Comments on Reads 7/25 II

Andrew McCarthy: Apologize For What?

If we are to remain free and secure, that cannot be allowed to happen. And that starts with not apologizing for the entirely rational fear that future terrorist attacks will be fueled by Islamist ideology, just as thousands of past attacks have been. Prominent Muslims are forever making the most unfounded, most offensive pronouncements, and yet they never have to apologize. Right after 9/11, MPAC’s Salam Marayati told a Los Angeles radio interviewer, “If we are going to look at suspects, we should look at groups that benefit the most from these kinds of incidents, and I think we should put the State of Israel on the suspect list.” Before becoming a top Obama aide and envoy, Rashad Hussain excoriated the Bush Justice Department’s prosecution of Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Sami al-Arian as a “politically motivated” “travesty of justice” that fit a “common pattern … of politically motivated prosecutions,” by which the U.S. government exaggerates the “threat to American security” — al-Arian later pleaded guilty to a terrorism charge. CAIR has made a career of rushing to the nearest microphone to discredit the investigation of Muslims who are later found guilty of terrorism. The list goes on and on; only the words “I’m sorry, I was wrong” are never uttered — and never demanded.

FP: I already commented on the obvious media bias when it comes to retractions and apologies.

Marc Steyn: Islamophobia and Mass Murder

But again: No mosque was targeted in Norway. A member of the country’s second political party gunned down members of its first. But, in the merest evolution of post-9/11 syndrome, Muslims are now the preferred victims even in a story in which they are entirely absent. A Tweeter thinks that “turning this scumbag’s atrocity in Norway into a lesson about how Mark Steyn and his ilk are douchebags seems… opportunistic,” but that’s the least of it. Even by the elastic definitions of “Islamophobia,” the angle being pursued is bizarre and profoundly tasteless: A rambling Internet pdf is trumping the facts on the ground — trumping the specifics of what occurred, and the victims. This man Breivik may think he’s making history and bestriding the geopolitical currents and the clash of civilizations, but in the end he went and shot up his neighbors. Why let his self-aggrandizing bury the reality?
Any of us who write are obliged to weigh our words, and accept the consequences of them. But, when a Norwegian man is citing Locke and Burke as a prelude to gunning down dozens of Norwegian teenagers, he is lost in his own psychoses. Free societies can survive the occasional Breivik. If Norway responds to this as the Left appears to wish, by shriveling even further the bounds of public discourse, freedom will have a tougher time.

FP: Claiming that the murders have nothing to do with Muslims is stretching it. A major reason why Breivik attacked the Norwegian government was its leftist, multiculti immigration policies and its failures to address the problems created by that immigration (see Amil Imani’s list of Muslim demographics in Europe in my previous post). Responsible conservatives have warned that such failures leave the field to deranged nutters like Breivik, but they were ignored.
But as I already argued, the European elites and media's reaction will be precisely the response that Steyn warns against. Is that going to reduce or increase murderous nutters? And between those and lack of freedom the PostWest will accelerate.

Martin Kramer

Nabil Shaath, Fatah blowhard: "Two states for two peoples is unacceptable to us. They can describe Israel as a state for two peoples, but we will be a state for one people.… We will not sacrifice the 1.5m Palestinians with Israeli citizenship who live within the 1948 borders, and we will never agree to a clause preventing the Palestinian refugees from returning to their country." Fine. Have talks with yourself.

FP: Well, had it not been for the West, they would have talked to themselves. But Israel’s strategy for a long time has been to appease the West that has increasingly been preventing Israel from defending itself and pressuring her to make concessions that appease the Arabs and which can only lead to what Shaath describes. That he and his colleagues can now make such statements in the open is a clear indication of what Western policies and Israel’s blunders have wrought.
Incidentally PA Setting Own Borders: PA officials are planning to unilaterally set their own borders after their statehood bid at the UN in September. Logical conclusion: if everybody supports anything they do, why do they need the UN? Just cut out the middle man.

POWERLINE: The spike, CIA style

In an important Wall Street Journal column last week, retired CIA officer Fred Fleitz reported on the current National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iran’s nuclear program. According to Fleitz, who has read the estimate, the American intelligence community stands by its collective assessment, first made in 2007, that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and has not restarted it since:
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Fleitz baldly states that, in pre-publication review of his column, the intelligence agencies censored his criticisms of the NIE analysis, including his serious concern that it manipulated intelligence evidence.
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Fleitz was prevented from naming the names of the outside reviewers, but he was permitted to say this:

Two of the four are former CIA analysts who work for the same liberal Washington, D.C., think tank. Neither served under cover, and their former CIA employment is well known. Another reviewer is a liberal university professor and strong critic of George W. Bush’s foreign policy. The fourth is a former senior intelligence official. Not surprisingly, the 2011 NIE included short laudatory excerpts from these reviewers that offered only very mild criticism.

FP: Ever wondered why the CIA so systematically and abysmally fails? And don’t give me Osama—it took them two years and it is they who had the idea to pretend they are doing vaccinations to validate it was him. Pathetic.