June 21, 2006

SULLIVAN'S 'CYCLE OF DEPRAVITY'

Here's what Andrew Sullivan equates with the Abu Graibh hazing of Jihadis.

Islamofascist Barbarism
"The mutilated bodies of missing U.S. soldiers PFC Kristian Menchaca, 23 of Houston, and PFC Thomas L. Tucker, 25 of Madras, Oregon, were found this morning in the “Triangle of Death” in Iraq. An Iraqi military official grimly said the two young warriors were killed “in a barbaric way.”

While details are still being withheld, the military grapevine is saying the men were beheaded and their eyes gouged out – the “required” procedure to kill the infidel according to the teachings of the Islamic fundamentalists..."
---Gary Bauer

June 20, 2006

PERVERSION: THE CASE OF ANDREW SULLIVAN

Tortured20 Jun 2006 02:26 pm

"I doubt whether even Donald Rumsfeld will describe what has been done to two young American soldiers as a "coercive interrogation technique." But you never know. Some people wonder why I remain so concerned about torture, and the surrender of our moral standing with respect to this unmitigated evil. Maybe the news of captured, tortured and murdered Americans will jog their conscience. Or maybe it will simply reinforce the logic of torture-reciprocity endorsed by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Gonzales. As usual, complete silence from Instapundit. Almost radio silence from the Corner, except for the torture-advocate, Mark Levin, who is urging reciprocal atrocities. Give him points for consistency. And so the cycle of depravity and defeat deepens ..."
---Andrew Sullivan

        Moral indignation is often a mask to hide the secret gratification in the very deeds the moralist condemns. Andrew Sullivan's peculiar preoccupation and fascination with torture always seems to contain an offputting element of erotic pleasure, just slightly disguised by his harumphing, high minded moral indignation. Sullivan's mode of thinking is perverse, in that, like sexual perversions that blur the differences between male and female, he blurs distinctions between modes of coercion, all becoming forms of "torture". His reaction to the actual bodily mutilation and murder of two captured American soldiers by the Jihadis gives the game away. You see, those very real tortures elicit virtually no condemnation of the perpetrators; instead they gratify Sullivan's perverse and fantastical need to blame--who else?-- Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzales. They and Mark Levin elicit his harshest condemnation. It's all just a "cycle of depravity" wherein distinctions are erased and Bush-Cheney, et. al. are the same as Jihadi savages. These days reading Sullivan makes one want to take a cleansing shower.

June 15, 2006

THE BENCHELLALI FAMILY BUSINESS

French terror plot: 25 convicted

PARIS, France (AP) -- "A court on Wednesday convicted 25 people for their roles in preparing an attack in France in support of Islamic fighters in Chechnya.

The five top defendants received prison terms of 8 to 10 years, while the others received lesser sentences. Two were acquitted. All but one defendant had been accused of helping Islamic fighters in Chechnya in what prosecutors said underscored the "globalization of the jihad movement."
Prosecutors were unable to prove strong suspicions that the attack was to have involved chemicals, even though investigators found equipment, including a protective suit, and chemicals including the highly toxic ricin.

In handing down sentences, the court followed the prosecutor's office by giving the maximum 10-year term to the group's alleged chemicals expert, Menad Benchellali. However, Menad's father, Chellali Benchellali, an imam, or prayer leader, in the Lyon suburb of Venissieux, received only an 18-month suspended prison term -- far lower than the prosecution's demand for six years behind bars..."

        When last heard from (see below) Mourad Benchellali was regaling us with tales of innocence and experience. His "dream vacation" in an al Qaeda training camp had landed him at Gitmo. Curiously enough, this innocent young man is about to go on trial in France for his vacation related activities. We're sure he knew nothing about the activities on behalf of Jihad terror by the rest of his family. Horsefeathers guesses he's like A.J. Soprano, just trying to convince himself the family is in the garbage collection business.
(See Ace of Spades for more)

June 14, 2006

REAL CLIMATE SCIENTIST: “GORE’S CIRCUMSTANTIAL ARGUMENTS ARE SO WEAK THAT THEY ARE PATHETIC.”

The Canada Free Press published a guest column by Tom Harris that is a must read for anyone looking for some common sense and knowledgeable discourse on climate silliness and Al Gore’s doom-ridden prophecies.

Tom Harris is mechanical engineer and Ottawa Director of High Park Group, a public affairs and public policy company. Harris took the trouble to get scientists who know something about the subject to clarify what the issues are. Among them was Professor Bob Carter of the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University in Australia; and Carter “is one of hundreds of highly qualified non-governmental, non-industry, non-lobby group climate experts who contest the hypothesis that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are causing significant global climate change. ‘Climate experts’ is the operative term here. Why? Because what Gore's ‘majority of scientists’ think is immaterial when only a very small fraction of them actually work in the climate field.

“Even among that fraction, many focus their studies on the impacts of climate change; biologists, for example, who study everything from insects to polar bears to poison ivy. ‘While many are highly skilled researchers, they generally do not have special knowledge about the causes of global climate change,’ explains former University of Winnipeg climatology professor Dr. Tim Ball. ‘They usually can tell us only about the effects of changes in the local environment where they conduct their studies.’

“This is highly valuable knowledge, but doesn't make them climate change cause experts, only climate impact experts.
“So we have a smaller fraction.

“But it becomes smaller still. Among experts who actually examine the causes of change on a global scale, many concentrate their research on designing and enhancing computer models of hypothetical futures. ‘These models have been consistently wrong in all their scenarios,’ asserts Ball. ‘Since modelers concede computer outputs are not "predictions" but are in fact merely scenarios, they are negligent in letting policy-makers and the public think they are actually making forecasts.’”

Don’t miss the rest of this story [click HERE] and find out why Gore is full of …well, HORSEFEATHERS.

HELLO MUDDA, HELLO FADDA, HERE I AM AT CAMP AL QAEDA

        The NYTimes, tribune of the oppressed, has now launched a campaign on behalf of misunderstood Jihadis. It has found a former Gitmo inmate to jerk our tear ducts with a tale of woe. Mourad Benchellali's Op-ed weeper follows a familiar form: the Western coming-of-age story, in which a young, innocent and idealistic boy seeking adventure, leaves home for a "dream vacation", has a series of dangerous experiences, then returns, sadder but wiser. Mr. Benchellali's variation on this time honored form, derives its impact from the way it employs fictional devices to create an appearance of verisimmilitude. We are required to suspend disbelief in the 'reality' of what is being described, when we're told that the author/narrator chose, for a "dream vacation", Afghanistan in the summer of 2001. "In the early summer of 2001, when I was 19, I made the mistake of listening to my older brother and going to Afghanistan on what I thought was a dream vacation. His friends, he said, were going to look after me. They did — channeling me to what turned out to be a Qaeda training camp. For two months, I was there, trapped in the middle of the desert by fear and my own stupidity..."
        Now Afghanistan was many things in 2001, but an ideal vacation spot it was not. It was a well known Taliban hell hole. The Bamiyan Buddhas were destroyed in March of that year and no prospective traveler was ignorant of that savage act. Non-believers were being massacred. Vacation heaven it wasn't--except in the dream world of our proto-novelist.
        Once we've agreed to suspend disbelief, we're prepared to submit to the author's delightful self-creation whereby, like a modern day Candide, he became a passive spectator of his own life. He tells us he arrived at an al Qaeda camp through the exertions ("channeling") of his brother's friends. He omits mentioning any Jihadi skills he acquired during his months of training, rather seeming to have just waited for camp season to end. Did he enjoy classes in beheading? Lying to captors? How did he do in suicide bombing class? Did 'camp' include extracurricular lessons in sexual submission? Color war ending with roasted anthrax marshmallows?
        Horsefeathers believes that Mr. Benchellali shows promise as a post-modern confabulator who, with a little more training at an Ivy League university or the Iowa Writers Workshop could make a living writing TV soap operas. He astutely counts on the capacity for denial by America's victims of 9-11. He understands that the New York Times is the organ of frightened liberals who want to hear happy multicultural talk. His shortcomings as a creator of fiction are most evident when he seeks to create a self portrait ("...I am a quiet Muslim — I've never waged war, let alone an asymmetrical one. I wasn't anti-American before and, miraculously, I haven't become anti-American since...). What an extraordinary fellow, able to rise far above base motives like anti-Americanism, and praise himself for his own extraordinariness. Such a self declared, mild mannered Muslim! Why how could anyone possibly suspect him of being a trained Jihadi killer. After completing his training, he was captured on his way out of Afghanistan and interrogated at Gitmo. He doesn't mention what he learned, but it can be found in captured al Qaeda manuals. And this is not fiction:

Lesson Eighteen
PRISONS AND DETENTION CENTERS
IF AN INDICTMENT IS ISSUED AND THE TRIAL, BEGINS, THE BROTHER HAS TO PAY ATTENTION TO THE FOLLOWING:

1 . At the beginning of the trial, once more the brothers must insist on proving that torture was inflicted on them by State Security [investigators ]before the judge.

2. Complain [to the court] of mistreatment while in prison.

3. Make arrangements for the brother ’s defense with the attorney, whether he was retained by the brother ’s family or court-appointed.

4. The brother has to do his best to know the names of the state security officers, who participated in his torture and mention their names to the judge.[These names may be obtained from brothers who had to deal with those officers in previous cases.]

5. Some brothers may tell and may be lured by the state security investigators to testify against the brothers [i.e. affirmation witness ], either by not keeping them together in the same prison during the trials, or by letting them talk to the media. In this case, they have to be treated gently, and should be offered good advice, good treatment, and pray that God may guide them.

6. During the trial, the court has to be notified of any mistreatment of the brothers inside the prison.

7. It is possible to resort to a hunger strike, but i t is a tactic that can either succeed or fail.

8. Take advantage of visits to communicate with brothers outside prison and exchange information that may be helpful to them in their work outside prison [according to what occurred during the investigations]. The importance of mastering the art of hiding messages is self evident here.

-When the brothers are transported from and to the prison [on their way to the court] they should shout Islamic slogans out loud from inside the prison cars to impress upon the people and their family the need to support Islam.

-Inside the prison, the brother should not accept any work that may belittle or demean him or his brothers, such as the cleaning of the prison bathrooms or hallways.

-The brothers should create an Islamic program for themselves inside the prison, as well as recreational and educational ones, etc.

-The brother in prison should be a role model in selflessness. Brothers should also pay attention to each others needs and should help each other and unite vis a vis the prison officers.

June 10, 2006

MARINES IN HADITHA: CATCH 23

YOU ARE A PREMIER WARRIOR—AN AMERICAN MARINE—AND MUST KILL OR CAPTURE ALL IRAQI INSURGENTS (SADDAM’S TRIBAL BROTHERS AND FOLLOWERS, MEMBERS OF AL QAEDA, ISLAMIC FANATIC JIHADISTS, AND ASSORTED ANTISOCIAL CRIMINALS) IN ANBAR PROVINCE.

BUT

YOU MUST BE A REPRESENTATIVE OF AMERICA AND WIN THE HEARTS AND MINDS OF THE PEOPLE OF ANBAR PROVINCE BY BEING FRIENDLY AND OUTGOING TO THE PEOPLE OF ANBAR PROVINCE WHO HATE YOU AND WISH TO DESTROY YOU BY PLANTING IEDS EVERYWHERE AND WHO WOULD RATHER DIE THAN COOPERATE WITH YOU.

CATCH 24

YOU MUST KILL OR CAPTURE ALL INSURGENTS IN ANBAR PROVINCE.

BUT

YOU MUST OBEY THE RULES OF WAR AND NOT INJURE ANY NON-COMBATANT EVEN THOUGH HE OR SHE SUPPORTS AND ASSISTS THE INSURGENTS BY PROVIDING FOOD, SHELTER, AND INFORMATION TO INSURGENTS.

CATCH 25

YOU MUST KILL OR CAPTURE ALL INSURGENTS IN ANBAR PROVINCE.

BUT

YOU MUST NOT INJURE NON COMBATANTS EVEN THOUGH THERE IS NO WAY OF TELLING INSURGENTS FROM NON COMBATANTS UNTIL YOU ARE SHOT AT BY SOMEONE.

CATCH 26

YOU MUST KILL OR CAPTURE ALL INSURGENTS IN ANBAR PROVINCE.

BUT

YOU MUST NOT INJURE ANY NON COMBATANT EVEN THOUGH THE INSURGENT PLACES HIM OR HERSELF IN THE MIDST OF NON COMBATANT WOMEN AND CHILDREN IN SCHOOLS, HOSPITALS OR MOSQUES.

No great civilization has ever survived without great warriors. In any large army there are a few fighters and many more soldiers who support and provide what the fighters require—truck drivers, quartermasters, cooks, intelligence specialists—men and women who do their duty behind the lines. Warriors cannot fight without the support these soldiers provide, but they rarely face sudden death and mutilation, nor do they have to kill the enemy at point blank range without more than a moments reflection.

America’s great warriors, at least in the conventional wars over the past fifty years, are to be found in three or four premier outfits like the 82nd Airborne, the 101st Airborne, and the Marine Corps. When the military going gets rough, these are the young men that are sent for. So that was why, when the 82nd Airborne’s tour of duty in Iraq’s northwestern Anbar province—the most brutal battle zone in Iraq—was over, they sent in the Marines—the First Marine Division.

When the story broke in Time Magazine last March that a Marine humvee hit an IED that killed one Marine and injured several others last November and in the aftermath a group of the remaining Marines killed 24 Iraqis including women and children, and that an attempt at covering up what may have been a massive criminal act had also been uncovered, the left-liberal, war-hating, Bush-hating journalistic establishment could barely keep from peeing in their pants with excitement; could barely wait for an investigation of the case, for the facts to be developed before writing the headlines like “MY LAI AGAIN!,” “The Shame of Kilo Company,” “Quagmire!” “Sick War, Sick Marines, Sick Administration.”

Before coming to premature condemnation of our warrior Marines it behooves those holier-than-thou liberals who are not above enjoying freedom but only above fighting for it, to take into account the following:

The story that Time Magazine broke back in March was based on the eye-witness accounts of two children who were coached and prompted for many days beforehand by an Iraqi Journalism student who is a member of the “Hammurabi Human Rights Group.” The children were interviewed at least a week after the incident and had been interviewed dozens of times since. In a CNN interview, Iman, who is nine years old, says (through a translator), “I was planning to go to school. I was about to get out of bed. I knew the bomb would explode, so I covered my ears. The bomb exploded. The bomb struck an armored vehicle. I don't know if it was a humvee or an armored vehicle. When the bomb exploded, they came straight to our house.”

If the “innocent” children knew about the IED outside their house, did the “innocent” grown-ups know about it? Who among the neighbors knew about it? If any of the “innocents” who knew had warned the officials of the area then perhaps Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas might still be alive.

But in a place like Haditha such cooperation is not likely. Here is what John F. Burns, one of the most objective correspondents in Iraq, has to say about the situation in Anbar Province. “Last summer, in two separate attacks over three days, Taliban-like insurgents operating from bases at mosques in the city [of Haditha] killed 20 Marine reservists, including an enlisted man who was shown disemboweled on rebel videos that were sold afterward in Hidatha’s central market.”

Anbar province and Haditha with its 90,000 residents has been a persistent trouble spot since the beginning, “clearly the toughest patch assigned to American troops in Iraq.” It is where the center of the insurgency exists and its Sunni population remains spiritually faithful to Saddam Hussein. Anbar is a vast, sparsely populated region that borders Syria and has become the “conduit for volunteers from elsewhere in the Arab world who have been at the core of the insurgency’s Islamic militant wing and the perpetrators of many of the suicide bombings and beheadings.”

Burns’ view of Haditha is supported by other journalists. Omer Mahdi, reporter for the Guardian, was given access to the city by the insurgents because they did not realize he worked for a British news¬paper. He would have been killed if they had. He wrote: "Haditha, a farming town of 90,000 people by the Euphrates river, is an insurgent citadel. That Islamist guerrillas were active in the area was no secret but only now has the extent of their control been re¬vealed. They are the sole authority, running the town's security, adminis¬tration and communications. It is a miniature Taliban-like state." The Guardian article disclosed routine dawn beheadings and savage beatings, which are all videotaped and sold on DVDs. Children laugh at the cruelty and delight at the news of double beheadings scheduled.

It should be noted, as John Burns points out, that the Army is doing the investigation of this matter and there is an interservice conflict between the Marine Corps and the Army about warrior culture. The Army has a distinctly softer attitude toward insurgents than the Marines, what the Army leadership calls the difference between “kinetic” and “non-kinetic.” Burns goes on to say, “In this context, ‘kinetic’ refers to the kill-and-capture warfare that has been the Marines' traditional way of battle, and ‘non-kinetic’ to the efforts that Generals Chiarelli and Casey have stressed — to reach out to local leaders, help build civic institutions, rebuild infrastructure and provide jobs, undermining the insurgency's appeal.

“General Casey tells American units that it is the military's non-kinetic activity that will win the war, as much as or more than the kinetic. But it is not a gospel that has found much favor — nor, Marine commanders might say, much relevance — in the fight-to-the-death crucible of Anbar.

“Reporters who have spent time embedded with the Marines return, almost invariably, with a strong sense of the comradeship that binds the units and an admiration for the discipline and fitness drilled into the fighting men, and, not least, for the lengths the corps is prepared to go to get reporters to the battlefront and to protect them while they're there.

“But the harsh Marine battle tactics make an impact, too…. they resort quickly to using heavy artillery or laser-guided bombs when rooting out insurgents who have taken refuge among civilians, with inevitable results.

“Something of this… was suggested when a senior Army commander involved in planning the Falluja offensive — and convinced of its necessity — visited the city afterward alongside Marine commanders. He expressed shock at the destruction, along with concern at the reaction of 200,000 residents whom the Americans had urged to flee beforehand. "My God," the Army commander said, "what are the folks who live here going to say when they see this?"

Well, if they are at all like Horsefeathers they will be shocked, shocked, to find that war is hell, that houses, even whole cities get destroyed, “innocent” men, women, and little children get killed. The fact is that collateral damage is a stark fact of war, and has been since war was invented.

The notion that we should disadvantage our Marines—our best warriors, young men we’ve trained to a fare-thee-well to win battles and kill the toughest enemy—by telling them to “win the hearts and minds” of the residents of Anbar Province—Arabs who, in the unlikely event that their hearts and minds were susceptible of being won, would become instant targets of insurgent death squads—such a notion is immoral and self-defeating. There are no “innocents” in Anbar Province, there are only our enemies and friends of our enemies.

If our young Marines err, in the course of their war against terrorists and insurgents, on the side of self-protection they should not be penalized. After all, those who are really responsible for all deaths in Anbar Province and Hidatha are the insurgents and those who support them. They could instantly reduce collateral damage among the Iraqi people by not using populated cities to hide in. Our Boots on the Ground are the only guys who have the right to decide what degree of force is required when they’re on the line—not some liberal journalist whose life is not on the line, or some flabby politician, or some career-oriented, bureaucratic, desk-jockey brigadier.

June 08, 2006

HOW WILL THE MSM REACT TO ZARQAWI'S DEATH?

         The killing of Abu Mussab al Zarqawi may constitute a blow not just to the Jihadis, but to their utopian allies among our wordsmith elites---the mainstream media, NPR, Hollywood leftists, liberal arts faculties. How will they respond so as to minimize the threat? We can anticipate the following, with variations: 1) By killing Z. we've created a martyr and that will fuel the 'insurgency'. 2) How did we get the intelligence? Did we use torture? It's another Abu Graibh. Besides, we should have captured him and given him a fair trial in accordance with our democratic ideals. 3) Invading Iraq created Zarqawi; ultimately Bush is to blame. 4) What about the lives of innocents killed when we bombed Zarqawi? We, of course, support our troops, but we're turning them into barbaric killers, terrorizing Iraqis. 5) Our indiscriminate killing took the life of a "spiritual adviser" to Zarqawi, thus demonstrating our Western disrespect for Islam. 6) Zarqawi was a liberator, fighting to rid Iraq of the arrogant Americans.7) Was he a truly bad man? There are lots of bad men; for instance Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush. Why single out Zarqawi? 8) Zarqawi never existed; he was a CIA invention, needed by Bush to justify his imperialist plans.

June 02, 2006

ORIANA FALLACI AND THE NEW YORKER

        The New Yorker magazine has, for many years, catered to the anxieties and strivings of wordsmith intellectuals and those aspiring to that status. Is there a psychiatrist’s office in Manhattan that doesn’t display the magazine in its waiting room? It is a part of the supportive therapy worried wordsmith intellectuals require. It reassures them that, just as in 6th grade, they are still the cleverest ones in the class, whatever the adult world may think. It assures them their sexual confusion is evidence of an elevated metrosexual status. It tells them that their physical timidity is in reality, evidence of a finer, nobler pacifist sensibility and multicultural tolerance. So what if they ran from confrontation in the schoolyard; they were only striving to rise above base human aggression.
        Ever since 9-11 scared the hell out of this wordsmith class, the magazine has devoted itself to explaining that there is no real threat from totalitarian Islam, the misunderstood “other”, but instead the danger to the world emanates from the person of President George Bush. Like any shared delusional belief, the community of believers feels special, superior to the unknowing masses, and reassured. While radical Islam is battering at the gates, the New Yorker turns its collective gaze, every week, to the imaginary threats posed by the macho cowboy in the White House. No reason to be concerned about an enemy who declares war on America and sets about annihilating the infidels. Hey, it’s the evil Christian believer, the man who's clear about his gender, George Bush, who must be stopped. Soothing the anxieties of its readers is accomplished, not only by flattering their sense of moral superiority, but by applying childhood utopian fantasies to real dangers. Multicultural leftism is such a balm to the worried. No reason to fear a Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; after all, he is simply articulating a belief system shared by many. We have our own shared liberal faith, and its devil is W. and the Neo-Cons, not totalitarian Islam. Multiculturalism is a form of self flattery, a 'We are the World' incantation, designed to calm the frightened upper west side liberal.
        Once upon a time, Orianna Fallaci was a heroine of the very same utopian left that now despises her. She wrote scathing assessments of Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon. Now however, she has become a Churchillian voice warning of the threat posed by totalitarian Islam, and has therefore become the target of former leftist allies. She has been especially scathing towards the appeasing, and cowardly politically correct responses of Western governments, media and intellectual elites. The New Yorker perfectly articulates every P.C. cliche, the denial of reality, the multicultural, appeasing attitudes she fears will lead to defeat of the West. This week the magazine sent its critic, Margaret Talbot, to interview Fallaci. While it is very interesting to hear Ms. Fallaci’s views, they are by now pretty familiar. The interview is most revealing though, of the status anxieties of the interviewer and her left-liberal assumptions. In place of thought, we have attitude, stance, tone. It is shot through with the interviewer’s smug condescension, as if she is engaged with a fascinating lower form of life, a curious specimen, full of animal spirits but lacking in proper attitudes, good taste and politesse. Ultimately it is Margaret Talbot trying to reassure herself that all is well in the insulated world of the New Yorker.
        Talbot is just shocked to the depths of her delicate literary sensibilities by Fallaci's straightforward description of the dangers posed to the West by Islam. She quotes Fallaci saying: “I am convinced that the situation is politically substantially the same as in 1938, with the pact in Munich, when England and France did not understand a thing. With the Muslims, we have done the same thing.” She elaborated, in an e-mail, “Look at the Muslims: in Europe they go on with their chadors and their burkas and their djellabahs. They go on with the habits preached by the Koran, they go on with mistreating their wives and daughters. They refuse our culture, in short, and try to impose their culture, or so-called culture, on us. . . . I reject them, and this is not only my duty toward my culture. Toward my values, my principles, my civilization. It is not only my duty toward my Christian roots. It is my duty toward freedom and toward the freedom fighter I am since I was a little girl fighting as a partisan against Nazi-Fascism. Islamism is the new Nazi-Fascism. With Nazi-Fascism, no compromise is possible. No hypocritical tolerance. And those who do not understand this simple reality are feeding the suicide of the West.”
        This is just too much for Talbot. You can almost see her reaching for the smelling salts. Not that she offers any reasoned objections to the facts laid out by Fallaci. Instead she has a literary objection, i.e, "Fallaci refuses to recognize the limitations of this metaphor—say, the fact that Muslim immigration is not the same as an annexation by another state..." Oh? Talbot utterly misses the facts placed in front of her by Fallaci and instead attributes to Fallaci her own tendency to aestheticize harsh reality and reassure herself with metaphoric equivalences between totalitarian Islam and the threat posed by Christianity in our public schools. When Talbot is on the verge of grasping a point Fallaci makes about the dangers of Islam being taught to young school children, she witlessly interjects: "This is a good reminder of why the American model of keeping religious instruction out of public schools facilitates assimilation." When Fallaci points to the spread of mosques through Europe, she is not doing so out of concern with their architectural failings, but with the ideology promoted in them. Talbot doesn't get it. Forceful as Fallaci's reasoning is, it makes no dent in the liberal faith of Talbot. From the Olympian heights of her position at the New Yorker, Talbot presumes to cast judgment on Fallaci's unconscious motivations: "Reasonable worries", Talbot writes, "about the rise of Muslim fundamentalism were combined (..in Fallaci) with a visceral revulsion and the need for a new enemy,(our emphasis) in the post-Fascist, post-Communist world..." The subtext here for New Yorker regulars is: 'this nutty woman finds enemies where none exist because of a pathological need. There's really nothing to be so concerned about, nothing more than a little 'reasonable worry' on the same level more or less as worry about Christianity in the schools, so move right along.'
        And move along, Talbot does. She is relieved that her next meeting with Fallaci is mostly devoted to talk about food and dress, congenial topics for a New Yorker writer. The reader can almost palpate Talbot's relief at not having to think too hard. She can relax, enjoy the food, discuss styles in womens' clothing, feel pleased to be interviewing a woman who has lived a life far richer than her own. Horsefeathers couldn't help but wonder, how did Fallaci manage to remain so polite, listen so carefully and respectfully to Talbot? The twittering conventional wisdom emanating from her must have been hard to tolerate. All the politically correct assumptions rattling against each other in Talbot's head must have been enough to provoke another blast of Fallaci's famous rage, but she remained patient and rather friendly, unfailingly respectful. Toward the end of the interview, Fallaci does, at last, seem to show the strain of listening to Talbot's self referential P.C. cant:
“You’ve got to get old, because you have nothing to lose,” she said over lunch that afternoon. “You have this respectability that is given to you, more or less. But you don’t give a damn. It is the ne plus ultra of freedom. And things that I didn’t used to say before—you know, there is in each of us a form of timidity, of cautiousness—now I open my big mouth. I say, ‘What are you going to do to me You go fuck yourself—I say what I want.’”
        Horsefeathers would like to think that the very last sentence was directed not just at the unholy alliance of Islam and the Western hating left, but at the New Yorker's Ms. Talbot herself.