CAIR cut off, but will it last?

The FBI has severed relations with CAIR, the dishonest and slippery Council for American Islamic Relations. For this we give thanks. But it’s one down, and several dozens of “moderate” Islamic front groups to go. For background, here's an IBD editorial. Now let's all write our representatives to encourage them NOT to talk to CAIR! Emphasize they are NOT a “civil rights group” that represents a religious minority persecuted by “Islamophobes”. Point out that CAIR is a front group for the Muslim Brotherhood who has vowed to destroy our civilization and our freedoms.

The reason this is important: CAIR will try to “end-run” FBI officials and apply pressure to members of the FBI’s Congressional oversight committee. This is where we can help. I implore you to join me in doing so. Only large numbers of cards, letters, e-mails and faxes can counteract the large sums of Islamic petro-dollar lobby money.

I would also recommend you retain the contact information for your Senators and Congress persons, because we will be needing them often in the Obama era that's now underway.

UPDATE: Since the above was written, it appears the CAIR end run is already starting. Virginia Congressman Frank Wolf is pushing the FBI not to cave in under the new administration. Steve Emerson and the Investigative Project on Terrorism have the story.

Afghan policy way off track

As Obama prepares to wade deeper into Afghanistan, President Karzai complains on Fox News about two things: his lack of control over American military operations in his country and the fact that "civilians are being killed". Here's the link. Comments:

* The Taliban embed themselves in civilian areas specifically for this reason. If Karzai succeeds with his demands for control and "no operations in civilian areas", it would neuter our military operations and give the Taliban a free pass.

* Karzai continues to demand more and more aid. This plays into the erroneous secularist notion that terrorism is caused by "poverty": not true! Violence is a tactic of JIHAD! We can waste billions over as many years as we wish but it will not change a thing: JIHAD will persist.

* JIHAD is the sacred obligation of all Muslims to struggle against unbelievers to impose The Shari'a Law on the whole world! It is a goal that Karzai and the Taliban have in common. We delude ourselves if we believe we can establish a "democracy" in this medieval tribal society, because Islam and democracy are utterly incompatible and irreconcilable. Why waste the blood and treasure on an unattainable goal? Forget the purple thumbs and understand Islamic Theology!

* We would do far better utilizing our resources to formulate an energy policy that eliminates our need to import oil from the Middle East. Doing that would defund and defang "JIHAD"and save Western Civilization.

Obama's first 48: Do you feel safer yet?

Barack Obama has been president for all of 48 hours, and I already feel less safe. In one of his first official acts as president, Obama ordered the detention facility at Guantanamo closed "within a year", and officially outlawed any "enhanced interrogation" techniques that fall outside of the U.S. Army Field Manual. In a signing ceremony attended by all the usual liberal suspects, the new president said that we would confront global violence without sacrificing "our values or our ideals".  After years of criticizing the Bush Administration, Obama and the Democrats will now have a chance to do it "their way". Democrats, of course, have always put a premium on high minded ideals -- preferring things to look good, sound good and feel good -- even if they don't work well (or at all) in practice.   The notion of fighting a war against a brutal enemy -- that decapitates its prisoners and seeks to wipe us from the face of the earth -- with the high ideals of our democratic laws and rules is both naive and dangerous. It reflects the fact that most on the left have never seen the fight against Islamic extremism as a real war, but rather as a difficult issue that can be dealt with through diplomacy, so-called "soft power" and conventional law enforcement techniques. In this upside down view of the world, Miranda rights, Habeus corpus and all other protections for terrorist detainees makes perfect sense.

The immediate result of closing Guantanamo is that it will now fall on the U.S. justice system to figure out what to do with the 250 detainees that remain there. For many on the left, this presents something of an academic question; there is a common narrative among opponents of Guantanamo that those imprisoned there are mostly innocent sheep herders and others caught up in the net of American power, and thus unjustly held without trial. Nothing could be further than the truth: the majority of prisoners at Guantanamo are hardened killers who if released will take up terrorism against us again, and present a real and pressing threat to the United States.

Obama's move to close Guantanamo comes as no surprise, of course, having been a central theme of his campaign. In fact, Obama has been on record as favoring a conventional legal remedy for terrorists ever since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year in Boumediene v Bush that Guantanamo terrorists should be granted access to the U.S. courts:

“I mean, you remember during the Nuremberg trials, part of what made us different was even after these Nazis had performed atrocities that no one had ever seen before, we still gave them a day in court and that taught the entire world about who we are but also the basic principles of rule of law. Now the Supreme Court upheld that principle yesterday”.

Now, as president, Obama is acting to put his view of "terrorist rights" into effect.  In ruling that interrogation techniques be limited to the U.S. Army Field Manual, which limits questioning to "please" and "thank you" kind of questions, Obama has effectively tied the hands of CIA and other interrogators who seek vital intelligence about Al Qaeda and other terrorists in the field. Unlike the salons of Paris, London or now Washington, D.C., the CIA and U.S. military operate in the real world, where innocent lives may depend on extracting information from evil doers intent on destroying us.

But that apparently doesn't matter to Obama, who with a swipe of his pen, has decided that he and the other liberals now in charge of our national security apparatus know more about security than does the current head of the CIA, General Michael Hayden, who has testified repeatedly in front of Congress that enhanced interrogation techniques are critically important to our security. Rather than study the issue from the inside and take some time to make the right decision on this important issue, Obama has placed politics over public safety in unilaterally disarming our intelligence officials as a grand act of political theater.

The left believes that some quid pro quo will exist between us and our enemies; that somehow us living up to our ideals will make a difference with those who seek our destruction and are willing to go to any lengths to ensure it. It is hard to believe that smart people can be so naive as to the real nature of the threats arrayed against us.

I've said many times that the left lives in a fantasy world of their own making, and this is further proof that with the Democrats in charge we will be in greater danger because of it.

Jihadists' goal: 'Destroy US from within'

Documents uncovered in a raid on the Holy Land Foundation, subject of the recent terrorism trial in Texas, reveal the intention and strategy of Islamizing the United States, even if it takes a hundred years. Linked below is an electronic copy of the Muslim Brotherhood's "Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America, 5/22/1991," shown in the original Arabic with English Translation. Consider, for example, Item 4 on the page numbered as Page 7 of 18 (but designated page 21 in the Adobe Reader for this PDF). Muslims are to understand that

their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and "sabotaging" its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions. Without this level of understanding, we are not up to this challenge and have not prepared ourselves for Jihad yet. It is a Muslim's destiny to perform Jihad and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes...

This candid self-indictment by the jihadists is worth sharing with those who think that Muslims are like any other group of immigrants and will assimilate, or with that a Mosque is no different than any other church, just like the Methodists on the next block.

Link to PDF: Muslim Brotherhood Intentions 1991

A Coloradan writes from Israel

We live in Gush Etzion, directly east of "Hamastan," about an hour away. We go to the beach in Ashkelon or Ashdod, just north of Gaza. It is somewhat safer here, in that there is only an occasional drive by shooting, random bombing, some rogue worker using his heavy equipment to plow down people and cars. Just before we got here a worker from Bet Lechem (Bethlehem), tried to blow himself up in our local grocery store. His trigger failed, and he was shot on the spot by a person who recognized him, realized Palestinian are not in Ephrata on the day before Shabbos (an obviously busy shopping day), and wearing an overcoat in the Summer. For the most part, we take all of this as ‘part of the territory’, but we don’t experience it on a daily basis, like our countrymen in Sderot.

They are heroes to us for staying in a town in which one gets 15 seconds warning to get to a bomb shelter. The kids and many adults are suffering from PTSD, night terrors, and other nervous conditions for their persistence. Shattered bodies are not the only casualties. We have known about this for years, and felt deeply betrayed that the same government who kicked out 9500 Israelis from Gush Katif by force, did not follow up on their promise that they would retaliate severely, if the Gazans used their newly self-occupied land as a staging area against Israel.

They finally are doing so, but each day is a nail biter because many of us have become cynical. This government is on its way out, so it is no coincidence that they are doing this just before an election. It has almost universal approval here. If you see something else on CNN, well, that’s the media for you. There is always a small but convenient group of ‘antis’ to keep things ‘even’. The general belief is that if Hamas stops the missiles (translate- we destroy their capacity to shoot them), we would be willing to stop short of destroying them. A power void could be worse, and Fatah has shown no less restraint. They are just being more closely watched; a condition which would be severely altered, if they got the state they clamor for.

Where we live is not in range of rockets either from Hamas or Hezbollah, but we have hosted friends besieged by both. In the last Lebanon fiasco, we had friends from the North living with us for six weeks. This past week, we hosted a family who left their home in Beersheva, due to the Grad missiles coming from Hamastan.

Since the incursion is becoming more successful, the amount of rockets is decreasing from a high of over 100/day to 14 yesterday (Jan. 5). May that trend continue to 0 and stay there, B”H. There are people who would see Hamas and Fatah totally destroyed, and the rest of the ‘civilian’ population gone, but mostly they admit that stance to be largely the result of unremitting aggression since we aspired to come here (this is not a political discussion, though).

I think the PR this time around has been astoundingly good. I was listening to a number of the news stations (France 24, CNN, Fox, Al-Jazeera, and the like), and encountered a new breed of well-informed, tough Israeli apologists. They did not allow themselves to be bullied, and did not allow the opposition to stray from the point. They diffused the so-called “humanitarian issue” by rightly pointing out how cynical it is to blame civilian casualties on Israelis, when Hamas routinely stores their military arsenals in schools, mosques, and other civilian structures. The thugs regularly hide among the civilians.

I am amazed at Israeli precision by having a Hamas/civilian casualty ration of 3-4/1. I particularly note an interview on Al-Jazeera, an understandably harsh forum for an Israeli. They brought on the A-Team. The interviewer constantly tried to overtalk the Israeli with the usual agenda. The Israeli would not allow it, and shouted over him (now this is the Israeli I have come to know and love). When the interviewer finally stopped his diatribe, the Israeli said that he was ‘invited’ on the air to give the Israeli side, so please be quiet for a few seconds, so he could present it. He them acquitted himself quite well.

No one is staying diplomatically quiet when the other side makes outrageous statements. Each detractor is being made to eat his words. I saw one Hamas apologist reduced to the eloquent response of saying, in an appropriately shocked voice, “I can’t believe you are saying this”, lacking any words of rebuttal. I’m sure it appealed to the more emotional among us.

Despite all this, it is not uncommon to find a victim of a terrorist attack and the attacker in the same Israeli emergency room. And there is a ton of humanitarian supplies sent to Gaza daily. Israel teats it enemies better that they treat themselves. ---------------------------------- Sol Grazi is a former Denver resident now living with his family in Israel.