Great "read the whole thing" commentary by Alan Dershowitz.

Sally Field, et. al., take note please. It's a similar theme to the film Death in Gaza, which I reviewed a couple years back.

Zahra Maladan is an educated woman who edits a women's magazine in Lebanon. She is also a mother, who undoubtedly loves her son. She has ambitions for him, but they are different from those of most mothers in the West. She wants her son to become a suicide bomber.

At the recent funeral for the assassinated Hezbollah terrorist Imad Moughnaya -- the mass murderer responsible for killing 241 marines in 1983 and more than 100 women, children and men in Buenos Aires in 1992 and 1994 -- Ms. Maladan was quoted in the New York Times giving the following warning to her son: "if you're not going to follow the steps of the Islamic resistance martyrs, then I don't want you."

Zahra Maladan represents a dramatic shift in the way we must fight to protect our citizens against enemies who are sworn to kill them by killing themselves. The traditional paradigm was that mothers who love their children want them to live in peace, marry and produce grandchildren. Women in general, and mothers in particular, were seen as a counterweight to male belligerence. The picture of the mother weeping as her son is led off to battle -- even a just battle -- has been a constant and powerful image.

Now there is a new image of mothers urging their children to die, and then celebrating the martyrdom of their suicidal sons and daughters by distributing sweets and singing wedding songs. More and more young women -- some married with infant children -- are strapping bombs to their (sometimes pregnant) bellies, because they have been taught to love death rather than life. Look at what is being preached by some influential Islamic leaders:

"We are going to win, because they love life and we love death," said Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah. He has also said: "[E]ach of us lives his days and nights hoping more than anything to be killed for the sake of Allah." Shortly after 9/11, Osama bin Laden told a reporter: "We love death. The U.S. loves life. That is the big difference between us."

"The Americans love Pepsi-Cola, we love death," explained Afghani al Qaeda operative Maulana Inyadullah. Sheik Feiz Mohammed, leader of the Global Islamic Youth Center in Sydney, Australia, preached: "We want to have children and offer them as soldiers defending Islam. Teach them this: There is nothing more beloved to me than wanting to die as a mujahid." Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a speech: "It is the zenith of honor for a man, a young person, boy or girl, to be prepared to sacrifice his life in order to serve the interests of his nation and his religion."

How should Western democracies fight against an enemy whose leaders preach a preference for death?

The two basic premises of conventional warfare have long been that soldiers and civilians prefer living to dying and can thus be deterred from killing by the fear of being killed; and that combatants (soldiers) can easily be distinguished from noncombatants (women, children, the elderly, the infirm and other ordinary citizens). These premises are being challenged by women like Zahra Maladan. Neither she nor her son -- if he listens to his mother -- can be deterred from killing by the fear of being killed. They must be prevented from succeeding in their ghoulish quest for martyrdom. Prevention, however, carries a high risk of error. The woman walking toward the group of soldiers or civilians might well be an innocent civilian. A moment's hesitation may cost innocent lives. But a failure to hesitate may also have a price.

Late last month, a young female bomber was shot as she approached some shops in central Baghdad. The Iraqi soldier who drew his gun hesitated as the bomber, hands raised, insisted that she wasn't armed. The soldier and a shop owner finally opened fire as she dashed for the stores; she was knocked to the ground but still managed to detonate the bomb, killing three and wounding eight. Had the soldier and other bystanders not called out a warning to others -- and had they not shot her before she could enter the shops -- the death toll certainly would have been higher. Had he not hesitated, it might have been lower.

As more women and children are recruited by their mothers and their religious leaders to become suicide bombers, more women and children will be shot at -- some mistakenly. That too is part of the grand plan of our enemies. They want us to kill their civilians, who they also consider martyrs, because when we accidentally kill a civilian, they win in the court of public opinion. One Western diplomat called this the "harsh arithmetic of pain," whereby civilian casualties on both sides "play in their favor." Democracies lose, both politically and emotionally, when they kill civilians, even inadvertently. As Golda Meir once put it: "We can perhaps someday forgive you for killing our children, but we cannot forgive you for making us kill your children."

Civilian casualties also increase when terrorists operate from within civilian enclaves and hide behind human shields. This relatively new phenomenon undercuts the second basic premise of conventional warfare: Combatants can easily be distinguished from noncombatants. Has Zahra Maladan become a combatant by urging her son to blow himself up? Have the religious leaders who preach a culture of death lost their status as noncombatants? What about "civilians" who willingly allow themselves to be used as human shields? Or their homes as launching pads for terrorist rockets?

The traditional sharp distinction between soldiers in uniform and civilians in nonmilitary garb has given way to a continuum. At the more civilian end are babies and true noncombatants; at the more military end are the religious leaders who incite mass murder; in the middle are ordinary citizens who facilitate, finance or encourage terrorism. There are no hard and fast lines of demarcation, and mistakes are inevitable -- as the terrorists well understand.

We need new rules, strategies and tactics to deal effectively and fairly with these dangerous new realities. We cannot simply wait until the son of Zahra Maladan -- and the sons and daughters of hundreds of others like her -- decide to follow his mother's demand. We must stop them before they export their sick and dangerous culture of death to our shores.

Labels: Islamic extremism, war on terror, why they hate us

Question: If Spain's 2004 elected government pulled troops from Iraq in order to appease Islamic militants who bombed their rail stations, why did a new batch of Islamic militants plan to do the same two weeks from today?

To repeat: Islamic militants don't hate us for our policies, but for the liberties of religion, assembly and speech and others upon which our democracies are based.

MADRID (Reuters) - Islamist extremists were planning attacks across Europe, especially against public transport, before their arrests in Barcelona last weekend, a Spanish paper reported on Saturday, citing a would-be attacker's testimony.

The Al Qaeda-inspired cell planned to attack the Barcelona metro and other targets in Spain, Germany, France, Portugal and the United Kingdom, said the bomber turned police informant.

In testimony that led to the arrest of 14 South Asians last Saturday, the informant told police the group had a preference for attacks on public transport, especially metro systems, El Pais newspaper reported.

"If we attack the metro, the emergency services can't get there," the informant said he was told by a fellow suicide bomber, El Pais reported.

Two pairs with explosive-filled bags were to enter separate Barcelona subway stations and other members of the group were to detonate their bombs by remote control, said the witness.

On Friday, Spain's government said the Barcelona cell was preparing to carry out the metro attack either last weekend or in the following 15 days.

Two other pairs of suicide bombers had been assigned targets elsewhere in Spain, another was to attack Germany, three were given objectives in France and two more were to strike Portugal.

The informant said the Barcelona cell had six suicide bombers and other members responsible for preparing explosives and planning attacks in other European states. Four of those arrested have since been released due to lack of evidence.

Al Qaeda was to take responsibility for the Barcelona attacks through Baitullah Mehsud, a Taliban commander the Pakistani government says was behind the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, El Pais said.

"Only the leadership of the organization knows what requests the emir (Baitullah) will make after the first attack, but if they are not carried out, there will be a second attack, a third in Spain. And next Germany, France, Portugal, United Kingdom," the head of the cell told the police informer, El Pais reported.

The Barcelona bombings could have taken place less than two months before Spain's March 9 general election.

Islamic militants attacked Madrid commuter trains days before Spain's last general election in March 2004, killing 191 people and wounding 1,800. They said the attacks were made in revenge for Spain sending troops to Afghanistan and Iraq.

Labels: Islamic extremism, war on terror, why they hate us

This letter to the Wall Street Journal hits the mark: We fail to take the Islamist rhetoric at its face value. They mean exactly what what they say. Yet we repetitively and mistakenly attempt to reduce the "root causes" of conflict to our Western mindset.

I continue to be amused at how the language of Marxist-Leninist "class struggle" has become such an integral part of the political analysis of Americans -- even the Journal.

Commenting on an op-ed column by Frederick Kagan (" Our Friends in Baghdad," Dec. 21), Steven Ross ("Well-Heeled Terrorists Responded to U.S. Presence ," letters, Dec. 27) borrows -- pretty much whole-cloth -- the language of "class struggle" as a means to explain just what it is that is motivating the world's Islamists. But while he is correct in pointing out that it is not the Muslim poor who account for the strength of the Islamists, he too falls into the trap of seeing this "struggle" in terms of a conflict between social and economic classes.

The simple fact is that what we are facing today is a religious, not a class, "struggle." If anything, the Islamists would undoubtedly point out that the Quran recognizes no social classes and, therefore, that Mr. Kagan, Mr. Ross, and the rest of the West continue to misunderstand Islam and the motivations of the Islamists.

This is not a Western-style conflict, born of the lessons of the West. It is a "struggle" to regain and expand the strength of Islam, to resurrect dar al Islam, the Khilafah, and the Shariah as the foundations of the governance of Islam, and ensure that Western influences are completely eliminated from Islam. It is a struggle both within Islam for what we in the West often refer to as "hearts and minds" and it is a struggle against dar al Harb -- the infidels -- to eliminate the growing influence of Western ideas -- such as the "class struggle."

Stephen Gale, Ph.D. - University of Pennsylvania and the Foreign Policy Research Institute Philadelphia
Time and again many persons first reaction is to ignore truthful statements and fact, preferring instead to believe that were the United States and Western leaders to simply adopt a foreign-policy of pseudo-isolationism all of our troubles with radical Islam would disappear. But, as Lawrence Wright points out in his book The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda And The Road to 9/11, the enemy makes their point quite clear regardless of those ingrained in western thought and "willing disbelief."

Between 10 and 20,000 trainees passed through the Afghan camps from 1996 until they were destroyed in 2001... in addition to the strenuous physical training the new recruits endured, they were also indoctrinated with the Al Qaeda worldview. The class notes of some of the trainees spelled out the utopian goals of the organization:

1. Establishing the rule of God on Earth.
2. Attaining martyrdom in the cause of God.
3. Purification of the ranks of Islam from the elements of depravity.

... their text was a 180 page manual, Military Studies in the Jihad against the Tyrants, which included chapters on counterfeiting, weapons training, security, and espionage. "The confrontation that we are calling for with the apostate regimes does not know Socratic debates... Platonic ideals... nor Aristotelian diplomacy," the manual begins. "But it does know the dialogue of bullets, the ideals of assassination, bombing and destruction, and the diplomacy of the cannon and machine gun."
This point - a total rejection of all civilized discussion to attain any happy medium - is further underscored by Wright when he points out that well before US troops were planted in Baghdad, on November 17, 1997, Islamic radicals had no compunction with murdering innocent civilians whose foreign-policy leanings and voting habits were never known to their murderers. On that day members of Ayman Zawahiri's Islamic Group indiscriminately murdered 62 people in an Egyptian temple.

Six young men dressed in black police uniforms and carrying vinyl bags entered the temple precinct shortly before nine in the morning. One of the men shot a guard, and then they all put on the red headbands identifying themselves as members of the Islamic group. Two the attackers remained at the gate to await the shootout with the police, who never arrived.

The other men crisscrossed the terraced temple grounds, mowing down the tourists by shooting their legs, then methodically finishing them off with close shots to the head. The paused to mutilate some of the bodies with butcher knives. One elderly Japanese man was eviscerated. A pamphlet was later found stuffed in his body that said, "no to tourists in Egypt."... the killing went on for 45 minutes, until the floors streamed with blood. The dead included a five year old British child and four Japanese couples on their honeymoons.... 58 tourists and four Egyptians had died, not counting the attackers.

It was the worst act of terror in modern Egyptian history. The majority of the victims, 35 of them, were Swiss others came from Japan, Germany, United Kingdom, France, Bulgaria, and Columbia. 17 other tourists and nine Egyptians were wounded. One Swiss woman had seen her father's head cut off in front of her eyes.
One does not recall the Swiss ever stationing troops in Arabia or partaking in any no-fly zone sorties. Rather, they were murdered only because they were different, and their religious-political belief system was not the same as those who shamelessly took their lives.

Labels: Islamic extremism, terrorism, war on terror, why they hate us

Islamabad (PTI): In a repeat of the horrendous vandalism that destroyed the Bamiyan Buddha statues in Afghanistan in 2001, militants in northwest Pakistan's troubled Swat valley have destroyed one of the oldest and most important Buddhist sculptures, second in importance in South Asia.

Despite repeated requests by Pakistani archaeologists to the local authorities to protect the seated Buddha and other sites, especially after the first attack, no action was taken. "In fact, militants were able to carry out their work in broad daylight," said President of the Asia Society, Vishakha N Desai in an article in Lebanon's Daily Star newspaper.
Perhaps it has to do with the Buddhist's Middle East policies? Perhaps it's because the Buddhist's support for the war in Iraq? Perhaps it's because of the Buddhist's dependence on foreign oil? Perhaps it's the Buddhist's support for Israel? Perhaps it's because Perhaps the Buddhists need more introspection and should ask why they so offend Islamic extremists? No..?

Oh, then, perhaps it's because Islamic extremists have a deadly zero tolerance policy for any person, any group, any ideology or any religion that does not espouse the exact same views as them? Yeah, that must be it.

Labels: Islamic extremism, war on terror, why they hate us

I have a newfound respect for U2 frontman Bono, who said the following in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine:

I want to be very, very clear, however: I understand and agree with the analysis of the problem. There is an imminent threat. It manifested itself on 9/11. It's real and grave. It is as serious a threat as Stalinism and National Socialism were. Let's not pretend it isn't.
I love that Bono gets it. He understands we're fighting an ideology, just as we did during the Second World War and Cold War, not just groups or their nation-state sponsors. Whether one hates Bush or not is irrelevant, as American presidents will come and go, but these Islamic extremists will be with us until we win the war of ideas. Sometimes that will take bullets and sometimes not. But you better believe it's most certainly a war.

P.S. I also love that Bono calls Nazism by its proper name -- National Socialism. That's a reminder to all those people who carelessly throw about the words fascist and Nazi and attempt to parallel it to conservativism or right-wing. National Socialism was, after all, a left-wing ideology, a socialist ideology. It's full name was "National Socialist German Workers' Party," and one would be hard pressed to find any right-wing idealogue who used "socialist" or "worker's party" as a standard to attain. The myth that it was right-wing was created by Joseph Stalin because he needed a way to differentiate his brand of socialism from that of Adolph Hitler's, especially once Germany broke its pact with Russia and invaded it. Both Stalin and Hitler borrowed their politics from the inventor of the movement, Italian Fascist Benito Mussolini.

Labels: Islamic extremism, war on terror, why they hate us

Christopher Hitchens warns about drawing the wrong lessons from the past 6 years, chiefly: Isolationism

...I mention all this because there is no way to argue that the Taliban, either local or imported, is the product of some grievance or injustice or root cause. Its gangs are, instead, primitive fanatics making war on a Muslim society. And they are not there only because "we" are there. We know this because, long before "we" got there, they were in effective control of large parts of the place and had turned a terrorized and stultified land into a springboard and incubator for transnational nihilism. Bad as things may be now, they were infinitely worse when we ourselves were being isolationist.

After all, if the usual peacenik logic were to be pursued, and it was to be assumed that "we" are chiefly responsible for magnetizing "them," then it would follow that if we were to leave, they would either give up or go elsewhere. Is there anybody who can be brought to believe anything so fatuous? Well, then, if this logic is self-evidently false in the case of Afghanistan, why should it be any more persuasive in the case of Iraq?

"No end in sight" is another favorite mantra of the anti-war mentality. And how true that melancholy reflection seems to be. The latest news is of a very nasty Islamic insurgency in southern Thailand, butchering Buddhist villages (remember the Taliban assault on the Buddha statues at Bamiyan?) and making demands for the imposition of sharia law. Perhaps someone will identify for me which Thai and Buddhist—or Western imperialist—crimes have led to this sudden development. Or perhaps it will be admitted, however grudgingly and belatedly, that there is something sui generis about Islamist fanaticism: something that is looking for a confrontation with every non-Muslim society in the world and is determined to pursue it with the utmost violence and cruelty. It is also seeking a confrontation with some Muslim states and societies.

I make the latter point with deliberation. Afghanistan has a constitution that reserves special privileges for Islam. Most Afghan women still cover at least their heads. Even those who fought long and hard against the Taliban and al-Qaida—the Northern Alliance forces, for instance, or the Shiite Hazara—are intensely Muslim by any non-Muslim standard. But that does not suffice to protect them from the attentions of suicide-murderers and throat-cutters, recruited from as far away as Chechnya or even the Muslim areas of China. So, can we hear a bit less about how the jihadists are responding only to those who "target" Muslims or who are "Islamophobic"?
Never underestimate the depth to which the simple concept of the Westernized woman scares the bejesus out of the Islamic fundamentalist. Ralph Peters, frequently quoted on this site, has written a ton on the subject of Islamic fundamentalism, and in particular on that one topic.

The first chapter of Lawrence Wright's book The Looming Tower covers how during his stay in the United States, Sayyid Qutb, a founding father of post-World War II Islamic fundamentalism, was fearfully disgusted by our evolving modernism, particularly as practiced by women.

Labels: al qaeda, Islamic extremism, war on terror, why they hate us

A truly disturbing report from military embed Jeff Emanuel:

Earlier this week in Samarra, the Iraqi National Police apprehended a man named Ahmed Mohammed Sabar Hamud al-Medhi al-Bazi, a key figure in a five-man ISI [Islamic State of Iraq (or "ISI," the name under which al Qaeda in Iraq has organized in Iraq)] cell which was responsible for an attack on the National Police using an Improvised Explosive Device (IED), as well as for IED, rocket-propelled grenade (RPG), and small arms attacks on coalition forces.

Upon being taken into custody, Medhi openly declared himself to be a member of al Qaeda, and freely admitted (and signed a written confession stating) that he had helped orchestrate and execute these attacks on Iraqi Security and Coalition Forces. Perhaps wishing to escape the punishing clutches of the NPs, and knowing full well -- as do all fighters in Iraq and elsewhere – how strict the rules are that Americans must abide by with regard to the humane treatment of prisoners and detainees, Medhi asked to be handed over to the coalition forces from Charlie Company 2-505 PIR (82nd Airborne) at Patrol Base Olson, in northwestern Samarra. In exchange for the transfer of custody, he had more information (and more confessions) that he was willing to provide.

What it was that he confessed to once in American custody shocked and outraged even his seasoned coalition captors, who had been facing ISI in this city for over a year.

Without a bit of pressure -- indeed, without the appearance of a care in the world -- Medhi, described in graphic detail the other half of his ISI cell's operations: running an organized al Qaeda Rape ring in Samarra. With a modus operandi of breaking into various houses and either raping women on the spot or threatening the family with death while taking their daughter away to become a hostage and a sex slave, Medhi, a self-described homosexual who engaged in intercourse (via rape) with women "because other members of this group" did, confessed to his cell's penchant for abducing girls and "holding them [hostage] just for their pleasure." Most recently, he said, he had taken part in the rape, kidnapping, and/or killing of five women, three of whom were supposedly still alive.

Among these most recent victims was "a twenty-five year old virgin," who was "alone in her house" when the al Qaeda leaders "raided" it. Breaking into the house, all five members of the cell held her captive in her own home and raped her repeatedly. Finally, when all five had quenched their base desire for that action which they so brutally prohibited others from humanely engaging in, under the guise of enforcing "true Islamic law," the terrorists departed, leaving the woman alone in her pain and misery.

If there is such a thing as "getting off easy" for a girl who is gang-raped, this first woman did just that. Two others, both age 23, met a much more gruesome fate shortly after the first, as they were taken from their houses (in front of their families), raped repeatedly by the entire al Qaeda cell, and then slaughtered. According to Medhi, their bodies were buried in a cemetery somewhere in the city.

The two most recent victims -- girls aged 23 and 20 -- were also taken from their family and gang-raped by these supposed enforcers of Islamic virtue. Both, claimed Medhi, were still being held hostage somewhere in Samarra. Unfortunately, the al Qaeda captive's keenness to confess to such atrocities as though they were simply ordinary daily activities did not translate into a willingness to provide coalition forces with an accurate location of his cell's current hostages. Twice Charlie Company platoons were dispatched to raid houses fingered by al-Medhi as being the site of his group's activities; both times, the information turned out to be inaccurate. However, on the last raid -- early on the morning of September 18th -- Charlie Co.'s White (2nd) Platoon was able to gather enough information to confirm that the other members of the cell, upon Medhi's capture, had fled Samarra, with the leader having gone all the way to Syria.

The dungeon was never found, nor were the two supposedly living captives, though the best guess by coalition forces is that they were either freed or -- much more likely -- killed when the remaining members of Medhi's al Qaeda cell decided to depart the region.

The mindset of such a person as Ahmed al-Medhi is impossible for a civilized person to comprehend; however, this is the face -- and the mind -- of the radical Islamist movement. This faction, which so brutally enforces "Islamic virtue" in others, is capable of turning right around and walking into families' houses, taking their daughters (about whom, Medhi said, there was "nothing special" – they just happened to be randomly chosen); and, after gang-raping them, either holding them hostage or slaughtering them.

Though few now seem to remember (only 4½ years from the end of his reign), this is the type of treatment that women in Iraq were subject to under the bloody rule of Saddam Hussein and his two sons, Uday and Qusay. Rape rooms were common throughout the country, and any woman in the vicinity of the Hussein family or their trusted high-ranking Ba'athists had to fear being randomly selected for such brutal treatment.

Labels: al qaeda, Iraq, Islamic extremism, why they hate us

And the emmy for most out of touch with reality goes to.... Sally Field!

[MRC] Using her Emmy acceptance comments on stage to praise mothers, Sally Field turned political Sunday night as she declared: "Let's face it, if the mothers ruled the world, there would be no Goddamned wars in the first place."
Oh, Reaaaally?



Well, there are countless mothers of suicide bombers whom disprove Field's naive theory. In fact, the culture of Islamic extremism fosters the concept that children are procreated especially for martyrdom.

Just a few examples:

A martyr is a sacrificial lamb, a sacrifice to obtain salvation, which is evident from the cultural term given to terrorists - Fida'e, which literally means 'the sacrifice.' The Islamic argument against blood atonement is somewhat contradicted when it comes to the concept of martyrdom in Islam. Blood atonement is hardly absent in Islam. In fact, blood atonement makes it possible to intercede on the behalf of others, since the Shaheed [suicide bomber] takes on Christ-like abilities, interceding for seventy members of his or her family, who would otherwise have entered hell's fire. So, in order to alleviate the suffering in hell, at least one family member is encouraged to be given as a sacrifice."
-- Walid Shoebat, author of Why We Want To Kill You: The Jihadist Mindset and How to Defeat it.

A new online magazine published by the 'Women's Information Office on the Arabian Peninsula' aims to teach women how to contribute to jihad, or holy war. "Our main mission: push our children to the battlefield, like Al-Khansaa," declares Umm Raad al-Tamimi in the magazine. The monthly publication champions the ideology of Al Qaeda terrorist chief Osama bin Laden: "Drive infidels from the Arabian Peninsula," or Saudi Arabia.
-- Agence France-Presse, Sep 4, 2004

"The mother of the Palestinian suicide bomber who blew himself up in Eilat three days ago also told Agence France-Presse that she was happy her son was martyred. She revealed that she had said goodbye [to him] before he left for his mission and had wished him success, and that she was happy that 'God had heard her prayers.'"
-- Al-Hayat, February 1, 2007

The mother of the first female Palestinian suicide bomber has said she is proud of her daughter and hopes more women will follow her example. ... Body parts found at the scene suggested that an attack on Sunday, which killed an 81-year-old Israeli man and left more than 100 injured, was the first of its kind by a woman. ... "She was happy when martyrdom attacks were carried out against the Israelis and told me she wished she would one day carry out such an attack," another relative, Manal Shaheen, said.

-- BBC, Female bomber's mother speaks out, 30 January, 2002

"Allah be praised, I am a Muslim and I believe in Jihad. Jihad is one of the elements of the faith and this is what encouraged me to sacrifice Muhammad in Jihad for the sake of Allah. My son was not destroyed, he is not dead; he is living a happier life than I. Had my thoughts been limited to this world, I would not sacrifice Muhammad. I am a compassionate mother to my children, and they are compassionate towards me and take care of me. Because I love my son, I encouraged him to die a martyr's death for the sake of Allah… Jihad is a religious obligation incumbent upon us, and we must carry it out. I sacrificed Muhammad as part of my obligation."
-- Umm Nidal, mother of suicide bomber Muhammad Farhat, in an interview with Dream 2 TV (Egypt), December 21, 2005

"I feel the martyr is lucky because the angels usher him to his wedding in heaven. I feel the earth moves under the occupiers' feet… There is no doubt that a child [martyr] suggests that the new generation will carry on the mission with determination. The younger the martyr - the greater and the more I respect him… They [mothers of martyrs] willingly sacrifice their offspring for the sake of freedom. It is a great display of the power of belief. The mother is participating in the great reward of the Jihad to liberate Al-Aqsa… I talked to a young man… [who] said: '… I want to marry the black-eyed [beautiful] women of heaven.' The next day he became a martyr. I am sure his mother was filled with joy about his heavenly marriage. Such a son must have such a mother."
-- Mufti Sheikh Ikrimeh Sabri, Al-Ahram Al-Arabi (Egypt), October 28, 2000

In an interview with Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Nuzhah Ziyadeh, also known as Umm Souheil, a 55-year-old woman from the Jebaliya refugee camp who had "sacrificed two of her sons as Shahids for the sake of Allah," expressed "pride and a sense of honor that Allah had honored her with the martyrdom of her two sons Souheil and Muhammad, and made their wish come true." The paper called Umm Souheil " Al-Khansaa" – referring to the mother of Shahids in Islamic history. -- Al-Hayat Al-Jadida (PA), June 7, 2003

The Palestinians are fighting against the Zionists with a lethal weapon - the weapon of the multi-birthing woman. If they kill ["The Engineer" Yahyah] 'Ayyash, or if a Mujaheed is Martyred, the wombs of the women pushed, push, and will continue to push thousands Ayyash's of Mujahideen who suckle with their mothers' milk, the education for Jihad... Ah, If only [former Israeli PM Ariel] Sharon and his angels of destruction knew that the mother of a Shahid [suicide bomber] receives the news of her son's Martyrdom with cries of joy... One of them, so it was reported, took an oath to send the four sons she had left to the battlefield so they would gain Martyrdom as well, just like their brother. We wish that just like the Zionist airports were filled with those vagabond homosexuals on their way in, they will be filled once again on their way out, without anyone feeling sorry for them..."
-- Al-Sharq Al-Awsat (London), June 5, 2001.

A large number of summer camps were named after Shahids [suicide bombers], without distinction between whether they were involved in attacks in the Palestinian territories or carried out suicide bombings within the Green Line [Israel]. The following is a partial roundup of some camps that were mentioned in the Palestinian media:

Two summer camps were named after the first female suicide bomber Wafaa Idris, in Qalqiliya and in the Al-Am'ari refugee camp; A summer camp in eastern Gaza, organized by the Fatah Shabiba, was named after female suicide bomber Ayat Al-Akhras ; A summer camp was named after commander of Fatah's military wing Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in Tulkarem, Ra'id Karmi; A summer camp in Gaza was named after Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades Commander in Gaza, Jihad Al-'Amarin; A summer camp was named after the Shahid Mahmoud Al-Jamasi, who blew up an IDF boat in Gaza; A summer camp in the town of 'Azoun in the Qalqiliya district, organized by the National Guidance Administration and named after the Shahid Muhammad Salim, an activist in the Hamas military wing Iz Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades who was killed while trying to blow up a tank; A boys' summer camp in Dir Ballah named after Shahids; A boys' summer camp named after "the Shahids of Surif"; The "Loyalty to the Blood of the Martyrs" summer camp; The "Loyalty and Love for Chairman Yasser Arafat" summer camp, which this year was named after Shahids from the Rafah district; The "Independence and [Refugee] Return" summer camp in Nablus; At an Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades summer camp in the Hebron district, the children held a closing ceremony which included a play called "The Shahid's Wedding" – that is, his wedding in Paradise to the 72 black-eyed virgins; The Charity Organization for Aid to Orphans and the Needy in Jericho, which is close to the Hamas movement, concluded its summer camps with an exhibit of handicrafts. The 230 children participating in these camps were divided into groups with names that have Islamic connotations. Some of the names were: Al-Khansaa, Al-Tayyar, and Paradise.
-- Middle East Media Research Institute special report.

Labels: antiwar loonies, Delusional Democrats, Hollywood bias, Islamic extremism, Moonbats, why they hate us

Just an awesome editorial by Michael Graham...

Deval's naivete endangers us all

How do you explain to someone who just doesn't get it, that the problem is that he just doesn't get it?

This is the Deval Patrick Dilemma.

He is our governor, and he's unlikely to leave office before serving two full terms. (Patrick may be a lot of things, but he's no Republican.)

He is our chief magistrate. Due to his involvement with the courts and police, he is essentially Massachusetts' top cop.

And yet he seems completely and utterly incapable of telling the good guys from the bad guys.

Ben LeGuer, rapist of grandmothers - bad. Police officers and prosecutors who locked LeGuer up - good.

Sex offenders looking for jobs at Massachusetts day care centers - bad. Employers who want to see complete CORI reports before hiring day-care providers - good.

Islamist hijackers who board planes at Logan and fly them into the World Trade Center - bad. The Americans they killed, and the nation they terrorized. . .

See the pattern here, Gov?

In his 9/11 commemoration speech, Patrick observed that while the attack on the World Trade Center was "mean and nasty," (that's telling 'em, Deval!) the real tragedy of six years ago was the "failure of human understanding."

Yes, 9/11 was, Patrick said "a failure of human beings to understand each other, to learn to love each other." [Emphasis added.]

To find out what the victims of 9/11 didn't understand about the terrorists that might have prevented the attack, I turned to Debra Burlingame. Her brother, Chic, was the pilot of American Airlines [AMR] Flight 77 - the plane that hit the Pentagon.

When I first read Debra the governor's remarks over the phone, her reaction was astonished silence. "Can you read that again please?"

I did. More silence.

"Did he have the audacity to say that in front of grieving 9/11 family members?" she asked, somewhat astonished.

Yes.

"Well, I'm glad I didn't have to listen to that on 9/11," she said in a measured tone, trying unsuccessfully to conceal her anger. "I would have found it extremely insulting to the memory of my brother."

"Did he really say 'mean and nasty?' " she wanted to know. "At Ground Zero, they've recovered 21,000 body parts and still counting. That's not mean and nasty, that's an atrocity."

Debra wasn't happy with the governor's suggestion that 9/11 was born of the failure of mutual understanding between the victims and their killers, but she understood it. She called is a form of moral vanity.

"It appeals to one's sense of vanity to think we're better than these people because we're nicer than they are. Liberals like this think 'I'm not judgmental, so that makes me superior,' " Debra said.

This self-gratifying "we're all responsible for 9/11" preening isn't just dumb, however. It's also dangerous. "If your governor thinks we can love-bomb al-Qaeda into submission, he's living in a dream world."

Perhaps that's Patrick's problem. Maybe he's living in another world, an imaginary liberal land were every Muslim radical is just one hug away from Methodism, and every criminal can be rehabilitated by a proper diet and midnight basketball.

The rest of us, alas, are trapped in the real world. And in this world, "9/11 is the price we paid for not truly understanding the enemy," Debra told me. "It was the moral vanity of our politicians that told them the Islamists could be dealt with through diplomacy, or negotiated with.

"The only negotiating they do is with a Kalashnikov rifle."

I'm still unclear what it is Patrick wants us to understand about the radical Muslims who want to kill us. But thanks to liberals like Patrick and MoveOn.org, the terrorists understand America.

All too well.

Labels: 9-11, appeasement, capitulation, Delusional Democrats, why they hate us

[US NEWS AND WORLD REPORT] Six years ago, Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda weren't just attempting to bring down the twin towers of the World Trade Center. They were trying to smash the American economy as well. Here is what bin Laden himself said about his goals and motivations back in December 2001: "If their economy is destroyed, they will be busy with their own affairs rather than enslaving the weak peoples. It is very important to concentrate on hitting the U.S. economy through all possible means." And here is what al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri said in September 2002: "We will also aim to continue, by the permission of Allah, the destruction of the American economy."

No luck so far, despite bin Laden's recent videotape ravings about our taxes and mortgage debt. Although the towers came down, the resilient American economy didn't. Since September 11, the economy hasn't suffered a single down quarter. In fact, it has notched 23 straight quarters of economic growth. (And despite the subprime mortgage crisis, this is likely to be the 24th straight quarter of growth.) Those numbers are especially amazing when you consider that when the terrorist attacks happened, the Internet stock bubble was in full implosion mode. The economy dipped in the third quarter of 2001 and was slightly negative in two of the previous four quarters. But it's been nothing but growth since then. Overall, the American economy is, adjusting for inflation, $1.65 trillion bigger than it was six years ago. To put that gigantic number in some perspective, the U.S. economy has added the equivalent of five Saudi Arabias, eight Irans, 13 Pakistans, or 15 Egypts, depending on your preference. And while 9/11 did cause the stock market to plunge, the Dow is 37 percent higher than it was on Sept. 10, 2001, creating trillions of dollars of new wealth for Americans. What's more, the unemployment rate is 4.6 percent today vs. 5.7 percent back then. Not bad at all.

Labels: 9-11, Economics, Islamic extremism, obl, terrorism, war on terror, why they hate us

Princeton Economist Says
Lack of Civil Liberties, Not
Poverty, Breeds Terrorism
July 5, 2007; Page A2

When Princeton economist Alan Krueger saw reports that seven of eight people arrested in the unsuccessful car bombings in Britain were doctors, he wasn't shocked. He wasn't even surprised.

"Each time we have one of these attacks and the backgrounds of the attackers are revealed, this should put to rest the myth that terrorists are attacking us because they are desperately poor," he says. "But this misconception doesn't die."

Less than a year after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, President Bush said, "We fight against poverty because hope is an answer to terror." A couple of months later, his wife, Laura, said, "Educated children are much more likely to embrace the values that defeat terror." Former World Bank President James Wolfensohn has argued, "The war on terrorism will not be won until we have come to grips with the problem of poverty, and thus the sources of discontent."

The analysis is plausible. It's appealing because it bolsters the case for the worthy goals of fighting poverty and ignorance. But systematic study -- to the extent possible -- suggests it's wrong.

"As a group, terrorists are better educated and from wealthier families than the typical person in the same age group in the societies from which they originate," Mr. Krueger said at the London School of Economics last year in a lecture soon to be published as a book, "What Makes a Terrorist?"

"There is no evidence of a general tendency for impoverished or uneducated people to be more likely to support terrorism or join terrorist organizations than their higher-income, better-educated countrymen," he said. The Sept. 11 attackers were relatively well-off men from a rich country, Saudi Arabia.

Mr. Krueger, 46 years old, is one of those academics whose research extends from the standard fare -- How much more do workers with education earn? What happens to employment when the minimum wage rises? -- to, well, cool stuff. Did Firestone factories produce shoddy tires during a period of labor unrest? (Yes) Are rich people really enjoying life more than the rest of us? (No) Are concert-ticket prices higher for female musicians than males? (Yes)

He began poking around this sordid subject a decade ago when he and a colleague found little connection between economic circumstances and the incidence of violent hate crimes in Germany. Among the statistical pieces of the puzzle a small band of academics have assembled since are these:

• Backgrounds of 148 Palestinian suicide bombers show they were less likely to come from families living in poverty and were more likely to have finished high school than the general population. Biographies of 129 Hezbollah shahids (martyrs) reveal they, too, are less likely to be from poor families than the Lebanese population from which they come. The same goes for available data about an Israeli terrorist organization, Gush Emunim, active in the 1980s.

• Terrorism doesn't increase in the Middle East when economic conditions worsen; indeed, there seems no link. One study finds the number of terrorist incidents is actually higher in countries that spend more on social-welfare programs. Slicing and dicing data finds no discernible pattern that countries that are poorer or more illiterate produce more terrorists. Examining 781 terrorist events classified by the U.S. State Department as "significant" reveals terrorists tend to come from countries distinguished by political oppression, not poverty or inequality.

• Public-opinion polls from Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan and Turkey find people with more education are more likely to say suicide attacks against Westerners in Iraq are justified. Polls of Palestinians find no clear difference in support for terrorism as a means to achieve political ends between the most and least educated.


Data on which all this relies are hardly perfect: Terrorists don't fill out elaborate questionnaires. Better-off, better-educated individuals could be motivated if not by their own circumstances, then by the conditions of their impoverished countrymen. Interviews of terrorists in Pakistan by Harvard terrorism scholar Jessica Stern reveal recruiters there found the poorest neighborhoods to be the most fertile ground, particularly among those who feel Muslims are humiliated by the West. She says Mr. Krueger and like-minded scholars don't yet have enough evidence to prove anything. "We are only just beginning to do really serious large studies in terrorism," she says.

But the conventional wisdom that poverty breeds terrorism is backed by surprisingly little hard evidence. "The evidence is nearly unanimous in rejecting either material deprivation or inadequate education as an important cause of support for terrorism or of participation in terrorist activities," Mr. Krueger asserts. The 9/11 Commission stated flatly: Terrorism is not caused by poverty.

So what is the cause? Suppression of civil liberties and political rights, Mr. Krueger hypothesizes. "When nonviolent means of protest are curtailed," he says, "malcontents appear to be more likely to turn to terrorist tactics."

Which -- ironically, given that Mr. Krueger is no fan of the president's actual policies at home or abroad -- is close to Mr. Bush's rhetoric: "Liberty has got the capacity to change enemies into allies."

Labels: terrorism, why they hate us

There was in interesting statement by the suspect whom FBI arrested in the plot to attack John F. Kennedy International Airport.

[Russell] Defreitas said the airport was a symbol that would put "the whole country in mourning."

"Anytime you hit Kennedy, it is the most hurtful thing to the United States," he said on a recording made by a police informant. "They love John F. Kennedy like he's the man ... It's like you can kill the man twice."
What's interesting is that it generally liberals and Democrats who put JFK on such a pedestal, and yet liberals and Democrats often peddle the belief that Bush has made more terrorists and other such nonsense. They seem to imply from pundit to politician that were we to just stop acknowledging a global war on terror -- as John Edwards recently recommended -- we could better protect ourselves and not incite the world's Islamic terrorists. That is, shun Bush to shun terror.

Defreitas' words and actions emphasize what rubbish are these beliefs because it should be clear to all that Islamic terrorists don't ask for one's voter registration card before they kill you.

Remember when Michael Moore bizarrely lamented on his website that the 9-11 attacks happened to hit the liberal demographics the hardest (New York City, Washington D.C.), wondering why the hijackers had not stuck a southern state like Alabama?

Moore's cluelessness aside, Defreitas and countless other Islamic nuts, like the 9-11 hijackers before him, don't care which American political ideology they strike, and don't target sites whose population voted more for Bush than Gore or Kerry.

They just kill Americans.

So we could choose, as John Edwards suggests, to simply repudiate the notion of a global war on terror and clash of civilizations (Western liberal constitutional democracy versus Allah's Sharia-demanded rule), but so long as Islamic terrorists believe in those concepts it matters not what we think.

The JFK plot is just one more proof of that.

Labels: JFK terror plot, terrorism, war on terror, why they hate us