Mark Steyn: http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=M2JmNDJlYTBiMGY2MzNkZDg2ZWM4ZTYzNjVhODU3YmI=&w=MA
Sotomayor watch: http://bench.nationalreview.com/
Israel / Palestinians: Obama's idiotic posturing against Israel leads to obvious result: Additional Palestinian posturing and increased demands on Israel: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1244371034500&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
& Saudi King Abdullah (O's BFF) lobbying the Great One to "impose"a solution: Saudi leader King Abdullah has urged US President Barack Obama to impose a solution on the Middle East conflict if necessary, Saudi newspaper Al Hayat reported on Sunday, quoting what it called informed sources. http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1244371033243&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Unemployment & Housing: http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2009/06/optimistic-unemployment-and-housing.html
Ralph Peters had one of the best articles, nailing what was wrong w/ Obama's Cairo speech: http://www.nypost.com/seven/06062009/postopinion/opedcolumnists/what_obama_taught_me_172894.htm
Andy McCarthy on Obama's outrageous spinning of economic bad news and GM bankruptcy:
Obamanomics: How Stupid Do They Think We Are? [Andy McCarthy]
Pretty stupid.
Watching Fox News Sunday, I caught a panel on which Obama economic advisor Austin Goolsbee conceded that the administration had previously predicted unemployment would top out at around 8%, that it was now up to 9.4%, and that double-digit unemployment was a distinct possibility in the near future. Goolsbee didn't resort to the administrations's blather about "saving or creating jobs," but he did repeat its fustian about how last month's loss of 345,000 jobs (resulting in a half percentage point jump in the jobless rate) is somehow good news because it beat predictions (I don't recall him saying whose) of even more dire loss numbers. It made me wonder why, if those predictions either existed or were serious, the Obama administration would have previously predicted that unemployment would top out at 8%?
Goolsbee then laughably intimated that the steep jump in the jobless rate could be attributable to hopeful signs that the economy is improving. Huh? See if you can follow this: he says flashes of hope that we are on the verge of a revival have purportedly caused previously uncounted jobless people to seek (but not find) work — that is, they waited out prosperous times, deciding to leap into the job hunt only when hundreds of thousands of heretofore gainfully employed people got pink-slipped and began competing for a declining pool of jobs. Of course, why shouldn't Goolsbee think he can get away with these fables when the Obamedia has taken to repeating them verbatim? Witness the headline on page one of yesterday's Wall Street Journal: "Slower Job Losses Lift Hopes" — I'm sure that's exactly the headline Bush would have gotten after a half-point jump in an already sky-rocketing jobless rate.
If that weren't enough to make your head spin, Goolsbee also blamed Obama's handling (i.e., nationalizing) of the auto industry on ... President Bush. Obama, you see, was saddled with this mess because Bush — over the objections of his own party — decided back in December to raid billions in public money intended for bailing out the financial sector in order to bail out the automakers.
Again, how stupid does he think we are? Bush's move came after then President-elect Obama implored him to take action to stave off the collapse of the auto-industry. This was one of the major topics of their meeting in the White House on November 11, covered here by the Wall Street Journal. Back then, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Harry Reid were already urging Bush to study whether — regardless of how Democrat sponsored auto bail-out legislation fared — the president already had the authority to divert financial sector bail-out funds for Detroit. So it was that when Republicans defeated the auto bail-out bill December, Bush, at the urging of Obama and the Democrats, made one of the worst gaffes of his presidency by extending over $17B in government "loans" to GM and Chysler. For the Obama/Democrat line to now be that Bush foisted this mess on the new administration, and that Bush is to blame for Obama's geometric exacerbation of the problem, is breathtaking.
Finally, Goolsbee explained that it was unfair to accuse Pres. Obama of a flip-flop just because he is now amenable to taxing employer-provided health benefits despite arguing during the campaign that it was shameful for Sen. McCain to suggest taxing employer-provided health benefits. After all, Goolsbee elaborated, the initiative to tax the benefits is not Obama's idea; it is an idea of top Democrats (with whom the White House closely coordinates) to which Obama is listening because he's just that kinda open-minded guy. Uh-huh.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Friday, June 5, 2009
Yikes -- Have You Been Body Snatched ?
So true, VDH, so true.
It's Better When You Wake Up Body-Snatched . . . [Victor Davis Hanson]
I think Obama remains popular because there is now no bad news. I saw this recent headline blaring, "Surge in Labor Force Shows U.S. Workers Gaining Confidence" and was uplifted — until way down into the article this little bit was unfortunately left in by some un-podded censor, "The gain in the labor force in part helps explain why the jobless rate jumped to 9.4 percent in May, the highest since 1983." Where did that icky guy come from?
In any case, we are happier waking up as alien duplicates. At least no one is dying in Iraq that we know of. Our Predator drones no longer kill anyone besides terrorists. Military tribunals, renditions, and wiretaps are a-okay. GM and Chrysler are finally "readjusting." The Muslim world likes us now. If $2 trillion deficits are okay, why not $3 trillion? Terrorists are unmentioned and so no longer exist. Europeans ask why can't they have their own Obama. Even the likes of Pravda and Hugo Chávez swear that we are more leftist and PC than they they ever were. No more silly movies like Rendition or Redacted, since both protocols are now approved. Everyone is proud of the U.S. again. We've got a president who finally cares enough to remind us to inflate our tires and wash our hands. Only a few problems remain — mostly those red-eyed hold-outs who won't go to sleep and so swear that Justice Sotomayor said more than twice that Latinas are wiser than white men, when we know she really didn't, or at least didn't mean it.
It's Better When You Wake Up Body-Snatched . . . [Victor Davis Hanson]
I think Obama remains popular because there is now no bad news. I saw this recent headline blaring, "Surge in Labor Force Shows U.S. Workers Gaining Confidence" and was uplifted — until way down into the article this little bit was unfortunately left in by some un-podded censor, "The gain in the labor force in part helps explain why the jobless rate jumped to 9.4 percent in May, the highest since 1983." Where did that icky guy come from?
In any case, we are happier waking up as alien duplicates. At least no one is dying in Iraq that we know of. Our Predator drones no longer kill anyone besides terrorists. Military tribunals, renditions, and wiretaps are a-okay. GM and Chrysler are finally "readjusting." The Muslim world likes us now. If $2 trillion deficits are okay, why not $3 trillion? Terrorists are unmentioned and so no longer exist. Europeans ask why can't they have their own Obama. Even the likes of Pravda and Hugo Chávez swear that we are more leftist and PC than they they ever were. No more silly movies like Rendition or Redacted, since both protocols are now approved. Everyone is proud of the U.S. again. We've got a president who finally cares enough to remind us to inflate our tires and wash our hands. Only a few problems remain — mostly those red-eyed hold-outs who won't go to sleep and so swear that Justice Sotomayor said more than twice that Latinas are wiser than white men, when we know she really didn't, or at least didn't mean it.
Obama - completely wrong re: Israel / Settlements
This points out the flaws in the Obama / Hillary "policy" / worldview ...
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/33855_Krauthammer-_Obamas_Settlements_Canard
Krauthammer: Obama's Settlements Canard
Opinion Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 10:06:35 am PDT
Charles Krauthammer’s column today is about Barack Obama’s speech to the Muslim world, and his call for Israel to cease settlement growth: Barack Obama’s Israeli Settlements Canard.
This first paragraph is the truly important point, and it’s the reality that most diplomats and politicians are constitutionally unable to acknowledge:
In the 16 years since the Oslo accords turned the West Bank and Gaza over to the Palestinians, their leaders built no roads, no courthouses, no hospitals, none of the fundamental state institutions that would relieve their people’s suffering. Instead they poured everything into an infrastructure of war and terror, all the while depositing billions (from gullible Western donors) into their Swiss bank accounts.
Obama says he came to Cairo to tell the truth. But he uttered not a word of that. Instead, among all the bromides and lofty sentiments, he issued but one concrete declaration of new American policy: “The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements,” thus reinforcing the myth that Palestinian misery and statelessness are the fault of Israel and the settlements.
Blaming Israel and picking a fight over “natural growth” may curry favor with the Muslim “street.” But it will only induce the Arab states to do like Abbas: sit and wait for America to deliver Israel on a platter. Which makes the Obama strategy not just dishonorable but self-defeating.
My only difference with Krauthammer is that these myths are not unique to Barack Obama; the Bush administration said the same things about settlements, and so has every US president for the past 20 years.
It’s a phenomenon that psychologists call “displacement” — the real problem (Arab rejection of Israel’s right to exist) is so difficult and unworkable that blame is displaced to an easier target (the settlements).
But the fact is that even if the settlements were to vanish completely, the underlying problem of rejectionism would remain. There can never be any real progress toward peace until the US and the world overcomes this obsessive denial of reality.
-----------------------
I disagree w/ Charles Johnson of LGF in that Obama and Hillary have gone much farther in their criticism of Israeli settlements. Bush admin, and even Bubba Clinton, recognized Israel would incorporate major settlement blocs around Jerusalem in any final settlement.
Fact is, the problem remains Palestinian hatred and racism, not "occupation and humiliation". The Palestinians brought the majority of their problems on themselves.
Diplomacy of Wishful ThinkingObama in Cairo.
By Mona Charen
In Cairo, President Obama told (was it for the 100th time?) the story of his African father and American mother. This story has worked well for him in the American context, and he seems to believe that it will beguile the rest of the world as well. We shall see whether this experiment with autobiography as foreign policy has purchase.
But while some of his appeal to Muslims for common ground was certainly benign, there were aspects of the speech that may create more problems than they solve.
Obama has signaled to the Arab world that his administration is willing to pressure Israel about settlements in the West Bank. Asked before his Middle East trip about relations with Israel, President Obama told National Public Radio, “Part of being a good friend is being honest. And I think there have been times where we are not as honest as we should be about the fact that the current direction, the current trajectory, in the region is profoundly negative . . . ” (Whenever someone starts a sentence by advising that “good friends tell each other the truth,” duck.) Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spelled out the president’s policy bluntly: “He wants to see a stop to settlements — not some settlements, not outposts, not ‘natural growth’ exceptions.”
President Obama presumably wants Israel to uproot the 300,000 Jewish settlers who live in the West Bank to make way for a Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. This is the “solution” to the Palestinian question that has been endorsed, formally and informally, by the last three presidents and most of the foreign ministries in the world. It has even been endorsed by many Israelis, including former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, who offered 95 percent of the West Bank and all of Gaza to Yasser Arafat.
The idea of handing over the West Bank to the Palestinians has lost favor in Israel after Gaza was evacuated (at considerable pain) in 2005, because the area became a launching pad for missiles aimed at the Israeli heartland. But President Obama has a solution to that. It’s nothing much — just the wholesale reversal of Palestinian political culture.
“Palestinians must abandon violence,” the president instructed. “Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America’s founding. . . . Now is the time for Palestinians to focus on what they can build. The Palestinian Authority must develop its capacity to govern, with institutions that serve the needs of its people.”
Is that all? If Mahmoud Abbas were like Martin Luther King Jr. and the Palestinians were like African Americans at Selma and Birmingham, things would be very different. In fact, if the Palestinians were not wedded to terrorism and violence; did not celebrate as heroes and martyrs those who blow themselves up in shopping malls and restaurants; were not beset with corruption, steeped in anti-Semitism, and drunk on maximal claims, there would be no conflict. Israel would have long since given up huge portions of the West Bank, as it gave all of Sinai back to the Egyptians.
And then there is the small matter of Hamas. One of Hamas’s leaders proclaimed as recently as January that his organization “will not rest until we destroy the Zionist entity.” Hamas’s charter is explicit that “Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement.” The charter also looks forward to the day when “The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.” Hamas controls Gaza, and, were it not for the presence of the Israel Defense Forces, would control the West Bank as well.
President Obama, who seems to live in a realm where wishing makes it so, waved his magic wand in Hamas’s direction too. “Hamas does have support among some Palestinians,” he said, “but they also have responsibilities. To play a role in fulfilling Palestinian aspirations, and to unify the Palestinian people, Hamas must put an end to violence, recognize past agreements, and recognize Israel’s right to exist.”Good luck with that. In the meantime, Palestinian hopes for American pressure on Israel have been ignited — with what conflagrations to come we do not yet know.
— Mona Charen is a nationally syndicated columnist.
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/33855_Krauthammer-_Obamas_Settlements_Canard
Krauthammer: Obama's Settlements Canard
Opinion Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 10:06:35 am PDT
Charles Krauthammer’s column today is about Barack Obama’s speech to the Muslim world, and his call for Israel to cease settlement growth: Barack Obama’s Israeli Settlements Canard.
This first paragraph is the truly important point, and it’s the reality that most diplomats and politicians are constitutionally unable to acknowledge:
In the 16 years since the Oslo accords turned the West Bank and Gaza over to the Palestinians, their leaders built no roads, no courthouses, no hospitals, none of the fundamental state institutions that would relieve their people’s suffering. Instead they poured everything into an infrastructure of war and terror, all the while depositing billions (from gullible Western donors) into their Swiss bank accounts.
Obama says he came to Cairo to tell the truth. But he uttered not a word of that. Instead, among all the bromides and lofty sentiments, he issued but one concrete declaration of new American policy: “The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements,” thus reinforcing the myth that Palestinian misery and statelessness are the fault of Israel and the settlements.
Blaming Israel and picking a fight over “natural growth” may curry favor with the Muslim “street.” But it will only induce the Arab states to do like Abbas: sit and wait for America to deliver Israel on a platter. Which makes the Obama strategy not just dishonorable but self-defeating.
My only difference with Krauthammer is that these myths are not unique to Barack Obama; the Bush administration said the same things about settlements, and so has every US president for the past 20 years.
It’s a phenomenon that psychologists call “displacement” — the real problem (Arab rejection of Israel’s right to exist) is so difficult and unworkable that blame is displaced to an easier target (the settlements).
But the fact is that even if the settlements were to vanish completely, the underlying problem of rejectionism would remain. There can never be any real progress toward peace until the US and the world overcomes this obsessive denial of reality.
-----------------------
I disagree w/ Charles Johnson of LGF in that Obama and Hillary have gone much farther in their criticism of Israeli settlements. Bush admin, and even Bubba Clinton, recognized Israel would incorporate major settlement blocs around Jerusalem in any final settlement.
Fact is, the problem remains Palestinian hatred and racism, not "occupation and humiliation". The Palestinians brought the majority of their problems on themselves.
Diplomacy of Wishful ThinkingObama in Cairo.
By Mona Charen
In Cairo, President Obama told (was it for the 100th time?) the story of his African father and American mother. This story has worked well for him in the American context, and he seems to believe that it will beguile the rest of the world as well. We shall see whether this experiment with autobiography as foreign policy has purchase.
But while some of his appeal to Muslims for common ground was certainly benign, there were aspects of the speech that may create more problems than they solve.
Obama has signaled to the Arab world that his administration is willing to pressure Israel about settlements in the West Bank. Asked before his Middle East trip about relations with Israel, President Obama told National Public Radio, “Part of being a good friend is being honest. And I think there have been times where we are not as honest as we should be about the fact that the current direction, the current trajectory, in the region is profoundly negative . . . ” (Whenever someone starts a sentence by advising that “good friends tell each other the truth,” duck.) Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spelled out the president’s policy bluntly: “He wants to see a stop to settlements — not some settlements, not outposts, not ‘natural growth’ exceptions.”
President Obama presumably wants Israel to uproot the 300,000 Jewish settlers who live in the West Bank to make way for a Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. This is the “solution” to the Palestinian question that has been endorsed, formally and informally, by the last three presidents and most of the foreign ministries in the world. It has even been endorsed by many Israelis, including former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, who offered 95 percent of the West Bank and all of Gaza to Yasser Arafat.
The idea of handing over the West Bank to the Palestinians has lost favor in Israel after Gaza was evacuated (at considerable pain) in 2005, because the area became a launching pad for missiles aimed at the Israeli heartland. But President Obama has a solution to that. It’s nothing much — just the wholesale reversal of Palestinian political culture.
“Palestinians must abandon violence,” the president instructed. “Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America’s founding. . . . Now is the time for Palestinians to focus on what they can build. The Palestinian Authority must develop its capacity to govern, with institutions that serve the needs of its people.”
Is that all? If Mahmoud Abbas were like Martin Luther King Jr. and the Palestinians were like African Americans at Selma and Birmingham, things would be very different. In fact, if the Palestinians were not wedded to terrorism and violence; did not celebrate as heroes and martyrs those who blow themselves up in shopping malls and restaurants; were not beset with corruption, steeped in anti-Semitism, and drunk on maximal claims, there would be no conflict. Israel would have long since given up huge portions of the West Bank, as it gave all of Sinai back to the Egyptians.
And then there is the small matter of Hamas. One of Hamas’s leaders proclaimed as recently as January that his organization “will not rest until we destroy the Zionist entity.” Hamas’s charter is explicit that “Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement.” The charter also looks forward to the day when “The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.” Hamas controls Gaza, and, were it not for the presence of the Israel Defense Forces, would control the West Bank as well.
President Obama, who seems to live in a realm where wishing makes it so, waved his magic wand in Hamas’s direction too. “Hamas does have support among some Palestinians,” he said, “but they also have responsibilities. To play a role in fulfilling Palestinian aspirations, and to unify the Palestinian people, Hamas must put an end to violence, recognize past agreements, and recognize Israel’s right to exist.”Good luck with that. In the meantime, Palestinian hopes for American pressure on Israel have been ignited — with what conflagrations to come we do not yet know.
— Mona Charen is a nationally syndicated columnist.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Sotomayor updates ......
Sotomayor’s Public Cheerleading for Obama [Ed Whelan]
In a speech that she delivered to the Black, Latino, Asian Pacific American Law Alumni Assocation on April 17, 2009—two weeks before news of the Souter vacancy broke—Judge Sotomayor made a number of references to President Obama that seem surprisingly and disturbingly partisan coming from a sitting federal judge:
“The power of working together was, this past November, resoundingly proven.” (p. 6)
“The wide coalition of groups that joined forces to elect America’s first Afro-American President was awe inspiring in both the passion the members of the coalition exhibited in their efforts and the discipline they showed in the execution of their goals.” (p. 7)
“On November 4, we saw past our ethnic, religious and gender differences.” (p. 10)
“What is our challenge today: Our challenge as lawyers and court related professionals and staff, as citizens of the world is to keep the spirit of the common joy we shared on November 4 alive in our everyday existence.” (p. 11)
“It is the message of service that President Obama is trying to trumpet and it is a clarion call we are obligated to heed.” (p. 13)
Canon 2 of the Code of Conduct for United States Judges provides that a judge “should act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.” Sotomayor’s public cheerleading for Obama seems clearly to violate that ethical obligation.
Sotomayor’s “Affirmative Action Plan for Puerto Rico” [Ed Whelan]
The apparent answer to history professor K. C. Johnson’s question (see “Former (?) Puerto Rican Nationalist Nominated to North American Supreme Court”) about “when Sotomayor ceased being a Puerto Rican nationalist who favors independence”: By the time she was in law school and was instead advocating what law professor Roger Alford (on the Opinio Juris blog) calls an “affirmative action plan for Puerto Rico” statehood. Excerpts from Alford’s post about Sotomayor’s law-review piece:
Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s student note in the 1979 Yale Law Journal is a piece of work. It makes an extravagant case for Puerto Rican statehood based on terms of accession that are more favorable to Puerto Rico than any other state in the Union. Her proposal is a sort of affirmative action plan for what she describes as a “small, economically poor dependency” acquired as a result of the “American experience with colonialism.”
While her legal arguments are complex, her economic and political conclusions are simple: Puerto Rico should become a state and accede to the Union in a manner that grants her ownership rights over the offshore oil, gas and mineral deposits within a two-hundred mile radius of Puerto Rico. It should do so despite the fact that no other state enjoys similar rights and despite over two centuries of federal practice that provide for states to enter the Union “on an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever.” …
In short, in proposing preferential treatment for Puerto Rican statehood, Sotomayor manages to provide justifiable grounds to (1) upset environmentalists; (2) upset those sensitive to the equality of states; (3) upset those opposed to affirmative action and preferential treatment; and (4) upset those who do not take kindly to assertions that the United States is a colonial power. I would think almost every United States Senator falls into at least one of those four categories.
In a speech that she delivered to the Black, Latino, Asian Pacific American Law Alumni Assocation on April 17, 2009—two weeks before news of the Souter vacancy broke—Judge Sotomayor made a number of references to President Obama that seem surprisingly and disturbingly partisan coming from a sitting federal judge:
“The power of working together was, this past November, resoundingly proven.” (p. 6)
“The wide coalition of groups that joined forces to elect America’s first Afro-American President was awe inspiring in both the passion the members of the coalition exhibited in their efforts and the discipline they showed in the execution of their goals.” (p. 7)
“On November 4, we saw past our ethnic, religious and gender differences.” (p. 10)
“What is our challenge today: Our challenge as lawyers and court related professionals and staff, as citizens of the world is to keep the spirit of the common joy we shared on November 4 alive in our everyday existence.” (p. 11)
“It is the message of service that President Obama is trying to trumpet and it is a clarion call we are obligated to heed.” (p. 13)
Canon 2 of the Code of Conduct for United States Judges provides that a judge “should act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.” Sotomayor’s public cheerleading for Obama seems clearly to violate that ethical obligation.
Sotomayor’s “Affirmative Action Plan for Puerto Rico” [Ed Whelan]
The apparent answer to history professor K. C. Johnson’s question (see “Former (?) Puerto Rican Nationalist Nominated to North American Supreme Court”) about “when Sotomayor ceased being a Puerto Rican nationalist who favors independence”: By the time she was in law school and was instead advocating what law professor Roger Alford (on the Opinio Juris blog) calls an “affirmative action plan for Puerto Rico” statehood. Excerpts from Alford’s post about Sotomayor’s law-review piece:
Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s student note in the 1979 Yale Law Journal is a piece of work. It makes an extravagant case for Puerto Rican statehood based on terms of accession that are more favorable to Puerto Rico than any other state in the Union. Her proposal is a sort of affirmative action plan for what she describes as a “small, economically poor dependency” acquired as a result of the “American experience with colonialism.”
While her legal arguments are complex, her economic and political conclusions are simple: Puerto Rico should become a state and accede to the Union in a manner that grants her ownership rights over the offshore oil, gas and mineral deposits within a two-hundred mile radius of Puerto Rico. It should do so despite the fact that no other state enjoys similar rights and despite over two centuries of federal practice that provide for states to enter the Union “on an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever.” …
In short, in proposing preferential treatment for Puerto Rican statehood, Sotomayor manages to provide justifiable grounds to (1) upset environmentalists; (2) upset those sensitive to the equality of states; (3) upset those opposed to affirmative action and preferential treatment; and (4) upset those who do not take kindly to assertions that the United States is a colonial power. I would think almost every United States Senator falls into at least one of those four categories.
Obama's Speech -- But on the other had ......
"Platitudes and naivete" [Andy McCarthy]
That's Robert Spencer's read on the president's Cairo speech at Jihad Watch — and he grounds it in lots of analysis.
Obama Abandons Democracy [Michael Rubin]
Obama studiously avoids the word democracy. Instead, he declared, "That does not lessen my commitment, however, to governments that reflect the will of the people." Dictators of the world, relax: Stage a spontaneous demonstration to demonstrate popular adulation; don't worry about those pesky votes.
Obama's Lexicon [Michael Rubin]
So Obama studiously avoids the word terrorism.
Madeleine Albright erased rogue regimes; they became states of concern.
More recently, we abandoned the global war on terrorism; it became overseas contingency operations.
Alas, if we change the term, the world does not become a better place. Diplomats may want to change the lexicon, but the problem is not the words, it is the phenomenon.
Jarring to Hear [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
POTUS refer to an "occupation" when talking about the lives of Palestinians.
Of Obama and Strawmen [Michael Rubin]
America is not and has never been at war with Islam. So says Barack Obama. Indeed. Bush never said we were at war with Islam. As Bush stated on September 20, 2001 before a Joint Session of Congress:
I also want to speak tonight directly to Muslims throughout the world. We respect your faith. It's practiced freely by many millions of Americans and by millions more in countries that America counts as friends. Its teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah. The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam itself. The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends. It is not our many Arab friends. Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists and every government that supports them.
The only ones who said we were at war with Islam were some irresponsible politicians and pundits, engaged in a strawman argument for domestic political reasons, completely oblivious to the cost of misrepresenting the president in terms of prestige, blood, and treasure.
Dueling Legacies [Michael Rubin]
Again, watching CNN, a few times the panelists juxtaposed Obama's standing ovation with the shoe thrown at Bush in Baghdad (forgetting to mention, the journalist was a Baathist and not representative of Iraqis let alone Arabs).
So let's juxtapose the legacy: Obama gave a rousing speech and got a standing ovation, but abandonned key U.S. principles and moral clarity. Bush gave a so-so speech but liberated 50 million people. Who should history favor?
The Good and Bad in Obama's Cairo Address [Marc Thiessen]
Let’s give President Obama credit for the good things he said in Cairo. He declared he would “relentlessly confront violent extremists who pose a grave threat to our security . . . . And it is my first duty as president to protect the American people.” He took on the conspiracy theories about 9/11, declaring “these are not opinions to be debated; these are facts to be dealt with.” And he pointed out that al-Qaeda has “killed people of different faiths — more than any other, they have killed Muslims.” All these are important points.But much of the rest of what the president said was damaging, wrong, and at times simply shameful.
Keep reading this post . .
Obama's Speech [Rich Lowry]
I have to go back and read it carefully, so I reserve the right to extend and revise my remarks. But on the whole I thought it was pretty good and I basically agree with Max Boot's take here. Yes, there were many things about which to cavil, there were missed opportunities, and he betrayed the disturbing weakness of his policy in certain key areas, Iran foremost among them. But the speech was an act of diplomacy and as such, it inevitably was going to skate over some inconvenient truths and tilt its presentation in a way to try to make it more persuasive to its target audience. Fundamentally, Obama's goal was to tell the Muslim world, "We respect and value you, your religion and your civilization, and only ask that you don't hate us and murder us in return." Bush tried to deliver the same message over and over again. The difference with Obama is that people might actually be willing to listen.
Flashback [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
President George W. Bush, Dec. 2008, to NR:
You can get short-term popularity if you want to in the Middle East by blaming all problems on Israel. That'll make you popular. …It would have made me wrong, however. And ultimately, you earn people's respect by articulating a set of principles and standing by them. You know, popularity comes and goes…but principles are enduring.
Obama and Israel [Aron Raskas]
President Obama went to Cairo University today to pay homage to Muslim “history” and “tradition,” and to stake his support for a Palestinian state. In his zeal to appease his Muslim audience, he deftly disregarded, and thus disparaged, the deeply rooted Jewish legacy in the Holy Land. There is no nation with firmer roots in a land than the Jewish people in the greater land of Israel. Obama-administration officials would undoubtedly recoil in disdain were any Israeli official to refer to the West Bank as the territories of “Judea” and “Samaria,” dismissing that as propaganda invented by extremist “settlers” for political ends. Yet, those names, reflecting the Jewish roots in the land, long predated any Palestinian Arab presence. Maps, photographs, travel guides, and other books have throughout history described these territories by those time-honored names. Indeed, the Obama faithful might be disturbed to know, even United Nations resolutions — including, notably, the 1947 Partition resolution — utilized those terms.
Keep reading this post . . .
Re: The Good and Bad . . . [Rich Lowry]
I agree with Marc on a few of his points, but not on others. I too didn't like the passage he cites on Iran (although the nuclear passage was much worse). The "on the other hand" after the Holocaust discussion was very unfortunate, although I don't think it means that Obama believes there's moral equivalence between the plight of the Palestinians and the Nazi murder of the Jews. On the Hamas reference, Marc leaves out the second half: "Hamas must put an end to violence, recognize past agreements, and recognize Israel's right to exist." I think the democracy language was pretty good all things considered, and Obama can't be expected to seriously pressure the Egyptians on human rights when even Bush didn't do it and democracy promotion was at the center of Bush's foreign policy. On Iraq, yes, Obama was stinting, but he opposed the war, so I don't know how much you can reasonably expect him to praise it. And on interrogation and Gitmo, Obama's polices are either partly (interrogation) or wholly (Gitmo) acts of international PR, so it would be bizarre not to mention them in such a speech.
I don't want to make exalted claims for the speech. It was a mixed bag and there are limits to the effect any one speech can have. But I think some in the conservative blogosphere are pronouncing it a scandal because they leave out all the good things. Consider: He extolled America as "one of the greatest sources of progress that the world has ever known"; pledged we will "relentlessly confront violent extremists who pose a grave threat to our country"; condemned Holocaust denial as "baseless, ignorant, and hateful"; said "it is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus"; insisted that "the Arab-Israel conflict should no longer be used to distract the people of Arab nations from other problems"; and called for more democracy, religious freedom, and women's rights in the Muslim world. And he got a standing ovation.
That should count for something. My standard is not whether Obama gave a speech I'd totally agree with (not going to happen), or whether it was strictly accurate as a matter of history of Koranic exegesis (irrelevant), but whether the speech will, on balance, help isolate Islamic extremists intellectually and politically, or not. Since I think it will, I consider it a success.
The End of America’s Strategic Alliance with Israel? [Caroline Glick]
From an Israeli perspective, Pres. Barack Obama’s speech today in Cairo was deeply disturbing. Both rhetorically and programmatically, Obama’s speech was a renunciation of America’s strategic alliance with Israel.Rhetorically, Obama’s sugar coated the pathologies of the Islamic world — from the tyranny that characterizes its regimes, to the misogyny, xenophobia, Jew hatred, and general intolerance that characterizes its societies. In so doing he made clear that his idea of pressing the restart button with the Islamic world involves erasing the moral distinctions between the Islamic world and the free world.In contrast, Obama’s perverse characterization of Israel — of the sources of its legitimacy and of its behavior — made clear that he shares the Arab world’s view that there is something basically illegitimate about the Jewish state.
Keep reading this post . . .
That's Robert Spencer's read on the president's Cairo speech at Jihad Watch — and he grounds it in lots of analysis.
Obama Abandons Democracy [Michael Rubin]
Obama studiously avoids the word democracy. Instead, he declared, "That does not lessen my commitment, however, to governments that reflect the will of the people." Dictators of the world, relax: Stage a spontaneous demonstration to demonstrate popular adulation; don't worry about those pesky votes.
Obama's Lexicon [Michael Rubin]
So Obama studiously avoids the word terrorism.
Madeleine Albright erased rogue regimes; they became states of concern.
More recently, we abandoned the global war on terrorism; it became overseas contingency operations.
Alas, if we change the term, the world does not become a better place. Diplomats may want to change the lexicon, but the problem is not the words, it is the phenomenon.
Jarring to Hear [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
POTUS refer to an "occupation" when talking about the lives of Palestinians.
Of Obama and Strawmen [Michael Rubin]
America is not and has never been at war with Islam. So says Barack Obama. Indeed. Bush never said we were at war with Islam. As Bush stated on September 20, 2001 before a Joint Session of Congress:
I also want to speak tonight directly to Muslims throughout the world. We respect your faith. It's practiced freely by many millions of Americans and by millions more in countries that America counts as friends. Its teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah. The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam itself. The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends. It is not our many Arab friends. Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists and every government that supports them.
The only ones who said we were at war with Islam were some irresponsible politicians and pundits, engaged in a strawman argument for domestic political reasons, completely oblivious to the cost of misrepresenting the president in terms of prestige, blood, and treasure.
Dueling Legacies [Michael Rubin]
Again, watching CNN, a few times the panelists juxtaposed Obama's standing ovation with the shoe thrown at Bush in Baghdad (forgetting to mention, the journalist was a Baathist and not representative of Iraqis let alone Arabs).
So let's juxtapose the legacy: Obama gave a rousing speech and got a standing ovation, but abandonned key U.S. principles and moral clarity. Bush gave a so-so speech but liberated 50 million people. Who should history favor?
The Good and Bad in Obama's Cairo Address [Marc Thiessen]
Let’s give President Obama credit for the good things he said in Cairo. He declared he would “relentlessly confront violent extremists who pose a grave threat to our security . . . . And it is my first duty as president to protect the American people.” He took on the conspiracy theories about 9/11, declaring “these are not opinions to be debated; these are facts to be dealt with.” And he pointed out that al-Qaeda has “killed people of different faiths — more than any other, they have killed Muslims.” All these are important points.But much of the rest of what the president said was damaging, wrong, and at times simply shameful.
Keep reading this post . .
Obama's Speech [Rich Lowry]
I have to go back and read it carefully, so I reserve the right to extend and revise my remarks. But on the whole I thought it was pretty good and I basically agree with Max Boot's take here. Yes, there were many things about which to cavil, there were missed opportunities, and he betrayed the disturbing weakness of his policy in certain key areas, Iran foremost among them. But the speech was an act of diplomacy and as such, it inevitably was going to skate over some inconvenient truths and tilt its presentation in a way to try to make it more persuasive to its target audience. Fundamentally, Obama's goal was to tell the Muslim world, "We respect and value you, your religion and your civilization, and only ask that you don't hate us and murder us in return." Bush tried to deliver the same message over and over again. The difference with Obama is that people might actually be willing to listen.
Flashback [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
President George W. Bush, Dec. 2008, to NR:
You can get short-term popularity if you want to in the Middle East by blaming all problems on Israel. That'll make you popular. …It would have made me wrong, however. And ultimately, you earn people's respect by articulating a set of principles and standing by them. You know, popularity comes and goes…but principles are enduring.
Obama and Israel [Aron Raskas]
President Obama went to Cairo University today to pay homage to Muslim “history” and “tradition,” and to stake his support for a Palestinian state. In his zeal to appease his Muslim audience, he deftly disregarded, and thus disparaged, the deeply rooted Jewish legacy in the Holy Land. There is no nation with firmer roots in a land than the Jewish people in the greater land of Israel. Obama-administration officials would undoubtedly recoil in disdain were any Israeli official to refer to the West Bank as the territories of “Judea” and “Samaria,” dismissing that as propaganda invented by extremist “settlers” for political ends. Yet, those names, reflecting the Jewish roots in the land, long predated any Palestinian Arab presence. Maps, photographs, travel guides, and other books have throughout history described these territories by those time-honored names. Indeed, the Obama faithful might be disturbed to know, even United Nations resolutions — including, notably, the 1947 Partition resolution — utilized those terms.
Keep reading this post . . .
Re: The Good and Bad . . . [Rich Lowry]
I agree with Marc on a few of his points, but not on others. I too didn't like the passage he cites on Iran (although the nuclear passage was much worse). The "on the other hand" after the Holocaust discussion was very unfortunate, although I don't think it means that Obama believes there's moral equivalence between the plight of the Palestinians and the Nazi murder of the Jews. On the Hamas reference, Marc leaves out the second half: "Hamas must put an end to violence, recognize past agreements, and recognize Israel's right to exist." I think the democracy language was pretty good all things considered, and Obama can't be expected to seriously pressure the Egyptians on human rights when even Bush didn't do it and democracy promotion was at the center of Bush's foreign policy. On Iraq, yes, Obama was stinting, but he opposed the war, so I don't know how much you can reasonably expect him to praise it. And on interrogation and Gitmo, Obama's polices are either partly (interrogation) or wholly (Gitmo) acts of international PR, so it would be bizarre not to mention them in such a speech.
I don't want to make exalted claims for the speech. It was a mixed bag and there are limits to the effect any one speech can have. But I think some in the conservative blogosphere are pronouncing it a scandal because they leave out all the good things. Consider: He extolled America as "one of the greatest sources of progress that the world has ever known"; pledged we will "relentlessly confront violent extremists who pose a grave threat to our country"; condemned Holocaust denial as "baseless, ignorant, and hateful"; said "it is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus"; insisted that "the Arab-Israel conflict should no longer be used to distract the people of Arab nations from other problems"; and called for more democracy, religious freedom, and women's rights in the Muslim world. And he got a standing ovation.
That should count for something. My standard is not whether Obama gave a speech I'd totally agree with (not going to happen), or whether it was strictly accurate as a matter of history of Koranic exegesis (irrelevant), but whether the speech will, on balance, help isolate Islamic extremists intellectually and politically, or not. Since I think it will, I consider it a success.
The End of America’s Strategic Alliance with Israel? [Caroline Glick]
From an Israeli perspective, Pres. Barack Obama’s speech today in Cairo was deeply disturbing. Both rhetorically and programmatically, Obama’s speech was a renunciation of America’s strategic alliance with Israel.Rhetorically, Obama’s sugar coated the pathologies of the Islamic world — from the tyranny that characterizes its regimes, to the misogyny, xenophobia, Jew hatred, and general intolerance that characterizes its societies. In so doing he made clear that his idea of pressing the restart button with the Islamic world involves erasing the moral distinctions between the Islamic world and the free world.In contrast, Obama’s perverse characterization of Israel — of the sources of its legitimacy and of its behavior — made clear that he shares the Arab world’s view that there is something basically illegitimate about the Jewish state.
Keep reading this post . . .
Obama's Speech -- not bad; it could have been worse ....
I did not watch and have not read it, but have read some excerpts and news reports.
I am surprisingly pleased with his comments re: 9/11 and anti-semitism .... like I said above, it could have been worse ....
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/33847_Obamas_Speech_to_the_Islamic_World
Obama's Speech to the Islamic World
World Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 9:17:19 am PDT
Andrew Malcolm has posted the full text of Barack Obama’s speech this morning: What Barack Hussein Obama told Muslims in Egypt.
I was struck by this quote, a straightforward rebuke of the conspiracy theories that are so prevalent in the Arab world (especially in Egypt):
The situation in Afghanistan demonstrates America’s goals, and our need to work together. Over seven years ago, the United States pursued al Qaeda and the Taliban with broad international support. We did not go by choice, we went because of necessity. I am aware that some question or justify the events of 9/11. But let us be clear: al Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 people on that day. The victims were innocent men, women and children from America and many other nations who had done nothing to harm anybody. And yet Al Qaeda chose to ruthlessly murder these people, claimed credit for the attack, and even now states their determination to kill on a massive scale. They have affiliates in many countries and are trying to expand their reach. These are not opinions to be debated; these are facts to be dealt with.
And this part, in a country that is rife with Holocaust denial:
Tomorrow, I will visit Buchenwald, which was part of a network of camps where Jews were enslaved, tortured, shot and gassed to death by the Third Reich. Six million Jews were killed — more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today. Denying that fact is baseless, ignorant and hateful. Threatening Israel with destruction — or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews — is deeply wrong and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve.
Overall, this was a pretty good speech, with the usual boilerplate statements of support for a two-state solution in the Middle East, but also a clear acknowledgment of the Palestinian culture of violence:
Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America’s founding. This same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia; from Eastern Europe to Indonesia. It’s a story with a simple truth: that violence is a dead end. It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered.
Read the whole thing. It’s doubtful that this one speech is going to lead to a “new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world,” but it’s certainly going to give the Muslim world a lot to talk about. It will be interesting to watch their reactions.
UPDATE at 6/4/09 9:29:19 am:
I agree with Max Boot’s summation:
Not bad. It could have been better. But it also could have been a lot worse.
UPDATE at 6/4/09 9:35:17 am:
One of my biggest criticisms is the very weak statement Obama made about women’s rights; I think this is one of the most critical issues the Islamic world needs to address in order to effect real change, but Obama spent only three paragraphs on it, and didn’t say much other than to note that women need the right to education:
I know there is debate about this issue. I reject the view of some in the West that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal, but I do believe that a woman who is denied an education is denied equality. And it is no coincidence that countries where women are well-educated are far more likely to be prosperous.
There’s much more to the overwhelming misogyny of the Islamic world than simply a lack of education, and this is a much larger problem than Obama’s speech seems to recognize.
I am surprisingly pleased with his comments re: 9/11 and anti-semitism .... like I said above, it could have been worse ....
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/33847_Obamas_Speech_to_the_Islamic_World
Obama's Speech to the Islamic World
World Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 9:17:19 am PDT
Andrew Malcolm has posted the full text of Barack Obama’s speech this morning: What Barack Hussein Obama told Muslims in Egypt.
I was struck by this quote, a straightforward rebuke of the conspiracy theories that are so prevalent in the Arab world (especially in Egypt):
The situation in Afghanistan demonstrates America’s goals, and our need to work together. Over seven years ago, the United States pursued al Qaeda and the Taliban with broad international support. We did not go by choice, we went because of necessity. I am aware that some question or justify the events of 9/11. But let us be clear: al Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 people on that day. The victims were innocent men, women and children from America and many other nations who had done nothing to harm anybody. And yet Al Qaeda chose to ruthlessly murder these people, claimed credit for the attack, and even now states their determination to kill on a massive scale. They have affiliates in many countries and are trying to expand their reach. These are not opinions to be debated; these are facts to be dealt with.
And this part, in a country that is rife with Holocaust denial:
Tomorrow, I will visit Buchenwald, which was part of a network of camps where Jews were enslaved, tortured, shot and gassed to death by the Third Reich. Six million Jews were killed — more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today. Denying that fact is baseless, ignorant and hateful. Threatening Israel with destruction — or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews — is deeply wrong and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve.
Overall, this was a pretty good speech, with the usual boilerplate statements of support for a two-state solution in the Middle East, but also a clear acknowledgment of the Palestinian culture of violence:
Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America’s founding. This same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia; from Eastern Europe to Indonesia. It’s a story with a simple truth: that violence is a dead end. It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered.
Read the whole thing. It’s doubtful that this one speech is going to lead to a “new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world,” but it’s certainly going to give the Muslim world a lot to talk about. It will be interesting to watch their reactions.
UPDATE at 6/4/09 9:29:19 am:
I agree with Max Boot’s summation:
Not bad. It could have been better. But it also could have been a lot worse.
UPDATE at 6/4/09 9:35:17 am:
One of my biggest criticisms is the very weak statement Obama made about women’s rights; I think this is one of the most critical issues the Islamic world needs to address in order to effect real change, but Obama spent only three paragraphs on it, and didn’t say much other than to note that women need the right to education:
I know there is debate about this issue. I reject the view of some in the West that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal, but I do believe that a woman who is denied an education is denied equality. And it is no coincidence that countries where women are well-educated are far more likely to be prosperous.
There’s much more to the overwhelming misogyny of the Islamic world than simply a lack of education, and this is a much larger problem than Obama’s speech seems to recognize.
Obama "Suck Up" Tour in full swing
What should one make of the stark contrast with how Obama treats America's allies - such as the British; and especially the Israeli's; versus how he is dealing with our "friends" the Saudis.
From today's newspaper:
"I thought it was very important to come to the place where Islam began to seek his Majesty's counsel ..."
BHO was struck by Abdullah's "wisdom and his graciousness".
"I consider the king's friendship a great blessing ...".
Surely, America's friends and allies are watching this lovefest and shaking their heads.
And surely, the Israeli's are seething. The contrast of how dismissive Obama has been so far with the Israeli leadership is truly disturbing.
From today's newspaper:
"I thought it was very important to come to the place where Islam began to seek his Majesty's counsel ..."
BHO was struck by Abdullah's "wisdom and his graciousness".
"I consider the king's friendship a great blessing ...".
Surely, America's friends and allies are watching this lovefest and shaking their heads.
And surely, the Israeli's are seething. The contrast of how dismissive Obama has been so far with the Israeli leadership is truly disturbing.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Obama's Speech to "Muslim World"
I thought this piece made some good points:
Asia Times: Obama’s speech to the “Muslim world” will merely help the Islamic extremists [Tom Gross]
An editorial column in yesterday’s Asia Times warns President Barack Obama that his much hyped “address to the Muslim world” to be delivered at Cairo University tomorrow will do more harm than good.
The writer argues that since there is no such thing as a “Muslim world” – any more than there is some kind of unified “Christian world” – Obama is merely helping to boost the Muslim extremist position by pretending there is. And by choosing Cairo for such an “address to the Muslim world,” Obama is compounding his mistake, the writer explains.
(Above: A Palestinian shopkeeper sells lots of Obama mugs yesterday in “impoverished” Gaza City)
Below I have pulled out some extracts from this lengthy piece:
Why should the president of the United States address the “Muslim world,” as Barack Obama will do in Egypt this Thursday? What would happen if the leader of a big country addressed the “Christian world”? Half the world would giggle and the other half would sulk.
There is no such thing as a Christian world, of course; there hasn’t been since the Great Schism of 1054, even less so since the Reformation. Europe’s nations agreed at the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 to subordinate the confessional to political sovereignty.
America, the new model of a nation, kept church separate from state. To utter the words “Christian world” would persuade the Muslim world that a foul conspiracy was afoot, perhaps a new Crusade…What does it mean to address the “Muslim world”? As a matter of practice, the Muslim world is just as fractured as the Christian world, even more so in the absence of any religious authority like the Catholic Church, which claims doctrinal authority over a billion people…To speak to the “Muslim world” is to speak not to a fact, but rather to an aspiration, and that is the aspiration that Islam shall be a global state religion as its founders intended. To address this aspiration is to breathe life into it…
Obama, the White House press office told reporters last week, will address among other issues the Arab-Israeli issue. What does it imply to raise this issue in a speech to the “Muslim world”? Nearly 700 million of the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims live in Indonesia, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, countries which share no linguistic or cultural affinities with the Arabs, and have only religion in common. They have no strategic interest whatever in the outcome of war or peace in the Levant. Their only possible interest is religious. Does the United States really believe that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is religious in origin? …
It is quite possible for the state of Israel to live in peace with nation-states whose population is mainly Muslim, to be sure. Israel has done so since 1975 with Egypt and Jordan, and has until recently maintained excellent relations with Turkey. Until the Ruhollah Khomeini revolution of 1979, Israel was an ally and arms supplier of Iran. As a matter of national interest, many Muslim-majority countries may seek peaceful and even friendly relations with the Jewish state, irrespective of what the dictates of Islamic theology might be. Rather than addressing nations with national interest, though, Obama is addressing Muslims, over the heads as it were of majority-Muslim nation states.
Even though the Koran mentions Jerusalem not once (against 832 times in the Hebrew Bible and 161 times in the New Testament), later Muslim tradition makes Jerusalem a Muslim holy place. No Muslim religious authority in Asia or Africa can or will rule that Islam can tolerate a Jewish state in Palestine with its capital in Jerusalem. There are a few Muslim voices in Europe and the US favorably disposed to co-existence with the Jewish state, but they are whispers against the roar of an ocean…
By addressing the “Islamic world” from Cairo, Obama lends credibility to the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and other advocates of political Islam who demand that Muslims be addressed globally and on religious terms – in contradistinction to nationalists such as Mubarak. Rather than buttress a loyal ally, Obama’s speech undermines him on his home ground. That is a lose-lose proposition…
For more comment on Obama’s “Speech to the Muslim world,” please see here.
Asia Times: Obama’s speech to the “Muslim world” will merely help the Islamic extremists [Tom Gross]
An editorial column in yesterday’s Asia Times warns President Barack Obama that his much hyped “address to the Muslim world” to be delivered at Cairo University tomorrow will do more harm than good.
The writer argues that since there is no such thing as a “Muslim world” – any more than there is some kind of unified “Christian world” – Obama is merely helping to boost the Muslim extremist position by pretending there is. And by choosing Cairo for such an “address to the Muslim world,” Obama is compounding his mistake, the writer explains.
(Above: A Palestinian shopkeeper sells lots of Obama mugs yesterday in “impoverished” Gaza City)
Below I have pulled out some extracts from this lengthy piece:
Why should the president of the United States address the “Muslim world,” as Barack Obama will do in Egypt this Thursday? What would happen if the leader of a big country addressed the “Christian world”? Half the world would giggle and the other half would sulk.
There is no such thing as a Christian world, of course; there hasn’t been since the Great Schism of 1054, even less so since the Reformation. Europe’s nations agreed at the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 to subordinate the confessional to political sovereignty.
America, the new model of a nation, kept church separate from state. To utter the words “Christian world” would persuade the Muslim world that a foul conspiracy was afoot, perhaps a new Crusade…What does it mean to address the “Muslim world”? As a matter of practice, the Muslim world is just as fractured as the Christian world, even more so in the absence of any religious authority like the Catholic Church, which claims doctrinal authority over a billion people…To speak to the “Muslim world” is to speak not to a fact, but rather to an aspiration, and that is the aspiration that Islam shall be a global state religion as its founders intended. To address this aspiration is to breathe life into it…
Obama, the White House press office told reporters last week, will address among other issues the Arab-Israeli issue. What does it imply to raise this issue in a speech to the “Muslim world”? Nearly 700 million of the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims live in Indonesia, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, countries which share no linguistic or cultural affinities with the Arabs, and have only religion in common. They have no strategic interest whatever in the outcome of war or peace in the Levant. Their only possible interest is religious. Does the United States really believe that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is religious in origin? …
It is quite possible for the state of Israel to live in peace with nation-states whose population is mainly Muslim, to be sure. Israel has done so since 1975 with Egypt and Jordan, and has until recently maintained excellent relations with Turkey. Until the Ruhollah Khomeini revolution of 1979, Israel was an ally and arms supplier of Iran. As a matter of national interest, many Muslim-majority countries may seek peaceful and even friendly relations with the Jewish state, irrespective of what the dictates of Islamic theology might be. Rather than addressing nations with national interest, though, Obama is addressing Muslims, over the heads as it were of majority-Muslim nation states.
Even though the Koran mentions Jerusalem not once (against 832 times in the Hebrew Bible and 161 times in the New Testament), later Muslim tradition makes Jerusalem a Muslim holy place. No Muslim religious authority in Asia or Africa can or will rule that Islam can tolerate a Jewish state in Palestine with its capital in Jerusalem. There are a few Muslim voices in Europe and the US favorably disposed to co-existence with the Jewish state, but they are whispers against the roar of an ocean…
By addressing the “Islamic world” from Cairo, Obama lends credibility to the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and other advocates of political Islam who demand that Muslims be addressed globally and on religious terms – in contradistinction to nationalists such as Mubarak. Rather than buttress a loyal ally, Obama’s speech undermines him on his home ground. That is a lose-lose proposition…
For more comment on Obama’s “Speech to the Muslim world,” please see here.
Sotomayor -- Puerto Rican Nationalist ?
Now I like Puerto Rico (great weather, hotels) and Puerto Ricans, but if this stuff is true, it seems disqualifying ..... then again, we do have Hillary and Holder, those pardoners of P.R. terrorists.....
Former (?) Puerto Rican Nationalist Nominated to North American Supreme Court [Ed Whelan]
On National Journal’s new “Ninth Justice” blog, Stuart Taylor passes along history professor K. C. Johnson’s very favorable assessment of Sonia Sotomayor’s senior thesis at Princeton, as well as the “few jarring elements” that Johnson finds, including:
First, I'm curious as to when Sotomayor ceased being a Puerto Rican nationalist who favors independence — as she says she does in the preface. (The position, as she points out in the thesis, had received 0.6 percent in a 1967 referendum, the most recent such vote before she wrote the thesis.) I don't know that I've seen it reported anywhere that she favored Puerto Rican independence, which has always been very much a fringe position. . . .
Second, her unwillingness to call the Congress the U.S. Congress is bizarre — in the thesis, it's always referred to as either the 'North American Congress' or the 'mainland Congress.' I guess by the language of her thesis, it should be said that she's seeking an appointment to the North American Supreme Court, subject to advice and consent of the North American Senate. This kind of rhetoric was very trendy, and not uncommon, among the Latin Americanist fringe of the academy.
We've Waived the Right to Press Sotomayor on Being a Puerto Rican Separatist Who Couldn't Bring Herself to Say "United States"? [Andy McCarthy]
Besides Ed's important post below, his separate Bench Memos post is a must read. In it, he notes what is likely to become the Left's mantra on this: namely, that if Sonia Sotomayor's meanderings on Puerto Rican separatism — and her allusion to "North American Congress" and "mainland Congress" because she couldn't bring herself to utter "United States" — were such a big deal, why did Republicans fail to object when she was nominated to the Second Circuit in 1997?
This "waiver" argument is laughable. Judge Bork, of course, was defeated as a Supreme Court nominee after breezing to confirmation for the D.C. Circuit. I'd also note the following:
Justice Alito: confirmed by only 58-42 for the Supreme Court after being unanimously in 1990 for the 3rd Circuit.
Chief Justice Roberts: confirmed by 78-22 after being confirmed for the DC Circuit in 2003 on a voice vote.
Justice Thomas: confirmed by only 52-48 after being confirmed for the DC Circuit in 1989 on a voice vote.
The failure to raise issues in lower court confirmation hearings has never been a bar to raising them for the far more consequential seats on the Supreme Court.
Former (?) Puerto Rican Nationalist Nominated to North American Supreme Court [Ed Whelan]
On National Journal’s new “Ninth Justice” blog, Stuart Taylor passes along history professor K. C. Johnson’s very favorable assessment of Sonia Sotomayor’s senior thesis at Princeton, as well as the “few jarring elements” that Johnson finds, including:
First, I'm curious as to when Sotomayor ceased being a Puerto Rican nationalist who favors independence — as she says she does in the preface. (The position, as she points out in the thesis, had received 0.6 percent in a 1967 referendum, the most recent such vote before she wrote the thesis.) I don't know that I've seen it reported anywhere that she favored Puerto Rican independence, which has always been very much a fringe position. . . .
Second, her unwillingness to call the Congress the U.S. Congress is bizarre — in the thesis, it's always referred to as either the 'North American Congress' or the 'mainland Congress.' I guess by the language of her thesis, it should be said that she's seeking an appointment to the North American Supreme Court, subject to advice and consent of the North American Senate. This kind of rhetoric was very trendy, and not uncommon, among the Latin Americanist fringe of the academy.
We've Waived the Right to Press Sotomayor on Being a Puerto Rican Separatist Who Couldn't Bring Herself to Say "United States"? [Andy McCarthy]
Besides Ed's important post below, his separate Bench Memos post is a must read. In it, he notes what is likely to become the Left's mantra on this: namely, that if Sonia Sotomayor's meanderings on Puerto Rican separatism — and her allusion to "North American Congress" and "mainland Congress" because she couldn't bring herself to utter "United States" — were such a big deal, why did Republicans fail to object when she was nominated to the Second Circuit in 1997?
This "waiver" argument is laughable. Judge Bork, of course, was defeated as a Supreme Court nominee after breezing to confirmation for the D.C. Circuit. I'd also note the following:
Justice Alito: confirmed by only 58-42 for the Supreme Court after being unanimously in 1990 for the 3rd Circuit.
Chief Justice Roberts: confirmed by 78-22 after being confirmed for the DC Circuit in 2003 on a voice vote.
Justice Thomas: confirmed by only 52-48 after being confirmed for the DC Circuit in 1989 on a voice vote.
The failure to raise issues in lower court confirmation hearings has never been a bar to raising them for the far more consequential seats on the Supreme Court.
B. Hussein Obama - Muslim World Suck Up Tour - Did He REALLY Say This ??
Oh yes he did....
Welcome to America, "One of the Largest Muslim Countries in the World"! [Andy McCarthy]
Yeah, he said it. Do you think Obama would ever call America a Judeo-Christian country? Anyway, maybe we should rewrite our Constitution to make sharia part of our fundamental law, just like the State Department has done in those other Islamic democracies it is building . . .
From the New York Times:
As President Obama prepared to leave Washington to fly to the Middle East, he conducted several television and radio interviews at the White House to frame the goals for a five-day trip, including the highly-anticipated speech Thursday at Cairo University in Egypt. In an interview with Laura Haim on Canal Plus, a French television station, Mr. Obama noted that the United States also could be considered as “one of the largest Muslim countries in the world.” ...
The president said the United States and other parts of the Western world “have to educate ourselves more effectively on Islam.... And one of the points I want to make is, is that if you actually took the number of Muslim Americans, we’d be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world,” Mr. Obama said. “And so there’s got to be a better dialogue and a better understanding between the two peoples.”
Mind you, the total number of Muslims in the U.S. is a subject of intense debate (CAIR, for example, argues for a figure above 6 million because it wants the Muslim population to be thought greater than the Jewish population). The probability, though, is that there are no more than about 3 million Muslims living in the U.S. (See, e.g., this entry from Wikipedia (collecting varying estimates), and this one from Daniel Pipes in 2001, observing that the credible estimates put the figure back then at somewhere between 1.8 and — an unlikely high of — 2.8 million). This, it should be noted, does not translate into 3 million American Muslims, for many Muslims in the United States are are nationals of other countries (although, I suppose, by Justice Department standards, it would translate into approximately 6 million Muslim voters.)
By contrast, of the approximately 1.5 billion Muslims in the world, there are about 200 million Muslims in Indonesia, 196 million in India, 165 million in Pakistan, 132 million in Bangladesh, 75 million in Egypt, 64 million in Iran, 33 million in Morocco, 32 million in Algeria, 31 million in Afghanistan, 26 million in Iraq, 25 million in Ethiopia, 24 million in Saudi Arabia, 20 million in China, and 15 million in Russia, to name just a few countries. In fact, there are 2 to 3 times as many Muslims in Burkina Faso (approx. 7.5 million) as there are in America. So obviously, one can see why the president would say the United States is "one of the largest Muslim countries in the world."
-------------------------------
Needless to say, Obama's comments have provoked much commentary and outrage today...
A poster to the Caucus blog makes the key point (even if you disagree with the poster's estimate of the American Muslim population):
As an American Muslim, I appreciate what the President is getting at. But it is a bit of an exaggeration to say that the US could be considered one of the LARGEST Muslim countries in the world. There’s still only less than 10 million of us (typically anti-Muslim bigots tend to give the lowest, low-ball estimates, while identity politics playing leaders within Muslim communities favor higher end estimates). Besides, the US is SECULAR, democratic country, not one defined by ANY religion, “racial” or ethnic group. What he perhaps could have said is that the US is one of the freest and best countries in the world to be a practicing Muslim, or for that matter a member of any or no religion.
The Largest Muslim Nation [Michael Rubin]
Andy, Jonah, aside from the factual issue here about Muslim population count, could I suggest that there is a greater problem reflected in Obama's statement? Obama has embraced cultural relativism, and argued that the United States cannot and should not impose its values on other countries. Whether we should or not is a debate for another time. But even if he chooses not to preach American values, rather than define the United States on religious terms, why not at least stand up for the values which made the United States great when describing the United States? The United States is not "a Muslim country." Nor should it be, in my opinion, a "Christian country," except in as much as Western liberalism and the core values of Christianity or Judaism or any other religion overlap with Western liberalism.
Rather, the United States is a country built on the very concepts about which Obama now seems embarrassed: freedom, liberty, respect for property, separation of church and state, constitutionalism, and rule-of-law. Rather than pander to Egyptians as if Egypt is just another constituency on a whistle-stop tour, perhaps Obama should emphasize our freedoms as the core of the American brand name.
It reminds me of an example — pointed out several years ago, I believe by Rob Satloff — of a State Department pamphlet about Muslims in America. About 90 percent of the women in its pictures were veiled. The problem is, that perhaps only 10 percent of American Muslims cover themselves. And yet, rather than send the message that Muslims in America could be free to dress however they wanted without fear of getting beaten, stabbed, or have acid thrown in their faces, the State Department chose to pander and implied acceptance of a far more conservative definition of proper Islam.
Re: Largest Muslim Nation [Andy McCarthy]
Michael, in the April 20 edition of NR, I wrote an essay called "Beyond Terrorism." The point was to argue that — as President Obama said in that interview reported on (as Jonah says, without much examination) by the Times — "the United States and other parts of the Western world 'have to educate ourselves more effectively on Islam.'"
The difference is that I mean it and he doesn't.
Anyway, the president and Islam's apologists in the West do not speak about the core American values you mention because, if they did, it would become painfully clear that major aspects of sharia (the Islamic legal code) are antithetical to Western democracy. The "Islam" that the president wants to "better educate" about is not the one that actually exists. In the essay, I put it this way
The Koran contains many an ode to tolerance, most of which are from Mohammed’s early Meccan period, when he was seeking to recruit converts to the new religion. Many such benign injunctions were abrogated by the contrary, brutalizing verses of the later Medinan period, when the warrior prophet spread Islam principally by the sword. That inconvenient fact is ignored by the “religion of peace” crowd, whose unparalleled favorite scripture is Sura 2:256, the instruction that there shall be “no compulsion in religion.” On the basis of this directive, they argue, à la Jacqui Smith [the British Home Secretary — or at least she was until she got sacked about five minutes ago], that jihadist violence must be anti-Islamic. A
u contraire. While militants would surely be delighted if, say, the destruction of the Twin Towers induced everyone to convert, that is not the direct goal of jihadist activity — violent or not. The goal is to induce each targeted jurisdiction to adopt sharia. The Muslim Brotherhood’s chief theoretician, Sayyid Qutb, explained that forcible jihad proceeds whenever Islam is obstructed by “the political system of the state, the socio-economic system based on races and classes, and behind all these, the military power of the government.” This system is then supplanted by Islamic law. At that point, Islam can be “addressed to peoples’ hearts and minds,” purportedly without compulsion, “and they are free to accept or reject it with an open mind.”
Jihad is not trying to convert you; it is seeking the imposition of Allah’s law. That law happens to be antithetical to bedrock American principles: It establishes a state religion, rejects the freedom of citizens to govern themselves irrespective of a religious code, proscribes freedom of conscience, proscribes economic freedom, destroys the principle of equality under the law, subjugates non-Muslims in the humiliation of dhimmitude, and calls for the execution of homosexuals and apostates. Nevertheless, its adoption produces what Islamists portray as the non-coercive environment in which people then “freely” embrace Islam. . . .
About America the Muslim Country ... [Andy McCarthy]
the President might want to have a look at Liberty & Tyranny — somebody should be able to get it for him since it is, yet again, number one on the NYT bestseller list. As I outline in a description of the relevant chapter in a review for The New Criterion, Mark
is
especially trenchant on the animating role of faith in the American founding, and, consequently, its place atop the statist hit-list. The Framers understood “that liberty and religious liberty are inseparable.” But Christianity, unapologetically, was and is America’s dominant religion and it is undeniable that Judeo-Christian values heavily influenced our founding law. The point of religious liberty was to forefend the establishment of a theocracy of the type Tocqueville discerned in the Islamic world, where the Qur’an imposed not merely religious tenets but control over every aspect of life. The Supreme Court’s fabrication of a “wall of separation” in its 1947 Everson decision (authored by one-time Klansman Hugo Black, the first justice appointed by FDR), installing official hostility to religion, was “a wretched betrayal of America’s founding.” As a result, “American courts sit today as supreme secular councils, which, like Islam’s supreme religious councils, dictate all manner of approved behavior respecting religion.”
Two Presidential Speeches in Egypt [Dana Perino]
The media is devoting a lot of time previewing President Obama’s speech that he’s giving tomorrow in Egypt. I wonder how many reporters will take the time to read President Bush’s speech at the World Economic Forum in Egypt last year — it’s worth a second look.I’ll be curious to hear what the president says. I expect he will touch on America’s respect for the Islamic faith and religious tolerance in our country (though I’m not sure he will discuss the lack of such tolerance in other countries).It’s likely that he will paint a future of the Middle East as a place of prosperity, peace, and democracy — although he has gone out of his way not to use the word “democracy” in the past, I hope he will use it tomorrow.The question I have is whether he’s willing to talk about the difficult steps on the road to that destination. In President Bush’s speech, he made specific points about supporting democracy advocates, free and fair elections, free-market entrepreneurs, and women.
Given that, the questions I have are:
* Will Obama be willing to speak out against the jailing of political dissidents in Egypt, as President Bush did?
* Will he stand firmly for free elections, even when we may not like the outcome?
* Will he support free-trade measures to help the Middle East connect itself to the global economy?
* Will he be willing to recognize all that the United States has done to protect Muslims over the past several decades — in Kuwait, Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq? And not to forget the extraordinary assistance after the tsunami in South Asia and the earthquake in Pakistan (I remember well how Pakistanis up in the mountains called U.S. Chinook helicopters “angels of mercy”).
In all of my time working for him, I noticed that President Bush did not see people as “Muslims” any more than he saw them as Jews or Christians or Buddhists or atheists. He saw them as individuals, each with God-given value, each deserving the universal gift of freedom. The people of the Middle East should be treated with dignity not because they are Muslims, but because they are human beings. And it was on that premise that President Bush reached out to them.
Multiculturalism Trumps Freedom? [Victor Davis Hanson]
In a recent interview President Obama, I think, was logically trying to say that practical hurdles and costs in the real world mean that we cannot simply force other countries to chose a wiser form of consensual government than their own. Instead, he suggested that, "The message I hope to deliver is that democracy, rule of law, freedom of speech, freedom of religion — those are not simply principles of the west to be hoisted on these countries. But, rather what I believe to be universal principles that they can embrace and affirm as part of their national identity, the danger, I think, is when the United States, or any country, thinks that we can simply impose these values on another country with a different history and a different culture."
So I'm not sure what Obama ended up saying, or rather, as usual, I think he is trying to say everything and thus nothing:
Democracy, rule of law, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, etc. are welcome universal aspirations, regardless of culture and are all without a particular cultural pedigree?
They are largely Western principles that need not be emulated by others, especially through the use of coercion?
Under the right circumstances, such universal principles can properly mesh into Muslim national identity?
In fact, these principles cannot mesh into other cultures with different histories and cultures without an undue and improper amount of coercion?
I think Obama's multiculturalist postmodernist answer would be something like the following:
"Democracy, rule of law, freedom of speech, freedom of religion are not properly Western principles as much as universal aspirations, but unfortunately we in the West claim them to be exclusively our own and to be superior to other narratives, and thus we try to force countries with different cultures and histories to embrace them when in fact they are not so universal or so superior after all — at least to the extent that their artificial spread requires anything other than a sort of natural osmosis."
So if Saudi Arabia beheads apostates, or the Sudan practices genocide, are we to understand that these are epiphenomena of indigenous history and culture, in a practical sense properly immune from antidotes like Western-inspired rule of law, human rights, and democracy?
Welcome to America, "One of the Largest Muslim Countries in the World"! [Andy McCarthy]
Yeah, he said it. Do you think Obama would ever call America a Judeo-Christian country? Anyway, maybe we should rewrite our Constitution to make sharia part of our fundamental law, just like the State Department has done in those other Islamic democracies it is building . . .
From the New York Times:
As President Obama prepared to leave Washington to fly to the Middle East, he conducted several television and radio interviews at the White House to frame the goals for a five-day trip, including the highly-anticipated speech Thursday at Cairo University in Egypt. In an interview with Laura Haim on Canal Plus, a French television station, Mr. Obama noted that the United States also could be considered as “one of the largest Muslim countries in the world.” ...
The president said the United States and other parts of the Western world “have to educate ourselves more effectively on Islam.... And one of the points I want to make is, is that if you actually took the number of Muslim Americans, we’d be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world,” Mr. Obama said. “And so there’s got to be a better dialogue and a better understanding between the two peoples.”
Mind you, the total number of Muslims in the U.S. is a subject of intense debate (CAIR, for example, argues for a figure above 6 million because it wants the Muslim population to be thought greater than the Jewish population). The probability, though, is that there are no more than about 3 million Muslims living in the U.S. (See, e.g., this entry from Wikipedia (collecting varying estimates), and this one from Daniel Pipes in 2001, observing that the credible estimates put the figure back then at somewhere between 1.8 and — an unlikely high of — 2.8 million). This, it should be noted, does not translate into 3 million American Muslims, for many Muslims in the United States are are nationals of other countries (although, I suppose, by Justice Department standards, it would translate into approximately 6 million Muslim voters.)
By contrast, of the approximately 1.5 billion Muslims in the world, there are about 200 million Muslims in Indonesia, 196 million in India, 165 million in Pakistan, 132 million in Bangladesh, 75 million in Egypt, 64 million in Iran, 33 million in Morocco, 32 million in Algeria, 31 million in Afghanistan, 26 million in Iraq, 25 million in Ethiopia, 24 million in Saudi Arabia, 20 million in China, and 15 million in Russia, to name just a few countries. In fact, there are 2 to 3 times as many Muslims in Burkina Faso (approx. 7.5 million) as there are in America. So obviously, one can see why the president would say the United States is "one of the largest Muslim countries in the world."
-------------------------------
Needless to say, Obama's comments have provoked much commentary and outrage today...
A poster to the Caucus blog makes the key point (even if you disagree with the poster's estimate of the American Muslim population):
As an American Muslim, I appreciate what the President is getting at. But it is a bit of an exaggeration to say that the US could be considered one of the LARGEST Muslim countries in the world. There’s still only less than 10 million of us (typically anti-Muslim bigots tend to give the lowest, low-ball estimates, while identity politics playing leaders within Muslim communities favor higher end estimates). Besides, the US is SECULAR, democratic country, not one defined by ANY religion, “racial” or ethnic group. What he perhaps could have said is that the US is one of the freest and best countries in the world to be a practicing Muslim, or for that matter a member of any or no religion.
The Largest Muslim Nation [Michael Rubin]
Andy, Jonah, aside from the factual issue here about Muslim population count, could I suggest that there is a greater problem reflected in Obama's statement? Obama has embraced cultural relativism, and argued that the United States cannot and should not impose its values on other countries. Whether we should or not is a debate for another time. But even if he chooses not to preach American values, rather than define the United States on religious terms, why not at least stand up for the values which made the United States great when describing the United States? The United States is not "a Muslim country." Nor should it be, in my opinion, a "Christian country," except in as much as Western liberalism and the core values of Christianity or Judaism or any other religion overlap with Western liberalism.
Rather, the United States is a country built on the very concepts about which Obama now seems embarrassed: freedom, liberty, respect for property, separation of church and state, constitutionalism, and rule-of-law. Rather than pander to Egyptians as if Egypt is just another constituency on a whistle-stop tour, perhaps Obama should emphasize our freedoms as the core of the American brand name.
It reminds me of an example — pointed out several years ago, I believe by Rob Satloff — of a State Department pamphlet about Muslims in America. About 90 percent of the women in its pictures were veiled. The problem is, that perhaps only 10 percent of American Muslims cover themselves. And yet, rather than send the message that Muslims in America could be free to dress however they wanted without fear of getting beaten, stabbed, or have acid thrown in their faces, the State Department chose to pander and implied acceptance of a far more conservative definition of proper Islam.
Re: Largest Muslim Nation [Andy McCarthy]
Michael, in the April 20 edition of NR, I wrote an essay called "Beyond Terrorism." The point was to argue that — as President Obama said in that interview reported on (as Jonah says, without much examination) by the Times — "the United States and other parts of the Western world 'have to educate ourselves more effectively on Islam.'"
The difference is that I mean it and he doesn't.
Anyway, the president and Islam's apologists in the West do not speak about the core American values you mention because, if they did, it would become painfully clear that major aspects of sharia (the Islamic legal code) are antithetical to Western democracy. The "Islam" that the president wants to "better educate" about is not the one that actually exists. In the essay, I put it this way
The Koran contains many an ode to tolerance, most of which are from Mohammed’s early Meccan period, when he was seeking to recruit converts to the new religion. Many such benign injunctions were abrogated by the contrary, brutalizing verses of the later Medinan period, when the warrior prophet spread Islam principally by the sword. That inconvenient fact is ignored by the “religion of peace” crowd, whose unparalleled favorite scripture is Sura 2:256, the instruction that there shall be “no compulsion in religion.” On the basis of this directive, they argue, à la Jacqui Smith [the British Home Secretary — or at least she was until she got sacked about five minutes ago], that jihadist violence must be anti-Islamic. A
u contraire. While militants would surely be delighted if, say, the destruction of the Twin Towers induced everyone to convert, that is not the direct goal of jihadist activity — violent or not. The goal is to induce each targeted jurisdiction to adopt sharia. The Muslim Brotherhood’s chief theoretician, Sayyid Qutb, explained that forcible jihad proceeds whenever Islam is obstructed by “the political system of the state, the socio-economic system based on races and classes, and behind all these, the military power of the government.” This system is then supplanted by Islamic law. At that point, Islam can be “addressed to peoples’ hearts and minds,” purportedly without compulsion, “and they are free to accept or reject it with an open mind.”
Jihad is not trying to convert you; it is seeking the imposition of Allah’s law. That law happens to be antithetical to bedrock American principles: It establishes a state religion, rejects the freedom of citizens to govern themselves irrespective of a religious code, proscribes freedom of conscience, proscribes economic freedom, destroys the principle of equality under the law, subjugates non-Muslims in the humiliation of dhimmitude, and calls for the execution of homosexuals and apostates. Nevertheless, its adoption produces what Islamists portray as the non-coercive environment in which people then “freely” embrace Islam. . . .
About America the Muslim Country ... [Andy McCarthy]
the President might want to have a look at Liberty & Tyranny — somebody should be able to get it for him since it is, yet again, number one on the NYT bestseller list. As I outline in a description of the relevant chapter in a review for The New Criterion, Mark
is
especially trenchant on the animating role of faith in the American founding, and, consequently, its place atop the statist hit-list. The Framers understood “that liberty and religious liberty are inseparable.” But Christianity, unapologetically, was and is America’s dominant religion and it is undeniable that Judeo-Christian values heavily influenced our founding law. The point of religious liberty was to forefend the establishment of a theocracy of the type Tocqueville discerned in the Islamic world, where the Qur’an imposed not merely religious tenets but control over every aspect of life. The Supreme Court’s fabrication of a “wall of separation” in its 1947 Everson decision (authored by one-time Klansman Hugo Black, the first justice appointed by FDR), installing official hostility to religion, was “a wretched betrayal of America’s founding.” As a result, “American courts sit today as supreme secular councils, which, like Islam’s supreme religious councils, dictate all manner of approved behavior respecting religion.”
Two Presidential Speeches in Egypt [Dana Perino]
The media is devoting a lot of time previewing President Obama’s speech that he’s giving tomorrow in Egypt. I wonder how many reporters will take the time to read President Bush’s speech at the World Economic Forum in Egypt last year — it’s worth a second look.I’ll be curious to hear what the president says. I expect he will touch on America’s respect for the Islamic faith and religious tolerance in our country (though I’m not sure he will discuss the lack of such tolerance in other countries).It’s likely that he will paint a future of the Middle East as a place of prosperity, peace, and democracy — although he has gone out of his way not to use the word “democracy” in the past, I hope he will use it tomorrow.The question I have is whether he’s willing to talk about the difficult steps on the road to that destination. In President Bush’s speech, he made specific points about supporting democracy advocates, free and fair elections, free-market entrepreneurs, and women.
Given that, the questions I have are:
* Will Obama be willing to speak out against the jailing of political dissidents in Egypt, as President Bush did?
* Will he stand firmly for free elections, even when we may not like the outcome?
* Will he support free-trade measures to help the Middle East connect itself to the global economy?
* Will he be willing to recognize all that the United States has done to protect Muslims over the past several decades — in Kuwait, Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq? And not to forget the extraordinary assistance after the tsunami in South Asia and the earthquake in Pakistan (I remember well how Pakistanis up in the mountains called U.S. Chinook helicopters “angels of mercy”).
In all of my time working for him, I noticed that President Bush did not see people as “Muslims” any more than he saw them as Jews or Christians or Buddhists or atheists. He saw them as individuals, each with God-given value, each deserving the universal gift of freedom. The people of the Middle East should be treated with dignity not because they are Muslims, but because they are human beings. And it was on that premise that President Bush reached out to them.
Multiculturalism Trumps Freedom? [Victor Davis Hanson]
In a recent interview President Obama, I think, was logically trying to say that practical hurdles and costs in the real world mean that we cannot simply force other countries to chose a wiser form of consensual government than their own. Instead, he suggested that, "The message I hope to deliver is that democracy, rule of law, freedom of speech, freedom of religion — those are not simply principles of the west to be hoisted on these countries. But, rather what I believe to be universal principles that they can embrace and affirm as part of their national identity, the danger, I think, is when the United States, or any country, thinks that we can simply impose these values on another country with a different history and a different culture."
So I'm not sure what Obama ended up saying, or rather, as usual, I think he is trying to say everything and thus nothing:
Democracy, rule of law, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, etc. are welcome universal aspirations, regardless of culture and are all without a particular cultural pedigree?
They are largely Western principles that need not be emulated by others, especially through the use of coercion?
Under the right circumstances, such universal principles can properly mesh into Muslim national identity?
In fact, these principles cannot mesh into other cultures with different histories and cultures without an undue and improper amount of coercion?
I think Obama's multiculturalist postmodernist answer would be something like the following:
"Democracy, rule of law, freedom of speech, freedom of religion are not properly Western principles as much as universal aspirations, but unfortunately we in the West claim them to be exclusively our own and to be superior to other narratives, and thus we try to force countries with different cultures and histories to embrace them when in fact they are not so universal or so superior after all — at least to the extent that their artificial spread requires anything other than a sort of natural osmosis."
So if Saudi Arabia beheads apostates, or the Sudan practices genocide, are we to understand that these are epiphenomena of indigenous history and culture, in a practical sense properly immune from antidotes like Western-inspired rule of law, human rights, and democracy?
Welcome to ACORN Nation, thanks to AG Holder
D I S G R A C E F U L (I told ya so !)
The Democrats Are Already Winning the 2010 Elections — Which Is What Happens When the Justice Department Is REALLY Politicized [Andy McCarthy]
Never a dull moment with the Justice Department of Eric Holder, aka "the right man at the right time to protect our citizens in the critical years ahead."
In fact, it would be more accurate to say he's the right man at the right time to protect our non-citizens in the critical years ahead. Unbelievably (or, perhaps, entirely too believably), Holder has told Georgia that it may no longer verify identification in order to ensure that voting is done only by citizens eligible to vote. The AP reports:
ATLANTA — The Justice Department has rejected Georgia's system of using Social Security numbers and driver's license data to check whether prospective voters are citizens, a process that was a subject of a federal lawsuit in the weeks leading up to November's election.
In a letter released on Monday, the Justice Department said the state's voter verification program is frequently inaccurate and has a "discriminatory effect" on minority voters. The decision means Georgia must halt the citizenship checks, although the state can still ask the Justice Department to reconsider, according to the letter and to the Georgia secretary of state's office.
"This flawed system frequently subjects a disproportionate number of African-American, Asian and/or Hispanic voters to additional, and more importantly, erroneous burdens on the right to register to vote," Loretta King, acting assistant attorney general of the Justice Department's civil rights division, said. King's letter was sent to Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker on Friday.
Georgia is required to seek DOJ approval before implementing voting protocols because of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (see George Will here and Roger Clegg here). Quite apart from the fact that the VRA is an anachronism in modern America, is there not something perverse about cancelling out the votes of eligible citizens — the inevitable result of permitting ineligible citizens and non-citizens to vote, as DOJ is effectively forcing Georgia to do here — under the auspices of something called the "Voting Rights Act"?
Michelle Malkin notes that Georgia's secretary of state, Karen Handel, has blasted DOJ's move:
The decision by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to deny preclearance of Georgia’s already implemented citizenship verification process shows a shocking disregard for the integrity of our elections. With this decision, DOJ has now barred Georgia from continuing the citizenship verification program that DOJ lawyers helped to craft. DOJ’s decision also nullifies the orders of two federal courts directing Georgia to implement the procedure for the 2008 general election.
The decision comes seven months after Georgia requested an expedited review of the preclearance submission.
“DOJ has thrown open the door for activist organizations such as ACORN to register non-citizens to vote in Georgia’s elections, and the state has no ability to verify an applicant’s citizenship status or whether the individual even exists. DOJ completely disregarded Georgia’s obvious and direct interest in preventing non-citizens from voting, instead siding with the ACLU and MALDEF. Clearly, politics took priority over common sense and good public policy.
Handel's letter demonstrates the absurdity of the claims by DOJ's Civil Rights Division of undue burdens simple verification — i.e., the process airport security personnel put you through if you want to get on an airplane and Amtrak randomly puts you through to get on a train — imposes on minority voters:
It is important to underscore that not a single person has come forward to say he or she could not vote because of the verification process. Further, while DOJ argues that the process is somehow discriminatory, the historic voter turnout among Hispanic and African-American voters in the 2008 general elections clearly says otherwise.
This outrage does not happen in a vacuum. It comes on the heels of the Civil Rights Division's astounding dismissal of the slam-dunk voter intimidation case against members of the New Black Panther Party in Philadelphia (a case in which the Justice Department surrendered after it had already won), and Justice's blatant undermining of a federal law that commands states to purge their voter registration lists of ineligible voters (e.g., citizens who have died or moved out of state) in order to minimize opportunities for fraud. (See Hans von Spakovsky's incisive work on these issues, here and here). At the same time the Justice Department is busy preserving the infrastructure of fraud, congressional Democrats are filling the overflowing coffers of the notorious voter-fraud practitioners at ACORN — longtime allies of President Obama.
The Democrats Are Already Winning the 2010 Elections — Which Is What Happens When the Justice Department Is REALLY Politicized [Andy McCarthy]
Never a dull moment with the Justice Department of Eric Holder, aka "the right man at the right time to protect our citizens in the critical years ahead."
In fact, it would be more accurate to say he's the right man at the right time to protect our non-citizens in the critical years ahead. Unbelievably (or, perhaps, entirely too believably), Holder has told Georgia that it may no longer verify identification in order to ensure that voting is done only by citizens eligible to vote. The AP reports:
ATLANTA — The Justice Department has rejected Georgia's system of using Social Security numbers and driver's license data to check whether prospective voters are citizens, a process that was a subject of a federal lawsuit in the weeks leading up to November's election.
In a letter released on Monday, the Justice Department said the state's voter verification program is frequently inaccurate and has a "discriminatory effect" on minority voters. The decision means Georgia must halt the citizenship checks, although the state can still ask the Justice Department to reconsider, according to the letter and to the Georgia secretary of state's office.
"This flawed system frequently subjects a disproportionate number of African-American, Asian and/or Hispanic voters to additional, and more importantly, erroneous burdens on the right to register to vote," Loretta King, acting assistant attorney general of the Justice Department's civil rights division, said. King's letter was sent to Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker on Friday.
Georgia is required to seek DOJ approval before implementing voting protocols because of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (see George Will here and Roger Clegg here). Quite apart from the fact that the VRA is an anachronism in modern America, is there not something perverse about cancelling out the votes of eligible citizens — the inevitable result of permitting ineligible citizens and non-citizens to vote, as DOJ is effectively forcing Georgia to do here — under the auspices of something called the "Voting Rights Act"?
Michelle Malkin notes that Georgia's secretary of state, Karen Handel, has blasted DOJ's move:
The decision by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to deny preclearance of Georgia’s already implemented citizenship verification process shows a shocking disregard for the integrity of our elections. With this decision, DOJ has now barred Georgia from continuing the citizenship verification program that DOJ lawyers helped to craft. DOJ’s decision also nullifies the orders of two federal courts directing Georgia to implement the procedure for the 2008 general election.
The decision comes seven months after Georgia requested an expedited review of the preclearance submission.
“DOJ has thrown open the door for activist organizations such as ACORN to register non-citizens to vote in Georgia’s elections, and the state has no ability to verify an applicant’s citizenship status or whether the individual even exists. DOJ completely disregarded Georgia’s obvious and direct interest in preventing non-citizens from voting, instead siding with the ACLU and MALDEF. Clearly, politics took priority over common sense and good public policy.
Handel's letter demonstrates the absurdity of the claims by DOJ's Civil Rights Division of undue burdens simple verification — i.e., the process airport security personnel put you through if you want to get on an airplane and Amtrak randomly puts you through to get on a train — imposes on minority voters:
It is important to underscore that not a single person has come forward to say he or she could not vote because of the verification process. Further, while DOJ argues that the process is somehow discriminatory, the historic voter turnout among Hispanic and African-American voters in the 2008 general elections clearly says otherwise.
This outrage does not happen in a vacuum. It comes on the heels of the Civil Rights Division's astounding dismissal of the slam-dunk voter intimidation case against members of the New Black Panther Party in Philadelphia (a case in which the Justice Department surrendered after it had already won), and Justice's blatant undermining of a federal law that commands states to purge their voter registration lists of ineligible voters (e.g., citizens who have died or moved out of state) in order to minimize opportunities for fraud. (See Hans von Spakovsky's incisive work on these issues, here and here). At the same time the Justice Department is busy preserving the infrastructure of fraud, congressional Democrats are filling the overflowing coffers of the notorious voter-fraud practitioners at ACORN — longtime allies of President Obama.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Obama & UAW Screw the Taxpayers
The compliant media allows Obama to get away with empty claims of UAW "sacrifices", while the taxpayer gets hosed:
The U.S. taxpayer will be providing up to $115,000 in incentive and severance payments for tenured GM workers, according to the Kansas City Star.
GM is offering $20,000 cash and a $25,000 car voucher to production workers who decide to retire with their benefits.
For skilled-trades workers, the cash portion of the retirement package is $45,000 with the same car voucher.
For those not eligible to retire, GM also is offering more cash to walk away and sever all ties with the company, along with the $25,000 car voucher.
Employees with less than 10 years could get $45,000. Those with at least 10 years but less than 20 are being offered $80,000. For those with 20 years or more, it’s $115,000.
Those with 28 or 29 years at GM are being offered a bridge to retirement, with the company providing a monthly gross wage of $2,850 or $2,900 until qualifying for retirement.
So much for those massive sacrifices undertaken by the UAW to make GM such a modern, streamlined company.
(courtesy of Zero Hedge)
The U.S. taxpayer will be providing up to $115,000 in incentive and severance payments for tenured GM workers, according to the Kansas City Star.
GM is offering $20,000 cash and a $25,000 car voucher to production workers who decide to retire with their benefits.
For skilled-trades workers, the cash portion of the retirement package is $45,000 with the same car voucher.
For those not eligible to retire, GM also is offering more cash to walk away and sever all ties with the company, along with the $25,000 car voucher.
Employees with less than 10 years could get $45,000. Those with at least 10 years but less than 20 are being offered $80,000. For those with 20 years or more, it’s $115,000.
Those with 28 or 29 years at GM are being offered a bridge to retirement, with the company providing a monthly gross wage of $2,850 or $2,900 until qualifying for retirement.
So much for those massive sacrifices undertaken by the UAW to make GM such a modern, streamlined company.
(courtesy of Zero Hedge)
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Now for some humor: Ted Rall slams Obama
http://www.sj-r.com/opinions/x124603932/Ted-Rall-It-s-increasingly-evident-that-Obama-should-resign
We expected broken promises. But the gap between the soaring expectations that accompanied Barack Obama’s inauguration and his wretched performance is the broadest such chasm in recent historical memory. This guy makes Bill Clinton look like a paragon of integrity and follow-through.
read the whole thing.....
We expected broken promises. But the gap between the soaring expectations that accompanied Barack Obama’s inauguration and his wretched performance is the broadest such chasm in recent historical memory. This guy makes Bill Clinton look like a paragon of integrity and follow-through.
read the whole thing.....
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