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By Daniel Pipes,
www.jewishworldreview.com

“Individual Islamists may appear law-abiding and reasonable, but they are part of a totalitarian movement, and as such, all must be considered potential killers.” I wrote those words days after 9/11 and have been criticized for them ever since. But an incident on March 3 at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill suggests I did not go far enough.

That was when a just-graduated student named Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, 22, and an Iranian immigrant, drove a sport utility vehicle into a crowded pedestrian zone. He struck nine people but, fortunately, none were severely injured.

Until his would-be murderous rampage, Taheri-azar, a philosophy and psychology major, had an apparently normal existence and promising future. In high school, he had been student council president and a member of the National Honor Society. A number of UNC students told the Los Angeles Times that he “was a serious student, shy but friendly.” One fellow student, Brian Copeland, “was impressed with his knowledge of classical Western thought, adding “He was kind and gentle, rather than aggressive and violent.” The university chancellor, James Moeser, called him a good student, if “totally a loner, introverted and into himself.”

In fact, no one who knew him said a bad word about him, which is important, for it signals that he is not some low-life, not homicidal, not psychotic, but a conscientious student and amiable person. Which raises the obvious question: why would a regular person try to kill a random assortment of students? Taheri-azar’s post-arrest remarks offer some clues.

• He told the 911 dispatcher that he wanted to “punish the government of the United States for their actions around the world.”
• He explained to a detective that “people all over the world are being killed in war and now it is the people in the United States['] turn to be killed.”
• He said he acted to “avenge the deaths of Muslims around the world.”
• He portrayed his actions as “an eye for an eye.”
• A police affidavit notes that “Taheri-azar repeatedly said that the United States Government had been killing his people across the sea and that he decided to attack.”
• He told a judge, “I’m thankful you’re here to give me this trial and to learn more about the will of Allah.”

In brief, Taheri-azar represents the ultimate Islamist nightmare: a seemingly well-adjusted Muslim whose religion inspires him, out of the blue, to murder non-Muslims. Taheri-azar acknowledged planning his jihad for over two years, or during his university sojourn. It’s not hard to imagine how his ideas developed, given the coherence of Islamist ideology, its immense reach (including a Muslim Student Association at UNC), and its resonance among many Muslims.

Were Taheri-azar unique in his surreptitious adoption of radical Islam, one could ignore his case, but he fits into a widespread pattern of Muslims who lead quiet lives before turning to terrorism. Their number includes the 9/11 hijackers, the London transport bombers, and Maher Hawash, the Intel engineer arrested before he could join the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Mohammed Ali Alayed, the Saudi living in Houston fits, the pattern because he stabbed and murdered Ariel Sellouk, a Jewish man who was his one-time friend. So do some converts to Islam; who suspected Muriel Degauque, a 38-year-old Belgian woman, would turn up in Iraq as a suicide bomber throwing herself against an American military base?

This is what I have dubbed the Sudden Jihad Syndrome, whereby normal-appearing Muslims abruptly become violent. It has the awful but legitimate consequence of casting suspicion on all Muslims. Who knows whence the next jihadi? How can one be confident a law-abiding Muslim will not suddenly erupt in a homicidal rage? Yes, of course, their numbers are very small, but they are disproportionately much higher than among non-Muslims.

This syndrome helps explain the fear of Islam and mistrust of Muslims that polls have shown on the rise since 9/11.

The Muslim response of denouncing these views as bias, as the “new antisemitism,” or “Islamophobia” is as baseless as accusing anti-Nazis of “Germanophobia” or anti-Communists of “Russophobia.” Instead of presenting themselves as victims, Muslims should address this fear by developing a moderate, modern, and good-neighborly version of Islam that rejects radical Islam, jihad, and the subordination of “infidels.”

TEHRAN (AP) Iran’s supreme leader ordered the country’s diplomats on March 14 to defend the country’s nuclear program, saying any retreat would undermine the country’s independence and Tehran’s other foreign policy goals.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran considers retreat over the nuclear issue … as breaking the country’s independence which will impose huge costs on the Iranian nation,” state television quoted Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as telling diplomats brought home from Iran’s embassies across the world for consultations with Iranian leaders.

His comments echoed those of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who vowed to resist pressure from the U.N. Security Council to back down.

The five veto-wielding members of the council – the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France – have been weighing proposals to persuade Iran to respond to concerns about its nuclear program. They were to resume their talks at the U.N. headquarters in New York.

The United States and its European allies want Iran to permanently abandon uranium enrichment and all related activities, a technology that can be used to produce nuclear fuel for reactors or materials for a nuclear bomb. Iran denies any intention to build weapons, saying it only wants to produce energy.

China expressed optimism that negotiations could still resolve the dispute, calling on Tehran to cooperate.

“Now there is still room to solve the Iranian nuclear issue through diplomatic negotiations,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang. “We hope Iran can cooperate closely with the International Atomic Energy Agency and do more to build up mutual confidence to help reach a solution.”

But Iran’s president said Iraq would not abandon its drive to produce nuclear fuel by what he called the harsh statements and pressures by Washington and its allies.

“Rest assured that the technology to produce nuclear fuel today is in the hands of the youth of this land and no power can take it back from us,” Ahmadinejad said in a speech attended by thousands in northern Iran. The crowd responded with chants of “nuclear energy is our right.”

The United States and its allies, he said, are angry because Iran has made progress in its nuclear program.

“Today, unfortunately, few big powers want, through coercion and bullying, prevent progress of nations… They are really angry that this great nation (Iran) is gaining access to the peaks of progress and development.”

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw warned that Iran’s government is taking the country in the “wrong direction,” repressing its own people and pursuing confrontation abroad.

Britain, France, Germany and the United States successfully pressed the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, to report Iran to the Security Council last week after Tehran resumed nuclear research and small-scale uranium enrichment.

Iran has insisted it will never give up its right under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to enrich uranium and produce nuclear fuel. It restarted research-scale uranium enrichment in February, two years after voluntarily freezing the program during talks with Germany, Britain and France.

It also has threatened to start large-scale uranium enrichment if the council imposes any sanctions on the country. Iran only has an experimental nuclear research program and scientists say the Muslim nation is months away from resolving technical problems to launch any large-scale uranium enrichment.

IN early March, Iran offered what it called a “final proposal” to agree to suspend large-scale enrichment temporarily in return for IAEA recognition of its right to continue research-scale enrichment.

by Nathan Guttman, Jerusalem Post

Former Chief of Staff, Moshe (Bogi) Ya’alon says that Israel has a military option against Iran’s nuclear program and that it should not take it out of consideration. In a speech at the Hudson Institute — a Washington think tank.

Ya’alon gave a rare detailed description of Israel’s military possibilities regarding Iran. He acknowledged the fact that Iran has its nuclear programs spread out in many sites and said that Israel can overcome the Iranian air defense system and carry out air strikes against several dozen sites which are used for the nuclear development project. According to Ya’alon, who is now a visiting fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, an attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities should include not only the Israeli air force, but also air forces of the US and European countries and should take place only after Iran is isolated internationally both economically and diplomatically.

Ya’alon stressed in his speech that such air strikes against Iran, will not completely destroy the Iranian nuclear program, but can set it back several years. The former chief of staff predicts that, if not dealt with, Iran is only 6 to 18 months away from achieving the nuclear know-how and 3-5 years from acquiring a nuclear bomb.

The issue of an Israeli air strike against Iran’s nuclear sites has been discussed many times in the past and was largely seen as impractical because the facilities Iran uses are spread out all over the country. Ya’alon, in his speech at the Hudson Institute, said that striking a nuclear facility in Iran is no more difficult than targeting a terror suspect in the territories as Israeli air force has been doing for the past five years.

The former Chief of Staff did acknowledge the fact that any Israeli strike against Iran would lead to a harsh retaliation against Israel. He said they might try launching missiles from its own territory towards Israel or to use the Hizbullah in Lebanon and the Hamas in Gaza in order to fire rockets into Israel. Yet Ya’alon added that Israel can withstand such an attack, thanks to its effective anti-missile systems.

www.ynetnews.com 

Hamas website: Kids, die for Allah

A New Hamas website features animated figures calling on youngsters to fight Zionists, commit suicide for God Dudi Goldman A new, attractive website for children was recently launched on the net. The site features animated figures and stories that young children could easily relate to. However, unlike ordinary sites catering for children, this particular one is operated by Hamas and its main objective is to advocate suicide and self sacrifice on behalf of Allah.

According to Israel’s leading newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, the site, whose name means “The Victor,” glorifies death and suicide for God. In one instance, a caption that appears next to a picture of an animated girl throwing stones at IDF soldiers, reads: “Death for Allah is victory, the victory of the glorified heroes whose names will forever remain in the hearts of millions of Muslims across the world.”

The animated figure calls on children surfing the web to enter the site and learn about the lives of “shahids” (martyrs) who “died a hero’s death,” after massacring Jews. Another section of the site is dedicated to suicide bombers. Each day the site presents the picture and biography of a different “shahid.” A special page on “The Victor” focuses on the story of Hamas’ “brave shahid” Nazim Jabary, who carried out a suicide bombing aboard a Be’er Sheva bus in 2004, killing 16 people, including children. 

Like every self-respecting site for youngsters, the website also features some catchy songs to entertain surfers: “For the great heroes who killed the Zionist thieves and invaders and died for Allah. These are the heroes our people will treasure in their hearts for eternity, and their names will be spoken by millions of Muslims today and in the future.”

By Hal Lindsey
www.worldnetdaily.com

In early 2003, the liberal left united worldwide to ask itself the stunning question: “Whom do you believe? Saddam Hussein? Or George W. Bush?”

So blinding was the partisan hatred for George Bush that the answer was a resounding, “Saddam Hussein!” Demonstrators crowded the streets of Europe and Blue State America carrying signs screaming, “Bush Lied, People Died” and “Bush=Liar!”

The same question was asked by the United Nations — with the same result. The U.N. refused to support the invasion of Iraq and did all it could to lend aid and support to Saddam during the buildup to the war.

• The French passed on secret communiques to Saddam directly from the White House.
• The Russians were still helping Saddam prepare defenses as U.S. forces crossed the borders.
• The United Nations continued to stall to give Saddam as much time as possible to burn “Oil for Food” related documents.

Lenin is reputed to have referred to blind defenders and apologists for the Soviet Union in the Western democracies as “useful idiots.”

WorldNetDaily.com reported that one of Saddam’s former confidants — Ali Ibrahim al-Tikriti, aka “The Butcher of Basra” — said:

Saddam planned the whole thing. He hid the weapons of mass destruction, hoping the “many who opposed the war to begin with are rallying around Saddam saying we overthrew a sovereign leader based on a lie about WMD.” This is exactly what Saddam wanted and predicted.

The marchers and demonstrators did precisely what Saddam wanted so precisely that, three years later, American forces are still battling insurgents encouraged by millions of demonstrators — and American news reports — about the rightness of their cause in fighting “the evil George Bush.”

It is now evident to all but the blindest partisans that the intelligence was correct and that Saddam not only had weapons of mass destruction, but that he worked directly with al-Qaida.

A lot of Saddam’s useful idiots also offered their services to al-Qaida, providing Osama bin Laden with lots of pre-written and authenticated slogans about “liar Bush” and his “evil American intentions” and “the Bush oil company connections,” etc., blah, blah, blah.

When not handing the enemy public-relations sound bytes about America’s dishonesty, they are telling the enemy America tortures Islamic prisoners and flushes Qurans down the toilet.

As with Saddam, they share the same objective — the destruction of the Bush administration. That is where the “useful” part comes from. The “idiot” part comes from thinking that hurting Bush doesn’t hurt America. But then liberals rarely seem to consider that factor anyway.

But as the truth comes out in Saddam’s own words via tapes obtained by John Loftus, the usefulness of the “Bush lied” lobby will have expired.

Unfortunately for America, the damage remains. The insurgent-terrorist caused U.S. losses have buoyed hopes that America will be forced to withdraw — because of the “useful idiot”-fed anger of the American people — and leave Saddam to return to power.

The radical Islamic terrorist regimes rightly believe that this would damage America’s international reputation for decades to come. It would make it virtually impossible for American leaders to respond to future terrorist threats in an aggressive enough manner to prevent them.

The lessons learned in Vietnam about how to exploit American public opinion have been refined into a whole new form of warfare — a weapon both useful to our enemies and idiotic for our own strategic interests. Saddam found them very useful, indeed.

But what happens to an idiot when he is no longer useful? Unfortunately, when the useful part is over, the “idiot” part remains — waiting for the chance to become useful again. And with our liberal at-any-cost media, the idiots’ future usefulness is virtually guaranteed.

By Charles Krauthammer, www.washingtonpost.com

Nothing tells you more about Hollywood than what it chooses to honor. Nominated for best foreign-language film is “Paradise Now,” a sympathetic portrayal of two suicide bombers. Nominated for best picture is “Munich,” a sympathetic portrayal of yesterday’s fashion in barbarism: homicide terrorism. But until you see “Syriana,” nominated for best screenplay (and George Clooney, for best supporting actor) you have no idea how self-flagellation and self-loathing pass for complexity and moral seriousness in Hollywood.

The “Syriana” script has, of course, the classic liberal tropes such as this stage direction: “The Deputy National Security Advisor, MARILYN RICHARDS, 40′s, sculpted hair, with the soul of a seventy year-old white, Republican male, is in charge” (Page 21). Or this piece of over-the-top, Gordon Gekko Republican-speak, placed in the mouth of a Texas oilman: “Corruption is our protection. Corruption is what keeps us safe and warm…. Corruption… is how we win” (Page 93).

But that’s run-of-the-mill Hollywood. The true distinction of “Syriana’s” script is the near-incomprehensible plot — a muddled mix of story lines about a corrupt Kazakh oil deal, a succession struggle in an oil-rich Arab kingdom, and a giant Texas oil company that pulls the strings at the CIA and, naturally, everywhere else — amid which, only two things are absolutely clear and coherent: the movie’s one political hero and one pure soul.

The political hero is the Arab prince who wants to end corruption, inequality and oppression in his country. As he tells his tribal elders, he intends to modernize his country by bringing the rule of law, market efficiency, women’s rights and democracy. What do you think happens to him? He, his beautiful wife and beautiful children are murdered, incinerated, by a remote-controlled missile, fired from CIA headquarters in Langley, no less — at the very moment that (this passes for subtle cross-cutting film editing) his evil younger brother, the corrupt rival to the throne and puppet of the oil company, is being hailed at a suitably garish “oilman of the year” celebration populated by fat and ugly Americans.

What is grotesque about this moment of plot clarity is that the overwhelmingly obvious critique of actual U.S. policy in the real Middle East today concerns America’s excess of Wilsonian idealism in trying to find and promote — against a tide of tyranny, intolerance and fanaticism — local leaders like the Good Prince.

Who in the greater Middle East is closest to the modernizing, democratizing paragon of “Syriana”? Without a doubt, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, a man of exemplary — and quite nonfictional — personal integrity, physical courage and democratic temperament. Hundreds of brave American (and allied NATO) soldiers have died protecting him and the democratic system they established to allow him to govern.

On the very night the Oscars will be honoring “Syriana,” American soldiers will be fighting, some perhaps dying, in defense of precisely the kind of tolerant, modernizing Muslim leader that “Syriana” shows America slaughtering.

It gets worse. The most pernicious element in the movie is the character at the moral heart of the film: the beautiful, modest, caring, generous Pakistani who becomes a beautiful, modest, caring, generous… suicide bomber. In his final act, the Pure One, dressed in the purest white robes, takes his explosives-laden little motorboat headfirst into his target. It is a replay of the real-life boat that plunged into the USS Cole in 2000, killing 17 American sailors, except that in the “Syriana” version, the target is another symbol of American imperialism in the Persian Gulf: a newly opened liquefied natural gas terminal.

The explosion, which would have the force of a nuclear bomb, constitutes the moral high point of the movie, the moment of climactic cleansing, as the Pure One clad in white merges with the great white mass of the huge terminal wall, at which point the screen goes pure white. And reverently silent. In my naivete, I used to think that Hollywood had achieved its nadir with Oliver Stone’s “JFK,” a film that taught a generation of Americans that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by the CIA and the FBI in collaboration with Lyndon Johnson. But at least it was for domestic consumption, an internal affair of only marginal interest to other countries.

“Syriana,” however, is meant for export, carrying the most vicious and pernicious mendacities about America to a receptive world. Most liberalism is angst- and guilt-ridden, seeing moral equivalence everywhere. “Syriana” is of a different species entirely — a pathological variety that burns with the certainty of its malign anti-Americanism. Osama bin Laden could not have scripted this film with more conviction.

We’re winning in Iraq. Let’s not lose at home.

By Victor Davis Hanson, www.opinionjournal.com

In late February the golden dome of the Askariya shrine in Samarra was blown apart. Sectarian riots followed, and reprisals and deaths ensued. Thugs and criminals came out of the woodwork to foment further violence. But instead of the apocalypse of an ensuing civil war, a curfew was enforced. Iraqi security forces stepped in with some success. Shaken Sunni and Shiite leaders appeared on television to urge restraint, and there appeared at least the semblance of reconciliation that may soon presage a viable coalition government.

But here at home you would have thought that our own capitol dome had exploded. Indeed, Americans more than the Iraqis needed such advice for calm to quiet our own frenzy. Almost before the golden shards of the mosque hit the pavement, pundits wrote off the war as lost–as we heard the tired metaphors of “final straw” and “camel’s back” mindlessly repeated.

The long-anticipated civil strife among Shiites and Sunnis, we were assured, was not merely imminent, but already well upon us. Then the great civil war sort of fizzled out; our own frenzy subsided; and now exhausted we await next week’s new prescription of doom–apparently the hyped-up story of Arabs at our ports.

That the Iraqi security forces are becoming bigger and better, that we have witnessed three successful elections, and that hundreds of brave American soldiers have died to get us to the brink of seeing an Iraqi government emerge was forgotten in a 24-hour news cycle.

Few observers suggested that the Samarra bombing of a holy mosque by radical Muslims might be a sign of the terrorists’ desperation–killers who have not, and cannot, defeat the U.S. military. After the furor over Danish cartoons, French rioting and Iranian nuclear perfidy, the entire world is turning on radical Islam and the terrorists feel keenly this rising tide of opposition on the frontline in Iraq.

True, the Sunni Triangle, unlike southern Iraq and Kurdistan, is often inhospitable to the forces of reconstruction–but hardly lost to jihadists and militias as we are told. There is a disturbing sameness to our acrimony at home, as we recall all the links in this chain of America hysteria from the brouhaha over George Bush’s flight suit to purported flushed Korans at Guantanamo Bay. Each time we are lectured that the looting, Abu Ghraib, the embalming of Uday and Qusay, the demeaning oral exam of Saddam, unarmored Humvees, inadequate body armor or the latest catastrophe has squandered our victory, the unimpressed U.S. military simply goes about what it does best–defeating the terrorists and training the Iraqi military to serve a democratic government. They stay focused in this long war, while our pundits prepare the next controversy.

The second-guessing of 2003 still daily obsesses us: We should have had better intelligence; we could have kept the Iraqi military intact; we would have been better off deploying more troops. Had our forefathers embraced such a suicidal and reactionary wartime mentality, Americans would have still torn each other apart over Valley Forge years later on the eve of Yorktown–or refought Pearl Harbor even as they steamed out to Okinawa. There is a more disturbing element to these self-serving, always evolving pronouncements of the “my perfect war, but your disastrous peace” syndrome.

Conservatives who insisted that we needed more initial troops are often the same ones who now decry that too much money has been spent in Iraq. Liberals who chant “no blood for oil” lament that we unnecessarily ratcheted up the global price of petroleum. Progressives who charge that we are imperialists also indict us for being naively idealistic in thinking democracy could take root in post-Baathist Iraq and providing aid of a magnitude not seen since the Marshall Plan.

For many, Iraq is no longer a war whose prognosis is to be judged empirically. It has instead transmogrified into a powerful symbol that apparently must serve deeply held, but preconceived, beliefs–the deceptions of Mr. Bush, the folly of a neoconservative cabal, the necessary comeuppance of the American imperium, or the greed of an oil-hungry U.S. If many are determined to see the Iraqi war as lost without a plan, it hardly seems so to 130,000 U.S. soldiers still over there. They explain to visitors that they have always had a design: defeat the Islamic terrorists; train a competent Iraqi military; and provide requisite time for a democratic Iraqi government to garner public support away from the Islamists. We point fingers at each other; soldiers under fire point to their achievements:

Largely because they fight jihadists over there, there has not been another 9/11 here. Because Saddam is gone, reform is not just confined to Iraq, but taking hold in Lebanon, Egypt and the Gulf. We hear the military is nearly ruined after conducting two wars and staying on to birth two democracies; its soldiers feel that they are more experienced and lethal, and on the verge of pulling off the nearly impossible: offering a people terrorized from nightmarish oppression something other than the false choice of dictatorship or theocracy–and making the U.S. safer for the effort.

The secretary of defense, like officers in Iraq, did not welcome the war, but felt that it needed to be fought and will be won. Soldiers and civilian planners express confidence in eventual success, but with awareness of often having only difficult and more difficult choices after Sept. 11. Put too many troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we earn the wages of imperialism, or create a costly footprint that is hard to erase, or engender a dependency among the very ones in whom we wish to ensure self-reliance. Yet deploy too few troops, and instability arises in Kabul and Baghdad, as the Islamists lose their fear of American power and turn on the vulnerable we seek to protect.

In sum, after talking to our soldiers in Iraq and our planners in Washington, what seems to me most inexplicable is the war over the war–not the purported absence of a plan, but that the more we are winning in the field, the more we are losing it at home.