Obsessed with history vs. obsessed with current events

As usual, the American media gets it 180 degrees wrong. The bombers and gunslingers of islam continue to run interference for "moderate islam" (like CAIR and the MAS) while running circles around our guys. Our guys in the media are oblivious to it all, of course, harping instead about trivialities and accidentals. The children of islam; in palestine, in Jordan, in Iran, In Dubai, in Saudi Arabia, (and all the other arabias, as well) in Egypt, in Indonesia, etc., etc., are taught their transcendent islamic history while our children are being taught "current events". Journalists love this, thrive on it, in fact, because it is, seemingly, all they know as well. They bring up the Beirut barracks bombing, as history, but to Osama and Nasrallah and Mahmoud, that's just current events. Michael Hirsch, in Newsweek, for instance:

"Once again timorous Democratic advisers behind the scenes are hoping they can run mainly on the ailing economy. While their candidates are urging an end to George W. Bush's war in Iraq, they are terrified of questioning the larger premises of his "war on terror" or John McCain's redefinition of it as the "transcendent challenge of the 21st century." Today's Dems are, in other words, proving unequal to the task of reclaiming the party's mostly honorable heritage on national security. This view is sadly out of touch, today more than ever. To little notice, Obama's tough, clearly stated position on Bush's war—that it was disastrously misdirected toward Iraq when Afghanistan was always the real front—is becoming conventional wisdom, even among the Bush administration's top security officials, like Defense Secretary Bob Gates andAdm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. During two days of nearly impenetrable testimony on Iraq by Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador RyanCrocker last week, one answer rang out as clearly as an alarm bell. Under questioning from Joe Biden, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Crocker admitted that Al Qaeda poses a greater threat in Afghanistan and Pakistan than it does in Iraq. No one knows more about this than the ambassador, an Arabic-speaking diplomat who previously served as envoy to Pakistan and whose career practically tells the story of America and the age of terror going back to the 1983 bombings of the U.S. Embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut."

As long as they continue to think about it as "Bush's War" we lose. Just for starters, Iraq is not a war, but merely a battle. Islam's generations are running a relay race into eternity, while our leaders are focused on petulant benchmarks for the Iraqis and cultivating the narcissism of our own electorate. Tragically, the real power is ours, if we only could just seize it and exercise it. We must start by owning our own cultural history and then by standing, unabashedly, on the shoulders of those who have come before us in this fight.

Arab Cat, American Mouse

Hugh Fitzgerald in his most recent Iconoclast post notes:

"It is not good that the Americans, from Crocker on down and up, appear to be constantly surprised, constantly disappointed, by Arab and Muslim attitudes, inside and outside Iraq, when there is nothing to be surprised or disappointed about. The Sunni regimes have a different interest from that of the Americans: they wish to keep the Americans in Iraq as long as possible, whatever the toll it takes on those Americans, and for several reasons.

First, as long as the Americans are there, the Shi'a cannot completely solidify their hold on Baghdad, historically the first city of Islam. Things remain, or seem to remain, still up in the air, as long as the foreign Infidels are present.

Second, once the Americans leave, the Sunnis of western and northwestern Iraq will be confronted with the Shi'a ascendancy in Baghdad, and realize that the Shi'a have no intention of honoring any promises made about their treatment, their equitable sharing in oil revenues for example, that may have been made, as part of Maliki's miching mallecho, to the ever-trusting Americans.

Third, it will now be the direct responsiblity of the Arab Sunni regimes to help their co-religionists in Iraq, and that costs money, and men, and war materiel. It was so much more pleasant to see the Americans stuck in Iraq, trying to stick up for the Sunnis, trying to modify the behavior of the new Shi'a rulers, in an attempt to "unify" the country. "

The Country. But is there really a "country" there, and I mean in the Western sense--(and Fitzgerald has made this very point in other contexts)--or is Iraq simply the "land of the two rivers"-- part of the formless, ubiquitous, globe-aggrandizing ummah? If it is axiomatic that Departments of State are designed to deal with states, then who in the government deals with nations, in the classical sense, other than the B.I.A.?

Certainly the ummah considers itself a nation, yet not a state. For the ummah to be a state would require a caliph, Allah's vicegerent on earth, and that is not at hand. Perhaps the Department of State would prefer, or would be better equiped to deal with a caliph, so as to better formalize our status with respect to the muslim world. Now there would be a road map and a road they could follow, trudging along in the footsteps of the ancients on their way to an ancient destination. Then we might see the old battles replayed all over again, to the same scripts as of old. Do you suppose the State Department would get it then?

You can read all of Mr. Fitzgerald's piece here.

Red Skelton's Pledge of Allegiance

This is a touching and warm-hearted piece. I used to watch Red Skelton when I was a kid. He was a gentle man, and funny without being crass or vulgar. What Hollywood was like before the likes of Michael Moore, Alec Baldwin and their ilk.

Flying penguins! Dear Al, Can the polar bears be far behind?

Video exclusive: First-ever images of the world's only flying penguins - Mirror.co.uk

This has something to do do with Global Warming--as well as plate tectonics, of course. Am I surprised? Well, yeah. Shocked? Not in the least. Politics vs. nature--and how does nature fight back? Well, not at all. Nature ignores politics, always and forever. That's one of the beauties of nature I find so compelling.

I am continually dismayed by the rigid dogmatism of the narcissistic environmental community. They have a pathologically rigid view of life and and of history. No room for mystery, no room for miracles and no place for the chances that life takes to survive and to persist. Life, life that has flourished and changed for eons without their help. How sad and pathethic they are compared to this colony of penguins!

Update: my wife wonders if this was an April Fools day gag...

A duty to instruct and protect?

The Iconoclast wonders about the "Great Inhibition", which I take to mean the culture of political correctness, in the context of the recent dissembling injunction of the Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith against Dutchman Geert Wilders' groundbreaking production of Fitna-the Movie.

Modern political-correctness was born of the Womyn's Movement; a forced scrubbing-out of the "patriarchal" and "racist" nomenclature of our common cultural inheritance--the inauguration of police officers, firefighters, councilmembers, congresspersons and mail carriers whilst ushering out all of the policemen, firemen, councilmen, congressmen and mailmen. The end of history and the birth of herstory, the end of negroes and the beginning of the endless parade of neologisms designed to replace an inherited vocabulary, however imperfect, that had been developed over historical time to discuss and to cope with common problems and problems in-common. Built essentially upon pretense and wishful thinking, political correctness has, by-and-large enervated our political vocabulary, debilitated our culture's ability to think straight, inhibited reasoned analysis of political problems with historic roots and has cut us off from our intellectual patrimony. Now, against the onslaught of a profoundly not-understood ideology, the "profundity" of which may be lain entirely at the feet of the political correctness movement, The Iconoclast wonders:

"What do the Western scholars of Islam say about the history of Islamic conquest, what prompted it, and what happened to the non-Muslims in the lands that were conquered, over the past 1350 years? Does he know that for a very long period, and especially in that century between roughly 1860 and 1960, before the Great Inhibition, all kinds of Western scholars, German and Dutch and Italian and Russian and English and American and Spanish, studied Islam and the history of Islamic conquest, and their works are not to be ignored nor denied, in the intolerable rush to embrace the assorted espositos and armstrongs, who have nothing like the learning of Schacht, Hurgronje, Jeffrey, Zwemer, Lammens, Dufourcq, and hundreds of others.
This kind of thing cannot be endured..."

I wonder, too. Read it all.

Update: a quote from the British psychiatrist and commentator Theodore Dalrymple (Anthony Daniels) on the corrosive effects of political correctness upon societies:

“Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small…the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.”

Da'wa: Are you persuaded?

I'm not. It just doesn't seem to resonate with me for some reason.
(Rightclick, "save picture as... " & print to 8 1/2 x 11).

Free Speech Solidarity

With the Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard on the occasion of the arrest of his would-be Muslim assassins.

Compliments to Jyllands-Posten.

A token of our Roman Heritage

And now, a little something different, for a change. When those nasty Romans weren't out conquering the world, they stayed home, engaging in all manner of domestic pursuits, or they travelled to faraway vacation spots for fun. This little gem was struck during the reign of Tiberius Caesar, the 2nd emperor of Rome, and the Caesar mentioned in the Christian Bible's New Testament. Tiberius was himself a notorious debauchee, living in self-imposed and libidinous exile on the picturesque island of Capri, in his cliff-top villa, miles away from Rome. This bronze coin, or token, is 24 mm across, or about the size of a U.S. quarter. It is thought by some that this particular token, and others like it, were used in multi-ethnic brothels, to purchase various services. Just go to the room with the XIII on the door. Thus did the Romans transcend the language barrier. Artfully. It sold at auction in April of 2006 for 15,000 Swiss francs ($11,632.00). Enjoy.

Living by the Islamic Golden Rule

"The honour of Islam lies in insulting kufr and kafirs. One who respects the kafirs dishonours the Muslims... The real purpose of levying jiziya on them is to humiliate them to such an extent that they may not be able to dress well and to live in grandeur. They should constantly remain terrified and trembling. It is intended to hold them under contempt and to uphold the honour and might of Islam."

Sufi saint Ahmad Sirhindi (1564-1624), letter #163

Time to Purge the D.O.D. of Muslims?

The dismissal of analyst Maj. Stephen Coughlin from the U.S. Department of Defense is covered here at Jihad Watch. Maj. Coughlin was one of the most highly placed individuals in the U.S. defense establishment to have a sound, and un-corrupted understanding of the role of jihad warfare in the ideology that is Islam. Now he will be gone, ousted at the behest of muslims who have penetrated the highest reach of our government. How can we even hope to understand the jihadist war being waged against the non-muslim world, let alone emerge victorious when situations like this are allowed to occur or are in fact sanctioned? Just as Sargeant Hasan Akbar tossed genades into the tents of his commanding officers on the ground in Iraq, and when the 911 jihadis drove a 757 into the building, there appear to be muslims attacking the Pentagon, only this time they have been invited in through the through the front door. Is there anyone at the top of our government with a clue? Should we continue to call it the Department of Defense, or could it be better described as the Department of Let's Not Risk Giving Offense?

I guess the pathetic Adam Gadahn, his pal Zawahiri and their ilk have friends in high places.



Update: Jihad Watch has posted an excellent summary of the issues involved in this case. See it here.