This further round of sanctions is unlikely to stop Iran if it is set on making a bomb. The sanctions add a list of heavy weapons that may not be sold to Iran, and forbid Iran to develop ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads. They lengthen slightly a list of Iranian officials and institutions on which various travel and financial restrictions are imposed. Perhaps most prominently, the resolution calls on countries to board ships bound for Iran and inspect their cargo, to enforce the resolution (if the country flagging the ships agrees, which is a big if).
What the resolution does not do is take a bite out of Iran’s main economic activity, the sale of its oil and gas. China made sure of that. As symbolic a blow as the vote is to Iran, these are not the “crippling” sanctions that the most fretful Iran-watchers have called for.
I guess a symbolic blow is nice. There’s a possibility that Iran will be angered enough by the perceived insult to do something really stupid. But in the meantime, the world slides toward nuclear war mainly because too many players would rather quibble over details of self-interest and vanity.
Here’s a disturbing clip. David Horowitz of FrontPage Magazine spoke at the University of California at San Diego last month. Watch this exchange with a member of the Muslim Students Association. She scorns the notion that the MSA is other than a peace-loving organization, and then…well, just watch it and see.
This hatemongering is tolerated and nurtured at our elite universities. This being a state-sponsored institution, you’d think there would be some outcry. But our lawmakers won’t dare condemn a genocidal movement if it’s politically correct. On the other hand, Arizona is denounced in the harshest possible terms. That’s the world we live in.
You’ve probably heard about the latest South Park show in which Mohammed appears. The South Park team took the occasion of their 200th show to revisit previous controversies.
From left to right: Joseph Smith, Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammed
Here’s a short YouTube interview with South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker. They recall how mentioning Mohammed suddenly became a taboo in the wake of the Danish cartoons. Prior to that, it was no big deal. The “Super Best Friends” episode of South Park’s fifth season portrayed a gathering of religious figures…including Mohammed. You’ll see a clip from that episode 3 minutes into the interview. Mohammed is just one of the boys; he’s not singled out for special attention. (The full episode has been removed from the South Park website; in its place an apology is posted.)
Parker and Stone note that the free world has been let down by the cowardice of the mainstream press. With our respectable institutions gone AWOL, the burden of defending free speech falls upon the clowns. So it’s Parker and Stone that put themselves in the firing line as a matter of conscience. Parker: “We’d be so hypocritical if we said, ‘Let’s not make fun of them because they might hurt us.’ That’s messed up!”
“Super Best Friends” aired on July 4, 2001. Ten weeks later, Islamists bombed the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Now the free press is self-censored, and the American President travels to hostile foreign lands to deny America’s Judeo-Christian roots and scrape his nose on the ground for the Grand Poobah of Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, the Democrat leaders proclaim their political opponents to be racists, Nazis, paid shills, and spiritual brothers of Timothy McVeigh. The irony is that if there was any truth to those charges, the Democrats would cower in fear instead of bravely spewing insults and slander.
A state-owned Chinese refiner plans to ship 30,000 metric tons of gasoline to Iran after European traders halted shipments ahead of possible new UN sanctions, according to Singapore ship brokers.
Beijing has growing commercial and political ties with Iran and has resisted US pressure for sanctions to press Teheran to abandon its nuclear program. Chinese officials say the country is entitled to energy trade.
In the recent era, Obama has bent over backwards, both literally and figuratively, to appease China and Russia. He cancelled the missile defense shield in Europe (a shield against Iran, not Russia) and ignored the currency manipulations and trade advantages of China.
These large concessions might make sense if we actually got anything in return. The general assumption was that we were buying meaningful cooperation in dealing with the Iranian situation. Harsh sanctions, if enforced, could bring down the Iranian regime without spilling blood.
Maybe America and the world will ultimately get value for Obama’s giveaways. But it doesn’t seem to be happening (or if it is, it’s not yet apparent). There’s rising concern that Obama is merely surrendering America’s advantages as a matter of redistributive ideology, and accomplishing nothing other than handing those who wish us ill a good laugh.
Apparently there is enough evidence for the Army to be “investigating” an alleged attempt by (maybe possibly) Muslim soldiers to poison the food supply of their fellow soldiers, but not enough evidence to say there is, uh, any evidence.
Kinda like how John Brennan noted after the Christmas Day bomber attempt that there have been no terrorist attacks on US soil. Interesting how an adviser to the president somehow forgot about the murder of Private Long by an Islamist and, of course, the mass murder horror at Ft. Hood.
Army Investigates Alleged Attempt by Soldiers to Poison Food at Fort Jackson
The U.S. Army is investigating allegations that soldiers were attempting to poison the food supply at Fort Jackson in South Carolina.
The ongoing probe began two months ago, Chris Grey, a spokesman for the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division, told Fox News.
The Army is taking the allegations “extremely seriously,” Grey said, but so far, “there is no credible information to support the allegations.”
Five suspects, detained in December, were part of an Arabic translation program called “09 Lima” and use Arabic as their first language, two sources told Fox News. Another military source said they were Muslim. It wasn’t clear whether they were still being held.
Grey would not confirm or deny the sources’ information.
Yep, another good, solid B+ for our Dumb Bastard-in-Chief.
Did you know that before the radical Muslim underwear bomber, there was a radical Christian underwear bomber? It was all laid out in Rosie O’Connell’s 2008 documentary. Here’s the clip of Bill O’Reilly interviewing Rosie and award-winning documentarian Michael Malone.
That Iran is racing ahead with its illegal nuclear program is apparent to all. If and when Iran gets the bomb, then the threat of nuclear annihilation will hang over the region and the world. Either Iran will be the big dog controlling the world’s gas tank through intimidation, or there will be a regional rush for everyone to go nuclear. With the prevailing Mid-East mentality (that is to say, genocidal maniacs generally in charge), nuclear war will soon follow, one way or another.
Should Israel or America launch a pre-emptive strike? Obviously such a move would be very dangerous. Unless we’re prepared to occupy and rebuild Iran — which isn’t on the table — then a strike would leave behind an Iran that, although weakened, would be angry and potent. Regional flashpoints would likely flare up as Iran’s proxy warriors launched attacks on other fronts. An oil shock and a spike in prices would follow, causing severe global economic disruption. And a pre-emptive strike would have to destroy a number of targets that are entrenched and defended. Do we even know the location of all the targets that must be destroyed? The size of the task may be too big for the Israeli air force — unless the Israelis decide to take out targets using tactical nukes.
Maybe a pre-emptive strike is the least-bad option. At least the resulting war wouldn’t be nuclear. But I understand the temptation to do nothing and pray.
A “bunker buster” bomb with more than 10 times the explosive power of its predecessor will be put into service by the United States next December, six months later than previously scheduled, the U.S. Defense Department told Reuters on Friday.
The deployment’s timing may help shape calculations of the United States and others in long-running standoffs with Iran and North Korea over their nuclear programs.
The precision-guided, 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrator, or MOP, is designed to wreck potential targets such as deeply buried nuclear facilities that are beyond the reach of existing bombs.
“Funding delays and enhancements to the planned test schedule have pushed the capability availability date to December 2010,” Tara Rigler, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said in an email.
“Funding delays”? This announcement, and the implication that the weapon won’t be available for a year because of a voluntary choice of funding, suggests that this is the Obama administration’s method of signaling that a strike on Iran has been taken off the table. This may also be the signal of acquiescence to a nuclear Iran, since the situation will likely have come to a boil before this bunker-buster is ready to deploy.
Likewise, the earlier decision to cancel plans to deploy a missile shield in Eastern Europe seemed to signal America’s willingness to have Europe exposed to Iranian nuclear blackmail.
Then again, these decisions may represent a more complex message in a more sophisticated game. Some of these things can’t be understood except in hindsight. But Obama’s foreign policies have seemed pretty weak and ineffective thus far. He seems to reserve his venom and coercive authority for America’s allies such as Israel, or for his political opposition.
Is there any method to what seems on the surface to be Obama’s suicidal madness? I guess we’ll find out.
The President in his West Point speech stressed getting out of Afghanistan, even going so far as to set a date for the beginning of the “transition”. A lot of people (and probably the cadets in the audience judging by their faces) thought this was a dumb ass thing to do. Clinton, Gates and Gibbs among others are scrambling around now trying to reassure everyone we aren’t planning an abandonment of Afghanistan. They point out that Obama did mention “conditions on the ground”. He mentioned dates more than conditions and said nothing about a December 2010 reevaluation.
McCain got his mug on the news asking Gates if it was a date certain or conditions that would determine events in Afghanistan:
McCain: Will the date of withdrawal of 2011 be based on an arbitrary date of July 2011 regardless of conditions on the ground?
Gates: I think it is a judgment that we will be in a position where we will be able to begin the transition. …We will have a thorough review in December 2010. If it appears the strategy is not working, then we will take a hard look at the strategy itself.
So we won’t leave if things are going badly a year from now, just a few months after reinforcements arrived? I think Robert Gibbs let the cat out of the bag on this one.
After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home.
…there are those who oppose identifying a timeframe for our transition to Afghan responsibility. Indeed, some call for a more dramatic and open-ended escalation of our war effort — one that would commit us to a nation-building project of up to a decade. I reject this course because it sets goals that are beyond what we can achieve at a reasonable cost and what we need to achieve to secure our interests. Furthermore, the absence of a time frame for transition would deny us any sense of urgency in working with the Afghan government. It must be clear that Afghans will have to take responsibility for their security, and that America has no interest in fighting an endless war in Afghanistan.
As president, I refuse to set goals that go beyond our responsibility, our means or our interests. And I must weigh all of the challenges that our nation faces. I do not have the luxury of committing to just one. Indeed, I am mindful of the words of President Eisenhower, who — in discussing our national security — said, “Each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs.
…our troop commitment in Afghanistan cannot be open-ended — because the nation that I am most interested in building is our own.
On the evening of November 26, 2008, ten young Pakistani men reached Mumbai in a small hijacked fishing boat, having slaughtered its captain and crew, and glided unnoticed into the teeming Indian port city. Over the next three days, armed with cell phones, machine guns, and fruit and nuts to sustain them, they unleashed coordinated attacks across the city that left at least 170 people dead and more than 300 wounded, sending shockwaves of fear around the world. Narrated by Mumbai-born Fareed Zakaria, CNN host and Newsweek International editor, and directed by award-winning filmmaker Dan Reed (HBO’s “Terror in Moscow”), TERROR IN MUMBAI provides a 360-degree view of a terrorist act, recounting in harrowing detail the bloody events of that 60-hour period…
The documentary walks you through the events as they happened, showing dramatic videos captured by security cameras and the media. It includes intercepted phone conversations between the terrorists and their handlers. These are particularly eerie…the audio is captioned, of course, but the tone you hear when a coordinator instructs a terrorist to commit murder is as matter-of-fact as you might ask an assistant to bring you a stapler. The terrorists are given spiritual encouragement as they tire, with ongoing references to the pleasure Allah is deriving as the operation unfolds and the dead pile up, along with assurances of splendid rewards awaiting the faithful. This is the sort of dialogue you’d expect to come out of the mouths of bad guys in a cheap movie, or maybe words Dr. Evil would say. It’s almost impossible to wrap your head around the concept that it’s real.
People will debate what we are to learn from revisiting these atrocities. I see this as a reminder of the depths of evil depravity to which human beings are capable of falling. Obviously Islam is a big part of the modern equation. But it should never be forgotten that the Nazi movement came out of a culture that was productive and relatively wealthy and second to none in terms of modern enlightenment and sophistication.
The fundamental error of the Left is the idea that evil arises as a result of economic and material factors. Hence the Leftist fixation on “economic justice”, which they see as the primary foundation of a world in which people do not turn to evil. In fact, evil exists independent of money or material or intellect. We will all be tempted by evil in some way, and we must find some spiritual strength within ourselves to resist that temptation. Cultural and environmental factors may strengthen or weaken or even destroy our personal resolve, but the battle remains on a spiritual, rather than a material, plane.
*UPDATE by Pat Here’s the clip of the handler dispassionately telling the terrorists to shoot the hostages at the Jewish Center. Warning, this is strong stuff. You will hear the gunshots.
It’s heartwarming when soldiers return from the field of battle to be reunited with their loved ones. Of course I wouldn’t want to understate the importance of the homecoming with regard to wives and children and the like. But the pièce de résistance is the reunion with the family pooch. Could anyone possibly disagree?
I’ve bumped this old post in light of the Obama administration’s shocking decision to try the 9/11 terrorists in a New York civilian court. Does anyone remember what happened the last time we tried this? Also, see David Horowitz’s editorial, “The Worst Decision by a US President in History”:
The decision to try the jihadists in a civilian court is also a decision which will divulge America’s security secrets to the enemy since civilian courts afford defendants the right of discovery. It is also a propaganda gift to Islamic murderers who will turn the courtroom into a media circus to promote their hatred against the Great Satan — a hatred shared by their apologists at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the pro-Castro Center for Constitutional Rights who have pioneered the campaign against Guantanamo and whose influence in the Obama Administration is pervasive. (BTW, The newly appointed lawyer for the president is the husband of Obama’s recently departed Maoist communications director Anita Dunn.)
Does anybody remember Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman? He was the blind Egyptian cleric who was associated with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He was plotting numerous additional bomb attacks, which were thankfully prevented by his 1993 arrest and 1995 conviction. So we left him to rot in jail, and that was that.
Not quite. The Sheik was represented by radical lawyer Lynne Stewart, who was always ready to defend the constitutional rights of the scum of the earth. As part of her services, Stewart carried secret communications from the isolated Sheik Abdel-Rahman to his followers between 1997 and 2002. These included instructions to initiate a campaign of terror in Egypt. Last year Stewart, along with two others, were convicted of conspiring to materially assist terrorists. Her sentencing is next month, and she is, of course, claiming hardship due to age and infirmity. And as you can imagine, she is receiving encouragement and support from the usual suspects.
Certain classes of evil people must simply vanish away into a pit, never to be heard from again. Yes, this gives a dangerous degree of power to the government. But when there is danger on every path, we must choose between trusting the American government and trusting the Lynne Stewarts of the world.
John Allen Muhammad was executed on Tuesday for masterminding and carrying out with his teenage accomplice the 2002 sniper shootings that killed 10 people and terrified the Washington, D.C. region a year after the September 11 and the deadly anthrax attacks.
The 48-year-old Muhammad was put to death by lethal injection at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, Virginia, said Virginia Department of Corrections spokesman Larry Traylor.
“Death was pronounced at 9:11 pm. There were no complications. Mr. Muhammad was asked if he wished to make a last statement. He did not acknowledge us or make any statement whatsoever,” Traylor told reporters.
A post by Maynard
Zbigniew Brzezinski was Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor, and a high-profile endorser of Obama. He has no post in the Administration, so he doesn’t directly craft policy and his comments aren’t official; nevertheless he’s not a man to be ignored. His recent Daily Beast interview is…odd.
Brzezinski was considered a relatively “hawkish” and [...]
Maynard contemplates
You’ve heard the news of advances in Iranian missile and nuclear technology. George Bush had planned a missile shield to protect Europe from the growing threat, but those plans have now been shelved, apparently because of Russian objections. Meanwhile, Russia has been beefing up the Iranian military.
Obama is looking very much like an appeaser; [...]
