[Rhodes22-list] Politics: How's It Going? Badly! (long, civil)

[brad haslett]

Robert,

No time this morning to comment but here is an
interesting article from the JP.  I'm not sure most
people realize what we're up against.

Brad

------------


Our World: The path to our destruction


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Caroline Glick, THE JERUSALEM POST  Jun. 5, 2006 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Allegedly spurred on by images of conflict in Iraq and
Afghanistan, and angered by what they saw as the
mistreatment of Muslims at home, they became
increasingly aggressive in their beliefs, according to
media reports. 

This is how London's Sunday Telegraph explained the
decision of 17 Canadian Muslims to stockpile three
tons of ammonium nitrate and plot acts of war against
their country. 

These men - all Muslims - who reportedly planned to
blow up the headquarters of Canada's Security
Intelligence Service (CSIS) in Toronto, are what
Canadian officials refer to as "home-grown
terrorists," and products of the "jihad generation."
Before their arrests on Friday, they had never visited
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq or the Palestinian
Authority. They chose the path of jihad in the streets
and mosques of Toronto. They learned how to build
bombs from the Internet. They trained for their
mission in a training camp in Ontario. 

Like the Telegraph, most media reports claim that
these men were prompted to wage a war against their
country because they believe that their fellow
Canadians are launching war against Islam. But why
would they think this? 

Canadians are outspoken in their anti-Americanism.
They have contributed generously to the Palestinians.
It only took the Canadian government a few weeks after
the Palestinian elections to announce it would fund a
Hamas-led PA. Canadians overwhelmingly oppose the
US-led war in Iraq and President George W. Bush. 

A Canadian Muslim friend who lives in Ontario told me
recently that he has been unwelcome in his local
mosque since the September 11 attacks on Washington
and New York. His fellow Muslims have blackballed him
because he made public statements critical of the
hijackers and of al Qaida and the Palestinians and
supportive of the US and Israel. He informed me that
while in absolute numbers, mosque attendance in Canada
has dropped since Sept. 11, those who continue to
attend are fervent in their devotion to jihad against
the Western world. 

That is, the Muslims who have been forced from the
organized Canadian Muslim community are those who
believe in Muslim integration in the West while those
who remain within that community are radical
separatists who cannot abide their pro-Western Muslim
brethren. 

My friend and his fellow pro-Western Muslims are
doubly ostracized. Not only are they rejected by their
fellow Muslims who decry their denunciations of jihad,
they are also rejected by the intellectual and
cultural elites in their countries who insist on
apologizing for jihadists in the name of
multiculturalism and anti-racism.
The depth of my friend's isolation was made clear this
weekend when, in the wake of the arrests of the
Canadian jihad cell, Luc Portelance, the CSIS
assistant director of operations told his countrymen,
"It is important to know that this operation in no way
reflects negatively on any specific community, or
ethno-cultural group in Canada." 

FOR ITS part, the Canadian Islamic Congress (whose
leader, Mohamed Elmasry has openly stated his view
that all Israeli citizens are legitimate targets for
terrorist murder), attacked Canada's Prime Minister
Stephen Harper for what it referred to as his decision
to "paint today's arrests as a battle between 'us' and
'them.'" The CIC alleged that "Such statements put all
Canadian Muslims in great danger," and demanded that
the Canadian government fund "legitimate academic
research to diagnose this serious social problem [of
Canadian Muslims waging war against their country] and
provide scientific solutions to it." 

Justifications for the actions of Western born and
raised jihadists - and indeed for all jihadists from
Osama bin Laden down - like that published by the
Telegraph are of course par for the course. As author
Bruce Bower exhaustively demonstrates in his book
While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying
the West from Within, there exists a unity of purpose
between Islamic extremists and Western elites in
Europe and throughout the world. Both sides wish to
hide the fact that Islamists seek to dominate the
Western world while painting the US and Israel as the
greatest threats to international security. 

There seems to be no limit to the willingness of
Western elites to justify jihadist acts of war against
their societies. The Telegraph's apology for the
Canadian jihadist terror group came at the same time
as Britain's counter-terror forces were conducting a
desperate search for a chemical bomb they fear was
built by two British born terrorists who were also
arrested on Friday in London. The fact that Britain's
own jihadists were planning to attack Londoners with
sarin gas made no dent in the Telegraph's willingness
to make excuses for radical Islamic warriors. 

THIS PATTERN of collaborative dissimulation between
leftist Western elites and jihadists manifested itself
last week in Winnipeg, Canada. There, as the Ontario
17 steadily advanced their plans of war, Muslims in
Manitoba launched an attack against a film that
exposes the nature of the global jihad against the
West. Last Monday and Tuesday the documentary film
Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West
launched its Canadian premiere in the city. (It will
be premiering in Israel at Hebrew University on June
14.) 

Obsession, was produced by the media watch group
Honest Reporting. It effectively shows the depth of
the hatred and indoctrination to jihad that is taking
place worldwide. Interweaving clips from Arab
television, recordings of mosque incitement,
interviews with extraordinarily brave Muslim heroes
like The Jerusalem Post's Khaled Abu Toameh and
renowned historians such as Sir Martin Gilbert,
Professor Robert Wistrich, and Daniel Pipes, the film
seeks to fill the void left by the Western media and
academia to alert regular citizens to the reality of
the threat that jihadist ideology presents to their
freedom. 

In light of the film's purpose, (and having
participated in the project and viewed the film
several times, I can attest to its success), it is not
surprising that the Muslim community in Winnipeg
sought to have it banned. It is also not surprising
that in reporting the protest, the Winnipeg Sun used
the misleading headline, "Aspers sponsor hate film,
say critics." 

Ahead of last week's screenings, members of the
Winnipeg Muslim community filed a complaint about it
with the city police's hate crimes unit. Shahina
Siddiqui, the president of the Islamic Social Services
Associations told the press, "I want the police to
identify this as hate propaganda. I want them to be
aware who the sponsors are and what they are doing." 

SO FOUR days before Friday's arrests, the Canadian
Muslim community attempted to prevent Canadians from
watching a film that explains why it is that Canadian
born Muslims are trying to destroy their country. And
four days before the arrests were made, the Winnipeg
Sun maintained faith with its colleagues throughout
the Western world by running a headline that gave its
readers the sense that there was some legitimacy to
the Muslims' complaint. 

And even though the apparent ringleader of the terror
cell served as a prayer leader and a member of the
board of directors of his local mosque, in the wake of
Friday's arrests, Canadian and other Western
commentators and editors continued to argue that the
arrested terrorists bore no relationship to the larger
Canadian Muslim community. 

It is against the backdrop of the refusal of Western
elites to acknowledge the fact that there is a global
jihad that the true danger of radical Islam becomes
clear. Many argue that the forces of global jihad are
no match for their enemies because they lack regular
armies. 

Yet because of the defiant, irrational and immoral
refusal of Western political, cultural and media
elites to acknowledge the threat that internal and
external jihadist forces manifest to the very notion
of human freedom, they make it impossible for their
societies to take measures to protect themselves.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This article can also be read at
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1148482113275&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

[ Back to the Article ]


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 1995-2006 The Jerusalem Post -
http://www.jpost.com/

--- Robert Skinner <robert at squirrelhaven.com> wrote:

> brad haslett wrote:
> > ...
> > We disagree that this is not a war.  It is a war
> that
> > has been ongoing for over twenty years and we lost
> the
> > first dozen or so battles.  9/11 was our wake-up
> call.
> >  Nothing in our recent history and experience has
> > prepared us for this type of war, so mistakes will
> be
> > made, and planning will prove to be less than
> > adequate. 
> 
> We have some common turf here.  We agree that this 
> situation has few if any parallels in our history.
> While we both will probably agree that smoking Bin 
> Laden would be a good thing, I do not see it as an
> ultimate objective.  We seem to have confused 
> economics with good and evil, and I submit that 
> the terrorists have been doing a damn fine job of
> clothing their thirst for power in religious garb.
> I do not see the USA being able to hold much moral
> high ground here -- we have not been anywhere near
> so successful in showing ourselves as being on God's
> right hand, whether we are or not.
> 
> > Lincoln is one of our most admired
> > Presidents for his perserverance during an
> unpopular
> > war.  Whether Bush is admired 50 years from now is
> > hard to tell from our present perspective. 
> 
> Agreed.  Nevertheless, perseverance has two edges,
> as many leaders have found.  And "history is 
> written by the winners."
> 
> > However, our current domestic politics is so
> polarized that it
> > is difficult to delineate peoples real opinion on
> Iraq
> > from their political zeal for whatever party.  I
> hope
> > this changes soon because the stakes are so high. 
> 
> Also agreed, without reservation in this case.
> 
> > We cannot retreat back to own shores and hope for
> the
> > best. 
> 
> I think withdraw and regroup might be a better
> characterization.  We have a lot of soft underbelly
> exposed in our current position.  I strongly suspect
> that there are better ways to protect our nation
> (and its way of life) than trying to impose a
> foreign
> way of government of Iraq now, no matter whether it 
> would benefit them in the long run.  
> 
> To put it another way, we in our society tend to
> value
> forgiveness and redemption.  One "aw sh*t" is wiped
> out 
> by some finite number of "attaboys".  One misstep by
> an American in Iraq is perceived as inexcusable, 
> warranting a death sentence.  We don't strap plastic
> around our waists, but some of them do -- largely
> due to outside influences, to be sure.
> 
> But we are quite alien.  We have lives that are
> worth 
> living on earth, as do most Iraquis.  But we do not
> live 
> in a country that was pasted together by outsiders
> for 
> their own purposes, nor are we under occupation by 
> another power whose purposes are quite muddy at
> best,
> and possibly very adverse to our own interests.
> 
> > As Evan Byah (who would make a great Democrat
> > candidate for President) said in a speech over the
> > weekend, the enemy budgeted a million dollars for
> the
> > 9/11 attack.  The cost to us was in the billions.
> > They have a decided advantage on the field of
> battle
> > because of the cost differential.  Whether Iraq
> was
> > the best choice for the next battlefield has yet
> to be
> > determined.  But, there will be a next
> battlefield.
> 
> Yes, they have a million-to-one economic advantage
> _on 
> this battlefield_.  But we have not taken the battle
> to 
> them.  They were not in Iraq.  They are as diffuse
> as 
> an idea, and it is on the battlefield of thought
> that 
> we need to dominate.  Heretofore, this has not been
> our
> strong suit.  Wouldn't hurt to divert more assets to
> 
> chasing him down.  Wiretapping inside the US seems
> wide
> of the mark.  A policy that includes torture is not
> exactly moral high ground.  We do not win hearts and
> 
> minds that way -- and that is the territory that
> must
> be won.
> 
> > Whoever the next President better choose wisely or
> the
> > choice will be made for him/her.  A lot of us
> > partisans are fed-up with both parties right now.
> 
> Yup!  And I am both a local Democratic party
> chairman 
> and a former Republican.  I am not so much partisan
> as
> someone with inadequate and unreliable information 
> attempting to extricate our country from a difficult
> (hopefully not impossible) situation.
> 
> > I've been following the attempt to start a
> 'virtual'
> > third party at http://www.unity08.com/.  Frankly,
> > neither the Democrats or Republicans have been
> > behaving or governing well lately.
> 
> Common ground there.  Neither end of the political 
> liberal-conservative dimension embodies the whole 
> truth.  And there is more than one dimension.  We 
> live in a multi-dimensional matrix, as finely
> divided 
> as each individual person within the whole populace.
>  
> 
> The middle ground of many, if not most, dimensions
> of 
> opinion has been horribly abused, denegrated, and 
> defiled.  Yet all of us have some area(s) of thought
> 
> where we either don't care, are ignorant, or find 
> both ends equally repugnant.
> 
> The Unity08 initiative sounds a bit idealistic, but 
> then, so did the Declaration of Independence.  I'm 
> interested, but not sold yet.  George Washington was
> 
> concerned about partisanship as a divisive force, 
> destructive to reasoned discourse.  I'm with him.
> 
> /Robert Skinner
> __________________________________________________
> Use Rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org, Help?
> www.rhodes22.org/list
> 


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com