Right Wing Nut House

This post has been swirling around on the outskirts of my conscious mind for months. It has to do partly with the politics of the war but even more so with the strategy for fighting global jihadism. As news from Iraq and Afghanistan gets more grim by the week and it is becoming apparent that anti-western and anti-American sentiment has spawned jihadist networks far beyond anything Osama Bin Laden ever imagined for al-Qaeda, we are confronted with the uncomfortable question of whether or not our actions in the Middle East and elsewhere have exacerbated the problem of terrorism.

In short, is there anything we could have done differently that would have made the United States safer while still dealing effectively with the global threat of terrorism?

In one way, the question opens the abyss beneath our feet in that it calls into question everything we’ve been doing for the past five years to fight terrorism. But in another way, the question challenges the assumptions of those who offer much in the way of criticism but little in the way of alternatives.

In what will possibly be seen as one of the seminal documents in the history of the Global War on Terror, a recently compiled National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism lays out in stark and unbending terms, what 5 years of our efforts in the War on Terror have wrought:

The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,’’ it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe.

An opening section of the report, “Indicators of the Spread of the Global Jihadist Movement,” cites the Iraq war as a reason for the diffusion of jihad ideology.

The report “says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse,” said one American intelligence official.

More than a dozen United States government officials and outside experts were interviewed for this article, and all spoke only on condition of anonymity because they were discussing a classified intelligence document. The officials included employees of several government agencies, and both supporters and critics of the Bush administration. All of those interviewed had either seen the final version of the document or participated in the creation of earlier drafts. These officials discussed some of the document’s general conclusions but not details, which remain highly classified.

That’s the headline; Iraq War creates more terrorists and terrorism. But there’s much more to ponder, including the notion that terrorist groups today are much more diffused across the world and have little or no connection to the “original” al-Qaeda:

The estimate concludes that the radical Islamic movement has expanded from a core of Qaeda operatives and affiliated groups to include a new class of “self-generating” cells inspired by Al Qaeda’s leadership but without any direct connection to Osama bin Laden or his top lieutenants.

It also examines how the Internet has helped spread jihadist ideology, and how cyberspace has become a haven for terrorist operatives who no longer have geographical refuges in countries like Afghanistan.

In the end, the NIE attributes this scattering of terrorists to both our efforts in taking out the Taliban and the fact that hatred of the west has thrown up many more radicals than most of us thought possible 5 years ago.

I am not disputing the conclusions in this leaked report. I am resisting the implications that some would draw from it; that if only we had not confronted the jihadists or worked to solve the root causes of terrorism, none of this would be true today.

I totally reject that notion. In fact, I believe it delusional thinking to say that we’d be any safer if we hadn’t invaded Iraq or if we had just lobbed a few cruise missiles at Osama Bin Laden following 9/11, or even if we had put enormous pressure on Israel to come to an agreement with the Palestinians. All of this ignores the one overarching truth about the nature of our enemies (and their tens of millions of supporters around the world); what they seek, we cannot give them.

Whether it’s a desire for the west to disengage from the Middle East - a region that supplies the lifeblood of our civilization - or a demand that we change our laws, our values, and our principles to accommodate them, or to simply submit to the will of Allah as they interpret it, we cannot yield. The jihadists wish us to change, to join them in living in the past where women were chattel, holy men dictated lifestyle, and the Muslim Caliphate was the glory of the known world.

The “root causes” crowd is fond of pointing out what they believe the reasons that terrorism is practiced on the west. They rightly repeat ad nauseum that terrorism is a tactic not an ideology and that given the huge disparity in military might between the west and the jihadists, employing the tactics of terrorism makes a good deal of sense. They also point to the extreme poverty of Muslim countries and that in many ways, Muslims are a “people out of time,” a direct result of a post-colonial residual feeling of inferiority and resentment. Terrorism gives the poor jihadis a means to strike back against their former oppressors (or current ones if you believe some of the more radical western leftists).

First of all, identifying “root causes” is all well and good. But short of massive transfers of wealth, overthrowing the despots who are sitting on top of all that oil, and allowing the State of Israel to be destroyed, just what the devil are we supposed to do to assuage this massive rage against us? That’s why this kind of psychobabble applied to people who desire to murder us all is disturbing to those of us whose thinking isn’t muddled by guilt ridden dreams of western imperialism or a belief that if only we could all sit down and exchange views, the jihadis hearts would soften and the problem would disappear.

An unfair exaggeration of the “root causes” crowd’s positions? Perhaps a little. But “solving” the problem of poverty anywhere is a chimera under any circumstances. And given the obvious tension between addressing the concerns of people being oppressed by despots and those same despots holding life in the balance for the western world with their hands clasped around an oil spigot, one can immediately see where the real world so rudely intrudes on the fantasies of the “root causes” crowd. And this goes to another favorite “root cause” of terrorism; our overall foreign policy and the fact that we are, for better or for worse, the only superpower around.

We are a nation of nearly 300 million people with an economy 3 times the size of the next largest producer. The world may hate our support for Israel but they can’t resist McDonalds. They may despise our support for despots around the world but they line up in droves to see Hollywood movies. They may riot over cartoons of the prophet, but they will work for years in order to save up enough to come to the United States for the opportunity to have a better life for themselves and their children.

Our superpower status is the result of the fact that the United States of America exists. Destroy the large corporations, contract the economy, bring every soldier home, dismantle our armed forces, makes ourselves a vassal of the United Nations and America would still be a superpower, still annoying most of the rest of the world. Of course, if we did all of that there wouldn’t be much left of the rest of the world. The world needs America pretty much the way we are now, despite the fact that it suits the nations to pretend this is not so for their own domestic reasons.

But what about radically altering our foreign policy and abjure our own concerns in the interest of world comity? This is an interesting criticism because it presupposes that we elect Presidents not to formulate policies to protect American interests but rather to bow to the interests of other countries. In effect, this critique posits the notion that we would be better off if we forgot about our own vital interests and used our power to injure ourselves, to shoot ourselves in the foot so to speak.

Again, is this an exaggeration of the “root causes” position? Not if you listen to some of its more articulate advocates like Noam Chomsky. The belief, for instance, that solving the Israeli-Palestinian problem can be approached by the United States reversing 60 years of support for the Jewish state by taking the side of the Palestinians in the dispute. Nothing less will satisfy the Palestinians and most of the Arab world so why pretend otherwise? The only “honest broker” desired by the Arabs is an auctioneer who will take bids on the pieces that remain of Israel once their enemies are through with them.

This doesn’t deal directly with the question of whether or not our tactics and strategy that we’ve employed in the War on Terror so far have made the problem worse than if we had gone a different route. But it does highlight the paucity of options between outright confrontation of the terrorists and a kind of middling, muddled, pre-9/11 approach to terrorism that saw us clearly on the defensive and faced with the prospect of future attacks that would use weapons of mass destruction.

Opinions on alternative paths we could have taken after 9/11 are as many as there are Democratic candidates for President. But one thing they will all agree on is that we never should have invaded Iraq. Indeed, the NIE outlined above would seem to indicate that the war was a blunder in that it has created more terrorists, radicalized young Muslims, and generated hate and revulsion against America throughout the Islamic world.

The counterfactual argument is tempting in this regard. No invasion of Iraq would mean fewer terrorists, less hate of America in the Islamic world, and generally speaking, a quieter world.

Even with Saddam? Some think so. In September of 2001, the world was more than ready to lift sanctions against Iraq and welcome Saddam back into the fold. How that would have played out over the next 5 years I leave to imaginations better suited for nightmares than mine but I think it safe to say that a re-invigorated Iraq would have been unpredictable and, given Saddam’s history, extremely dangerous to the neighborhood.

This is no secret which is why the United States Congress was calling for regime change in Iraq as early as 1998. But it important to point out that there would be no box for Saddam if the sanctions were lifted. And when even the Pope was calling for an end to them, as John Paull II did in 2000, you know that eventually the French and Russians, eager to bring their clandestine dealings with Saddam into the open, would have successfully agitated to have to sanctions lifted.

This is old ground, well travelled here and elsewhere. But given the alternatives between confronting Saddam and, despite the myopic and ass covering reports from Congress and our intelligence agencies, his clear support for terrorists (can critics guarantee that Saddam never would have established operational ties with al-Qaeda?), the range of options regarding Iraq narrows considerably. One can argue that the timing was wrong in confronting Iraq. But as something we eventually would have been forced into doing as a result of a general conflict with terror and terror states, it is very difficult to see how we could have avoided it.

Despite the NIE’s conclusions, it should be noted that it is not saying specifically that we should not have invaded Iraq. What it is saying should make us think long and hard about the disadvantages of confronting the terrorism beast without preparing for the fallout. I think even if we had been able to look into the future 3 years ago and have seen this report, the stark choices facing the Administration would have been exactly the same. It may be triumphalism for some to be able to point to the NIE as proof that things would have been different if we had not invaded Iraq. But that doesn’t change what conditions were like in 2003 and what was on the horizon if we did nothing.

I haven’t read a dead tree edition of Time Magazine in many, many years but one of my favorite Departments used to be “Milestones” that was actually run as a separate page of the Magazine. In it, they marked the passage of famous people, reported on births, accomplishments, and sometimes unusual or interesting happenings around the world.

But when I read this lone Associated Press story marking the “milestone” of war casualties equaling in number the victims of the attack on 9/11, my jaw did a little floor scraping:

Now the death toll is 9/11 times two.

U.S. military deaths from Iraq and Afghanistan now surpass those of the most devastating terrorist attack in America’s history, the trigger for what came next.

The latest milestone for a country at war came Friday without commemoration. It came without the precision of knowing who was the 2,974th to die in conflict. The terrorist attacks killed 2,973 victims in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

An Associated Press count of the U.S. death toll in Iraq rose to 2,696. Combined with 278 U.S. deaths in and around Afghanistan, the 9/11 toll was reached, then topped, the same day. The Pentagon reported Friday the latest death from Iraq, an as-yet unidentified soldier killed a day earlier after his vehicle was hit by a roadside bombing in eastern Baghdad.

Not for the first time, war that was started to answer death has resulted in at least as much death for the country that was first attacked, quite apart from the higher numbers of enemy and civilians killed, too.

What makes this piece so unbelievably disingenuous is that the reporter then takes the next 500 words to tell us why this “milestone” doesn’t matter:

Historians note that this grim accounting is not how the success or failure of warfare is measured, and that the reasons for conflict are broader than what served as the spark.

The body count from World War II was far higher for Allied troops than for the crushed Axis. Americans lost more men in each of a succession of Pacific battles than the 2,390 people who died at Pearl Harbor in the attack that made the U.S. declare war on Japan. The U.S. lost 405,399 in the theaters of World War II.

“There’s never a good war but if the war’s going well and the overall mission remains powerful, these numbers are not what people are focusing on,” said Julian Zelizer, a political historian at Boston University. “If this becomes the subject, then something’s gone wrong.”

Beyond the tribulations of the moment and the now-rampant doubts about the justification and course of the Iraq war, Zelizer said Americans have lost firsthand knowledge of the costs of war that existed keenly up to the 1960s, when people remembered two world wars and Korea, and faced Vietnam.

“A kind of numbness comes from that,” he said. “We’re not that country anymore — more bothered, more nervous. This isn’t a country that’s used to ground wars anymore.”

In fact, the milestone itself was not really the reason for highlighting our war dead. It was to point to the fallacious notion that the war is part of the class struggle:

A new study on the war dead and where they come from suggests that the notion of “rich man’s war, poor man’s fight” has become a little truer over time.

Among the Americans killed in the Iraq war, 34 percent have come from communities reporting the lowest levels of family income. Half have come from middle income communities and only 17 percent from the highest income level.

Even if true, what in God’s name does the economic background of our casualties have to do with anything? Does the reporter truly believe that this is a “Rich Man’s War?”

In order to prove that assumption, one must delve into the conspiracy theories involving Haliburton and the oil companies. Because while you could almost certainly prove that there have been increased profits for large corporations doing business with the government as a result of the war, there is not one scintilla of evidence proving that the reason George Bush went to war in the first place was to personally enrich himself or his Evil Corporate Friends. It is a fantasy that has been pushed by the left for nearly 5 years. The theory makes a titanic mistake in logic and reason by positing the notion that there is no other possible explanation for increased profits for Haliburton except the reason that Bush and Cheney wanted to do themselves and their friends a favor.

It insults the intelligence of thinking people to make such charges - which of course lets out the left and most of the press.

The overt bias inherent in this piece is a disgrace. One can be anti-war without allowing that bias to permeate a story about our honored dead in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Associated Press should either amend the story to make it a study of the economic disparities in Iraq War dead or pull the piece entirely. The highlighting of that “milestone” was gratuitous and without precedent in the history of war reporting.

ESTIMATED CROWD OF 500,000 TURN OUT IN BOMBED OUT SOUTHERN BEIRUT FOR HIZBULLAH “VICTORY” RALLY

Sheik Hassan Nasrallah came out of hiding for the first time since the start of his unprovoked aggression against Israel on July 12 to declare victory to about 500,000 of his followers. The “Victory Rally” took place amidst the worst of Nasrallah’s handiwork; the bombed out buildings and shops in devastated southern Beirut.

The surroundings didn’t seem to dim the enthusiasm of his supporters:

Speaking to a sea of followers at a “divine victory” rally in south Beirut, Nasrallah said the Shi’ite Muslim group had emerged stronger from the conflict and also called for a new government in Lebanon.

“The resistance today, pay attention…has more than 20,000 rockets,” he told hundreds of thousands of cheering supporters in his first public appearance since the war broke out in July.

“(It) has recovered all its organizational and military capabilities…it is stronger than it was before July 12,” Nasrallah told the crowd in the Shi’ite Muslim suburbs which were heavily bombed in the 34-day war.

“There is no army in the world that can (force us) to drop our weapons from our hands, from our grip,” he declared.

That last statement would seem to indicate that neither can the government of Prime Minister Siniora. While the PM has received high marks from Lebanese citizens on his handling of reconstruction ($940 million and counting), his government has come under attack from two sides; Christian opportunist Michel Aoun and the Hizbullah/Amal bloc.

Strange bedfellows indeed, those two. Aoun heads up the Free Patriotic Movement, the largest Christian party, and has joined forces with Hizbullah in Parliament, making them the second largest bloc behind the reformist Future Movement. Aoun seeks the Presidency that will be vacated by Syrian toady Emile Lahoud next year, despite the firm opposition of many in the Future Movement who believe him to be too sectarian in his outlook. This so riled the former anti-Syrian Prime Minister and President that he signed a letter of cooperation with pro-Syrian Nasrallah last February that most observers believe meant that Nasrallah would throw his bloc of votes behind Aoun for President when the time comes.

Aoun has also been calling on Siniora to resign and for a “Government of National Unity” to be formed, savaging Siniora by blaming him for not being able to protect Lebanon from Israeli jets and accusing some of his ministers of corruption.

Haaretz is reporting that al-Manar, the Hizbullah TV station is saying that many Christians joined Nasrallah at the rally today:

Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television said thousands of buses, minivans and cars were streaming toward Beirut from the south and the eastern Bekaa Valley. Members of Christian parties and pro-Syrian groups in northern Lebanon were also traveling to the capital to participate in the rally, the broadcast said.

Al-Manar said late Thursday that Friday’s rally would be “the biggest referendum on the resistance choice.” It said “waves of humans” would pour into the bombed-out southern suburbs of Beirut to support the guerrillas.

Meanwhile, the Israelis point out the obvious:

Israeli Foreign Ministry Spokesman Mark Regev said Hezbollah is spitting in the face of the international community by refusing to disarm.

“Nasrallah is challenging not only the government of Lebanon, but the entire international community,” Regev said. “The international community can’t afford to have this Iranian-funded extremist spit in the face of the organized community of nations.”

Regev noted that according to the UN cease-fire resolution, Hezbollah “shouldn’t have any rockets.”

Nasrallah also boasted at the rally that he still had fighters in southern Lebanon despite the presence of UNIFIL and the Lebanese army. But please don’t tell Kofi Anan about either the fighters or the rockets. Such unpleasant truths would ruin his reputation as a peace maker not to mention the fact that he would actually have to direct criticism at someone besides the United States or Israel.

Ya Libnan spoke for the still majority of Lebanese who see Nasrallah as a threat:

The very same man who needed Lebanon’s government to negotiate an end to the conflict has come out of hiding to beat his chest and discredit the government. In a speech riddled with contradictions, Nasrallah made every attempt to present Lebanon’s Prime Minister and his allies in a weak light.

“The current government cannot protect, unite and reconstruct Lebanon,” Nasrallah said, adding “a strong state is built with the formation of a government of national unity.”

Ironically, it is the government who should be credited for rallying world support for Lebanon. Siniora gathered $940 million at the donors conference. Siniora offered $40,000 in support to each household impacted by the war. Hizbullah initially vowed to rebuild the destroyed areas, then ran into financial issues and had to call on its big brother Iran for financial support.

Nasrallah even admitted there is a real political crisis in Lebanon and urged all Lebanese not to transform such a problem into a sectarian crisis.

However the Hizbullah chief went on to make a comment that goes against any pretense of “national unity” by posing an open threat: “I will not tolerate any insults to my people.”

Nasrallah’s threats should be taken very seriously. Several prominent Future Movement politicians have harshly criticized Hizbullah for a wide variety of transgressions including charges that they seek to overthrow the government and that their refusal to disarm threatens the Lebanese state. The old Druze warlord Walid Jumblatt has been especially critical of both Nasrallah personally and Hizbullah in particular. One wonders if Nasrallah will make good on his threat made at the height of the war that he would “hold some accountable and forgive others,” for their criticisms.

One potential bright spot is the counter-demonstration being planned for Sunday by the Christian parties supporting the Future Movement. Lebanese Forces party headed up by the fiercely independent former Commander of the LF militia Samir Geagea hopes to outdraw Hizbullah with a massive demonstration of support for Siniora’s government. Geagea is a hero to many Lebanese for his refusal to leave solitary confinement where he spent 11 years if he would accept a deal offered by the Syrian backed government that he could be free if only he would curtail his political activity.

The question has to be is the government really in any danger of falling? The Future Movement has an absolute majority in Parliament so unless there were important defections from the coalition, Siniora would seem to be safe at the moment. However, Nasrallah controls the streets with his militia and given the political crisis in Lebanon right now, it would not take much to spark the kind of street violence that could lead to his downfall. This is Nasrallah’s ultimate domestic political weapon and he knows it. At the first sign of any wavering by important members of the March 14th coalition, he could engineer Siniora’s ouster.

For the moment, Nasrallah is basking in the adulation of his supporters. But the majority of Lebanese are still upset with he and his militia for starting the war, something they may very well prove on Sunday when they turn out in massive numbers to support the legitimate Lebanese government.

The Iraq Study Group (I wrote about them here) held a press conference yesterday during which nothing much was revealed publicly but that off the record chats with the Group’s members told the story; it is likely that when they present their recommendations to the President after the November elections, they will present him with a couple of pretty stark choices. We can make a supreme effort to internationalize that conflict while at the same time talking to Iran and Syria and getting them to halt their support of the insurgency. Or we can leave.

Eli Lake of the New York Sun:

According to participants in that meeting, the two chairmen received a blunt assessment this week of viable options for America in Iraq that boiled down to two choices.

One plan would have America begin its exit from Iraq through a phased withdrawal similar to that proposed this spring by Rep. John Murtha, a Democrat of Pennsylvania and former Marine. Another would have America make a last push to internationalize the military occupation of Iraq and open a high-level dialogue with Syria and Iran to persuade them to end their state-sanctioned policy of aiding terrorists who are sabotaging the elected government in Baghdad.

In actuality, the fix has been in from the beginning with the formation of this Group. Given its makeup, it is more than likely that the ISG was set up to provide our national leaders as well as members of both parties political cover for an Iraq exit.

This is a time honored exercise in Washington. Whenever a problem is just too sticky to be resolved in a normal political way, form a Commission and take cover behind its recommendations. The list of the use of such a device is long; social security, Medicare, base closings, the solution to racial riots (Kerner Commission) to name a few.

Will Bush acquiesce in this charade? Much could depend on the outcome of the November elections. If the Republicans hang on, Bush may thank the blue bloods for their recommendations and continue his own way. If the Democrats take control, he will probably be forced to listen closely to what these national security wise men are proposing and throw in the towel on Iraq.

Because, let’s face it. There is no way on God’s green earth that any sort of international force is going to come to the rescue of the United States in Iraq. Hell, they can’t even get 15,000 troops to sit down in the southern Lebanese desert and play cards while Israel and Hizbullah gear up for round 2 in their war for the survival of the Jewish state. And Syria and Iran are perfectly content to continue their support for the murderous insurgents and terrorists who are bleeding Iraq white. Why not? At the moment, they are winning.

Kevin Drum:

So: Bush should either plan to withdraw from Iraq or else open up talks with Syria and Iran. It’s hard to know which of those two options he’d loathe the most, and even with Baker delivering the bad news it’s hard to see Bush agreeing to either course. By the time the ISG delivers its recommendations officially, though, he might not have much of a choice.

Indeed, things are really starting to turn for the worse in Iraq even with our stepped up presence in Baghdad. In a countermove, the insurgents have attacked all over the country:

The U.N. reported that 3,009 people were killed in Iraq during August, a slight decrease from July’s toll of 3,590. The report warned that although the numbers decreased at the beginning of the month, they escalated again by month’s end, especially in Baghdad.

The current level of violence, the report said, “is challenging the very fabric of the country.”

The trend in the national figures echoed recent statements by the Baghdad morgue, whose reports on deaths in the capital have been most often cited in tracking civilian casualties from sectarian fighting and the insurgency.

These past few weeks have been even bloodier than usual in the capital, with a torrent of execution-style killings coming despite an American-led crackdown. Even as U.S. commanders have focused on Baghdad, attackers have struck in northern and western parts of the country in what appears to be a coordinated campaign.

Another 46 bodies were recovered today in the capitol. Attacks on US forces are increasing although this was to be expected given our more aggressive posture. And in perhaps the most disheartening news, Prime Minister al-Maliki may not have the political cohones to do what is necessary to fight for his government’s survival:

Four months into his tenure, Mr. Maliki has failed to take aggressive steps to end the country’s sectarian strife because they would alienate fundamentalist Shiite leaders inside his fractious government who have large followings and private armies, senior Iraqi politicians and Western officials say. He is also constrained by the need to woo militant Sunni Arabs connected to the insurgency.

Patience among Iraqis is wearing thin. Many complain that they have seen no improvement in security, the economy or basic services like electricity. Some Sunni Arab neighborhoods seem particularly deprived, fueling distrust of the Shiite-led government.

Concerns about the toughness of the new government seemed reflected in President Bush’s comments when he met Tuesday with Iraq’s president, Jalal Talabani. Mr. Bush said he wanted Iraqis to know “that the United States of America stands with them, so long as the government continues to make the tough choices necessary for peace to prevail.”

One can certainly sympathize with al-Maliki’s situation. On the one side he’s got the Mehdi militia and Badr Brigades jostling for influence and control in the streets while he tries desperately to hold his fractious government together in the face of horrific sectarian violence. If he authorizes the Americans to go full bore after Mookie al-Sadr and his militia, Baghdad becomes a war zone - Beirut of the 1970’s. But in the meantime, the radical cleric continues his efforts to undermine the government by carrying out sectarian attacks that sap the confidence of the people and kill their hope for the future.

The question of whether there is or isn’t a civil war anymore is moot. There are a variety of reasons for so many dead Iraqis and sectarian differences are only one of them. There is also targeting of government workers, Iraqis involved in reconstruction, locals cooperating with American forces, anyone who speaks out against al Qaeda, and the innocents who are simply murdered in car bombs and terrorist attacks or who get caught in the cross fire between the insurgents and the Americans.

Through all of this, al-Maliki dithers. Bush aides are angry at his seeming inability to make a decision. In reality, there are too many factions, too many voices to appease. And Maliki seems to be at a loss as to how best to proceed. His relationship with al-Sadr - who seems to be supporting him in the councils of government while undercutting his position in the streets by carrying out massacres of Sunnis - has prevented the Iraqi army from forcefully disarming the goons with the guns.

ISG Co-Chair Lee Hamilton, who also was co-chair on the 9/11 Commission has been quoted as saying that the next 3 months in Iraq will be critical. While not being specific, one gets the feeling that the ISG will give Maliki that long to prove he is up to the task of dealing with the crisis in the streets. If not, the ISG recommendations will probably reflect the reality that it is time for either a massive increase in our own forces or a humiliating withdrawal.

There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, that when asked how we were going to leave Viet Nam, President Kennedy said half in jest “As soon as we can put someone in power who will ask us to leave.” Perhaps Bush should keep that story in mind when James Baker and the ISG come calling after the election.

Is it just me or are the flights of rhetorical nonsense emanating from the Muslim world regarding the Pope’s remarks getting more surreal as we go along?

We’ve seen murder, mayhem, and arson from our peace loving Muslim brethren over the last few days, all in response to a perceived insult from someone who’s been dead for more than 700 years. Now, I agree that’s a lot of lost time to make up for but there’s got to be a limit to the rage exhibited by the adherents to the Religion of Peace. I mean, isn’t there a statute of limitations on hyper-emotional outbursts and unreasoning hatred?

Silly me.

I suppose we should all be comforted by the brilliant idea advanced by Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, a noted Muslim scholar, who has torn a page from the Abbie Hoffman School of Grievance Mongering and called for a “Day of Rage” for Muslims on Friday:

“I urge Muslims to take to the streets on the last Friday in the month of Shaban, to express their anger in a peaceful and rational manner,” Qaradawi, chairman of the International Union for Muslim Scholars (IUMS), told Al-Jazeera’s Al-Shari`ah and Life program late on Sunday, September 17.

“Muslims should be wise in their anger,” he stressed, warning against attacking churches, individuals or property

And if one wants evidence of a towering state of denial among moderate Muslims about the nature of these protests, all you have to do is read this next quote from the article linked above in Islamonline:

The prominent scholar regretted that some Christian places of worship had been attacked over the past few days.

“It is unfortunate that such a mistake was made by a man who represents one of the largest denominations in Christianity,” Qaradawi said.

“It is unfortunate as well that the pope insulted a great religion whose followers are up to one billion people.”

I may be missing something but do you see anything in what the Sheik said that indicates he regrets that “some Christian places of worship had been attacked?” I see him not knowing that the Roman Catholic Church is not “one of the largest denominations” in Christianity but the largest by far. But what you don’t see is a connection between what was written in the article and what was said by the scholar. If this is what passes for “regret” on the part of moderate Muslims, we are in deep trouble.

Mike Lee of ABC News tries to be helpful in explaining why, even if the protests on Friday turn violent, it isn’t the Muslims fault:

But why do Islamic leaders use what many Westerners regard as inflammatory language?

Because it is not inflammatory, at least not in the context of Islamic culture. “We must not try to interpret Islamic terms and cultural signals by using our Western ideas,” said Fawaz Gerges, a professor in the department of international affairs and Middle Eastern studies at Sarah Lawrence College, and an ABC News consultant. Gerges pointed out that in Islamic culture “ghadab” means anger or frustration. A day of rage does not mean a day of jihad (war), added Gerges.

Mimi Daher, a Muslim woman working in the ABC Jerusalem bureau, explained that the Grand Multi in Jerusalem reflected this cultural mindset today when he said, “Muslims have to express their anger. Was the pope expecting Muslims to clap their hands to him while hurting their faith and prophet? Of course not. We call on Muslims throughout the world to react in a disciplined manner, according to our Islamic faith.”

I believe what the Pope may have been expecting is exactly what occurred; an illustration for his thesis about reason and violence in the name of religion. The fact that this has passed completely over the heads of his intended targets shouldn’t surprise us. Nor should it surprise us that Muslims would lift whole passages out of the “aggrieved minority” PR handbook to try and elicit the Pavlovian response by western liberals to blame themselves for the violence. Eric at Classical Values:

That difference is what we in the West naively call civilization. We tend to assume that all people want to be civilized. The enemies of civilization don’t. They want to kill us. For things like looking at the wrong pictures. For quoting obscure Byzantine emperors. And what do we do?

We apologize, because among civilized people, an apology is seen as the civilized thing to do when someone is offended. The problem is, uncivilized people see apologies as weakness. No number of apologies is ever enough. Which means one is too many.

No, it is never enough. And that’s why this “Day of Rage” will not be the end to Muslims venting their “grievances” against any and all perceived slights against the Prophet or Islam. Mike Lee once again helps us understand by obscuring the larger truth:

There are at least two important reasons why Muslims react with such passion when the Prophet is called into question. First, to Muslims, Mohammed represents an absolutism. His is the absolute prophecy. To question that is to challenge the foundation of their belief system. As for Westerners making jokes about Christ, or movies that question the teachings of the church, many devout Muslims will ask, “Why don’t the Christians defend their prophet more vigorously? Just because some of you Christians don’t stick up for your Christ, don’t ridicule us for sticking up for Mohammed.”

I’ll allow my favorite Catholic, The Anchoress, to answer that:

There are important distinctions not being made here. Muhammed, for all that he is praised - for all he is “absolute” - was still a man, and Islam (as far as I can tell) does not claim him to be more than man. All of the bloodshed and anger we’ve been witnessing, for example, over the Danish cartoons, has been in vengence of perceived slights about a man who - however blessed by God - was still simply a human being.

Christ on the other hand is not a “prophet,” (although this is how the Muslims understand him), and he is not simply a man. We Christians believe and assert that He is God, identified as the second part of the Triune God (whose Trinity might be best understood as “Body, Mind and Spirit of God - Christ being the Body). He is also our Savior. And Christians DO defend Christ against the bigoted mockery and disrespect of the unbelievers in our midst…we just don’t do it by calling for their deaths, threatening them with death or running into the streets to burn things, destroy things and get folks worked up enough to kill people, and we would like it - the whole world would really, really like it - if the adherents of Islam could possibly learn to defend their prophet without feeling the need to do all of this violence and raging.

As I wrote yesterday, Muslim apologists like Juan Cole chalk the violence up to a post-colonial hangover, a gene that was surreptitiously planted in Muslims by evil westerners that turns itself on whenever Islam is insulted.

The politically incorrect explanation is cultural. We have a people “out of time” - that is, their world is not in sync with the 21st century calendar. Couple that with the inability of their institutions to make the leap across time to bring them into the modern, globalized world and what we have is a crisis in expectations.

The key, of course, is the Muslim faith itself. As Mike Lee points out, Mohammed represents absolutism. His dictates are not open for debate or discussion. In this sense, the Koran is not an interpretive text in the same way that most westerners see the Bible. And while most Muslims like most Christians honor their religious strictures in the breach, it is the values and lifestyle laid down by the Prophet that permeates life in Muslim lands.

Some more “moderate” Muslim countries like Indonesia and Malaysia seek to intermix ancient cultural traditions with Koranic law while adopting some of the material values of the west. What you get in Indonesia is a powderkeg. Bitter end Muslims are seeking to carve out a separate Muslim country to distance themselves from the disease of modernity and their tactics are remarkably similar to what their co-religionists in the Middle East use. Other nations with large Muslim minorities like the Philipines and China are witnessing similar efforts.

Perhaps it is time to ask if Islam is capable of “modernizing?” The first step would be some kind of self-examination, something The Anchoress wonders about:

But listen, the Muslims quoted above have said this “Day of Rage” is not “Jihad.” They’ve said they need the world to see that they are “aggrieved,” again. So good, say I; do it. Have your day of rage. Let the world see how very, very angry you are. But when you’re done raging on Friday and it comes to Saturday…then what? Then will you be ready to sit down and talk about your faith and your grievances, like adults? Finally? Will that be the point at which you can settle down and talk to the rest of humanity like human beings, in the same respectful tones you say you seek?

What do you think will happen after your “Day of Rage?” Do you think the world will offer you Benedict XVI, so you can slaughter him and dance in his blood? That’s not going to happen. So, you need to plan on how you’re going to deal with the world the next day. Because you can’t keep on raging. That simply won’t do. It’s getting more than a little tiresome.

Indeed, it appears that Islam does not lend itself much to the kind of introspective examination that led Martin Luther to nail his 95 theses to the door of a church. And if you asked a Muslim participating in that “Day of Rage” just what he was going to do on Saturday, we may not want to know the answer.

Should we take this sort of thing seriously? After all, Juan Cole informs us that this kind of talk is perfectly understandable:

The Vatican continues to decline to apologize, only saying that no offense was meant by the Pope’s remarks.

Some commentators have complained about Muslim sensibilities in this regard. But in my view, this sensitivity is a feature of postcolonialism. Muslims were colonized by Western powers, often for centuries, and all that period they were told that their religion was inferior and barbaric. They are independent now, though often they have gained independence only a couple of generations (less if you consider neocolonialism). As independent, they are finally liberated to protest when Westerners put them down.

There is an analogy to African-Americans, who suffered hundreds of years of slavery and then a century of Jim Crow. They are understandably sensitive about white people putting them down, and every time one uses the “n” word, you can expect a strong reaction. In the remarks the pope quoted about Muhammad, he essentially did the equivalent of using the “n” word for Muslims. It is no mystery that people are protesting.

Shooting old women in the back, burning churches, and threatening the life of the leader of a billion Catholics is an excellent demonstration of Muslim “sensibilities” I must say. Cole’s analysis is spot on. Who woulda thunk it? All the burning, and killing, and screaming, and gouging, and stabbing is the fault of the West and our mean old ancestors who told the fanatic’s ancestors that their religion was dirt. Failing that, it is the legacy of those superior airs put on by the Brits and the Frogs that is causing our Muslim brothers so much pain.

Of course, the good professor conveniently forgot to mention the most famous footstools in history - the Ottomans - and their bloody, inhuman rule over the Middle East. By the time Napoleon saw the pyramids, the Ottoman’s had made themselves at home in the region for nearly 300 years. Known as “the sick man of Europe” the Ottoman’s proved that they not only could out-atrocity the west on any given day, but also proved that they could be pretty damn good colonial oppressors themselves even when they weren’t feeling 100%.

Of course, the Ottomans didn’t worship Jesus. They didn’t recognize the Pope’s authority. They never saw the inside of a synagogue (except to set fire to one), nor did they worship, Bal, Babel, Ra, Isis, or any other regional deity. They followed the teachings of the Prophet Muhammed.

So much for the Cole theory of Post Colonial Stress Syndrome.

Then again, there’s that curious analogy al-Cole uses to instruct us stupid Americans in how it feels to have your religion called “evil and inhuman” by a long dead and rotting 15th century vassal emperor of Byzantium. It’s exactly the same thing as calling your black neighbor a ni***r.

True, you’re more than likely to get bopped in the nose for using such a racial obscenity. But I daresay you would probably get to keep your head. Nor is it likely that said justifiably outraged black man would follow you home and torch your house, kill your children, behead your wife, steal your possessions, and force your relatives to abandon the religion of their fathers and convert to Islam.

Other than those differences, Cole’s analogy rings true, doesn’t it?

Juan Cole is not an apologist for radical Islamists. He is an enabler. In that sense, he and all who try and pass off the behavior of these extremists as a reaction to anything is either childishly naive or a prevaricator of the first order. The radicals do not need an excuse to kill their enemies. They are told to do so by those who have hijacked Islam and then instruct their fanatical followers using an interpretation of the Koran so far from the true meaning of that book that they can twist and obfuscate anything the Prophet said to justify their murderous urges.

A better analogy is our own homegrown terrorists who use the bible to justify the murder of abortionists. There is nothing in any bible I’ve ever read that could ever countenance murder. Whether you believe abortionists are killing innocents or not, it should be pointed out that it ain’t your call, friends. As we should render unto Caesar, we should obey the law. The abortionists will get their just due in the hereafter. And if you believe in that, then you know they’ll pay for their crimes in ways that makes anything the Christian extremists do to them pale in comparison.

To be fair, Cole graciously tries to show the Pontiff a way out of his death sentence. All he has to do is grovel:

All he has to do is say he is sorry if it appeared he was slamming Muhammad and Islam, and that this is what the Catholic Church actually feels about the issue:

* The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men. Indeed, she proclaims, and ever must proclaim Christ, “the way the truth, and the life” (John 14, 6), in whom men may find the fullness of religious life, in whom God has reconciled all things to Himself (4).

There’s much more that Cole quotes, all of it from a 1965 Second Vatican Council pronouncement on the relation of the Catholic church to non-Catholic religions.

Yeah…that’ll do the trick. Try reason and light on people with blood on their hands and hate in their hearts. I suggest for practice, the Pontiff rehearse the speech before a brick wall. That way, he won’t be disappointed when the targets of his sweet reason react with less enthusiasm than the edifice.

Cole usually has something helpful to contribute to the debate over the meaning of Islam and its relationship with the west. I find much of his writing learned and even fascinating. But there are many times recently when he has allowed his obvious sympathies to override his judgment and even perhaps his scholarship.

For Cole, it isn’t that the crocodile will eat him last. It’s that he thinks all those forms around him in the water are nothing but logs.

Even though the Pope’s remarks about violence and Islam were buried midway into a long lecture to scientists and theologians about faith and reason, is it possible that the Vatican knew full well that his comments would draw the kind of reaction from the Muslim world that we see erupting in the streets of the Middle East and elsewhere?

I would say it is more than possible. Given the way that the Vatican vets anything the Pope says in public, it would seem likely that at some point in the review process, someone would have pointed out that connecting the words “evil and inhuman” with anything associated with Islam would cause an uproar.

Just as with any major Presidential address or a speech given by the Secretary of State here in this country, the Vatican has several different departments that review anything uttered by the Pope, especially on foreign soil. The Pope’s speeches are reviewed to make sure not only that they reflect Vatican policy but also are consistent with religious dogma. And I feel certain that anything in a Papal speech that would mention another religion would have to be okayed by both the Secretariat of State as well as the Congregation in charge of interfaith relations. Either one of those two departments would have been able to tell the Pope what he could expect from the Islamic street after using the term “evil” in relation to anything having to do with the Prophet or the Muslim religion.

In fact, the more I think about it, in order not to believe that the Pope knew his remarks would cause a firestorm, you would either have to think that the Vatican bureaucracy are a bunch of fools or that a small part of the Pope’s lecture slipped through the cracks and wasn’t vetted properly. Either scenario just isn’t very plausible.

There was some speculation in the media that the “blunder” by the Pope was due to his lack of media savvy and a doctrinaire approach to his public pronouncements. The problem with this critique is that the lecture he gave a Regensburg was not about the Catholic faith as much as it was about a fascinating dissertation on the history of reason in Western thought. In fact, there was little if anything doctrinal in what Benedict said at his old University. There was reminiscing about how his education progressed and a scholarly look at how the relationship between secular reason and divine faith have developed since the Greeks. But there were no major pronouncements about theology and certainly no opportunities to lay down the law regarding anything having to do with the Catholic faith.

As far as being “media savvy,’ the 78 year od Pontiff is stiff and uncomfortable in his public appearances although he seems to be getting better as he goes along. But the thought that the Secretariat of State would not have realized that the Pope’s words would have been taken out of context and used to incite violence strains credulity. The job of the Secretariat in vetting Papal pronouncements is to make sure that just such an eventuality is covered.

Would the Pope then deliberately roil the Muslim world and incite hatred against the Catholic church? The “apologies” issued by both the Secretariat of State and the Pope himself are careful to avoid regretting anything the Pope said and instead express regret about the reaction to the speech.

Ed Morrissey thinks that even this partial apology gives legitimacy to Muslim complaints. In an impassioned Open Letter to the Pope, Morrissey points to the expressions of regret being a sign of weakness:

When you apologize and retreat, they understand that as a triumph for their religion, a victory won with force and threats rather than through intellectual engagement. This encourages more of the same. The West had the opportunity to stand up to the same angry hordes earlier this year during the controversy over the Danish editorial cartoons that depicted Mohammed, and many of us gave into the threats and violence rather than stand up for the freedom of speech, religious practice, and editorial commentary. In both cases, Muslims ironically proved the point of the criticism leveled at them.

I have to disagree with Ed. I think there are larger forces at play here - larger even the outrageous killing of a nun in Somalia or the apparent kidnapping of a priest in Iraq. If this is indeed the first salvo fired by the Catholic church against radical Islam (which is driving the violence causing more “moderate” Muslims to respond or be marginalized), it is a possibility that this is a real effort by the Vatican to rally more moderate, thoughtful Muslims to the anti-terror banner. So far, nothing has worked in trying to engage the millions of Muslims who disagree with the jihadists. But by holding up a mirror and forcing these moderates to look their own religion in the face, perhaps the Pope believes he can start a dialogue that would help set Islam along a different path. Instead of the moderates being marginalized, such a turn of events would marginalize the extremists.

This is pure speculation, of course. But I am having a hard time believing that the Pope’s words were a “blunder” or some kind of a media faux pas by the Vatican. And if the Pope’s words were deliberately provocative, one can only conclude there was some other reason why he might have used the obscure example of a dialogue between a 15th century emperor and Islamic scholar to make a point about the differences between Muslims and Christians.

I remember several months ago reading about a bi-partisan group that had been set up to make recommendations about what the United States could be doing differently in Iraq that would improve the situation.

The Iraq Study Group appears to be a little more than that. In fact, my Washington sense tells me that the group is not set up to see how things could improve but rather what would be the least painless way to leave Iraq for US domestic and foreign policy interests.

First, there are the group’s affiliations:

The United States Institute of Peace is facilitating the group with the support of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the Center for the Study of the Presidency (CSP), and the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University.

The pedigree of each of these groups is impeccable. Largely non-partisan, their ranks of experts have filled positions in the White House of both Democratic and Republican Administrations as well as the rest of the national security establishment.

Indeed, in some ways they are the national security establishment. And a glance at their boards of directors reveals the heaviest of hitters in both government and industry. Check out the board at CSIS for a good example of what I mean.

Another tell on what the real agenda of the Iraq Study Group is can be found in their mission statement:

At the urging of Congress, the United States Institute of Peace is facilitating the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, led by co-chairs James A. Baker, III, former secretary of state and honorary chairman of the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, and Lee H. Hamilton, former congressman and director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. The Iraq Study Group will conduct a forward-looking, independent assessment of the current and prospective situation on the ground in Iraq, its impact on the surrounding region, and consequences for U.S. interests.

Was this group set up to try and forge a bi-partisan consensus on how to win the war? Here’s the Washington Post take:

The group has attracted little attention beyond foreign policy elites since its formation this year. But it is widely viewed within that small world as perhaps the last hope for a midcourse correction in a venture they generally agree has been a disaster.

The reason, by and large, is the involvement of Baker, 76, the legendary troubleshooter who remains close to the first President Bush and cordial with the second. Many policy experts think that if anyone can forge bipartisan consensus on a plan for extricating the United States from Iraq – and then successfully pitch that plan to a president who has so far seemed impervious to outside pressure — it is the man who put together the first Gulf War coalition, which evicted Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in 1991.

It’s no secret that most of the pundit elites in Washington abandoned any hope of victory in Iraq long ago. Conservative defections have included such luminaries as George Will, Bill Buckley, and Bob Novak. And if you read the Op-Ed pages of the Washington Post and New York Times religiously, you probably have noticed that a strong, bi-partisan consensus has already emerged among our foreign policy elites to exit Iraq.

Baker, of course, is the key. His job will be to sell the President on the coming draw down of American forces. What Baker thinks of his job was made clear in the WaPo article:

But in an interview in the current issue of Texas Monthly, Baker dashed the idea of “just picking up and pulling out” of Iraq. “Even though it’s something we need to find a way out of, the worst thing in the world we could do would be to pick up our marbles and go home,” he said, “because then we will trigger, without a doubt, a huge civil war. And every one of the regional actors — the Iranians and everybody else — will come in and do their thing.”

The study group appears to be struggling to find some middle ground between such a pullout and the administration’s strategy of keeping a heavy American troop presence until the Iraqi government can maintain security on its own.

In other words, no “cut and run” but rather the slow, inexorable drawdown of US forces whose exit will not so much reflect the ability of the Iraqi government to defend itself from internal enemies but rather how the pull out will be perceived by the rest of the world - including how it will play domestically.

Cut and run - even if it’s done slowly - is still cut and run.

The immorality of this strategy is shocking in its implications. The foreign policy elites have apparently decided that the war is unwinnable but that it would harm American interests if we simply up and left. Therefore, they are going to ask young American men and women to risk their lives not for victory, but…for what? To save face? To keep politicians from looking bad? To fool the American people?

In fact, any exit from Iraq that doesn’t leave a stable government capable of maintaining a modicum of peace on the streets would be seen by the entire world as a crushing defeat for the United States. How we get there by “extricating” ourselves is a fairy tale I’m dying to hear.

What the Washington Post sees as Bush stubbornness - the President is “impervious to outside pressure” - is actually the only rational policy for Iraq.

Not “staying the course.” There absolutely must be changes to our force structure including additional troops sent immediately to try and secure Baghdad. Other important alterations in strategy (not policy) would help with some of the other challenges faced by our troops. But the policy of helping the Iraqis until they are capable of defending themselves must be the correct one. Anything less and we might as well leave now. We simply cannot ask our troops - even if they are professional soldiers - and their families, to make the kinds of sacrifices they have already made for some kind of nebulous outcome in a conflict that has already cost more than 3,000 American lives and 20,000 wounded not to mention almost 50,000 Iraqi lives.

Another indication that the Iraq Study Group is not interested in even trying to redefine victory:

The administration’s more hawkish supporters, meanwhile, are nervous about Baker’s involvement, counting him as one of the “realist” foreign policy proponents they see as having allowed threats against the United States to grow in the ’80s and ’90s. Gary J. Schmitt of the American Enterprise Institute voiced concern that the Iraq group was not listening to those advocating a more muscular military strategy to defeat the insurgency.

But Schmitt added: “People can worry about what Baker is going to say, but the president has a way of doing what he is going to do. There could be a lot of wishful thinking on the part of the older Bush crowd that the son got into trouble and now he’s going to listen to Baker the strategist.”

Our foreign policy elites want to abandon Iraq without appearing to do so. They apparently won’t offer any advice via interim reports until after the November elections. When they do, I expect their recommendations won’t offer anything new as far as a strategy for winning.

For that, they should be condemned because they are unwilling to face the unpalatable alternative that would place our soldiers in harms way in order to satisfy something less than victory.

UPDATE

Evidently, Rudy Guiliani resigned from the group several months ago citing “time considerations.” You don’t think it could have anything to do with the fact that he knows the group’s recommendations will not sit well with conservative hawks? And that Rudy may need the hawks come 2008?

Just wondering…

This has been “The story that won’t die.” And indeed, the chatter in the blogosphere and on the outskirts of the mainstream media is growing.

The first I saw of it was at Jawa Report in a post that described a Pakistani journalist who interviewed al-Qaeda members in Pakistan. They told him of a plot against targets inside the United States that was ready to go and set for the month of Ramadan (beginning later this month). The plot included “nuclear materials” - probably a dirty bomb or bombs of some kind. The al-Qaedans mentioned Adnan Al-Shukri Jumaa, a man on the FBI Most Wanted list as the main plotter and they referred to the plan as an “American Hiroshima.”

My BS-O-Meter was blinking red at this point. We’ve heard almost since the day after 9/11 that al-Qaeda was going to hit us again only this time with nukes. Congressman Curt Weldon famously walked around the Capitol building in 2004 carrying a suitcase that he said was big enough to contain one of the nuclear weapons al-Qaeda had already stashed inside the United States. And every couple of weeks it seems there’s a story in Newsmax or World Net Daily about someone else predicting nuclear catastrophe for America.

But the story wouldn’t die. One of the commenters at Ace of Spades swears she saw Al-Shukri Jumaa last year when the terrorist was trying to rent a house. Now the sometimes accurate, sometimes not NE Intelligence Network has published the interview between the journalist Hamid Mir and Abu Dawood, the newly appointed commander of the al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan. In it, Dawood claims:

* Final preparations have been made for the American Hiroshima, a major attack on the U. S.

* Muslims living in the United States should leave the country without further warning.

* The attack will be commandeered by Adnan el Shukrijumah (“Jaffer Tayyer” or “Jafer the Pilot”), a naturalized American citizen, who was raised in Brooklyn and educated in southern Florida.

* The al Qaeda operatives who will launch this attack are awaiting final orders. They remain in place in cities throughout the country. Many are masquerading as Christians and have adopted Christian names.

* Al Qaeda and the Taliban will also launch a major strike (known as the “Badar offensive” against the coalition forces in Afghanistan during the holy month of Ramadan.

* The American people will be treated to a final audio message from Osama bin Laden which will be aired within the next two weeks.

The name Abu Dawood is almost certainly fictitious as it refers to a prominent historical figure who is mentioned in the Islamic Sunnah which contains stories of the Prophet’s life. And whether he is in fact the new Commander of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan is something I have been unable to verify.

The reputation of journalist Mir is more intriguing. He appears to be a first class reporter who has twice been fired for writing stories exposing scandals in Pakistan. The reputation of his current employer Geo TV is very good with Mr. Mir’s show Capitol Talk attracting big ratings as well as newsmaking politicians in Pakistan.

What then to make of his story?

Allah’s “worry meter” remains at mid-level on this story which is a sensible place for it to be. After 9/11, we can never quite go back to dismissing these kinds of stories out of hand. However, considering that Washington leaks like a sieve, one would think that any special concerns about an imminent attack that was being monitored by our intelligence agencies would have hit the papers by now.

Remember that during the summer before 9/11, CIA Chief Tenet famously said “The system is blinking red” to describe the threat level. And despite a certain level of dysfunctionality in our intelligence organizations, I can’t believe that they wouldn’t at least get a hint of the kind of massive attack described in Mir’s interview.

So, it is probably a good idea to be aware of the threat while not taking it very seriously. Then again, if we were to get another audio tape from Osama in the next couple of weeks and if the Taliban launches a massive attack in Afghanistan, it may be time to go to the mattresses by stocking up on canned goods to carry you through at least a couple of weeks - perhaps a month. And buy yourself a radio that can run on batteries ( I found after 9/11 I had no such radio or TV).

Let’s hope it’s one more al Qaeda nuke story that never pans out.

Pope Benedict tried again today to quiet the storm of controversy that erupted over his remarks about Islam and violence given during a lecture to scientists and theologians last week.

Pope Benedict XVI said Sunday that he was “deeply sorry” about the angry reaction to his recent remarks about Islam, which he said came from a text that didn’t reflect his personal opinion.

“These (words) were in fact a quotation from a Medieval text which do not in any way express my personal thought,” Benedict told pilgrims at his summer palace outside Rome.

The pope sparked the controversy when, in a speech to German university professors Tuesday, he cited the words of a Byzantine emperor who characterized some of the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, Islam’s founder, as “evil and inhuman.”

“At this time I wish also to add that I am deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address at the University of Regensburg, which were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims,” the pope said Sunday.

The remarks follow a similar statement released yesterday by the Vatican in which the Pope expressed “regret” for remarks made during the lecture and that “some passages of his speech may have sounded offensive to the sensibilities of Muslim believers.”

Note here that all the Pope did was substitute the word “sorry” for “regret.” He is still speaking of the reaction to the speech while not apologizing directly for the content. He clarified that the words which gave offense were not his own but rather the statements of a 15th century Byzantine ruler.

Will this appease the church burners and potential papal assassins who are currently being allowed to run wild in the streets of the Middle East? If their “outrage” was indeed due to the Pope’s remarks, then it should have a salutary affect on their hurt feelings.

But of course, the violence is not about “outrage” over anything. It is simple blood lust directed against people of another faith. The Imams and other religious leaders who have ratcheted up this violent response to the Pope’s words find it a most convenient device to control their flocks of ignorant, 7th century peasants while extremists with a political agenda seek to use the violence for their own nefarious purposes.

Most disturbing is that once again, so called “moderate” Muslims have jumped aboard the extremist bandwagon and piggybacked their own causes and concerns on top of the those of the mob in order to horn in on the publicity and victimhood occasioned by the Pope’s statement:

In Turkey, however, where the Pope is due to visit in November, the deputy leader of the ruling party said Benedict had “a dark mentality that comes from the darkness of the middle ages”. Salih Kapusuz added: “He is going down in history in the same category as leaders such as Hitler and Mussolini.”

Representatives of the two million Turks in Germany, where the comments were made, also expressed deep annoyance. The head of the Turkish community, Kenan Kolat, said they were “very dangerous” and liable to misunderstanding.

The next step is for these “moderate” Muslims to solemnly condemn the violence (churches were firebombed all over the West Bank) while piously calling for “dialogue” and “understanding.” And sure enough, the guilt tripping west will meekly obey, taking part in high profile meetings with local Muslim leaders who will chide the west for their “ignorance” and demand special considerations for the Muslim community. The fact that these “considerations” are designed to further isolate Muslims from the rest of western society thus increasing the power and influence of the Muslim leadership is the ultimate goal of these “moderates.”

It’s nothing less than a con game and we should be on to these grifters by now. Unfortunately, the “moderates” know exactly which buttons to push in order to increase their status as victims in the eyes of guilt ridden western liberals while feeding their anti-religious bias against the Pope. Comparing Benedict to Mussolini and Hitler is about as absurd as it gets and yet, the charge resonates with many on the European left who see the conservative Pontiff and the papacy in general as holdovers from a time when religious wars racked the continent. Certainty about right and wrong behavior or who is good and who is evil as expressed by the Pope and the Catholic church smacks of anti-modernism where it is preferred that relativism be substituted for the moral certitudes found emanating from the Vatican.

All of this is irrelevant to the mobs who have obediently turned out to protest words and ideas that are far beyond their comprehension. The subtlety found in the Pope’s lecture regarding reason and violence - with God being pure reason and hence violence being incompatible with his existence - could have been embraced by people of all faiths if they bothered to look at the Pontiff’s words in their totality. But as we have become all too aware recently, trying to explain the violence by positing a cause and effect scenario is useless. It is not any particular causal happenstance that drives the fanatics into the streets and urges them on to burn churches or kill Christians. It is a disease. It is for the sake of violence alone that the mobs act as they do, the rationale being no rationale is necessary.

I can see why the Pope has issued this second, personal statement trying to explain that he meant no offense in his words. I fear however, that he and most other well meaning western leaders fail to grasp the true nature of the extremists who lurk behind the mobs, goading them on in order to achieve ends that have little to do with religion and everything to do with power and influence.

UPDATE

Michelle Malkin has the horrible news of an Italian nun shot in the back three times and killed by a Somali gunman. The sister was working at the local hospital and was gunned down by what Malkin correctly refers to as “Animals. Cowards. Barbarians.”

The attack came hours after a Somali cleric called for the assassination of the Pope.

And Michelle points out that Benedict did not apologize for the content of his lecture but rather for the reaction to it.