This Week on the Web (March 10 – March 16)
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Quote of the Week:
“It's this appeasement which is victimizing our troops, not the ‘war-hungry’ mentality the Democrats claim President Bush possesses.”
Video of the Week:
The Great Global Warming Swindle
Channel 4 (via YouTube)
“This short program, produced and shown in
NEWS
Professor's Invitation At GMU Pulled, Muslim Complaints
ABC 7
An
On Friday, however, it appeared that the speech might be rescheduled for April.
John Lewis, who teaches history at
In the article, Lewis calls for war against the Islamic government in
The speech had been sponsored in part by the school's Objectivist Club, which promotes the social philosophies of self-interest of author Ayn Rand. The invitation was pulled after the school received complaints from Muslim students and it was discovered that the club's charter had lapsed.
Lewis said Friday that the speech had been tentatively rescheduled for April, with the university's College Republicans club as a new sponsor. But university spokesman Daniel Walsch said the school had received no notice of the club's invitation.
[…]
In a phone interview, Lewis said he does not advocate violence against individual Muslims in the
"I didn't plan on going to George Mason with an armed gang. I'm coming to share my ideas," Lewis said.
He said he would tell any student who advocates implementation of Islamic law that "it's impossible for you to live in the
"They need to witness the destruction of the Iranian state and be shown its failure," he said.
In his article in The Objective Standard, Lewis compares the fight against radical Islam to the fight against the Japanese in World War II.
"Ask whether it would have been in our interest to have left the regime of 1945 in power, to continue preaching religious militarism and training kamikaze. The best thing Americans did for themselves (and, incidentally, the kindest thing for the Japanese) was to burn that regime to the ground. So it is Friday," Lewis wrote.
COMMENTARY
The “Forward Strategy” for Failure
Yaron Brook and Elan Journo, The Objective Standard
The Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Lebanese Hezbollah, the Islamist regime in Iran, the Mahdi Army, Al Qaeda—these are all part of an ideological movement: Islamic Totalitarianism. Although differing on some details and in tactics, all of these groups share the movement’s basic goal of enslaving the entire Middle East, and then the rest of the world, under a totalitarian regime ruled by Islamic law. The totalitarians will use any means to achieve their goal—terrorism, if it proves effective; all-out war, if they can win; and politics, if it can bring them power over whole countries.
Bush’s forward strategy has helped usher in a new era in the
The situation in the Middle East is worse for
[…]
The problem does not lie with a shortage of resources or blunders in executing the strategy. The problem lies with the strategy’s basic goal, whose legitimacy critics fail to challenge.
The strategy has failed to make us safer, because making us safer was never its real goal. That goal is mandated by the corrupt moral ideal driving the strategy.
What, then, is the actual goal of the strategy?
Nonnegotiable: “Diplomacy” with Iran means ignoring what its leaders are saying
Michael Ledeen, Jewish World Review
Kissinger’s refusal to acknowledge the religious and revolutionary nature of the Islamic Republic is of a piece with the scores of diplomats who insist that negotiations will eventually tame the Islamic Revolution. It won’t work. Only the defeat of the Islamic Republic can accomplish that goal, because that would demonstrate that the mullahs do not have divine support for their global jihad.
There’s something about diplomats, no matter how brilliant, that leads them to see a world that never existed, and most likely never will. The past results achieved by the grand master of diplomacy were often disappointing. Kissinger attempted to tame the Soviet Empire by constructing “détente,” which probably extended the life of the Communist superstate by a decade or more; it took Ronald Reagan to bring it to an end.
[…]
No matter how much evidence of Iran’s determination to destroy or dominate us, no matter how many times Khamenei or Ahmadinejad leads the chant of “Death to America,” no matter how many American fighters and Iraqi citizens are killed as a result of Iranian support for the terrorists, she and the Kissingers of this world continue to convince themselves that things are getting better, that Iran shares our goals for peace in the region, and that if we only make one more generous offer, the whole unpleasant situation will work out for the best.
It is not so. They are not like us, and they do not share our dreams. Diplomacy will not tame them. Only our victory will.
Faster, Please. Our kids are getting killed every day by these people, and we’re next on their list.
Free Radical: Ayaan Hirsi Ali infuriates Muslims and discomfits liberals
Joseph Rago, Opinion Journal
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is untrammeled and unrepentant: "I am supposed to apologize for saying the prophet is a pervert and a tyrant," she declares. "But that is apologizing for the truth."
Statements such as these have brought Ms. Hirsi Ali to world-wide attention. Though she recently left her adopted country,
Ms. Hirsi Ali was born in 1969 in
[…]
Many liberals loathe her for disrupting an imagined "diversity" consensus: It is absurd, she argues, to pretend that cultures are all equal, or all equally desirable. But conservatives, and others, might be reasonably unnerved by her dim view of religion. She does not believe that Islam has been "hijacked" by fanatics, but that fanaticism is intrinsic in Islam itself: "Islam, even Islam in its nonviolent form, is dangerous."
The Muslim faith has many variations, but Ms. Hirsi Ali contends that the unities are of greater significance. "Islam has a very consistent doctrine," she says, "and I define Islam as I was taught to define it: submission to the will of Allah. His will is written in the Quran, and in the hadith and Sunna. What we are all taught is that when you want to make a distinction between right and wrong, you follow the prophet. Muhammad is the model guide for every Muslim through time, throughout history."
This supposition justifies, in her view, a withering critique of Islam's most holy human messenger. "You start by scrutinizing the morality of the prophet," and then ask: "Are you prepared to follow the morality of the prophet in a society such as this one?" She draws a connection between Mohammed's taking of child brides and modern sexual oppressions--what she calls "this imprisonment of women." She decries the murder of adulteresses and rape victims, the wearing of the veil, arranged marriages, domestic violence, genital mutilation and other contraventions of "the most basic freedoms."
These sufferings, she maintains, are traceable to theological imperatives. "People say it is a bad strategy," Ms. Hirsi Ali says forcefully. "I think it is the best strategy. . . . Muslims must choose to follow their rational capacities as humans and to follow reason instead of Quranic commands. At that point Islam will be reformed."
From a Rapt Audience, a Call to Cool the Hype
William J. Broad, New York Times
Hollywood has a thing for Al Gore and his three-alarm film on global warming, “An Inconvenient Truth,” which won an Academy Award for best documentary. So do many environmentalists, who praise him as a visionary, and many scientists, who laud him for raising public awareness of climate change.
But part of his scientific audience is uneasy. In talks, articles and blog entries that have appeared since his film and accompanying book came out last year, these scientists argue that some of Mr. Gore’s central points are exaggerated and erroneous. They are alarmed, some say, at what they call his alarmism.
Quotable
“It’s been said before, and it’s worth saying again: If the Arabs put down their weapons, there would be no more war. If the Jews put down their weapons, there would be no more Jews.”
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Other links
Web Logs
Principles in Practice– Principled commentary on cultural matters and current events from “The Objective Standard”
Cox and Forkum – Political cartoons and commentary
The Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid – Donald Luskin
Dollars and Crosses – CapitalismMagazine.com
Rule of Reason – The Center for the Advancement of Capitalism
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