Bethlehem, Then and Now

Political Poster in Bethlehem

The Bethlehem of 2007 years ago when Jesus Christ was born bears little resemblance to the Bethlehem of 2007, which I visited last May. Or does it?

Growing up in New England - land of the white Christmas, I sang carols in the snow outside my neighbors’ houses. I got cards with shepherds, Persian kings and manger scenes depicting that first Christmas in Bethlehem. How authentic were those images? That’s hard to say, but they were imprinted in my imagination nonetheless, just as they were for millions of others. Bethlehem in 2007, however, didn’t look anything like that.

It’s is a depressing place - literally walled off from greater Jerusalem where I was staying. The wall is about 20 feet high with barbed wire above that. It’s black and ominous with guard towers at regular intervals. From the bus window, I saw it snake down the valley and over the hill in the distance as we inched up toward the security checkpoint. Graffiti, including a large lion devouring a dove, were painted on the wall. The message was anything but “Peace on Earth” or “Good will to men” as we entered the “little town of Bethlehem.” Administered by the Palestinian Authority, Israelis are not welcome there. Tourists are allowed only if guided by Palestinians, which we were. Our bus driver and our guide were Palestinian Christians - a dwindling minority in Bethlehem after comprising the majority for centuries. That’s because the Palestinian Authority is made up of radical Muslims intolerant of other religions. Christians are ruthlessly harassed and are moving away in great numbers. If present trends continue, there won’t be any more Christians in Bethlehem before long.

Inside Bethlehem were overflowing dumpsters and graffiti on the ground-level walls of nearly every building down the main road through town. Men - young, old and middle-aged - loitered on street corners and stairs and smoked. Nearly every one had a cigarette going. Aside from cab drivers and waiters at the restaurants where we ate, I saw no one working, though there was obviously plenty to do just cleaning up trash. There were posters of the late scumbag terrorist Yassir Arafat and, here and there, posters of Hamas terrorists holding AK-47s. The approach to “Shepherd’s Cave” where the carols proclaim that “shepherds watched their flocks by night,” was lined with barbed wire. The bathrooms had no water and the cave entrance, which had been a natural limestone formation, was bricked up with bars on windows. The site of the manger is now inside the Church of the Nativity, which was occupied by Palestinian Muslim terrorists for over a month in 2002. They urinated on the floor, set an adjacent Franciscan study afire, and a statue of Mary was hit by a bullet. Israeli security forces had come to arrest them, so they holed up in the Church of the Nativity and effectively held the holy Christian shrine hostage. The terrorists threatened to blow up the church, which is the oldest in Christendom, unless the Israelis withdrew. The siege broke when Israelis did withdraw and terrorists melted back into Bethlehem’s population.

No. Today’s Bethlehem bears little resemblance to the Christmas cards. Thinking about this for the past few months as Christmas approaches for the the 2007th time, I’m realizing that the Israel Jesus was born into was full of conflict too. Romans occupied it and the Jewish king Herod, who the Romans allowed to stay in power, was no prize. Was he as bad as Arafat? A case could be made. He ordered the slaughter of every male infant in Bethlehem after hearing that a king had been born there. Hamas? Yeah, they’re terrorist scumbags too. They’re rocketing Israel every day from the Gaza strip. When I was there, Hamas and Fatah (considered the “good” Palestinian terrorists by President Bush) were killing each other. During Christ’s time, Jews were chafing under Roman rule. Some kissed up to the Romans while others conducted hit-and-run attacks against them. Romans practiced pagan rituals which were insulting to pious Jews. There was religious and political violence aplenty. John the Baptist was later beheaded by Herod’s son and his cousin, Jesus, was crucified by the Romans after being set up by some Jewish religious leaders.

Though it doesn’t resemble the Christmas cards, the Israel Jesus was born into 2007 years ago wasn’t too awfully different from the country I visited. Political and religious conflict - which were often the same thing, then and now - were either playing out in violence or brewing under the surface waiting to erupt again. Shortly after Jesus Christ’s time, there was a large-scale Jewish revolt. Romans slaughtered a million Jews, destroyed their temple, and scattered the rest in the Great Diaspora. Two thousand years later Israel exists again, but for how long?

One in five people on earth believe the most important lifetime in history began in Bethlehem and ended eight miles away in Jerusalem - so important that we measure time according to what happened before it and what happened after it. Though many try to obsure this by calling our time the “Common Era,” we know that it’s 2007 AD - Anno Domini - the “Year of Our Lord.”

Strange Bedfellows

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” is a generally unsavory principle I use as a history teacher to explain why our country has associated with scumbags at various times. Practical politics dictate that it’s sometimes necessary to do business with a person, a group, or a country with whom we would never associate otherwise. When at war with Hitler’s Germany, for example, we sent military aid to Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union - a country which had murdered more people than the Nazis. We helped Saddam Hussein when he was at war with Iran and we helped the “Mujahideen” who were allied with Osama Bin Laden’s cause when they were at war with the Soviet Union in 1980s Afghanistan. My students grasp the realpolitik behind those unfortunate alliances as a “lesser of two evils” thing. Once our common enemies were vanquished, alliances ended.

Lately, I’ve been using the principle to shed light on the unlikely alliance between the Western political left and Islamofascism. Who could have predicted that leftists, whose most cherished causes include women’s rights, homosexual rights, abortion and pacifism, would be apologists for Islamofascists who are against them all? There’s only one explanation: they both hate Western Civilization and the United States as its epitome. They have a common enemy and it’s us. Islamofascists call us “The Great Satan” and the left calls us “The Evil White Patriarchy.” Islamofascists see us, correctly, as the biggest obstacle to achieving their goals of converting everyone in the world to Islam, restoring the Caliphate, and the universal application of Islamic law - Sharia. Leftists see us, also correctly, as the biggest obstacle to achieving their goals of one-world-government socialism with taxpayer-funded healthcare including abortions, homosexual marriage, and state-mandated multiculturalism.

For example, the liberal ladies on “The View” declined to criticize Sudan for arresting British school teacher Gillian Gibbons whose class named a teddy bear “Muhammad,” even when she was about to get forty lashes and Muslim mobs were literally calling for her head. Co-host Sherri Shepherd said, “. . . you would think that with her being in Sudan, she would know the rules and customs . . .” whereupon Whoopi Goldberg responded, “ . . . you’d think if you were going overseas [you’d be] learning the customs and knowing what is cool and what isn’t cool . . . It’s just one of the reasons we’re called the ugly Americans.” The National Organization for Women declined comment entirely.

Leftists who dominate our universities act as apologists for bizarre Islamofascist practices like female genital mutilation. Referring to a debate at the American Anthropological Society’s Annual Meeting, a New York Times article asks: “Are critics of this practice, who call it female genital mutilation, justified in trying to outlaw it, or are they guilty of ignorance and cultural imperialism?” Hey, maybe it’s okay to snip off a girl’s clitoris, right? What do you think Whoopi? Sherri? Barbara? Let’s hear your views. I’d even listen to Rosie O’Donnell on this one.

How about 200 lashes for the victim of a gang rape in Saudi Arabia? You read that right - the victim. She was raped 14 times by seven men, but she was guilty of getting into a car with a man who was not her relative. Can’t have that.

How about Muslim “honor killings”? In certain Muslim communities, a young woman may be killed by her brothers or her father if she “dishonors” her family by having sex with someone not her husband, even if she’s raped - even if the rapist is one of her brothers. I’m not making this up. This would be an “honor killing” and it’s practiced not only in Muslim countries, but in expatriate Muslim communities in Europe and the United States as well. Occasionally, feminist groups have condemned the practice, but when scholars are invited to college campuses to discuss it, they’re shouted down and accused of “hate speech.” Often discussion of such horrible Islamofascist practices (be warned: this link is disturbing) is banned altogether at our universities because talking about them may be offensive to Muslims. Women’s Studies Departments virtually ignore them.

Then there’s the execution of homosexuals. Records are scant, but some claim reports of 200 to 4000 killed in Iran since the Ayatollahs took over, which could be why Ahmadinejad claimed there were none in his country when he spoke at Columbia recently. Why don't homosexual activists and other leftists protest? Heck, Columbia University won't let our military on campus because of “Don’t Ask - Don’t Tell” but they invite a leader of a country that kills them? Doesn’t make sense unless you apply “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” principle. Both hate America, therefore they’re on the same side.

The only other explanation is that the American and European left is too cowardly to criticize Islamofascists because, unlike Americans, they don’t tolerate criticism. They kill you. It's okay to throw the Eucharist on the floor at St. Patrick's Cathedral, but stay away from mosques. Boy Scouts don’t want homosexual leaders in their tents on camping trips? Go after them. Leave Islamofascists alone.

Students Discover Ahmadinejad

When they were done with their world map tests, I told them, they could use their laptops to go online and answer the question I had written on the board: “What does Mahmoud Ahmadinejad believe about the Twelfth Imam?” I told them Ahmadinejad was the President of Iran, and they had learned about where Iran and many other countries were for the test. It was Friday and I knew Ahmadinejad was coming to New York City over the weekend and that his name and face would be all over the news. “Use a search engine and those names for key words in your searches,” I instructed.

Ahmadinejad believes the Twelfth Imam, or the “Mahdi,” is a nine-year-old boy who has been living in an Iranian well for thirteen hundred years, kept alive by Allah. The Iranian president believes that if he can create enough chaos on earth, the Mahdi will emerge from the well and preside over the earth during a thousand-year period of justice and peace.

“Wow,” said a boy as he was reading his screen. “This guy says the Holocaust never happened. Is he crazy?” I looked around the room. Some students were finishing up their tests and others were intently reading from their screens. One girl had her hand up. When I walked to her desk she was pointing to the word “Mahdi” on her screen. “Is that the Twelfth Imam?” she asked.

“That’s him,” I said. “Read on.”

“I don’t have my computer with me,” said a boy as he brought his test up. “It lost its charge.”

I printed a two-year-old article from the London Daily Telegraph with the story of Ahmadinejad’s devotion to the Twelfth Imam. “All the information is in the article coming out of the printer now,” I told him. “Read it.”

“He wants to go to Ground Zero,” said another boy reading from his computer screen. “But the NYPD doesn’t want to protect him because they think he’s a terrorist.”

The following Monday, we were correcting the map tests in class. I had the television on as classes were changing and while I was taking attendance. All day long, the cable news shows were broadcasting heated debates between pundits over whether Columbia University should have invited Ahmadinejad to speak there. I’d let it run a minute or two, then shut off the TV and tell them: “President Ahmadinejad says the Holocaust never happened and that he is going to ‘wipe Israel off the map.’ Against international law, he’s trying to build nuclear weapons with which to do so, but he tells the world he’s only trying to make peaceful nuclear power plants. Nobody believes him. He trains and sends money to ‘Hizbollah’ - the Shiite terrorist group in Lebanon responsible for killing hundreds of US Marines two decades ago and which regularly shoots rockets into northern Israel. Ahmadinejad trains other Shiite terrorists to sneak into Iraq with weapons and explosive devices to kill American soldiers fighting there. Other than that, he’s a nice guy.”

As the last period of the day was beginning, Columbia University President Lee Bollinger was making a live speech to an auditorium full of students. President Ahmadinejad was seated on the stage listening and waiting his turn. I told students in that group that we would watch the speeches and correct tests the next day instead. Some were disappointed. Others watched and listened to the speeches intently. Bollinger excoriated Ahmadinejad for all the things I had been telling students at the beginning of each class earlier that day. It was a blistering speech.

When Ahmadinejad came to the podium, he invoked God and the Twelfth Imam: “Oh God, hasten the arrival of Imam al-Mahdi and grant him good health and victory and make us his followers and those who attest to his right fullness.” Then he responded to Bollinger’s verbal attack essentially by saying it was impolite to invite someone and then say nasty things about him before he speaks. Then Ahmadinejad went on at length about studying science and searching for truth.

“He’s talking in circles,” said a boy.

“He’s not making much sense,” said a girl. Class ended while Ahmadinejad was still speaking. Several students were shaking their heads as they walked past the TV. I watched and listened to the rest of the speech as busses were being called.

Losing the Propaganda War III

Two previous columns in this series described Islamic propaganda in American public schools – middle schools, high schools and colleges – and some of the textbooks that are used, as related by Richard Thompson, president and general counsel for the Thomas More Law Center. This column looks at Thompson’s remarks on what he details as a double standard.

“Well, what you have here is a double standard, I think, where there is one standard for Christians and Jews and people of other faiths where you cannot promote religion in any fashion; and there seems to be a second standard for Muslims, who are allowed to get away with promoting their religion and their religious observances in the public schools, whether it be a university or a secondary school.

“And a part of this that concerns me is the overall agenda that a lot of these Islamic political action committees have: and that is, although they do not want to assimilate in America, they don’t want to be Americans – they want to maintain their Islamic culture – they are willing to use American politics, the Constitution and American law to seek accommodation and continue to force the majority to accept the religious propositions of the minority.

“You may have heard this quote from Omar Ahmad, who is the head of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). Back in 1998, he said: ‘Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran should be the highest authority in America and Islam the only accepted religion on earth.’ This is an organization that promotes itself as a Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). Its representatives have been used on a lot of mainstream media to talk about the Islamic affairs and what’s happening in our culture. They’re not there to be equal to us. They’re there to be dominant, and if you look at what history does – what history instructs us – is that when they do become dominant, that they then persecute every other religion.”

“You may have heard that they were planning to put foot baths at the University of Michigan, Dearborn campus,” Thompson continued. “When that became public, we [started] obtaining the facts to find out how those foot baths are going to be funded, and there is a good possibility that we may bring a lawsuit against the University of Michigan for utilizing, again, public taxpayer money for a specific religious purpose.

I asked if the university had any plans to put in holy water fonts alongside the foot baths. “Well, baptism fonts…I mean you can go on and on and on, but if the law in fact says that publicly-funded universities and schools cannot promote a particular religion, then that should apply to everybody.”

“It would seem pretty simple on its face,” I said. “But apparently it isn’t.”

“Well first of all, we’re dealing with universities and you probably know that the Saudi Arabian government or princes from Saudi Arabia are giving out a lot of money to these universities developing these Middle Eastern departments which then, you know, spout out their propaganda.

Some colleges and universities remove American flags because they may be “offensive” to foreign students. The College of William and Mary removed a cross from its chapel because it made students from other religious traditions “unwelcome.” Meanwhile, the Muslim Students’ Association (MSA) is pushing for “accommodations” for Muslims attending American schools both public and private. According to a July USA Today article: “At least 17 universities have foot baths built or under construction, including Boston University, George Washington University and Temple University, and at least nine universities have prayer rooms for ‘Muslim students only,’ including Stanford, Emory and the University of Virginia, according to the MSA's website. The association did not return calls seeking comment.”

Most of the September terrorists were Saudis, but an increasing number of terrorists planning and carrying out attacks in Western countries are home-grown. They get radicalized in mosques and madrassas in Europe, Canada and the United States. “Back in 2000,” said Thompson, “a sheik by the name of [Muhammad Isham] Kabbani said there were about 3000 mosques in the United States and 80% of the mosques are controlled by extremists. . . . [and] a great percentage of those mosques are being funded by Saudi Arabia.”

Should we be concerned? If only 10% were controlled by extremists, we should be concerned, very concerned. Two years ago, then-Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney suggested that we should be monitoring what is said in extremist mosques in the United States, even if it means wiretapping them. His suggestion was condemned by CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper in a Washington Post article: “It's irresponsible for the top elected official in any state to suggest blanket wiretapping of houses of worship.”

CAIR has since been named as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in a Texas case where a CAIR affiliate, the “Holy Land Foundation,” is accused of funding the Radical Muslim terrorist group Hamas. Meanwhile, Romney has become a leading candidate for the Republican nomination for president of the United States.

American schools and other institutions are bending policies to accommodate Muslims while they purge accommodations associated with other religions. About this, Attorney Thompson said: “What is concerning me is that, in one of the states, it was ruled that a person could swear on the Koran rather than the Bible and make an affirmation. And then, I understand this congressman – the first congressman who is Muslim, swore on the Koran, right? Well, it’s interesting to note that the Koran itself approves of lying.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah. There’s a word called “kitman” or “taqiyya” which means lying or deception. And it has been ruled by their theologians that it is appropriate for them to lie if it is in the interest of achieving an objective for Islam. That’s in their own, in the Koran.

“Unbelievable.”

“So, they’re taking an oath on a book that approves lying.”

The idea of “taqqiya” is indeed quite different from our own “Thou Shalt Not Lie”; and it is equally different from the attribution to George Washington, father of this country, “I cannot tell a lie; I chopped down the cherry tree.” So for those of us who are not in familiar territory when it comes to denial, deceit and dissimulation, we are at a distinct disadvantage in this propaganda war.

But just as others use our laws to harm us, we can use our laws to protect ourselves. Attorney Richard Thompson said: “We are a public interest law firm and I would hope – hopefully in your article someplace you will mention that we’re willing to look at cases and file lawsuits.”

If you see or hear anything suspicious where you live, contact Richard Thompson at Thomas More Law Center.

Losing the Propaganda War II

Islamist propaganda has a foothold in American schools at all levels. I didn’t realize how pervasive it was until I interviewed Richard Thompson, president and general counsel of the Thomas More Law Center. Last week’s column described inroads into middle schools in California and New York City (The NYC school principal has since resigned under pressure after distributing “Intifada in NYC” T-shirts). This week, I report Thompson’s comments about textbook publishers and universities.

When I asked how parents might monitor who teaches what in our schools, he said, “Well, right now there are several web sites out there [for information], but on a personal level, they have to look at the textbooks their children are bringing home. What do they say about Islam? About Christianity? . . . For instance, a textbook published by Houghton Mifflin, a reputable publisher, was talking about how tolerant Muslims were of women. If anything, they’re probably the most intolerant when it comes to women. And, in another place, they talk about how tolerant Muslims were toward Jews and Christians.”

I told him about my visit to the Holy Land last May where our Palestinian Christian tour guides told us how Palestinian Christians had been the majority in Bethlehem and in Nazareth for centuries, but that’s reversed in just the past few years. Palestinian Christians are persecuted by Palestinian Muslims and moving away from their ancestral homelands. Similar things are happening in several other Middle East venues as Radical Islam gains strength.

“It reveals what the long-range plans are,” Thompson said, “and although they may put a friendly face right now to their activities, their ultimate aim is to become dominant, and once they become dominant, they are going to persecute every other religion.”

As for how parents could monitor things, Thompson continued: “They have to write the school and say, ‘I think this book is inaccurate’ and show where. You can also put pressure on the publishers themselves. Teachers should do that too. Publishers will react. You can do is find out where teachers are getting their instruction. Check out training seminars for subjects such as Islamic History. Are these seminars being put on by organizations funded by some Saudi Arabian prince?”

That brought us to what is going on in American universities. “There was a study done,” said Thompson, “I think by someone from Fordham University - that showed how some of these Arab princes would fund public relations firms who then would get professors [to teach] seminars on . . . Islamic history. And these seminars were basically pro-Muslim and anti-Christian. So [parents can check on what qualifies a] teacher to teach Islamic history. Have they gone to any seminars? What seminar did they go to? Then they’d have to research the seminar to find out if it is funded by some Arab prince, or whether it is a legitimate seminar that is going to teach Islamic History in an objective fashion.”

“Is the US Department of Education involved in any of this?” I asked.

“That’s another ironic situation,” he said, “because the federal government developed these curriculum standards K-12 and the public school system tried to perform those standards . . . the federal government gave them money, gave them a stamp of approval, and university Middle East Study Centers would train teachers to teach Middle Eastern History. But they were, in fact, paid for by the Saudis.”

“Yikes,” I said.

“[Many] universities have compromised their objectivity because they are getting large sums of money from Saudi princes. There was an effort in Congress back in 2006 to have universities report the amount of money that they were getting from Saudi Arabia in their Title VI International Education bill - it was House bill 609 and it was sponsored, I believe, by Indiana Representative Dan Burton. It didn’t get passed and I don’t know there has been a similar bill introduced, but this would have been an easy way for Americans to [check up on universities]. I know there was one Saudi prince who donated $40 million to Harvard and Georgetown Universities - $20 million each.”

“Those are huge sums,” I said.

“Yeah. They’ve already tainted Harvard University with that money. Now Harvard goes out and taints a bunch of innocent school teachers [who are] thinking that they’re getting the best kind of information from a superior school and it’s basically promoting Saudi Arabia propaganda. A lot of universities are that way. It’s not just Harvard and Georgetown - there are lists of universities. . . . I know that there are some really good web sites out there, again, like ‘Campus Watch’ that monitor these studies.”

“Here’s the concern I have,” Thompson continued. “We have Americans fighting Islamic terrorists all across the world, yet we are inviting them into our schools and universities to taint our own students and to destroy our civilization and our culture from within.

“We’re not putting enough resources into the propaganda war,” I suggested.

“We’re winning the war on the battlefield,” said Thompson, “but we’re losing the war in Washington, DC and in the ivy halls of learning.”

Losing the Propaganda War

Imagine a public school teacher telling his/her students, “For the next few weeks, you’re all going to become Christians.” Imagine that students had to wear crosses, memorize Christian prayers and recite them, memorize Christian concepts of the Eucharist and celebrate them, fast during Lent and chant “Jesus is the Messiah!” How long would it take for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to file a lawsuit? A week? A day? A minute? As we’ve seen many times, it would be immediate and very expensive for the school district, which, when it lost, would have to pay huge legal fees to the ACLU.

In 2000, a seventh grade teacher in California’s Byron Union School District (about fifty miles east of San Francisco) forced her seventh-grade students to become Muslims for three weeks. Students wore a star and crescent, memorized Muslim prayers, verses and the five pillars of faith, fasted during lunch period as if it were Ramadan, chanted “Allah Akbar!” and played a dice game called “jihad” (defined as “struggle against oppression”). What did the ACLU have to say about this? Nothing. Not a peep. Christian parents were outraged and filed a lawsuit in federal court against the school with the assistance of the Thomas More Law Center.

I interviewed Richard Thompson, president and general counsel for the Thomas More Law Center last week. The lawsuit against Byron Union School District was one of the earliest to call attention to increasing Muslim influence in our public schools. He said, “[T]he judge dismissed the case saying, well, this was a typical educational program. The activities were not overtly religious, that would raise any ‘establishment clause’ concerns. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that dismissal in a non-published opinion.”

“Non-published?” I asked. “Is that typical?”

“No,” he said. “And this was a very neat trick that they pulled. Because it was non-published - at the time the rule was that any non-published opinion could not be used as precedent - so what they basically did was, give the Byron Union School District a pass on the fact that they were in fact involved in overtly religious education. But it would not be used as a precedent so that Christians could say, okay, well you’ve done it for the Muslims - now we’re going to be able do it for Christians. That was our first involvement in a school - a public school - overtly promoting the religious faith of Muslims.”

The case was appealed to the US Supreme Court which, last October, declined to intervene. I asked then if there were any other cases of this nature he knew of. “There are some very suspicious things going on in the city of New York,” he said, “with this new school [Khalil Gibran International Academy] - a charter school - that the city has approved. What is of concern is that it is really a cover for a madrassa, right there in Brooklyn where, under the guise of just being a charter school for Arabic-speaking students, it is really going to be cover to promote Islam, to inflame hatred towards Christians, Jews and other religions? And it’s going to be funded by the taxpayers of New York? And when you look at the people on the board of directors - you have, several of them, imams or Muslim clerics - you have a suspicion that this is going to have a religious taint to it. Now there’s nothing wrong - if you want a religious school in the United States, you can have a religious school - but you can’t pay for it with public funds and that is the constitutional issue there. . . . the New York public school system was very secretive about the programs of the school and one of the things that this parents’ group [Stop the Madrassa Coalition] is trying to find out is what are the objectives? What [will be taught in] the classes?”

The parents’ web site published a link to a Monday New York Post story which begins: “Activists with ties to the principal of the city's controversial new Arabic-themed school are hawking T- shirts that glorify Palestinian terror, The Post has learned. The inflammatory tees boldly declare ‘Intifada NYC’ - apparently a call for a Gaza-style uprising in the Big Apple. . . . [The school’s principal, Dhabah] Almontaser downplayed the significance of the T-shirts. ‘The word [intifada] basically means “shaking off.” That is the root word if you look it up in Arabic,’ she said.”

Parents are skeptical according the Post: “‘Intifada is a war. Isn't that what Arafat had?’ said Pamela Hall, a Manhattan mom opposed to the academy on the grounds that it violates separation of church and state.”

The Post article ended with: “A Department of Education spokeswoman defended Almontaser, saying her link to the T-shirt was tenuous.” Somehow I expected that.

Is this all part of a new front in Radical Islam’s propaganda war? Are we losing? Attorney Richard Thompson said: “[T]here are a lot of great questions [and] I don’t have all the answers, but we are a public interest law firm and I would hope - hopefully in your article someplace you will mention that we’re willing to look at cases and file lawsuits.”

My interview with Richard Thompson ranged further into Muslim propaganda in our secondary and post-secondary education system, public and private. More next week.

Know Your Enemy

Our Islamofascist enemies know us better than we know them. They know they’re in a long war against us, but too many Americans don’t realize we’re even at war. Not really. For many of us the two biggest theaters of the war, Afghanistan and Iraq, are little more than inconveniences - unless you have a friend or loved one there. Then you know it’s a real war. An increasing percentage of Americans just want it all to stop. Our Islamofascist enemies understand this and that’s their advantage.

What’s even worse is that our enemies know us better than we know ourselves. The “us” and the “we” I’m referring to here are people who comprise what used to be called “western civilization.” If you’re old enough to remember the courses you took way back in high school or college called “Western Civ I” and “Western Civ II” - the courses which have since been expunged at leftist campuses (which most are) - then you know I’m referring to Western Europe, the United States, Australia, Canada, etc. Islamofascists are enemies of Western Civilization. They want to take over the whole world and make it Muslim - and they’re willing to die in the process. Very few westerners understand this. It’s not a secret - they’ve declared it over and over in fatwas, in the mosques and in the madrassas - but they know westerners are so busy celebrating diversity and multiculturalism, they cannot fathom that Islamofascists seek worldwide monoculturalism.

Our enemies see us as the once-mighty coalition that won World War I, World War II and the Cold War, but has become soft, decadent, salacious, satanic and lacking will to fight. They believe they can defeat us because they believe they defeated the godless Soviet Union in Afghanistan. It took an assemblage of Radical Muslims from all over the Islamic world ten years to do it, but they did and they watched the USSR disintegrate right afterward. Critics claim Radical Islam’s victory was due to the weakened state of the Soviet Union at the time more than the strength of Radical Islam. But no matter - our enemies believe it was Allah’s will that prevailed over the godless communists because Muslims practiced jihad there, and they expect the same result in their war against the west.

They know Western Europe and the United Nations are paper tigers. After they attacked the United States on September 11th, they were surprised when we counter-attacked and took over Afghanistan in a few weeks - and did it from the other side of the world after the ten-year Soviet effort failed from right next door. The even quicker defeat of Iraq shocked them again and we had them on their heels. The Libyans started kissing up to us - the Lebanese and Egyptians too. Syria and Iran were isolated as terror-sponsoring states.

Radical Muslims stuck to their plan though, believing that Americans had no stomach for a long conflict. They expected leftist Democrats to undercut the American people’s confidence in their commander-in-chief just as they did in Vietnam. Our enemies knew they could parade the Palestinians as Muslim, poster-child victims of western “imperialism” perpetrated by Israelis and Americans that and leftist Democrats would lap it up. They knew the American left hated its military and that hatred could be exploited just at the Vietnamese communists exploited it through leftist stooges like Jane Fonda and John Kerry. Our enemies knew that if they staged a demonstration, they could count on our liberal media to be there, to film angry, Muslim, young men burning American flags, and to lead with that footage on the evening news. They believed a steady diet of this would wear down American resolve and that weariness would be expoited by leftist Democrats in biennial elections. They believe we’ll pull out of Iraq, just as we pulled out of Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia.

Are they right? It looks that way so far. Every candidate for the Democrat presidential nomination demands either an immediate pull-out or a timetable for withdrawal. So do leftist Democrats in Congress. Does this encourage our enemies? Of course. Yet every leftist candidate insists (s)he supports our troops and withdrawal isn’t defeat. It’s “redeployment” - kind of like the old Three Stooges line: “Advance to the rear!” Americans who agree expect the result will be as it was in Vietnam - that the war would just stop for Americans, that there would be peace - in the US at least, and Radical Muslims will just leave us alone too.

Leftist Democrats aren’t quite ready to cut off funding for the Iraq war as they did for the Vietnam War, but they’re getting closer. They’re licking their fingers and holding them up in the wind. The leftward wind is a wayward wind, and it’s picking up.

Another '60s Legacy

Again I assert that however baby boomers remember the sixties determines their view of the world today. If they believe changes in American life resulting from the sixties have been positive, they’re liberal. If they have a negative view, they’re conservatives.

One legacy of the early sixties - the civil rights movement for black Americans - is regarded almost universally as positive regardless of where one is on the political spectrum. Conservatives, however, don’t agree with liberals that civil rights should morph into a “constitutional right” for women to abort their babies, or into a “constitutional right” for homosexuals to sodomize each other as Supreme Court decisions since the sixties have asserted.

Having commented in two previous columns on the sixties legacy in the areas of drugs and then sex, marriage and family, I now turn to how that legacy has affected America’s view of its military. Sixties slogans such as “Make Love, Not War” or “Drop Acid, Not Bombs” or “What If They Gave A War And Nobody Came?” or the more recent derivative “War Is Not the Answer” are purported alternatives to military action. While many liberal boomers have thankfully stopped dropping acid, they still abhor the military.

Liberals have believed since the Johnson Administration that crime is caused by poverty, and if we can eliminate poverty we can eliminate crime. That Johnson’s $2 trillion “War on Poverty” was a failure and crime rates skyrocketed does not affect their belief system. They apply the same flawed rationale to war, believing firmly that our present conflict with Radical Islam results from “oppression” of poor Muslims by British and American oil companies in the Middle East. How many times have you heard someone insist that “It’s all about oil”?

Liberal boomers saw the Vietnam War as a struggle of poor peasants, championed by the communist National Liberation Front (the “Viet Cong” as our soldiers called them) against neo-colonial oppressors backed by the United States. Many like Jane Fonda openly cheered for the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese. Others like John Kerry depicted American soldiers as murderers and rapists in the tradition of Genghis Khan. I remember people insisting that oil had been discovered under the South China Sea and that’s why the United States was fighting.

Liberal boomers who comprise most of the mainstream media today believe they stopped the Vietnam War, and they’re not entirely wrong. They certainly undermined America’s confidence in its military and in itself. Many believe they can stop war forever. If only the Wall Street Warmongers would stop exploiting other countries, then poverty would be eliminated and there would be no reason to fight. Everybody would get along. Conservatives know it’s an impossible dream this side of heaven, but liberals believe it fervently.

That they sympathize with our current enemy, Radical Islam, puzzled me at first. Islamofascists stone adulterers and homosexuals to death. They degrade women. They impose sharia law - far harsher than any Republican get-tough policy ever was. They force conversions. All this is antithetical to social policies precious to liberals, so why support them? Then I realized: the ’60s mindset of today’s liberals holds that Islamofascists are victims of US imperialism. Their dogma of multiculturalism preaches that it’s heresy to criticize Radical Islam because all cultures are equal. All, that is, except for conservative American culture which is the root of all evil. Islamofascists call America the “Great Satan” and that fits the ’60s world view pretty well. Islamofascists may say they want to kill us all right now, but when they discover how nice and tolerant liberal boomers are, they’ll lighten up.

Point out that Bin Laden, Zawahiri, Atta, the eight British doctor/terrorists and many others are (were in the case of Atta) affluent Arab Muslims from privileged backgrounds and not poor or oppressed. It won’t change their minds.

Eliminate the military and you eliminate war, they think. They apply the same philosophy to guns - eliminate guns and you eliminate killing. Point out that cities with the highest murder rates are also the ones with the strictest gun control laws and it doesn’t sway their thinking, if you can call it thinking. Point out places like Maine and New Hampshire with the lowest murder rates and also the loosest gun control laws and that won’t sway them either.

Liberal boomer President Clinton “loathed” the military, remember? His supporters believed we have wars because we have a military, so he cut it back drastically. Al Qaeda blew up our embassies? Our ships? Exploded a truck bomb under the World Trade Center? Then shoot a few missiles at them but don’t send any troops. That’s what we did in Vietnam and look what happened. Good thing we pulled out of there, huh? Now we should pull out of Iraq too because “War Is Not The Answer.” Send UN Peacekeepers with blue helmets and talk about the problem. When we fight them we only create more terrorists.

That’s the mantra of the new Democrat majority in Congress and the Democrat presidential candidates for 2008. It’s also the predominant theme in Humanities departments on college campuses where ’60s liberals dominate faculties and write the multicultural history books used in our schools.

Islamofascists are aware of how America has changed since the sixties. They know we still have a powerful military, but they’re banking on our lack of will to use it. Bin Laden said as much when he declared war against us in 1996. Perhaps our enemies know us better than we know ourselves.

Constant State of War

On our second day in Israel, Palestinian terrorists rocketed an Israeli town called Sderot near the Gaza Strip less than forty miles from our hotel. Israeli planes hit Hamas locations in retaliation. We were advised to call and assure families of our safety because it was all over the news back home. I got online and read a frantic email from our daughter, Sarah, asking if we were all right. We called to reassure her that we weren’t in danger.

But were we? Israel is in a constant state of war. When my wife visited in May of 2000, she called me from Galilee. The NBC Nightly News was reporting rocket attacks into Israel from southern Lebanon and I asked her if she could hear anything. She said she could hear explosions in the distance, but she wasn’t afraid. “We’re fine,” she said. “Don’t worry.”

Returning to my classroom after the trip, a student asked me if anyone ever pointed a gun at me. “Yes,” I said, “but not in Israel. That happened in Massachusetts.” Danger is a relative thing. In any given place natives learn where to go and where to avoid, but I was in strange territory. That night, I heard what sounded like gunshots outside the hotel. Two of the guys I sat with at breakfast the next morning told me they heard it too. One suggested it might have been firecrackers. The other, a former US Marine, said emphatically that it wasn’t fireworks.

I felt safe in Jewish areas but anxious in Palestinian sections. Traveling around the country by bus, I looked out the window constantly because I didn’t want to miss anything. The contrast between Jewish areas and Palestinian areas was stark. In the Oslo Accords in 1993, Israel agreed to turn over most of the West Bank which it took from Jordan after that country, together with Syria and Egypt, were about to invade Israel in 1967. Palestinians in turn, agreed to recognize Israel’s right to exist and stop their terrorism. Israel began turning over territory (Bethlehem, Jericho, Hebron, etc.) but Palestinian terrorism didn’t stop. It increased. So Israel began building walls around the areas already given to the Palestinian Authority.

Street scenes on the Palestinian side of any checkpoint we passed were markedly different than on the Israeli side. I saw groups of men loitering. Very few did I ever see working. Young, middle-aged and old men sat around and stared as we went by. I never saw women hanging around as the men did. Wearing head coverings, they were usually walking purposefully, in pairs or with children in hand. They had a destination and wasted no time getting there.

Passing through areas still controlled by Israel, we went through Jewish sections and Palestinian sections. I didn’t need to see minarets to realize we had passed out of the former into the latter. I’d see trash, graffiti, abandoned buildings and idle men. It didn’t take a sociologist to figure out that Israel functions well, while “Palestine” functions somewhere between feebly and not at all. We went into a lot of Palestinian areas of Jerusalem, the West Bank, as well as central and northern Israel, because that’s where most Christian shrines are, and I saw the same things. Palestinian towns like Nazareth in northern Israel seemed somewhat better, maybe because they’d been under Israeli control since 1948, whereas those in the West Bank and Jerusalem were taken in 1967.

For our last few days we stayed in an Arab-owned hotel in a Palestinian neighborhood on the Mount of Olives overlooking the Old City of Jerusalem from the east. It was a beautiful view, but we were advised to watch out for pickpockets and take cabs to the old city rather than walk the streets. Nearly every time we were getting on or off the bus we were besieged by peddlers or panhandlers. Boys pulled at the pen in my breast pocket and put an arm on my shoulder. I had to push them away with one hand while keeping my other hand on my wallet.

Fighting in the Gaza Strip had started between rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas. Both are terrorist “organizations.” In the midst of fighting each other, Hamas fired rockets into Israel. Why? For the same reason Saddam fired scuds at Tel Aviv during the Gulf War. Killing Jews is the cheapest way to score points in the eyes of other Arabs as if Jews were responsible for their miserable conditions. Hitler did the same thing. He knew it was simpler to blame Germany’s problems on Jews than look in the mirror for the real cause. It’s no coincidence that Hitler’s book, “Mein Kampf” (My Battle) does well in its Arabic translation “Jihad.” It’s banned in Germany now, but it’s a top-ten seller in the Middle East.

Israel and the United States have the same enemy: Islamofascism. The sooner we Americans realize that, the better. Reading about Islamofascist terror plots to shoot up Fort Dix and blow up JFK the past few weeks, I wondered if what I was seeing in Israel was a glimpse of our own future.

Hate Crime Absurdity

Our media is hypersensitive when it comes to reporting perceived insults to Muslim students in our schools, but downright obtuse when it comes to whatever may trouble Christian or Jewish students.

It was big news in Lewiston, Maine when a kid left a bag containing a piece of ham on a table in the lunch room where a group of Somalian immigrant students were sitting. The story made front page headlines in the Sun Journal, the city’s daily newspaper. It also ran on WMTW, the local TV station. The Boston Globe picked it up too. The April 19th Sun Journal reported:

One student has been suspended and more disciplinary action could follow a possible hate crime. Lewiston police are investigating, and the Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence is working with the school to create a response plan. . . . Placing ham where Muslim students were eating was "an awful thing" said Stephen Wessler, executive director of the Center for Prevention of Hate Violence. "It’s extraordinarily hurtful and degrading" to Muslims, whose religion prohibits them from being around ham. It’s important to respond swiftly, Wessler said.

There have been no reports I know of about how Muslims may be offended by classes teaching that homosexual behavior is normal and natural. Several public schools sponsor assemblies in which homosexual and transgender behaviors are natural too. Certainly there have been no front page headlines. Jews and Christians may be offended by such material also but our media is virtually silent about it. They must know that the Roman Catholic Church teaches that homosexuality itself is “intrinsically disordered” and homosexual behavior is sinful. Under Islam a homosexual act is punished with death by stoning. Orthodox Jews consider it an abomination. None of this comes up to leaving a bag containing a piece of ham on a table though.

Christian, Muslim and Jewish students must accept homosexuality in the schools even though it offends their religious beliefs. It’s legal in Maine and every other state since the recent Supreme Court ruling in “Lawrence vs Texas.” Muslim (and Jewish) students have to accept students in the lunch room who eat ham sandwiches even though it offends their religious beliefs because it’s legal too and always has been. The boy who left the bag with ham on the table was suspended because he was flaunting his dietary behavior around students who considered it offensive. It was “an awful thing . . . extraordinarily hurtful and degrading,” and the Sun Journal strongly suggested his suspension didn’t go far enough and more punishment was warranted because of an alleged “hate crime.”

A week after the ham incident, over five thousand public schools across the country observed a “Day of Silence” in support of homosexuality. Students at all these schools were encouraged to be silent for a day to protest purported harassment of gay and lesbian students. They were also encouraged to wear T-shirts and buttons supporting homosexuality. Events of this nature have been sponsored by public schools for more than ten years. Though no homosexuals were harassed that day, Christian students who were offended by the school’s orchestration of homosexual propaganda were. After peacefully expressing their opposition to what they consider brainwashing, dozens were suspended in several districts around California. In the Sacramento area, more than three thousand students stayed home to avoid exposure to pro-homosexual indoctrination. According to the Catholic news service lifesitenews.com:

Other students concerned about the one-sided messages determined to wear clothing and distribute literature which peacefully highlighted the dangers of homosexuality. Dozens of religious students were disciplined for expressing their viewpoints at Inderkum, Rio Linda and San Juan high schools.

Did you hear anything about this anti-Christian harassment? Probably not. The same media outlets that trumpet “hate crimes” involving their pet minorities ignore similar incidents involving groups of which they disapprove. None of this comes up to leaving a piece of ham on a table, I guess. Anything that would make a particular group feel uncomfortable is a possible “hate crime” - unless that group is Christian.

American students have been disciplined for using the word “gay” as a pejorative. Our media regularly trumpets so-called hate crimes, many of which are later discovered to have been staged. The new Democratic Congress is pushing a beefed-up “hate crimes” bill adding sexual orientation to the list of potentially aggrieved minorities. Attempted enforcement of similar laws in the UK illustrate their absurdity. An 11-year-old boy, for example, was visited in his home by two policemen for calling another boy “gay” in an email. He was using the word to mean “stupid” as many children do, but in the UK it’s a hate crime. In another case, the Daily Mail reported last October:

14-year-old Codie Scott was arrested and thrown in a police cell for almost four hours after she was accused of racism for refusing to sit next to a group of Asian pupils in her class. Teachers reported the youngster . . . after she claimed it was impossible for her to get involved in the class ‘discussion’ because only one of the Asian pupils spoke English. She had her fingerprints and DNA taken but was eventually released without charge.

Mark Steyn, in his recent book American Alone reported on a UK homosexual charging a Muslim cleric with “homophobia” for preaching against homosexuality and the Muslim countercharging the homosexual with “Islamophobia” for criticizing Islam. UK Thought Police were having a difficult time sorting it out.

I can’t help but wonder what George Orwell would say about all this.

EUnuchs

It’s sad to watch a big person tormented by a small one who knows intuitively the big guy hasn’t the will to defend himself. The little fiend pours on abuse - verbal insults that escalate into humiliating condemnations. Then he’ll throw things at the big weakling who turns away, unable to make eye contact. Then come painful punches and kicks. Onlookers feel his humiliation and plead with him to defend himself, to use his strength to dispatch his tormenter. They want to do it for him but know they cannot. Something vitally important is lacking in his big body - a pride, a belief in himself that would enable him to fight. They know only he can find it - and if he doesn’t, he won’t survive.

That’s how it feels now watching Iran torment Britain. Fifteen British sailors were seized by Iran and they’re forced to make humiliating televised “confessions.” Iran insists that Blair agree his sailors strayed into Iranian waters - even though they didn’t. Blair has asked the UN Security Council for help. That’s how we know he hasn’t got the guts to stand up to the mullahs.

The UN? Is he kidding? He thinks Iran respects the UN? The sailors were captured because they obeyed UN rules of engagement. They couldn’t shoot unless they were shot at. Ask black Christians in Darfur about UN “help.” Ask the Tutsis in Rwanda. This is the UN whose Human Rights Commission last Friday passed a resolution which “expresses deep concern at attempts to identify Islam with terrorism, violence and human rights violations.” Nobody should be hanging by the neck waiting for the UN to rescue him.

Blair is articulate. He might work something out if he weren’t dealing with a government of nut jobs who deny the Holocaust, pledge to wipe Israel off the map, and are waiting for the Twelfth Imam to come out of the Iranian well he’s been living in for thirteen hundred years. They believe that if they create chaos here in earth by making nukes and blowing up Israel with them, the imam will come out of the well and establish 1000 years of peace and justice.

I’m not making this up.

Blair thinks he can negotiate with these people? What’s happened to the Prime Minister who fought alongside the United States after September 11th? If he’d just issue an ultimatum like: “Release the hostages in 48 hours or else,” we could help. But no, he’s putting his tail between his legs and whimpering to the UN. Pathetic.

Whatever Britons there are left who haven’t succumbed to the multiculti emasculators of the European Union (EU) are pining now for the days of Margaret Thatcher - the “Iron Lady.” Thatcher would know what to do with Iran’s theocratic dictators. When Argentinean dictators took over the Falkland Islands, she dispatched a naval task force to the area. When no diplomatic progress was made as the fleet was sailing, there was little doubt what it would do upon arrival.

A generation has passed since Thatcher was in office. Today’s Britons are are so enamored with the EU, they’ve become EUnuchs who, like the UN, are worried about offending Radical Islam much less standing up to it.

For example, London's Daily Mirror reported Monday that:

Schools are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils, a Government-backed study has revealed. It found some teachers are reluctant to cover the atrocity for fear of upsetting students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial. There is also resistance to tackling the 11th century Crusades - where Christians fought Muslim armies for control of Jerusalem - because lessons often contradict what is taught in local mosques.

Iran smuggles weapons and terrorists into Iraq to kill British and American soldiers. They’ve set up a proxy army (Hezbollah) to bring down the Lebanese government and attack Israel. Now they’ve kidnapped British sailors and publicly humiliate them every day. The price of oil is going up in anticipation of Britain doing something about it. Iran has threatened to shut down the Strait of Hormuz (entrance to the Persian Gulf) if it’s attacked and the big western countries are afraid to call its bluff. So, the torment continues. For how long? Don’t hold your breath waiting for a respite.

Americans remember when Iran took 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. The United States was humiliated for a year and a half while President Carter tried to use his big smile to negotiate with the Iranian theocrats - who only released them on the day his successor, Ronald Reagan, was inaugurated. Historians say that was the beginning of our War with Radical Islam.

Something’s lacking in the big western countries like Britain and the United States who represent western civilization itself. Iran and Al Qaeda know it and their torments will only escalate. If we can’t find the will to defend ourselves, if we all become EUnuchs, we won’t survive either.

Power of History

History has power, whether it’s factual or in a distorted form. It can be a positive force or a negative one. Those who distort history seek power as shown in two recent examples: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claims the Holocaust never happened. The late Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat claimed there never was a Jewish Temple in Jerusalem built by Solomon or by Herod. Many Muslims are taught this kind of history across the Middle East and believe it. Consequently, they see Israelis as evil invaders with no right to exist. For them, such distortions justify “wiping Israel off the map” as Ahmadinejad and Arab leaders threaten. Palestinians have already done so literally - the maps used by Palestinian schoolchildren do not depict the state of Israel - only Palestine. In these two cases, rewriting history would seem preliminary to perpetrating a second Holocaust.

Israel exists today because one of the first acts of the newly-created United Nations was to recognize Israel as a country in 1948. The western world felt pity for Jews because of what Nazis did to them. An ancient people, Jews had lived in what is now Israel for more than a thousand years before being dispersed around the world in the Great Diaspora after rebelling against the Roman Empire. It was Rome that destroyed the second Temple built by King Herod. Although a small number of Jews remained in the Holy Land after the Diaspora, most endured as residents of other countries - where they suffered countless persecutions for two more millennia. Some Jews became Zionists around the beginning of the 20th century and returned to their ancestral homeland in relatively small numbers. After World War II this trickle became a flood and the new Israel became a reality.

Dore Gold was Israel’s UN Ambassador from 1997-99. In an interview about his recent book, “The Fight for Jerusalem: Radical Islam, the West, and the Future of the Holy City” he said, “I felt it was necessary to respond to the charges that Yassir Arafat made at the end of the Camp David summit in July 2000 that denied the core of our Judeo-Christian heritage. As you might remember he tried to assert that there never had been a Temple in Jerusalem. But what he essentially did was to throw a stone of historical lies into a lake and its ripples spread all over the Middle East.”

If Palestinian Arabs can be convinced that the Nation of Israel was foisted upon them out the blue by western countries acting through the United Nations, they can be convinced that their suicide-bomber sons who kill Israelis are heroes who will enjoy their virgins in Paradise. If other Arab Muslims can be convinced that their socioeconomic backwardness is a result of historical western oppression, recruitment of suicide-bombers and other terrorists to kill Jews and Americans will be much easier. That’s power gained through both selective history and distorted interpretations of history.

Soviet schoolchildren were taught that Russians invented the light bulb, the radio, the television, and many other things actually invented in the west. Soviet citizens grew up believing communism wonderful, capitalism evil, and that communism would eventually spread over the whole world. Thus they were willing to make whatever sacrifices were necessary to accomplish it. That’s power gained in the same way - distorting history.

Other people selectively interpret history to justify their inertia in the present. Some of my Irish ancestors were accustomed to blaming British oppression for whatever miserable circumstances in which they found themselves. The British certainly did oppress the Irish for centuries, but even though Britain’s domination had been over for generations, many Irish held on to it as an excuse for their largely self-induced misery.

Once I wrote a column urging Mainers to vote “No” on a referendum question that would have allowed Indians to open casinos in this state as they have in so many others. I questioned the status of Indians as citizens with different rights other Americans and whether that was justified. In that context I acknowledged that many Indian tribes suffered savage oppression at the hands of some European countries. However, I also pointed out that many Indian tribes had perpetrated similarly savage oppression against one another before the Spanish, French, English or Portuguese ever arrived in the Americas. Europeans had treated each other savagely at various times also and nobody has a monopoly on suffering. History shows us that very few escape.
Citing such politically incorrect aspects of history stirred up a hornet’s nest as Indians from around the country flooded my principal, my superintendent, my school board, and my state teacher certification office with angry letters, phone calls and emails declaring me unfit to teach. Clearly, a lot of Indians cherished their victim status even more than the Irish did, and they weren’t going to tolerate alternative viewpoints from this columnist. I even got a telephoned death threat.

History has power however it’s used, and pointing out its misuse as I did can be a very unpopular - even risky - undertaking. Still, it must be done. Now, about those "Bones of Jesus," . . .

Rape, Injustice, Anger

(Two Maine papers declined to publish this in 2005 when I submitted it - afraid of lawsuits, they said. Only one paper in New Hampshire, The Conway Daily Sun, ran it. Now that I have a blog, I've decided to put it out there again.)

A fourteen-year-old retarded girl was abducted from the Maine Mall and raped two years ago. Three Nigerian immigrants were arrested and charged with gross sexual assault. Newspaper and television coverage was widespread and, this being every parent’s nightmare, a lot of people heard about it. Very few, however, know how it finally turned out. I didn’t know myself until the girl’s mother, Laurie Stanley from Bridgton, called me. She was crying with frustration and asked me to write about it.

The Nigerians got away with it, essentially, and this fact was all but ignored by local media. Charges against Kingsley Nwaturocha were dropped. Dan Eneagu and Okey Chukwurah pled guilty to misdemeanor assault. Eneagu got a suspended sentence and two years probation. Chukwurah got a $1000 fine. That’s it. The Portland Press Herald ran a tiny news brief buried in the December 10, 2003 issue, saying: “A Nigerian man accused of raping a 14-year-old Gorham girl in Old Orchard Beach last year has pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault charges and has been released after his attorneys said the man would receive a death sentence if deported.”

The York County District Attorney’s office contacted Laurie Stanley the day before trial to tell her that Eneagu would be killed in Nigeria if he were deported. “Is that what you want?” a woman from the DA’s office asked her over the phone. “As mad as I was that they raped my daughter,” she said, “I didn’t want that. I didn’t want them to die.” I listened silently. “What would you have done?”

“If they raped my daughter,” I said, “execution would be fine with me.”

Semen found in the girl matched Eneagu’s DNA. A rape conviction would have been a slam-dunk, yet the DA’s office offered a plea bargain on the belief that the men would be deported and executed in Nigeria if convicted of felony rape. That seemed suspicious to me. Checking into it, I discovered that a rape conviction is extremely difficult under Islamic law and it would have been highly unlikely for those men charged with rape in Maine to be accountable there. I called Eneagu’s attorney, Nicholas Mahoney, several times to ask where he got his information but he didn’t return my calls.

Islamic law, or “Shari’a,” considers a woman’s testimony worth only half that of a man’s. Robert Spencer, author of “Islam Unveiled,” wrote in his article “Rape in Islam: Blaming the Victim” that four Muslim male witnesses are required for a conviction and that “without these witnesses and a confession from the accused rapist, the victim will stand condemned by her very accusation: she wasn’t raped, so she must be guilty of zina.” Zina, under Islamic Law, is sexual activity outside of marriage. In Nigeria, women found guilty of zina are sentenced to death by stoning.

York County Assistant District Attorney Jeffrey Moskowitz negotiated Eneagu’s plea bargain and I asked him if he verified the defense attorney’s execution claim. He told me he called the US Immigration and Naturalization Service, but they had no idea about it. Then, he consulted an immigration lawyer in Portland, who referred him to “a Nigerian” in Portland whose opinion was that “there was a good chance Eneagu would be killed.” When I related what I had learned about Islamic law, he said I was comparing apples to oranges because Eneagu would have been deported already convicted, and would not likely be re-tried in Nigeria. When I asked Moskowitz if he thought justice was done, he said he had no regrets about how he handled the case and would do the same thing again.

I called the immigration lawyer Moskowitz talked to, an attorney name George Hepner. He said he didn’t have an opinion about Eneagu at the time and referred Moskowitz to Najim Animashaun of South Portland. Animashaun is Muslim, a practicing attorney in Maine. He has also practiced in the UK and in Nigeria. He told me he didn’t specifically recall consulting with Moskowitz on the Eneagu case either, although he might have. He said he often discusses hypotheticals concerning certain legal cases and does remember talking to Eneagu’s attorney, Nick Mahoney. He told me it was very unlikely Eneagu would have been executed. Eneagu is not a Muslim and Islamic law is only applied to Muslims. He said though Islamic law is practiced only in some parts of Nigeria and death sentences are often made, they’re seldom carried out. When I asked why, he said Islamic officials are afraid of executing someone wrongly because they themselves would be accountable in the afterlife if they made a mistake.

Laurie Stanley called me originally, not just because the men were never convicted of rape, but also because she read another tiny news brief in the Portland Press Herald that day last September about Kingsley Nwaturocha against whom the rape charge was dropped. He was granted $95,000 because he claimed to have been beaten by corrections officers at the York County Jail while awaiting trial. “I was trying to get my daughter into a residential school to protect her because it was getting to point that I couldn’t handle her,” Stanley said. “I was afraid she might go off with someone like she did at the Maine Mall, but the school wouldn’t pay for it and the state wouldn’t either. And now he gets all that money. My daughter was raped, bitten, and burned with a cigarette. They gave her herpes. She had to be tested for AIDS. She was robbed of her innocence, and he gets $95,000!”

Stanley found an attorney willing to file suit against Nwaturocha, but he discovered that the Nigerian had gotten his payoff three months earlier and moved to Maryland. Believing the money to be gone by then and because it would be difficult to file suit in a state so far away, the attorney dropped the case. Stanley’s frustration became unbearable and she wanted the story told. After seeing how everything turned out, she wishes now the men were executed.

My inquiries into this sad case produced as many questions as answers. Why didn’t the York County DA’s office scrutinize the defense’s execution claims more closely? Why didn’t they just enforce Maine law instead of worrying about Nigerian law? Why would the local media virtually ignore the plea bargain? Were they afraid of public outrage? Was it overzealous opposition to the death penalty? Why delay reporting the $95,000 settlement for three months? Was it sympathy for immigrants? Whatever it was, two of those men are still here, free to walk among us, and they don’t have to register as sex offenders because they were never convicted of rape.

Old Enemy

A Muslim has been elected to the US House of Representatives. Should we be worried? Yes.

There would be no problem if he were a moderate Muslim. I’ve heard they’re around, but I wish they’d speak up so I can be sure. Anyway, our first Muslim congressman doesn’t seem to be one. His name is Keith Ellison, a Democrat from Minnesota. He’s is a past (I hope) member of Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam and supported by CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations), an organization with ties to Hamas, Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. They are not moderate. They are enemies of the United States. This is a problem.

That very few Americans understand it’s a problem is our biggest problem. That’s why the war isn’t going well. People don’t understand what we’re up against. For this, I blame President Bush.

Mr. President? You’re inarticulate and you know it. So hire someone who speaks well to educate America about who our enemies are. First, let’s stop calling this the War on Terror. Let’s not call it the War in Iraq or the War in Afghanistan either. Let’s call it what it is: The War Against Radical Islam. If you like acronyms, call it WARI. We can refer to the Iraq Theater or the Afghanistan Theater but keep reminding us that our enemies are global. You started off well, warning countries that they were either with us or against us, and that if they supported Islamic terrorists, they were enemies. People began to understand that we’re not fighting a country, but a fanatic, transnational movement.

You went into Afghanistan to rout the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Great. Bin Laden escaped into Pakistan and you didn’t go after him. Mistake.

You went into Iraq to rout Saddam. Great. Four American civilians were murdered, mutilated, burned, dragged, stomped on and hanged from a bridge in Fallujah by terrorists. American soldiers were ready to clean out Fallujah in response. Great. But for months you held them back. Mistake.

Moqtada Al Sadr defied you and our soldiers had him surrounded, ready to destroy his Mahdi Army. Great. But you held them back. Mistake.

Iran and Syria called your bluff, sending weapons and terrorists into Iraq to kill Americans and Iraqis. You’ve allowed it for years. Mistake.

People are losing confidence in you.

Our enemy isn’t new and Congressman Ellison’s swearing-in ceremony is instructive here. After some controversy about taking his oath of office with his hand on a Koran instead of a Bible, he sought to neutralize it by using a Koran that belonged to Thomas Jefferson. The irony is that Jefferson very likely used that Koran to study what motivated the Barbary Pirates who sold over a million white Europeans and Americans into slavery. These Muslim pirates had been raiding American and European ships, killing and enslaving men, women and children all over the Mediterranean. Women were sold as concubines while boys were castrated to serve as eunuchs in their harems. With future president John Adams, Jefferson questioned a Barbary representative in London, asking by what right they were raiding and enslaving Americans. As Jefferson later reported:

“The ambassador answered us that [their right] was founded on the Laws of the Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have answered their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every [Muslim] who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.”

Sounds familiar, no? Later, as president, Jefferson made war on the Barbary pirates. It’s likely that the same Koran Ellison used for his oath, Jefferson used it to read about the “right” of Muslims to kill, rape and enslave non-Muslims. If a Muslim should be killed in the process, he’d go straight to Paradise (to enjoy the services of 72 black-eyed virgins for eternity, as Jihadists believe today). Jefferson wouldn’t appease the pirates as European leaders and his predecessor President John Adams did. Adams paid them tribute amounting to as much as 20% of the federal budget. Jefferson knew what the Koran said and he got tough. “Millions for defense,” he declared, “but not one cent for tribute.” He sent the US Marines to Tripoli and the rest is history. “From the halls of Montezuma, to the shores of . . .” You know the words.

We face the same enemy Jefferson did, only now they have a worldwide reach and are fueled by petrodollars, giving them access to weapons of mass destruction. Iran, Syria and Pakistan house and support them but deny doing so, and although the whole world knows they’re lying, we’re reluctant to call their bluffs. President Bush started well, but buckled under intense criticism from American appeasers, European appeasers, and their media minions.

Yet he’s our commander-in-chief. He must educate Americans about the nature of our enemy and why we can’t negotiate with them - why we need to take the war to Iran and Syria rather than wait like sitting ducks while they orchestrate cross-border raids on our soldiers in Iraq. The rest of us have to buck up and prepare for the sacrifices necessary to win. That’s what you do in war. Americans - Christians, Jews, moderate Muslims and atheists - must band together and win this. There’s no other way.

Interview with Captain Charlie Benbow USMC

A few weeks ago I was contacted by a soldier working for CENTCOM in Tampa, Florida. He found my blog and asked if I’d be willing to interview a soldier with experience in the Middle East and post it. I said, “Of course,” and submitted fifteen questions. The other day, I got the answers posted below. It was my pleasure to exchange words with Marine Captain Charlie Benbow, Firepower Control Team Leader, 2nd Air / Naval Gunfire Liaison Company, II Marine Expeditionary Unit. He’s a veteran of four deployments in and around Afghanistan and Iraq. Right now, he’s stationed in Camp Lejuene, North Carolina.

Hi Captain,
As you probably know, I got your name from Spc. Chris Erickson in Tampa. I’d like to first thank you for your service to our country - which seems to be more than most, based on what Chris told me. My questions are:

What does a Firepower Control Team Leader do? Coordinate airstrikes? Artillery from ships?

Captain Benbow:
“The Air Naval Gunfire Liaison Company (ANGLICO) mission is to plan, coordinate, and conduct terminal control of fires in support of allied and coalition forces. By fires, we mean the entire spectrum of fire support, from close air support to artillery and naval gunfire. The Firepower Control Team (FCT) is where the rubber meets the road in ANGLICO. We walk the ground with those allied forces (in this case, Iraqi Army) and provide access to Coalition fire support, mostly U.S. air support and artillery, for the supported unit. I am also a qualified Joint Terminal Attack Controller, which means that I am qualified to control aircraft engaged in close air support. My primary role on the last deployment was to control aircraft in support of an Iraqi Army battalion near Habbaniyah.”

How long were your tours in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Captain Benbow:
“My first tour in Iraq lasted for six months, but only two of those were actually in Iraq. We spent a month and a half in transit to Kuwait aboard amphibious shipping, then another month in Kuwait during the buildup to the invasion, and finally another month and a half in transit back to the U.S. My tour in Afghanistan lasted for six months. My third deployment was as part of a Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), that one lasted for six months as well. I did not actually set foot in Iraq on that deployment; we trained in Kuwait, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Djibouti, but only sent a partial detachment into southeastern Iraq to work underneath a British task force. My last deployment only lasted for four and a half months, all of it spent in Al Anbar province.”

How old are you?

Captain Benbow:
“27”

Do you have a family? If so, how have they dealt with your deployments?

Captain Benbow:
“I am not married, yet. My immediate family (parents, brother, and sister) had a difficult time with the first deployment, particularly when my battalion was involved in the Battle of An Nasiriyah. The second deployment was much easier for them, as they initially had an impression that Afghanistan would be safer. Ironically I was wounded less than a month into that deployment, after coming through the invasion of Iraq without a scratch or even a close call. On the last deployment, they were a bit more anxious since I was going into the heart of Al Anbar province to work with the Iraqi Army. Also, for the first time I had a serious girlfriend. She knew early on in our relationship that I was expecting to leave for Iraq just two months after we met, but dealt with it fairly well. She had a couple of rough spots, like one night after visiting with some friends in Richmond, VA. My friend returned from Hadithah, Iraq about the same time that I got back from the MEU deployment, and when I told him that I would be working with the Iraqi Army, he cringed. Although she didn’t tell me until much later, his reaction deeply troubled Stephanie. However, she was very supportive, and my family was very supportive of her throughout.”

How long is a deployment?

Captain Benbow:
“Most of my deployments have been 6 months, but the typical rotation for a Marine unit in Iraq is 7 months. I will be returning to Iraq in the fall for the full 7 months.”

Having volunteered for four tours, you have a long view of America’s response to the terrorists who attacked us. Were you commander-in-chief, how would you handle things now?

Captain Benbow:
“Tough question, and I’m hesitant to go ‘outside of my lane,’ but here goes nothing. Iraq is obviously the center of gravity in the current War on Terrorism (on an aside, a great quote I heard from a professor from Sandhurst: 'Never declare war on an abstract noun.'), so it is where we need to focus our efforts on defeating the Islamic extremists. Al Qaeda and their associated movements apparently see Iraq as a center of gravity as well, as they have devoted extensive resources to fighting our troops there. I would direct the military to focus efforts on supporting the Iraqi Army with training and fire support. More boots on the ground is crucial, but we have reached the point where drastic increases in U.S. troop strength are nearly unsupportable. The most effective means would be continuing to increase the number of Iraqi troops and provide them with the necessary support to establish footholds in and around the major population centers. On a global level, keep the pressure on international terrorist organizations through the CIA, FBI, and other intelligence and law enforcement agencies.”

How is the morale of the Marines you serve with? Do they feel the support of their country?

Captain Benbow:
“The morale is very high, but the Marines are starting to wonder what the changes in Congress and the Secretary of Defense will mean for the war effort. Most of us feel the support of the average American, but are very skeptical of the media and the political leadership. There is almost a sense that the latter two are working against us.”

When so many say, “We oppose the war, but we support the troops,” how does that make you feel?

Captain Benbow:
“I think it’s a superficial gesture, designed to make the so-called supporter feel better about themselves. If you really support us, just let us win this damned thing. Whether you agreed with President Bush’s justifications in 2003 or not, we are committed to this war and we need to win it. Congress has passed several bills that support the troops, yet many of them are calling for withdrawal. Again, if they really supported us they would give us what we need to win the war, and accept nothing less than victory. Instead, many of them want to forsake the sacrifice of our dead comrades and withdraw without finishing what we started.”

Why did you become a marine?

Captain Benbow:
“Originally because I wanted to fly fighter jets. I changed my mind a little over halfway through college and decided that I wanted to lead Marines on the ground. I’ve stuck around because I truly enjoy being around the guys I serve with.

What do you think of the Iraq Study Group report?

Captain Benbow:
“I have not read the report yet, I have only heard discussions on TV and read more discussions in the blogosphere. However, my impression so far is that it is worthless, as they apparently discarded the advice they got from their military advisors. I do think it makes some good recommendations with respect to the military advisor teams in Iraq, but the overall strategy (majority of combat brigades out by 2008) is inherently flawed. It is not a strategy for victory, it is a strategy for capitulation and submission.”

Do your fellow soldiers discuss the report? If so, is there a consensus about it?

Captain Benbow:
“There has been some discussion at work, but most of the opinions reflect what I wrote above. Mostly, we are just watching and waiting to see what the Democratic Congress will do.”

How would you define victory in Iraq?

Captain Benbow:
“When the Iraqis have a stable, functioning government and military that can operate without a large U.S. presence to back them up. They do not currently have that.”

Is this war like any others America has waged? If so, which ones?

Captain Benbow:
“There are similarities with many of the wars in our history, but none so closely that they can be used as a model for strategy or tactics in Iraq. The parallel with Vietnam that most concerns me is the erosion of our national will to continue this war. We are continuing to validate the strategy of engaging us with protracted, low-intensity conflict.”

What do you think about talk of renewing the draft?

Captain Benbow:
“Complete and utter nonsense. Why force us to accept people who do not want to do this job? The drivel about lower economic classes being overrepresented is just that, when you take a look at actual combat forces the socioeconomic breakdown is very similar to civilian society. There are quite a few children of the middle and upper classes that join the military looking for adventure, and when they do they typically sign up for combat arms.”

What can ordinary citizens like me do to help guys like you?

Captain Benbow:
“Convince your elected representatives that you will not accept anything less than victory in Iraq, and do not allow the politicians to redefine victory into some sort of easy exit strategy. Care packages are great too, but what I really want for Christmas is for Americans to wake up and realized that we are committed to this war and can not afford to quit now.”

Clearly, we’re fortunate to have such brave, intelligent young men in our armed forces. People like Charlie Benbow give the lie to Senator Kerry’s remarks about those who don’t do well in school being “stuck in Iraq,” or Congressmen Rangel’s about poor Americans in the military because it’s their only choice. These men make me proud to be an American.

Time To Be Trampled?

They struck us September 11th because they sensed we were weak. Maybe they were right. “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse,” said their leader, “they will like the strong horse.” He wasn’t referring to the United States as the strong horse. He was referring to Radical Islamists like himself who dared attack us because we were a “paper tiger,” a country with a powerful military, but without strong enough belief in itself to sustain a fight. Maybe they were right. Perhaps they know us better than we know ourselves.

They watched as “progressives” among us rooted religion out of our culture while the rest of us stood around and allowed it. Radical Islam’s aim was to impose their religion on every person in the world or kill them. They listened as our university professors blamed the evils of the world on Western Civilization and that was one thing Radical Islamists agreed with. They watched and listened as our intellectual and media elites bewailed selected victim groups among us and they learned that if they portrayed themselves as victims, they would get sympathetic coverage in our media.

It’s enlightening to look at ourselves as our enemies see us. They’ve observed us as we blame capitalist, white-guy leaders of Western Civilization - not only for the miseries of victim groups in the US and the Third World - but also for destroying the planet itself with pollution, extinction and global warming.

As our liberal leaders in universities and the courts do all this - purge religion from the public square, lament the miseries of victim groups, and condemn the depredations of capitalist warmongers - they overlook glaring contradictions in their own rhetoric. What about the old idea that we were created by God to have dominion over the earth? No, they say. Only fundamentalist simpletons believe that. We evolved just as any other species in nature did, and we’re no more special than they are. But if it’s true that we’re just another ordinary part of nature, why do we blame ourselves for killing trees or wiping out passenger pigeons? Wouldn’t that be nature acting through us? Beavers are part of nature when they flood an area and kill off trees, right? Aren’t we being our natural selves when we cut down mahogany trees in the rain forest? If a threatened species can’t make it, shouldn’t it disappear to make way for more adaptive species? That’s what Darwin taught us, isn’t it?

The guy we nearly elected president six years ago travels our country preaching “The End Is Near” in the form of an impending global-warming catastrophe. Some of us listen and ask ourselves: Who caused the global warming that melted glaciers of the last ice age ten thousand years ago? Was it those evil cave men making their campfires too big? And what about the first three ice ages when evil white guys hadn’t evolved yet? Who caused the global warming back then?

Though 99% of all species that ever existed are now extinct, whichever ones disappear while we’re around must be our fault. If we look deeply enough, we’re sure we’ll discover that Dick Cheney and Halliburton were somehow involved but have covered it up.

It’s pretty obvious we have forgotten who we are and what we’re about. We don’t know where we came from and we don’t know where we’re going. Meanwhile millions or Radical Jihadists around the world are willing to die to kill us. They’ve declared war and attacked us in the most dramatic fashion - and we don’t seem to realize what’s going on. They gather by the thousands chanting “Death To America!” and “Death To Israel!” They’ve infiltrated Europe, Canada and the United States. They’re blowing themselves up to kill us and plotting to do it on a bigger scale with nuclear weapons.

How do we respond? Do we concentrate on defeating them and saving our civilization? No. We look in the mirror and wring our hands. “Why do they hate us?” we ask. “It must be something we’ve done!” Instead of figuring out how to defeat them, we’re worried we might discriminate against them.

They call us the Great Satan. Their goal is to convert us to Islam or kill us. Meanwhile, what’s our goal? It looks like we’re trying to figure out a way to surrender without it looking like surrender. It looks like our enemies know us well. We can’t sustain a fight. We wimped out in Iran in 1980. We pulled out of Lebanon in ’83 and Somalia in ’93. Now we’re getting ready to pull out of Iraq. The country that defeated fascism and communism in the last century hasn’t got what it takes any more.

As Martin Luther King said, “If a man has nothing he would die for, he isn’t fit to live.” Maybe it’s time to lay down and let the strong horse trample us.

Who Are Those Guys?

News that six Sunnis were doused with kerosene and burned alive sickened me before I learned from conservative bloggers that it probably didn’t happen. There’s no evidence and only one questionable source. The Associated Press stands by its story, but given what’s becoming commonplace in mainstream wire services, I would bet a week’s pay it’s false.

The AP claims its source is “Captain Jamil Hussein” of the Baghdad Police and they’ve published several stories since last April based his information alone, each an alleged incident of Shiite violence against Sunnis. Trouble is, nobody but the AP seems to know who this guy is. The Baghdad Police don’t. The US government doesn’t. The Iraqi government doesn’t. Does the Associated Press itself know? Conservative bloggers have challenged the AP to produce him, but so far nobody’s been able to actually see “Captain Jamil Hussein.” The mainstream media - big-city broadsheets, network news and big weekly newsmagazines - are ignoring the story or suggesting that it’s “agenda-driven” by the “right-wing blogosphere.” What could bloggers possibly know? They don’t attend cocktail parties with Katy or Matt so why should anyone take them seriously? CENTCOM has officially asked the AP for a retraction.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about two Lebanese ambulances allegedly rocketed by Israeli warplanes. That probably didn’t happen either. The story was initially released by the Lebanese Red Cross, then spread by the Associated Press. After more than four months, the AP still hasn’t admitted its mistake, if it was a mistake. I’m beginning to have doubts about that. I suspect the AP knows its stringers come from the other side.

Why doesn’t the AP just produce “Captain Jamil Hussein” and let him be vetted? That would clear it all up, wouldn’t it? Maybe it’s afraid of scrutiny since one of its cameramen - a man named Bilal Hussein - was arrested by the US military inside an Al Qaeda bomb factory a few months ago. Old Bilal was producing remarkable photos he couldn’t possibly get without very close access to Al Qaeda terrorists. He took close-ups of “insurgents” firing rocket-propelled grenades and mortars, presumably at American soldiers, and also took staged shots of terrorists standing over the just-executed body of kidnapped Italian hostage Salvatore Santoro. When old Bilal was finally arrested in that IED factory, he had bomb residue on his hands. The AP is indignantly trying to get him released, even using Democrat Congresswoman Louise Slaughter to carry AP water on the floor of the US House.

When I say I have my doubts that all these shoddy AP stories are mistakes, am I implying that the Associated Press intentionally publishes enemy propaganda? That would be a serious charge. Al Qaeda’s former head guy in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (he’s in Paradise with his virgins now thanks to the US Air Force), said his number-one goal was to foment civil war between Sunnis and the Shiite majority as the best way to destabilize Iraq and force Americans out. Considering we’re at war, do AP stories and photos “provide aid and comfort to the enemy”? That would be treason, wouldn’t it?

Over the weekend of November 25-27, NBC’s Matt Lauer decided to start calling the Iraq theater of our war against Islamofascism a “civil war” and cited the “six Sunnis burned alive” story as a tipping point in his decision. Soon, other media followed his lead. On Monday, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan did too. Is the “burned-alive Sunnis” story true? Very doubtful. Is it influential? Most assuredly. Is that a problem? You bet it is.

As columnist and author Michael Novak wrote in “National Review Online” two weeks ago: “Today, the purpose of war is sharply political, not military; psychological, not physical. The main purpose of war is to dominate the way the enemy imagines and thinks about the war. Warfare is not, these days, won on a grand field of battle. Nor is it won by the force that wins series after series of military victories. Nor is triumph assured by killing far higher numbers of the enemy. The physical side of warfare no longer holds precedence. The primary battlefield today lies in the minds of opposing publics.”

Our military has made mistakes. So has our Commander-in-Chief. So has every military and every commander in every war ever fought in the history of the world. The biggest problem we face is that our mainstream media, which is more powerful that it’s ever been, focuses on nothing but the mistakes as if they want us to lose. When not doing that, they’re illegally publishing classified information that hurts us and helps our enemies. Thanks to our media, America is losing on the most important front - the propaganda war. Our enemy couldn’t possible beat us on the battlefield, but they’re beating us in our own media with the willing assistance of the Associated Press, Reuters, the New York Times, NBC News, etc. If Novak is right that “The primary battlefield today lies in the minds of opposing publics,” and I believe he is, we have to ask ourselves: Is our mainstream media trying to persuade our public mind that we’re losing? I strongly suspect they are, and that’s the great tragedy.

Americans must demand the Associated Press produce “Captain Jamil Hussein” and let the vetting begin.