Examine the text (Muslims certainly do)

Cal Thomas on The Real Teachings of the Koran:

Soloman says the outlets for Islamic ideology are religious - seminaries, the madrassas (Koranic schools) and especially the mosques. "From the beginning, Mohammed used the mosque to propagate this ideology. It was in the mosque that jihad was declared (and) that troops were sent to conquer the rest of the world. The mosque was the seat of government and Americans are right to be concerned about (their growth)."

He asks Americans to inform themselves about the real teachings of Islam and not to fall for what various Islamic groups say it teaches. Soloman says, "The simplest Islamic book you open" teaches that all unbelievers (in Islam) are profane people. "Because of the (Koranic) text and what it says, it incites violence." He begins quoting verses from memory, too quickly to write them all down. One is, "Slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush." (Surah 9:5)

Dangerously Adrift

Gerard Baker has a disturbing piece in the London Times in which he analyzes the current state of US foreign policy. In many many respects, it sums up my current thoughts on the leadership of the Bush administration. The administration's recent handling of the Israel-Lebanon war has led me to believe that unless it retools its foreign policy, Bush's presidency could well go down in history as a failure--not because of Iraq per se, but on account of his rendering America as a force to brazenly scoff at rather than as force to fear and respect. Baker ends his column thus:

Now we have the worst of all worlds. Not only is the US despised around the globe, it can’t even make its supposed hegemony work.

It’s one thing to be seen as the bully in the schoolyard; it’s quite another when people realise the bully is actually incapable of getting anybody else to do what he wants. It’s unpleasant when people stop respecting you, but it’s positively terrifying when they stop fearing you.

What we have now is a situation in which the world’s only superpower, with the largest economic and military advantage any country has ever enjoyed on Earth, is pinned down like Gulliver, tormented by an army of fundamentalist Lilliputians.

Some will say that the US’s ineffectiveness is a direct result of the loss of its “soft” power. Alienating the rest of the world has weakened its ability to achieve its objectives. Idiocies such as Abu Ghraib and the brief flirtation with torture as a legitimate instrument undoubtedly hurt America’s image. But I don’t truly see how the failings in the Middle East could have been avoided by Washington’s being nicer to foreigners. What’s been missing is resolute leadership.

It is hard for me to recall a time when the world was such a scary place. No one should rejoice at America’s weakness. The world is scarier still because of it.

The circle of strife

I found the following video posted at Little Green Footballs (the blog that recently broke the story of the photoshopped-pictures from the Israel-Lebanon war). The video has the first footage I've seen of Hitler meeting the Mufti of Jerusalem (the man who Yassar Arafat claims is his uncle). A lot of people have been making analogies between what's happening now in the Middle East and what happened in the 1930s. Usually, analogies are taken too far and made to quickly. But I believe that the more we learn about what's happening now, and the more we study the past, the more appropriate this particular analogy becomes. I hope our leaders don't forget the lessons of the past--just as I hope they don't turn a blind eye to the dire challenges we face today.

The war on terror is over

Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem post has a must-read breakdown of the UN backed cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hezbollah/Lebanon. In short, she argues passionately that this agreement (codified in the form of a UN resolution) represents a catastrophic loss for Israel and the US and a victory for Hezbollah. Sadly, she's right. The Bush administration has handed a terrorist organization a victory, and in doing so has effectively ended the war on terror. My faith in Bush's resolve and leadership with respect to the greatest threat our country now faces has been utterly shattered.

Why, why, why can't we learn from history? Diplomatic compromises with Hitler in the 1930s cost us dearly in the 1940s. The folly of attempting to broker a lasting peace with a bunch of Islamic terrorists who will stop at nothing to kill as many Jews and take as much land as they can should be even more apparent to us now than the futility of negotiating with Hitler was to the leaders of the day in the late 1930s. I fear that in the years to come, we too will pay dearly for our desire to appease the appeasors of the world.