December 31, 2006

"MERCY FOR THE GUILTY IS CRUELTY TO THE INNOCENT"-ADAM SMITH

        John Burns stands out as the only trustworthy NYTimes Iraq reporter. Over the years he has kept the focus on the sadistic practices of Arab tyrants, hate spewing clerics, and assorted psychopaths. His accounts of Saddam Hussein's depradations have vividly personalized the mass tortures and murders and placed Saddam in the company of Stalin, Hitler and Mao. Burns retrieved the stories of families choking to death in clouds of poison gas, of individuals being tortured and murdered for no reason other than to feed the dictator's megalomania. Anyone following Burns's accounts over the years will have a hard time refraining from celebrating Saddam's death. Yet Burns, because of his personal honesty reveals a sickness- if not a death wish, then a vulnerability- at the core of Western liberalism.

In his riveting account of Saddam's last days Burns writes of a moment when he felt pity for Saddam:

"...I felt sorry for him, as a man in distress and perhaps, too, as a once almighty figure reduced to ignominy. But the expression of that pity to the Iraqis present marked the distance between those, like me, who had taken the measure of Saddam’s terror as a visitor, shielded from the worst of it by the minders and the claustrophobic world of closely guarded hotels and supervised Information Ministry trips, and Iraqis who lived through it with no shield.

That I could feel pity for him struck the Iraqis with whom I talked as evidence of a profound moral corruption. I came to understand how a Westerner used to the civilities of democracy and due process — even a reporter who thought he grasped the depths of Saddam’s depravity — fell short of the Iraqis’ sense, forged by years of brutality, of the power of his unmitigated evil..."

        Burns clearly prefers to think of himself as a liberal man of compassion and understanding, who can even identify with the common humanity he shares with Saddam. However, he is honest enough to acknowledge what
survivors made clear: that he suffers from a "profound moral corruption.", really a form of narcissistic self flattery. We're "better" because we're capable of understanding and sympathizing with our enemies, whether Nazis, Communists or Islamists, Hitler, Stalin, Mao or Saddam. After all, weren't they just human beings like us, struggling with inner conflicts, fears and wishes. Besides, "evil" is such a judgmental word, far too crude for our advanced sensibilities. And so the West succumbs to a relativistic psychological sickness which hobbles our efforts to forcefully prosecute a war against foes who sense our need for moral self flattery. However, as Adam Smith pithily suggested long ago, this self-flattery is really just a mask for cowardice, allowing us to inflict cruelty on the innocent by prolonging the war, while pretending to be merciful.
        While Horsefeathers would have preferred that Saddam be shot in his rat hole, we will celebrate the long delayed fate he so richly deserved and applaud the hangmen.

December 29, 2006

EASTWOOD TURNS HIS MAGNUM IN FOR A KIMONO

Dirty Harry has finally succumbed to the endemic moral pathology of Hollywood. The best evidence of this is the New York Times’ A.O. Scott’s rating of “almost perfect” for Clint Eastwood’s new film “Letters from Iwo Jima.” Following suit, most of the major media reviews acknowledged it as a masterpiece and contender for many Academy Awards.

The film is a companion piece of sorts to “Flags of our Fathers,” the story of the iconic photo of the flag raising on Mt. Suribachi on Iwo Jima in February of 1945 and the horrendous battle for the island. Despite its ideological twists and turns, “Flags” was mostly a true story. The same cannot be said of “Letters.” The new “almost perfect” movie is mostly made up out of whole cloth. But to make it seem true a “McGuffin” is used. The Mcguffin here is the two scenes that frame the movie—the discovery of a mail pouch some time after the battle with a couple of hundred letters from Japanese soldiers which never made it home to their families until after the war. Whether this is factual or not is not clear, although from the lack of detail about this matter in the promotional material that accompanies the film one suspects that not very much of the film comes from the letters of ordinary soldiers. It is known, however, that General Kuribayashi, the Japanese commander, did write many letters to his wife and family, and some of these appear in the film.

But the scenes of the discovery of the mail pouch remain a McGuffin—a trick to make the audience believe that what they will see and hear is true, and that the dramatic narrative is derived from eye witnesses. It is of course not possible that the complex thoughts, feelings, actions and ideas shown in the film could be derived from a couple of hundred brief letters and postcards, especially after they have been vetted by Japanese censors whose job it was to remove the unpatriotic thoughts and feelings that get expressed in the movie.

The main character in the movie is a young conscript named Saigo, who is fictitious or perhaps a composite of several different ordinary soldiers. He is a likable soul, a baker by trade with a pregnant young wife, a basically incompetent soldier who couldn’t hit the side of a barn with his rifle if he tried. He thus becomes the goat of his unit and target of his sadistic Bushido-oriented captain. He grumbles good-naturedly throughout the movie, and makes friends with one or two other malcontents. And although there are scenes of cruelty and sadism committed by both armies, because we see the battle through the eyes and sensibility of Saigo we cannot help but feel sympathy with and for the ordinary Japanese soldier. He reminds one of a fresh faced kid who has wandered out of an Andy Hardy movie.

This sympathy is reinforced by the commander of the Japanese forces, General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, depicted as a wise, gentle, highly respected leader who opposes the Bushido mentality of his junior officers.

On the whole, great pains are taken to show that the ordinary Japanese soldiers are not fierce fighters but just ordinary guys like Bill Mauldin’s Willie and Joe. Those familiar with the real Battle of Iwo Jima will be surprised to see the battle in the movie, which shows the Japanese as the victims of a merciless foe whom they fought with little food, water and ammunition and who, only as a last resort, chose death before surrender. You would not think, watching the movie, that this poor hapless army of twenty thousand half-starved guys could have killed 7,000 and mutilated another 14,000 Marines in six horrendous weeks of fighting. It just shows what simple, ordinary Japanese guys can do when they pull together.

Sure, all grunts are similar in that they miss their homes, their wives and sweethearts, they look at photographs of them before the battle, they tell jokes and form friendships, they are kind to little children and dogs. But their leaders are not the same. They are guided by an ideology that gives the conflict its character and may even have caused it in the first place. The Japanese were a militaristic nation bent on conquest and with a cult of death before dishonor, by seppuku (sword to the abdomen) if necessary—the way General Kuribayashi is believed to have died, not by an ivory handled U.S. Army Colt .45 as depicted in the film.

In the context of Clint Eastwood’s new movie, which seems to have a total amnesia for the history of the Japanese before February of 1945, it is important to call attention to what Eastwood and his colleagues have forgotten.

The historian Chalmers Johnson, who served as a naval officer in Japan and taught political science at the University of California, has said that:

"It may be pointless to try to establish which World War Two Axis powers, Germany or Japan, was the more brutal to the peoples it victimised. The Germans killed six million Jews and 20 million Soviet civilians; the Japanese slaughtered as many as 30 million Filipinos, Malays, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Indonesians and, at least 23 million of them ethnic Chinese. Both nations looted the countries they conquered on a monumental scale, though Japan plundered more, over a longer period, than the Nazis. Both conquerors enslaved millions and exploited them as forced laborers — and, in the case of the Japanese, as [forced] prostitutes for front-line troops. If you were a Nazi prisoner of war from Britain, America, Australia, New Zealand, or Canada (but not Russia) you faced a 4 % chance of not surviving the war; [by comparison] the death rate for Allied POWs held by the Japanese was nearly 30 %."

Below, Clint Eastwood will find a list of more specific barbaric acts committed by those good-natured boys in the Imperial Japanese Army who loved their moms and girl friends. The details of them all are readily available on the internet.

In China alone, during 1937-45, approximately 3.95 million civilians were killed as a direct result of the Japanese invasion. The most infamous incident during this period was the Nanking Massacre of 1937-38, when, according to the findings of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the Japanese Army massacred as many as 260,000 civilians and prisoners of war. A scorched earth strategy used by Japanese forces in China in 1942-45, sanctioned by Hirohito himself, was responsible for the deaths of 2.7 million Chinese civilians.

Special Japanese military units conducted experiments on civilians and POWs in China. One of the most infamous was Unit 731. Victims were subjected to vivisection without anesthesia and amputations, and were used to test biological weapons, among other experiments.

According to GlobalSecurity.org, the experiments carried out by Unit 731 alone caused 3,000 deaths. Furthermore, "tens of thousands, and perhaps as many 200,000, Chinese died of bubonic plague, cholera, anthrax and other diseases..." caused by use of biological warfare.

In 2006, the first accounts of experimentation by the imperial military outside China were published. According to the BBC and Kyodo news agency, former IJN medical officer Akira Makino stated that he was ordered — as part of his training — to carry out vivisection on about 30 civilian prisoners in The Philippines between December 1944 and February 1945. The surgery included amputations and the victims included women and children.

According to historians Yoshiaki Yoshimi and Seiya Matsuno, Emperor Hirohito authorized by specific orders the use of chemical weapons in China. During the invasion of Wuhan from August to October 1938, the Emperor authorized the use of toxic gas on 375 separate occasions, despite Article 171 of the Versailles Peace Treaty and a resolution adopted by the League of Nations condemning the use of poison gas by Japan.

Japanese imperial forces are also reported to have used torture widely on prisoners, usually in an effort to gather military intelligence quickly. Tortured prisoners were often later executed. A former Japanese Army officer who served in China, Uno Shintaro, stated:

"The major means of getting intelligence was to extract information by interrogating prisoners. Torture was an unavoidable necessity. Murdering and burying them follows naturally. You do it so you won't be found out. I believed and acted this way because I was convinced of what I was doing. We carried out our duty as instructed by our masters. We did it for the sake of our country. From our filial obligation to our ancestors. On the battlefield, we never really considered the Chinese humans. When you're winning, the losers look really miserable. We concluded that the Japanese race was superior."

The Japanese military's use of forced labor by Asian civilians and POWs also caused many deaths. According to a joint study by historians including Zhifen Ju, Mitsuyoshi Himeta, Toru Kubo and Mark Peattie, more than 10 million Chinese civilians were mobilized by the Japanese Asia Development Board for forced labor. More than 100,000 civilians and POWs died in the construction of the Burma-Siam Railway, made famous in the film “The Bridge Over the River Kwai.”

The intent of Eastwood’s movie is to humanize the enemy; it’s in denial of the real, documented, witnessed behavior which was characteristic of the Japanese in WWII. In Hollywood’s POV we are all the same under the skin—Americans, 1945 Japanese, 1972 Palestinians, 2006 Jihadisits. And if there are no differences between us, why should we fight anyone, the Japanese then or the Moslem terrorists today?

So this is where we’ve been brought by postmodernism: there’s no such thing as truth, (every judgment is subjective), political correctness (mustn’t hurt anyone’s feelings), and multiculturalism (every culture has its own equally valid set of values—beheading, anyone?) All matters of history become relative, there is no good or evil, only different ways that cultures look at things and choose to remember them. So let’s be the first to scrap the idea that there was any point to us opposing the (fill in: Nazis, Communists, Imperial Japan, and by extension the Jihadists)—we just have to learn to understand them and accept our differences.

December 20, 2006

MAKE WAR, NOT LOVE

Finally, some good uses for all those smuggled arms:

Dec. 19, 2006 11:48
2 dead as 2nd PA cease-fire crumbles
By KHALED ABU TOAMEH AND JPOST.COM STAFF

Hamas gunmen killed two Palestinian policemen loyal to the rival Fatah movement early Wednesday, just hours after the sides agreed to a new cease-fire meant to end more than a week of factional fighting...

        President Bush has repeatedly asserted that we are in a war, although he shrinks from naming the enemy: totalitarian Islam. However, his State Dept. and Defense Dept. seem to have a peculiar understanding of what "war" means. Our Generals and our diplomats all seem to have been trained in the art of therapy rather than the art of war. They take enormous pride in their cultural sensitivity, rather than in their killing skills. Not a Patton or a Curtis LeMay among them. No way someone like Patton could rise in today's military bureaucracy. The model of a modern General is Colin Powell. His bureaucratic skills helped him get to the top of the State Dept., an organization of therapeutic wordsmiths who believe we have no real enemies, only people who misunderstand our good intentions.
        Let us perform a thought experiment: imagine that assorted State Dept. bureaucrats wake up tomorrow and realize we're in a war to the death and that our enemies are jihadists of every stripe--sunnis and shia, Fatah and Hamas, ayatollahs and sheiks and their assorted followers. Our networked enemies are bound together in a death cult whose aim is a perfect sharia world. In its pursuit, they have been killing one another for 14 centuries. Now they've turned their sights on us. Our foes are barbarous and are incompetent at most life tasks---hence their envy and hatred of Israel and the Jews. It's humiliating to be smacked in the face by reality; fantasy is far more comforting. While these backward fantasists appear to be skillful at waging guerilla war, that is illusory. It takes no great warrior talent to hide among civilians, detonate bomb belts while disguised as women, launch RPG's into hospitals, and blow up small children on playgrounds. The correct word to describe such behavior is 'cowardice'. We collude in the illusion that our foes are terrifyingly powerful, our therapeutic mindset resembling the stance of a masochistic wife "explaining" that her violent alcoholic husband had a difficult childhood. We play by Marquis of Queensbury rules, pulling our punches while our foes hide in mosques, disguise themselves as civilians and hide their weapons in apartment buildings. Anyone who grew up dealing with playground bullies knows that bullies are cowards. They're weaklings whom we are treating as if they were strong men, thereby supporting their delusions of adequacy.
        Until now we've fought with one hand tied behind our backs as if we were afraid someone we targeted might get angry. How awful, we could blow up a mosque serving as a munitions dump! We carefully avoid targeting one of their designated "Holy Cities." Incidentally, what makes their 'holy' cities more sacred than my city, New York? Instead of issuing pathetic appeals for Hamas and Fatah and Islamic Jihad to stop killing each other, we should be encouraging this internecine war among our foes.
        If we simply used the word 'war' as it has been used before our Post-Modernists gave it a kinder, gentler meaning, we would stop our endless attempts to intervene when our enemies are killing each other. Then we might cease referring to our "war on terror", an absurd p.c. way of disguising the true enemy: totalitarian Islam. Why is Condi Rice begging Hamas to stop shooting at Fatah and vice versa? Why are we endlessly palavering with Shiite ayatollahs and Sunni clerics when both of them regard us as infidels to be killed or forcibly converted? Why is our State Dept. eager to talk with the Iranian leadership, instead of encouraging revolution against it? All of these absurdities are the product of our Post-Modern therapeutic view of the world, which is really a symptom itself of our wavering confidence. Do our advanced military thinkers now read Lacan and Derrida instead of Clausewitz and Sun Tzu?

"If the enemy is to be coerced, you must put him in a situation that is even more unpleasant than the sacrifice you call on him to make. The hardships of the situation must not be merely transient - at least not in appearance. Otherwise, the enemy would not give in, but would wait for things to improve."
- Karl Von Clausewitz

        Notice, Clausewitz does not suggest that the enemy's grievances need to be sympathetically addressed. Nor does he urge a multi-cultural egalitarian approach to conflict. All of James Baker's and Lee Hamilton's deep thinking produced nothing as useful as those two sentences of Clausewitz. Clearly, we have not made the situation unpleasant enough, nor have we convinced the enemy we are going to stay. Quite the opposite. Our latest plan--to "surge" more troops to Iraq is offered with the implicit promise that it will be followed shortly by a drawdown of troops. Furthermore our troops fight within the constraints of rules of engagement that seem designed to persuade our enemies that we are delicate and sensitive souls, more concerned with avoiding collateral damage than with defeating them.
        If we could rediscover our martial vigor, then we could win this war rather quickly. President Bush now stands alone, as Churchill did, against the counsel of all his cautious advisers. This is probably his final opportunity to change history. And in truth it's not that difficult to discern what he ought to do. If we grasp the nature of our enemy---8th century minds, steeped in fantasy, then we know where to strike them. Notice how enraged they become when their symbols are mocked or destroyed. Their rage is the rage of the frightened and vulnerable. They are more afraid of women than the average member of the BLGT alliance. The great Heavyweight champ Joe Frazier told how to win a fight: "Kill the body and the head will die." That should be our motto for the war against totalitarian Islam. Horsefeathers has observed human nature closeup and personal for many years, and the kind of infantile rage emanating from Islam is not--contrary to the great Mark Steyn--a mark of self assurance and growing confidence. It is the collective tantrum of vulnerable and frightened children unable to keep up with the other kids who've mastered arithmetic and are moving on to more difficult subjects. The further and further Islam has fallen behind the rest of humanity, the more fearful and humiliated its practitioners have come to feel, and the more they collectively retreat into fantasy and symbols. Thus an attack on those symbols, the body of Islam (reminding them they attacked our secular ones at the WTC), would constitute a blow to their primitive collective faith and a corrective to their grandiose utopian fantasies. As a further "reality check" we hope the President puts aside political correctness and emulates Churchill, not with words but with deeds. All he need do in his national speech is explain that we are in a World War, that Iraq is one battlefield on which we have suffered defeats, just as we did many times in World War II, but from this defeat we've learned the nature of our enemies and will use the full range of our power, up to and including nuclear weapons to utterly annihilate them. Furthermore, the United States, as the guardian of Western civilization will not permit a second holocaust. Then let us hear that our air power has removed the symbols the jihadis worship, the mosques they make pilgrimages to in Mecca and Medina, as well as the nuclear program undertaken by the Iranian Hitler, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. If the President acts decisively the country will support him. The media typically misunderstands the results of the recent elections. Americans want to win. This is a war that can be won, but only if we possess the will to fight. Hurry up, please Mr. President.

December 19, 2006

SINATRA AT 91

        Horsefeathers recalls a time, long ago, when popular song was the realm of sophisticated lyricists, when those lyrics were enunciated with clarity as if the listener possessed intelligence as well as "feelings". For those who still remember, and those who never knew, we strongly recommend Sinatra in Vegas. What more is there to say about Sinatra? Well there's this: he was an American patriot (listen to his prescient ad libs about the moral hypocrite, Jimmy Carter). We of a certain age, grew up with him and he's the background soundtrack of our lives. Still, the DVD of his performance at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas in 1978 is remarkable. He's a seasoned 63 year old who knows how to get down and dirty with his aging audience, as he jokes and sips bourbon between songs, always with a sense of yearning for an erotic past, just gone and forever unrecoverable. Once he begins vocalizing, especially Harold Arlen lyrics, we're in the presence of tragic genius. Those Jewish lyricists--Gershwin, Berlin, Arlen--and the Italian boy from Hoboken were a match made in heaven. His only lapse is his effort to make something of a maudlin Beatles song. The uneducated scrapper from Hoboken was an American genius, up there with Fitzgerald and Faulkner, destined to be listened to as long as America lasts. He had the rare creative power to transform a maudlin lyric about love and loss into classic tragedy. Saloon songs, in Sinatra's hands, become the equals of Aeschylus. Fittingly, he closes the concert with an unforgettable version of America The Beautiful.

MAY BOTH SIDES TRIUMPH

GAZA (Reuters) - Hamas policemen and forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas fought gunbattles at Gaza's main hospital on Tuesday, killing one person and wounding 11 in a further sign that a day-old truce was in tatters.

        Horsefeathers begins to discern a strategy for winning against the jihadis: turn their primitive death cult loose against itself. Let them send each other to reunion with Allah. In the battle between the holocaust denying, slow jihadis of Fatah vs. the "let's have the second holocaust now", fast jihadis of Hamas, Horsefeathers is rooting for both sides. The same applies to the sunnis and shias in Iraq.

December 18, 2006

IT MUST BE BUSH'S FAULT

Iranian students are probably safer hiding out in Iran than they would be on an Ivy League campus.

"Iranian student activists who staged an angry protest against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last week have gone into hiding in fear for their lives after his supporters threatened them with revenge.

One student fled after being photographed holding a banner reading, "Fascist president, the polytechnic is not for you", during Mr Ahmadinejad's visit to Tehran's Amir Kabir university. At least three others have gone underground after being seen burning his picture. Vigilantes from the militant Ansar-e Hezbollah group have been searching for them..."

December 11, 2006

CAMPUS REBELLION IN IRAN

The Iranian Hitler would have gotten a far better reception at Columbia University than at Amir Kabir Technical University, in Tehran. From Gateway Pundit:

"Iranian Students Smash Cameras, Burn Ahmadinejad Photos During His Speech in Tehran!!

Students smashed Iranian state television cameras installed to cover the event!! The students lit firecrackers and burnt his picture while he spoke..."

December 09, 2006

A CHILD'S GARDEN OF INANITIES: THE BAKER-HAMILTON REPORT

"It is useless for sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism while wolves remain of a different opinion."--William Inge

        Two weeks after the Iraq war began, Horsefeathers penned the following warning:

"...A form of Utopianism is on the loose, a neo-Wilsonian urge to make the world safe for democracy again.

Early in the formation of Bush’s Iraq policy the aim was simple and militarily achievable—“regime change.” Then came “liberation of the Iraqi people,” and, finally, “the ultimate goal of regime change is liberal democracy.” It does not require the mind of a policy wonk to see that the idea of “liberating” the Iraqi people and transforming them into liberal democrats is a way of sugar coating the naked aggression that is implied in getting rid of Saddam. It represents a fear of our own power and of the assertion of our appropriate role of leadership in the world of nation states. Our enemies and rivals call this “unilateralism” or “imperialism.”

Like a guilt-ridden, frightened grownup who is afraid to assume his rightful responsibility lest his parents—“old Europe”—get angry with him and withdraw their affection and esteem, we make up rationalizations and fantasies that fly in the face of facts and history. So we have to tell ourselves and the hand-wringing appeasers of Europe that the Iraqis are waiting for us to liberate them, that they will dance in the streets when we arrive, that they are lining up to buy copies of the “Federalist Papers.”

Even now, after barely two weeks of war, the chimerical idea that the Iraqis are longing to breathe the free air of democracy is beginning to dissolve..."

        Now, almost 4 years later, the fool's errand has become the terrible problem we anticipated. An electoral consensus has formed that we must do something different. But what? For the answer our media elites look for guidance to the doddering Arabist Jew bashers, led by James ("Fuck the Jews") Baker and architects of previous foreign policy disasters. And what have they produced? The same old, same old.
        Horsefeathers takes this as confirmation of Kipling's "truth" about human nature:
"...the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,/
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire.."
        Does anyone remember how the mainstream media hated James Baker for his role in the 2000 Presidential election? All is forgiven now. Listening to NPR the day following release of the ISG report you might have thought Mr. Baker had ascended the Lord's throne. Yet reading the ISG's farrago of jejune nonsense, far from being the product of wisdom and knowledge, it expresses a childish utopianism even more dangerous than the Wilsonian one that has bedeviled us in Iraq. Perhaps Baker and Hamilton need a resupply of Viagra, for their report reads like something written by 13 year old girls attending a model UN meeting. It assumes our enemies are motivated by sweet reason, rather than violent homicidal urges. It fits rather neatly in the Neville Chamberlain, Stanley Baldwin castrati tradition, calling for appeasement and offering up Israel as Chamberlain once offered up Czechoslovakia. Additionally, it ladels into the appeasement stew large helpings of Jew hatred and masochism, the sort of cant that explains the unmistakable tone of orgasmic glee on NPR. It urges us to sit down and negotiate the future of Israel--absent Israel-- with the Hitler wannabe, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the rest of the Middle East's primitive tyrants. It deserves the reply Churchill gave to Chamberlain when he said:
"The Prime Minister has believed in addressing Herr Hitler through the language of sweet reasonableness. I have believed that he was more open to the language of the mailed fist..."
        The most laughable part of the whole enterprise is use of the word "realist" to describe the latest group of fantasists, but then again, in dreams, reality can be whatever the dreamer wishes. Lewis Carroll described our post-modern condition long before PoMo theorists decoupled words from meaning and it surely applies to the James Baker school of "realist" thinkers.

        "...When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,' it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less..."'
        The only "realists" we can discern are the Iranians, who immediately understood the ISG report as signifying weakness and retreat on the part of our governing and opinion elites. They have announced yet again that they are hellbent on producing the materials for nuclear weapons and will brook no interference.
        President Bush, if he has not been completely worn down by the incessant attacks, has another chance to show the kind of leadership he exemplified post 9-11. He should explain why the Baker-Hamilton solutions are unacceptable to a great nation. He ought to then indicate that all diplomatic efforts to dissuade the Iranians have failed, and announce that we are undertaking an air campaign to destroy their nuclear facilities. This would serve to instill fear and respect in our enemies who need to understand the power of the mailed fist. Taking out Iran's nuclear facilities would not, however, be enough. To drive our message of survival home, we should destroy Iran's oil refineries, thereby collapsing their economy. This would weaken the ruling mullahs enough, we suspect, to allow for a new regime to emerge. It would also drive up the price of oil--a good thing as it would speed up our shift away from dependence on Middle Eastern tyrants. Meanwhile in Iraq, we should (as we recommended in 2003)station American forces in the Kurdish north where we're welcome, let the Shias and Sunnis continue their 1400 year old mutual slaughter and use special forces and intelligence data to insure that al Qaeda and other foreign forces don't try to establish bases in non-Kurdish Iraq. Oh, and by the way, we should divert a few of the planes from Iran to Syria to leave our calling card for Mr. Assad. The President would tap the latent sentiment of Americans who want a clear path to victory in World War IV.

December 04, 2006

THE SIX FLYING IMAMS: WHAT THE MEDIA DIDN'T TELL YOU

A couple of days before Thanksgiving the NY Times and many other papers around the country ran a story about 6 middle eastern men who claimed to be “imams” and who were eventually bumped off a US Airways flight from Minneapolis to Phoenix. They were seen to be acting in a manner sufficiently unusual to attract the attention of passengers and crew alike. The Captain of the flight felt that their behavior was suspicious enough to deplane them and hand them over to officials for further questioning. After several hours they were released and continued their journey the following day on another airline.

What is interesting is that the media coverage transformed the story into a case of religious persecution by the airline all stirred up by a couple of nutty/paranoid passengers. And that the poor group of innocent religious clerics were victims of prejudice and isn’t this worthy of a congressional investigation so that we can preserve the practice of religious freedom in our great country?

Below you will find a vivid description of the story of the 6 flying “imams” from the point of view of one of the passengers who witnessed nearly all of the events. Her description of the events is in the form of a letter to US Airways in response to her outrage at reading the media coverage the next morning. Upset by the distortion of the events and lack of important details in the stories she read, she decided to tell the story of what she herself observed. Shy, she goes by the nom de plume “Pauline.”

(Thanks to Pajamasmedia for making her letter available.)

November 21, 2006

US Airways Airline

To all news stations concerned:

“In reference to the removal of the six Muslim gentlemen from flight 300 at the Minneapolis –St. Paul airport last light, prior to the planes departure.

“I was a passenger on that flight, sitting in seat 5-E originally and later
temporarily sitting in the front row of first class, while waiting for everyone to disembark the plane for a safety check. Having been on the plane, witnessed what transpired first hand and talked at great length with the first class steward regarding other facts, I am “ENRAGED” at the national AND local news reports I have seen this morning.
The facts reported are incomplete and inaccurate. This event was immediately jumped on by their attorney, who told the American people on CNBC they need to get over 911, stop being paranoid about Musliums and he even threatened a huge law suit against US Airways for the discriminating and humiliating treatment of his clients. I am convinced this entire thing may have been done to intimidate not only US Airways, but all airlines and airports in order to get them to back off on their security efforts. This is only part of the real story.

“In defense of US Airways: They did a splendid job of handling the situation. No panic was created we felt protected at all times. They did not make a knee jerk reaction as a result of one passenger passing them as note as reported by the media.

“Most importantly, the public needs to be told that there was a series of” many suspicious events”, which were observed by the crew and several passengers. The captain made his decision based on all of these events and not just one note.

“Their [the Imams’] attorney is trying to turn this into a “right to pray in a public place issue” and it is not that at all. He is claiming they were removed from the plane for praying in public. And inferring [sic] it is wrong to discriminate against them for this. Claiming that we Americans don’t understand their religion and their need to pray everyday at specific times, he stated that WE need to be more tolerant of their religious beliefs. He made a statement trying to
draw an analogy of the right to carry a bible or a rosary on a plane. This is nothing more than a smoke screen to make this a human rights issue and intimidate the airline industry. They were already claiming discrimination to Fox TV news when I got home from the airport. Something does not smell right here.

“This has all of the earmarks of a preplanned “set up” with their attorney all ready to go. I am sure their attorney has made a point of contacting all of you immediately, even last night, in order to get their slanted side of the story out first. Do not be fooled by this propaganda. You in the media have a moral responsibility to investigate all of the facts, not just statements you are fed by
them.

“I would encourage you to interview the planes’ captain, the first class steward and the gate ticket taker to confirm the following facts. These are the correct facts:

“The airline employee taking tickets reported to the crew that she felt very uncomfortable with the men and so she engaged one of them in a conversation to feel him out. I assume he spoke English to her in their conversation. She stated she felt uncomfortable with them and she felt they were extreme fundamentalists. She needs to be interviewed by the news media for her side of the story.

“Several passengers observed the men praying and chanting near the gate prior to boarding. They were sitting apart from everyone else, behind the wall which stands behind the ticket counter at the gate. I was eating dinner while they were praying and chanting and did not observe this part, but spoke with a passenger, after we disembarked who has observed this.

“I seem to remember hearing something on the news after 911 about the terrorists praying at the airport prior to departing on 911. If this is true then there is a legitimate cause for concern and doing so created an inflammatory situation. If it is their custom to pray at a certain time each day at sunset, they know this in advance and easily could have taken the 7pm flight, two hours later, doing their prayers prior to arriving at the airport. One question is: were they intentionally trying to create fear in the passengers by praying loudly in public, hoping to get removed from the plane?

“I took a seat next to the men about 20 minutes prior to boarding. (I had been having dinner earlier and did not observe their prayers.) They spoke no English while seated next to me only Arabic, or what ever language they speak. One of the gentlemen acted very intense and nervous. He was on one phone call the entire time talking very fast while he paced back and forth in front of me. I said nothing to anyone about this, but was later told by first class passengers that this same conversation continued for at least another hour from his front row seat in first class. A man in the third row of first class told me he had a very uncomfortable feeling about this man. Their seating arrangement was very unusual and it raised a red flag to the crew. Only one of the 6 sat in first class, with the telephone, although they were all together. The rest sat in coach. The second one sat in the first row of coach in front of me; I think another mid way back in the plane and the rest in the very rear of the plane. They were there early enough to get seats together but chose to spread out.

“Another strange thing the crew noticed was the way they boarded. When they made the call for first class passengers the other 5 boarded as well.

“The one in first class, which had been on the telephone, did not stay seated in his first class seat, but walked back to the rear of the plane twice to talk to his friends, during the delay.

“One of the passengers sitting close to them in the rear of the plane overheard their conversation and became very nervous. I believe he may have been the one who sent the note up to the crew and captain. I was told later that there was mention of Ala and the word terrorists in their conversation.

“A woman passenger, who understood their language, indicated they were making slanderous remarks about the American people, thinking no one would know what they were saying. This raised concern also.

“The most suspicious thing, which has not yet been mentioned on the news, and needs to come out publicly, is the fact that the man in the first class front row asked for and was given a seat belt extender as did one of the men in the rear of the plane. This can be confirmed by the male steward serving first class on the flight. The strange and totally unexplainable thing about this request by them was the fact that neither of these men was fat enough to even need an extender strap for their seatbelt in the first place and the crew noticed that they not even put it on but placed them on the floor by their feet. Why ask for them and not use them, especially if you don’t even need one?

“I was a witness to the seat belt extender on the floor in first class, as the steward asked me to hand him so he could show it to the FBI and the Police. It was a totally detachable strap about 18 in length that could easily be used as a noose around a flight attendant or passenger’s neck to create a hostage situation on the plane. With one in the back of the plane and another in the front and their people positioned in between they were perfectly positioned to take control of the entire plane with out any weapons. The captain, crew, police and FBI all obviously also felt this was a real possibility when combined with the note passed to them by an obviously shaken man who had heard some of their conversation. Put all of this together along with the fact that the ticket agent at the gate was not comfortable and a couple of other passenger observations it added up to a situation of possible danger.

“Should the Airline, crew and captain be blamed for deciding to protect the safety of several hundred passengers after their lengthy deliberation of the facts? No, it was not just a note from a paranoid passenger as reported on television, but many things that just added up to a very uncomfortable feeling. The airline, police and FBI acted responsibly, professionally and in the interest of the majority of passengers. Any potential law suits from these people are totally unfounded and ludicrous.

“Doesn’t the fact that these men already had an attorney lined up to
immediately alert the media seem like a “pre-set up deal” to get the airlines and security to back off and ease up on the high alert issue?

“Did they even tell their own attorney about the seat belt extenders sitting on the floor? Probably not.

“With all of their accusations on CNBC’s morning news about passenger paranoia put aside there is still no answer to a very simple question…. What were they going to do with the seat belt extenders?

“Why did they have one in the front and one in the back of the plane and why were they sitting on the floor by their feet and not in use?

“I can only determine two possible scenarios: Either they were planning to use the seat belt extenders to subdue hostages and take over the plane and were caught by their suspicious activities…Or, it was done intentionally to induce suspicion and make a big public fuss to intimidate security at the airports.

“They claim we have discriminated against them and they were humiliated. They fail to accept the fact that what happened to them on flight 300 was a direct result of their own people’s hateful behavior on 911, while once more trying to put the blame for everything on the Americans.

“What about the human rights of the several hundred people sitting on flight 300? Most of the passengers were going home for the thanksgiving holiday. Don’t we have the right to get home safely for thanksgiving? Any psychologist will tell you they were simply trying to project the blame for this unfortunate event back at the airline in order to avoid any personal responsibility for their actions, or the actions of the 911 terrorists.

“Upon watching the 5 o’clock news tonight I heard more about this incident. Now they are reporting the men to be clerics. Last night at 1 pm they were calling themselves scholars who were attending a conference. It would be interesting what kind of a conference they had been attending. I question, from my close personal observations of them prior to boarding that they are either. I would also like to see this investigated also. I believe there is a real story here that the American public deserves. US Airlines has been caught off guard by these accusations and is being painted as the bad guy, stating they will make their own internal investigation. Why, all of a sudden now, are they made to look guilty by the media? Only the media can clear the air on the truth here. They need your help and support in this matter.

“Let’s not sweep this under the rug as yesterday’s news. I challenge the news media to investigate the real facts of these backgrounds, what had they been attending in Minneapolis as well as interview the crew and people involved bringing the real truth to the American public. They deserve the truth for the future of their own safely. Please do not just let this matter drop. Thank you!”

Modern Arab Jihadis are clever and adaptive in fighting their enemies. Rarely do they fight battles head on with those stronger than themselves. They strike and run, they disguise themselves as women or hide in hospitals, Mosques, schools—using any wile they can find or invent. The flying Imam event last week was clearly part of the Jihadi program to defeat our airline security program piecemeal. It was a trap the Jihadis set and our naïve politically correct media fell for it hook, line, and sinker.

The Jihadis know that one of their best allies in America is political correctness, and assuming the role of the victim. So whenever possible they will shout “discrimination,” whether it is wearing veils, swearing on the Koran instead of the Bible in open court, and a thousand other matters of Sharia law. They will cry “You are keeping me from practicing my religion!” And sure enough you can count on an in-depth story one Sunday morning (with pictures) on the front page of the NY Times with interviews of all the Arab Moslems who claim their civil rights have been invaded and stolen.

Although there are literally thousands of rules in Sharia law, there is room in Islam for interpretation which will allow for flexibility of behavior in most of the laws, unless you are an Arab Jihadi and don’t want to be flexible. There are non-arab Moslems—the Turks, the Indonesians, the Indians—who fit in easily with the rest of their respective cultures, so that there needn’t be provocations and tensions. It is only the middle eastern Arab Jihadis who are determined to destroy us and our culture, if not by weapons of mass destruction then by ten million cuts and bites.

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