Bully boy Bill Winter embarrasses himself

By Brian Ochsner (baochsner@aol.com) Let me get this straight. Bill Winter isn't afraid of a local critic - Dave Kopel of the Independence Institute - but he's worried that Osama bin Laden will make the 6th Congressional District more of a target because Tom Tancredo speaks his mind about Islamofascism. Makes perfect sense to me... if you're using liberal logic, that is.

He sent an email to Kopel in 2004 calling him a "rabid attack dog for Bush and Cheney." He finished his email with the line: "When the revolution comes, I'll be looking for you, brother!" This sounds like something a steroid-fueled pro wrestler would say before a match. Not a congressional candidate who wants to be taken seriously as Tancredo's Democratic challenger.

Both Ways Bill seems to pick his fights pretty carefully. If he can bully someone locally, he’ll do it. But if a global terrorist can hit him back, he’s not quite as feisty. It’s a free country, and Americans have the right to have dissenting opinions. As Oliver North aptly said, “You can disagree without being disagreeable.”

However, when someone comes ‘over the top’ like Winter did with Kopel, I have to question his judgment and temperament to be considered for high elected office.

Fighting terrorism causes it?

By Dave Petteys (dpetteys@comcast.net) Apropos the intelligence estimate leaked in part to the New York Times last weekend, and being spun by the left to blame America for the attacks upon us in Iraq and beyond:

The assertion that “fighting terrorism is what causes it” implies that ceasing to fight would cause terrorism to disappear.

This is like saying pulling weeds in your garden is what causes them to grow. Or, it is like saying big city crime is caused by law enforcement efforts.

Therefore the best way to handle crime is to dismantle police forces. Would any sane New Yorker believe such a thing?

Common sense l tells us the absurdity of such assertions. But more ominously, it impugns sinister motives for our society by those who advocate such dangerous steps.

Jihad rooted in theology, not economics

By Dave Petteys (dpetteys@comcast.net) Listening to a talk show yesterday, I heard yet again a gentlemen assert that the way to end Jihadism was to "treat the underlying structural cause", which he believed to be poverty. His model was the uneducated unemployed young Muslim in a Palestinian camp with nothing better to do than to strap on an explosive belt.

Thus, all that's necessary is to spread around aid, and give these young men a "place in society" and Jihadism goes away. In essence, we can and must buy them off! But this is a dangerous misperception that doesn't wash. Consider the following:

** Sayyd Kutb, theoretician for the Muslim Brotherhood, studied in America and was appalled by what he saw

** Osama Bin Laden himself is from a very wealthy Saudi family in the construction business.

** Most of the 9/11 hijackers were from middle-class families who had all the advantages of education, travel, etc.

** Those recently arrested in London were all educated and middle class British subjects, some of whom had never been in the Middle East

** Iran is awash in oil billions without the Shi'ia militancy diminishing a mite.

The sad fact is: Jihadism is caused by religious fanaticism. Period. Unfortunately, many of PhD's in the policy think tanks are secularists. Religious fanaticism simply does not compute for them. Most cut their eye teeth during the Cold War, and they assume everyone thinks like they do. They are used to dealing with the Russians who have their interests, are rational, and would negotiate. They cannot understand the Islamic demand to "convert or die" nor do they take it seriously.

They have thus reverted to the tried and true economic causality because it's the only explanation that makes sense to them. But the tragedy would be to base our policy on such misperceptions. It would be an ineffective waste of our resources. The challenge of Jihad is theological, not economic.

Islam's violence problem

(John Andrews in the Denver Post, Sept. 3) Next week marks the fifth anniversary of September 11, 2001, when our Islamic fascist enemy attacked America. Mohammad Atta and 18 of his Muslim brothers, aided by countless unnamed conspirators, commandeered jetliners to smash the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Another strike on the White House or the Capitol was narrowly averted. The cold war for global domination by radical Islam, sustained since the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979, turned to hot war on that Tuesday morning. But victory is now in doubt, less because of invincible enemies abroad than because of war weariness at home. People wonder if John Kerry was right when he argued this is not a geopolitical struggle for survival, but merely a law enforcement concern. How comforting to think so.

Except such wishful thinking could get us all killed. Our deeply ingrained religious tolerance must not blind us to the reality that one great world religion, Islam, today harbors powerful elements who have a violence problem. To us who are its targets, those fanatics’ belief that killing delights their God is quite literally intolerable – especially as their access to nuclear weapons for dealing death to millions is now just a matter of time.

My son’s son, Ian Michael, turns four this fall. I want him to grow up in a world where liberty, markets, democracy, equal justice, freedom of worship, and the rights of women are thriving and expanding. Ahmadinejad of Iran and Nasrallah of Hezbollah want him incinerated. Or if he grows up at all, they want him subjugated to sharia, Allah’s brutal theocracy. What choice have I but to regard these evil men and their death cult as mortal enemies?

I would be derelict as a citizen and grandfather if I fantasized that this ideology of world conquest can be managed back to a nuisance level like drugs – Sen. Kerry’s naïve vision in his 2004 campaign against President Bush. Other 9/11 columns may prescribe solutions for Baghdad or Beirut, airport profiling or energy independence; not this one. My 9/11 message is simply that we’re at war and we must win, nothing less.

Remember the mass murderer Atta, namesake of the prophet Mohammad. We don’t hear about some modern Jesus leading a Christian jihad, or some Moses leading a Jewish one. They don’t occur, not on the global scale of 9/11. That’s because Judaism and Christianity, imperfect as they have been and are, don’t have a violence problem – which Islam unfortunately does. This lethal virus cannot be tolerated. It must be eradicated.

Establishment of a tri-faith dialogue in Denver led by an Iraqi Shiite imam, Ibrahim Kazerooni, suggested an effort at eradication might be starting. But the so-called “Abrahamic Initiative” at St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral is all doubletalk so far.

“The bloodshed must stop,” Kazerooni writes on the cathedral website. “The logic of war, destruction and human suffering must be reversed, because such logic is not consistent with the will of God, who is understood by Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike to be compassionate and merciful. If we believe what our scriptures teach, there is no other choice.”

These bland generalities are belied by the imam’s strident anti-Israel activities and his coziness with radical Iranian clerics, as documented by local blogger Joshua Sharf. Moral equivalence between aggressor and defender, a Kazerooni specialty, cynically favors the aggressor. Thus are today’s Islamofascists excused like yesterday’s Soviets, with useful idiots in the West again paying the tab.

The patriarch Abraham, as we meet him in Genesis, took direct divine title to the Holy Land; peaceably settled territorial disputes with his nephew Lot; and most importantly, recognized that God does not command ritual human bloodshed. With these basics, Jews and Christians agree – whereas Muslims, as we know, balk. Invitations for Imam Kazerooni to explain the disagreement on my radio show have been rebuffed.

Not until Islam faces its violence problem and cleans house, achieving internal reform through external pressure, can the war that flared on September 11 come to an end. For America to opt out of the conflict unilaterally before then would be suicidal. Keep faith, patriots. The long struggle must continue.

Coerced conversion meets secular tolerance

By Dave Petteys (dpetteys@comcast.net) Mssrs. Olaf Wiig and Steve Centanni of Fox News were recently converted to Islam at gunpoint and released by their captors. To conclude “Piece of cake! They could recant tomorrow” may be an oversimplification. The experiences of prisoners of war in Korea (termed “brainwashing” after the war ended), as well as the famous “Stockholm Syndrome”, where captives formed bizarre attachments to their captors, could come into play here.

The extreme trauma of having your very life hanging by a very slender thread for several days, and coupling this with the immense relief and gratitude for the nightmare’s end may have unintuitive consequences. First of all, these men have been sternly warned that the penalty for recanting Islam is death. Secondly, after returning to their homes, should they begin attending the nearest neighborhood Mosque, the overwhelmingly warm and congratulatory welcome they would receive would be completely disorienting. And as they began their instruction in the Faith, the Imam would apologize for the “harshness that brought them to the correct path” but assure them it has been for their long term greater good. To see a complete and genuine conversion of these captives is not out of the question.

I have long thought that secularism is doomed. The experience of Mssrs. Wiig and Centanni explains why. Any person of faith in a similar situation would merely have been administered the bullet to the brain. The history of Christianity is filled with stories of martyrs who chose death rather than apostasize. But a secularist would see conversion as the better course. It is a perfect example of what happens when “Convert or Die!” confronts “Tolerance and Understanding at all costs”.