A Letter from a Fearfully Concerned Muslim
Dear Roger,
Since 9/11 I have been mulling over the words of Georgi Arbatov pinned on the wall above my desk. I don’t believe in conspiracies, and I strive to keep my distance from the sophisticates of the Chomsky school of conspiracy-peddlers. But I do believe in what Barbara Tuchman described so well in The March of Folly. Folly, it seems to me, is the most severe and unforgiving sin of politicians, especially politicians responsible for the security of societies in advanced cultures of relative freedom, such as ours at this time in history. As Martin Walker, then the Moscow correspondent for the Guardian, reported in August 1992, Arbatov said to him: “We are going to do the worst thing we possibly can to America — we are going to take away their enemy.” Arbatov, you might recall, was a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, responsible for keeping track of Soviet-American relations.
Arbatov — now looking back nearly twenty years later in deconstructing his words — seemed to possess a piercing understanding, as student of history, of the American scene, and how it could likely unfold over time in the post-Soviet and post-Communist era. His words to Walker were more insightful than any offered by just about all the left-leaning talking heads and commentators, in the U.S., Canada, and Europe put together. Arbatov understood, given his experience sitting in the privileged seat of the party in Moscow during the Brezhnev period, how the existence of Communist Russia checked the forces of the left in the West, keeping them from gaining influence and power. Now, as Arbatov reflected, since the Soviet Union as a military superpower had collapsed and the threat of Soviet Communism was discarded in the so-called dustbin of history, the spoiled children and beneficiaries of the West’s longest and strongest economic expansion and technological achievements, unparalleled in history, would set forth to do what the Soviet Union could not do — to advance the aim of Communism to wreck liberal capitalism from the inside.
Just ponder how a third-rate community organizer — from the most incestuously corrupt political region in the U.S.; with a record of participation in the most vulgar gathering of Jeremiah Wright posing as a reverend, spouting Fanonian rhetoric and bigotry; with mentors such as the unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers; channelling the teachings of Saul Alinsky and Rashid Khalidi of the Chomsky school of self-loathing and sophistry — could advance through the ranks of American politics at an astounding speed, with little or no record of experience in government, to become the 44th president. In one of my columns from 2008 for the Sun Media in Canada, I had written in disbelief, as I watched the primaries unfold, of how American voters could be so beguiled by a charlatan of the Harold Hill type from The Music Man and vote for Obama. I was wrong in my overestimation of reason and experience among American voters as a check on the naivete of the university crowd and the duplicity of Lenin’s “useful idiots” in free societies. One of the lessons from 2008, for me, is this: how can I now scold Egyptians for wanting freedom and democracy behind the banners of the Muslim Brotherhood when their experience with electoral politics is negligible, and their history of 7,000 years offer little guidance for what freedom requires — respect for the other and not mistaking freedom for licentiousness?
There is not a very long arc connecting the joyful news of Soviet disintegration with the painfully distressing slide of American politics framed for posterity in the election of Obama. Arbatov did not nor, even if he had indulged in irresponsible speculation, could have predicted such an eventuality in American politics. But he had it right, it seems to me, for what he meant was the presence of the Soviet Union placed upon liberal democracies, led by the U.S., a discipline and a check upon the excesses and follies of democracy. But once this discipline was removed it would lead to a bacchanalia in the West, the near instant raising of the slogan “end of history” even as the dust from the tearing down of the Berlin Wall had not settled, and this lack of discipline combined with the “flower children” of the sixties coming of age and grasping for power, would bring about a situation, Arbatov imagined, that would do more damage than the old men of the Communist plutocracy could ever deliver without committing suicide of their own.
Smart man. I’m really impressed.
Dear ‘Terry, Eilat – Israel’ and fellow readers,
Before you get a thrill up your leg about Mr. Mansur’s patronizing screed and hollow pathos, read it a couple of times and understand what he is really saying. Commentator #2 ‘Ben David’ below gets it when he so lucidly asks “So 9/11 is the fault of….. the decadent West?”
That is what Mr. Mansur is really saying: That because we are weak and decadent, because of our defective culture, WE are responsible for Islamic Jihad.
We need to wake up and smell the Arabica coffee. Islamic Jihad was slaughtering and terrorizing and raping and enslaving and subjugating and exterminating for centuries before we embraced the repulsive music of Eminem and Britney Spears, before hamburger imperialism was forced down the throats of the unwilling world, and before we defended democracy abroad.
We forget that it was as recent as 1683 that the spectre of Islamic Jihad threatened to subsume the entirety of Europe into the Islamic empire.
We forget that before there was a great satan United States, the Hindus and Sikhs of India endured centuries of brutal, savage Islamic Jihad.
We forget that Magellan was killed by a Moro Muslim on Mactan Island, and that the Islamic Jihad in the Philippines rages to this very day.
We forget that the sweet, kind Buddhists of Afghanistan were eradicated by Islamic Jihad, and Muhammeds violence against the Buddhists continues until this very day in Thailand.
We forget that our FIRST foreign wars, the Barbary Wars of 1801-1805, and again in 1815 were against murdering, looting, enslaving Islamic razzia following the example of the ‘holy prophet’ Muhammed and the mandates of Islamic Jihad found in the Koran and Ahadith.
I’m pretty sure that the Islamic Jihad in the Catholic Philippines, Buddhist Thailand, Hindu/Sikh India, Hindu Bali, Chaldean Iraq, Coptic Egypt, Zoroastrian Persia, Christian Lebanon, Christian Nigeria, Christian Southern Sudan, and of course ancient Israel really has nothing to do with American sloth and depravity.
It has everything to do with Islam, Muhammed and Islamic Jihad.
That is the hard truth.
~ The Infidel Alliance
AND the Slave trade that ended up with African blacks in the West as slaves was started by MOSLEMS.
One of the latest propaganda and takiyya lies from Islamics is that Muslims were one of the first Americans and that they-Muslims were brought here as slaves. (Founder of Islam, Mohammad, was a HUGE slave trader).
Besides the above, our leaders and schools have deliberately distorted and changed historical facts by ALLOWING Muslim propagandists to LIE to America’s school children and students via school textbooks some of which are anti-American, anti-Christianity and anti-Judaism. Islam is presented as being very, very good. On this one issue alone, there should be HUGE street protests all over America.
Global jihad and Islamization of our countries is advancing rapidly because this is what our leaders want. And the total annihilation of our freedom.
Absolutely. I have read/heard from numerous sources, including Obama, that muslims helped found America, were an early part of its history, were involved with the building of our republic. I saw a quote several months ago from a muslim commenter with several “quotes” from the founders, not the ones we know about, but supposedly them saying what a wonderful help and influence the followers of mohammed were in creating this nation, and I knew this was going to be pushed as common knowledge and inserted into our history books.
It is beyond disgusting. I’m a teacher and know how little most professionals in our schools know aout the history of islam and how pressured they are to teach the obama-endorsed “glorious faith and tolerance” version and how easily it will be slipped into our textbooks and testing, just as man-made global warming wss…
Those of us who know the truth must not be forced into silence.
THis whole string is accurate but my reponse is to vladdy. The only way to silence me to make me stone cold. I will not be silenced.
No we are not responsible for Islamist Jihad. However, a la-de-la namby-pamby walking through a bad neighborhood saying “oh they are just oppressed victims” is going to get hurt. That is what happened to the USA on 9/11.
No, no, no! The writer has not got a christian perspective. We have plenty of enemies, Islam for one, against which to unite. But, because, as a nation, we have turned away from God, He will abandon us to those enemies. True, we must stamp out Islam, and other corruptocracies. But, most importantly, we must repent and return to corporate and individual lives of obedience to God. Jesus saves those who obey Him, Heb.5.9. The heavenbound are those who do the will of God, Mt.7.21. Only a tiny percentage of Americans is focused on trusting, loving and
obeying Almighty God. Unless and until we do so, there is no
hope for us. Lets get started!
yes indeed …look up some of Salim’s other writings.
he is another “moderate islam” caretaker. THERE IS NO MODERATE ISLAM. and no moderate muslims. if they are moderates …then they are apostates.
duplicity is their method.
Infidel Alliance -
I read it very carefully, several times. He is not saying that the decadence of the West has made it RESPONSIBLE for the Islamic Jihad! Only that it has made us VULNERABLE to it. That’s a huge difference – can’t you see it? – and he is entirely correct.
Vulnerable against whom? Buddhist bombers? Methodist mercenaries? Hindu hitmen? NO.
No matter how supposedly weak, corrupted, vile and pathetic we supposedly have become, none of these ideologies threaten us. We are not ‘vulnerable’ to any of these.
Only ISLAM threatens us, with its Allah inspired, Koran commanded, Muhammed mandated Islamic Jihad theology.
Islam is the threat. Not ‘radical’ Islam. Islam is radical by its very nature. Islam.
Were it not for Islam, Mr. Mansur would not have written this article, nor felt compelled to. It’s Islam, not us.
~ The Infidel Alliance
Thank you, Yackums. I was beginning to believe that nobody here could read. The digressions and obfuscations by the comments on that excellent summary got me very worried about the collective intelligence of those on whom we depend to keep this country free.
So 9/11 is the fault of….. the decadent West?
The decades of simmering pan-Arab nationalism, progress-crushing dictatorship, and fundamentalism in the Muslim world have nothing to do with it – are not even mentioned in the article?
Really?
No, I believe his point is that we have real enemies out to destroy us. It is at our own peril that we lose sight of this fact, as we have since the fall of the Soviet Union. The liberal idea that “we can all get along, all America has to do is be more deferential and humble”, the moral relativism that’s taken hold under Obama in particular, will lead to our doom if unchecked.
Freedom is a blessing that we must cling to with vigor. It will not survive if we continue to take it for granted.
Gee, Ben, I believe Mansur, as well as many others, takes these things you mention as givens. He is saying wake up, attend to those things we have to do to summon the will to defeat our enemies.
There is hope. Though our timid, sentimental, and politically correct leaders[?] have not yet shown the courage, leaders and/or past leaders of the major countries of Europe have now spoken out against multiculturalism, the unwillingness to accept the culture of the country one has migrated to; leaders of the UK, Germany, France, and Spain. This is not the beginning of the end for our enemies, but it may be the beginning of the beginning.
See also Robt. at #10.
“So 9/11 is the fault of….. the decadent West?”
No, Mr Mansur did not say that. He did say that our response to 9/11 has been hobbled by our politics.
BTW, recall another Russian official of recent years. Days after 9/11, the Russian ambassador to Belgium was quoted as speculating “The Americans will rebuild the Towers to show they will not be cowed.” He got the point of what needed to be done.
Once New York began to show indecision on a rebuild, Congress and George Bush should have exercised eminent domain, made the property a Federal reservation, rebuilt the Towers (Trump’s proposal was the best), and ordered every Federal office in the Tri-state area into the Towers if commercial renters were slow to return. Privatization could come later after the need to reassert national determination had been met.
We were fools to not have done this.
Sadly, the towers were in New York State–and, even worse, in Manhattan. The absence of the rebuilding of those towers isn’t a demonstration that the terrorists have “won”, so much as a demonstration that we have bogged ourselves down in so much bureaucracy, that we couldn’t do something so basic as to rebuild those towers!
I’d like to think that, if the attack happened anywhere else, we would have rebuilt quickly, like the Pentagon was…but I can’t be so sure. We have too many regulations–federal, state, local–to predict where rebuilding could and could not have happened!
Agreed. Congress could have limited local interference in any bill empowering an eminent domain taking. Too few saw it as important – and still too few understand that these were our commercial Minarets [which is why they had to go]. Again, the fault lies with us and with those we elect.
Thank you Mr. Mansur for explaining the thinking behind our failures.
Yes. regulations have affected this. Just my opinion, but I beleve that even more, our own dhimmi-hood (rather, that of the elites) has made it impossible. Our leaders have been out psy-op’d by those who would turn every suggestion to muslims into an insult, every independent move into a “humiliation of the other.” If there had been a fire, I don’t think regs would have kept the US from rebuilding. It’s this horrific concern on the part of elected leaders and unelected “experts” in academia and the media who have made the “victory mosque” a possibility, if not yet a reality.
Not only the twin towers. We cant even build a simple menorial to the heroes of flight 93 in Shanksville,Pa without PC getting in the way. A moslem crescent where MOSLEMS murdered American citizens? HOW DARE THEY. Every single one of the moslem filth need to be kicked out. They are not AMERICANS or patriots. There loyalty is to that STINKING KORAN, not our constitution.
Calm down, Darth. There are plenty of Muslim American patriots. Freakin’ A, demonizing all members of Islam doesn’t help anyone.
Islam is unique among all the religions of the world (unless you include Marxism as a religion) in calling for the destruction of whatever non-Islamic government a good muslim lives under. You are wrong. You are either a good Muslim, or a Patriotic American. It is logically impossible to be both.
While there may be many cultural Muslims that are in it for the feasts, fasts, and pilgrimages rather than jihad, even they are suspect – in the same way as a man that hasn’t (yet) molested any children, but likes to watch child porn is suspect.
“Muslim American Patriots”, you say. HA hA hA!
Hi Ben.
I suggest you re-read the article. He, the author, is correct.
Not at all. He has identified the ideological and geographical source of the attack, and lamented that our response, a decade later, is constrained by a refusal to accept the nature of the threat we face.
There is no possible way the Islamists can defeat us. We can, however, preemptively surrender to them, and that is indeed what we are in the process of doing.
He makes some excellent points. Greece was both powerful, and responsible, as long as it had Persia to contend with. Rome was the same, with Carthage as its main challenger. And even Japan remained united, with a culture based on the code of Bushido, as long as it had Mongol-ruled China to contend with.
Once those external threats were gone, however, things changed. Greece became a series of squabbling city-states which forgot why they had united to begin with, ruled by “enlightened sophisticates” who were only concerned with not letting anyone criticize them for their sexual excesses, and browbeating anyone else who dared to question their “perfect” theories of what the world was really like. (One later scholar opined that “the great sin of the Greeks was not sodomy, but extrapolation”.)
Rome became an Empire, rather than a Republic. In the end, it became an Empire ruled by a succession of bad leaders (Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, etc.) who were either weak, dangerously insane, or both at the same time. Believe it or not, both Caligula and Nero were hailed by the people when they first came to power, in the belief that they would be an improvement over their immediate predecessors. The Roman citizenry soon learned that it is possible to go from bad to worse, because “worse” has no bottom limit.
As for Japan, once China ceased to be a problem, the leaders began squabbling like the Greeks over who was the greatest, while simultaneously practically raising racial superiority and attendant xenophobia to a religion. The end result was the Tokugawa shogunate, which only ended when the United States Navy paid a call in 1854 to discuss the locals’ nasty habit of executing shipwrecked mariners.
The moral here is not that civilizations need “existential threats” to remain viable. It is rather that the systems conceived to ensure responsible government only work as long as those in power must prove, repeatedly and constantly, that they are in fact qualified for the job. Once the need for the leaders to behave sensibly, and deal with the world as it is rather than as they wish it were, is gone, it becomes all too easy to assume that anyone who has managed to get to the top of their polity is qualified to be there- by virtue of just being there.
Unfortunately, it isn’t always true.
clear ether
eon
Sexual excesses and drug induced stupors? I’ll take a gang of outlaw bikers over the effetes in Washington any day.
Unfortunately, what is true is that most that reach a comfortable plateau of either power or wealth assume an attitude of superiority simply by having ascended to some more notable peer level of society. Neither have they ever looked back to measure the degree of broken, damaged and dead accumulation of souls lining their route of ascent nor kept corrected moral measure of those already at a summit of success.
Upon arrival at their career apex the truth of their unbridled rise to fame looms undeniable to the few that have remained sober throughout the trip. Now the trap of philanthropic philosophy to anesthetize pain of reality is sprung. Too bad that the wealth again falls into the hands of more of those that will neither sweat for success nor guarantee efficiency in scrambling the golden eggs of their benefactor goose.
Morality was lost at the beginning not at the end. Consumers will continue to support the parasites of capitalism without a thought , at least til they get hungry.
For those, probably in the U.S., who may be unfamiliar with Salim Mansur’s writing, I’d just like to say that he’s a very well respected, (among those who believe in reality, i.e. non-liberals), in Canada, and his comments are always well worth listening to.
And for those of us who used to regularly enjoy Krusty, Dunf, Salim and all the rest in the Toronto Sun, it’s been a long time.
Good thing we’ve got the web to keep us company now…not to mention keeping fingertips free of ink.
We have the web for the moment, but not for long, if Obama has anything to do with it.
Oops, neglected to insert “commentator” after “respected”.
Dr. Mansur has hit a home run. One of the original sins that founded this great country was that the foppish elites had taken over the British Government and turned it in to a bureaucracy that no-one could love.
And that is where we are today. Our response to crises is to build a bureaucracy. We are rapidly pushing notions of “Git-er-done” toward redneck humor instead of a healthy way of life.
“Ten years after 9/11, we, the broad public of liberal democracies, still have not fully grasped the meaning of that horror-filled morning, or understood without any apologetics or polemics the evil nature and ideology of the men who planned and executed the deed.”
I’ve always believed this. I’ve always believed that the American people don’t really comprehend the magnitude of the struggle we are in with radical Islam. This is the fault of both Bush and Obama, who always tried and still try to minimize this threat, asking people to “shop” and go about their daily lives.
What we are involved in is a generational struggle with a bunch of religious fanatics. This struggle will last a lot longer than the Cold War because these same fanatics have been around for centuries in the Middle East. Will we be able to totally “defeat” them? Probably not. Various Islamic factions have been slaughtering each other for centuries in the Middle East. If we think we are going to stop this blood feud against us in a year or two, especially with US troops fighting two wars in the Middle East right now, you’re dreaming and understand very little about the mind set of the fanatics in that part of the world.
What we can (maybe) do is discourage these nuts from attacking us again. They will still be there, but they will understand that they are facing the laws of diminishing returns if they continue to attack us. They will risk total destruction if they attack us on our soil again and if more Americans are killed like they were on 9/11, the Middle East will turn into a major ash heap. The religious crazies in the Middle East know we have the power to do this, but they do NOT believe we have the will to carry through on our threats. And, with people like Obama in office, they’re right.
Our threats will only work, will only discourage them, if they know we will follow through on them. If, for example, we suffer a major attack in the US again, perhaps we flatten the al Qaeda/Taliban stronghold in Quetta, Pakistan? Or Maybe we thoroughly bomb every Taliban/al Qaeda stronghold in northern Pakistan and send a message that wherever they go, we will find and kill them and whoever helps these people and allows them to operate in their towns and cities will pay an aweful price for doing so. THAT will send a message and possibly discourage them from attacking us again.
We really are in a death struggle with these people. And it will only get worse. When countries like Iran get nuclear weapons, do you really think things will get better in the Middle East? Americans have to realize that we’ve entered a new “Cold War” that is very hot and is going to last for possibly generations to come. And if we don’t acknowledge that, then we may as well give up right now.
Libertyship46,
I agree with your fear that America must suffer another serious attack, possibly loss of a city, before we awaken to the threat of Islam — and I see it as a threat from Islam itself, not from a fringe of “radicals” or “extremists” as our leaders try to persuade us. Muhammad relayed the command of his god to conquer the entire world, so the degree of devotion of any Muslim to his beliefs is a direct measure of his threat to us.
I disagree that bombing scattered hovels and caves in Pakistan will have any meaningful effect, except to further aggravate the hatred and malignancy already directed at us.
When and if attack becomes necessary, I believe it should be aimed to destroy the structure of Islam itself. Two of the five pillars of Islam relate to Mecca: daily prayer is directed there, and pilgrimage is made to there. It is also the center of the wellspring of Saudi power, that is financing worldwide jihad, and of the power of their god.
We should quietly advise the Saudis now, that we will hold them responsible (as they are, by financing and generating the militant advance of Islam) for any attack on our nation, and that we will retaliate by turning Mecca into a sea of volcanic glass.
I have been saying this for the past three years. If they never do anything else, they have already brought America to its knees by disrupting our lives, having us searched and patted and insulted every time we try to fly and blowing a king’s ransom on security investments. If they want to twist the knife they’ve stuck into our bellies they have simply to start a rumor that another terror attack is under way and we jump through more of their hoops. It is impossible for us to control or eradicate the lunatic and radical elements in Islam but we can delegate the job to the governments that run Islamic countries by informing them that they will pay for any acts by terrorists from their countries. They won’t believe us, of course, but if after the next attempt by a terrorist from say, Saudi Arabia, we turn the industrial city of Al Jubail into a parking lot, they’ll get the message. It’s one of their smaller cities with less than 300,000 population – we don’t want to go overboard at the outset. We simply need to convince them that we mean what we say. Their administration has plenty of experience and talent in executing draconian laws and they are perfectly capable of controlling and/or eliminating their radical elements. If they realize that the next city may be Mecca or Riyadh, you will find them turning their Wahabi Mullahs and al Queda operatives into Presbyterian choir boys – or martyrs pushing up daisies. It will be more difficult with the Islamic states presently in disarray. Here we must zero in on the primary groups devoted to our destruction who don’t represent any one country but who operate throughout the world – such as the MB. Here we should employ Mossad techniques with assassinations of leaders and organizers. In evaluating presidential candidates for 2012, we need to ask them very direct questions on this subject and we need clear answers before we give them our votes.
Thank you, excellent.
I was unfamiliar with Arbatov, who one-upped Gramsci.
One small typo you may wish to correct — I think you meant “24 *years*”
The 24 mos. he’s refering to is from the end of WWII ’til the formation of NATO.
Salim,
Great summary of what I feel, with more elegance than I could ever muster. Thanks. I hope others will read it.
But after 1992 we have been in the state of enjoying our unrestrained appetite for endless orgy, the zeal that comes to declining bodies from the artificiality of induced eroticism by pills which give to narcissists of the “sixties” generation the pathetic sense of immortality. These are the folks the people have elected to run their lives, protect their cultural legacy, hold back the enemies of freedom, maintain balance of power in strategic and vulnerable regions of the world and, as Burke reminded his own generation, maintain the promise of the present and inheritance of the past as trustees for the unborn generations of the future.
This is as close to a Sarah Palin endorsement as one can get without actually mentioning her name.
Mr Mansur unfortunately doesn’t address the problem. After bin Laden etc are gone, the foundational texts of Islam that provided the direction, motivation and justification for the attacks will remain. The hard truth is that the hijackers of Islam are the moderates.
True, but there’s a ray of hope.
Last week, David Cameron stated that:
1) We should be less tolerant of militant Islam; both in our midst and abroad.
2) Multi-culturalism has failed.
Under that cover, both Sarkozy and Merkel have repeated the comment regarding multi-culti.
Admittedly only words, but one hopes it’s the beginning of a long road back to some form of realism.
Actually Cameron was following Merkle who opened the subject a couple of months ago.
We can and we will overcome the incompetence and despotism of the statist-in-Chief and the mush-headed kleptocrats of the Left.
It may take a generation or three, but it will happen. Such is my faith in humankind.
The majority of the US has no intention of going into ruin; that’s the goal of the political class. Believe it or not, they won’t get their way.
My breath caught reading this. To see such profound words pour forth from a Muslim of good heart . . .
Thank you, dear Salim.
Amen,or as my Middle English ancestors
would have said ‘Sothlice’; Truly spoken.
A better question is, why did 75% of my co-religionists vote for him? And an even better question is, why do about 50% of them still support him?
I think you are talking about Jews and since I am one I will answer your question. Most American Jews are, sadly, ignorant about Judaism. They are led by hucksters who claim to be Rabbis whose business is to sell whatever feels good in the moment. All semblance of true Judaism has been purposely squeezed out. So while they identify themselves as Jews, and according to Jewish law many of them may be, they are rootless spiritually. They no longer fear G-d. And just as nature abhors a vacuum so does the spiritual world. It is sad to see.
Plain and simple The Jews are their own worst enemies. We are unable to learn from our own history until is too late.
Nihil obstat – Catholics are nearly in lockstep with the Jews: more than half of them voted for Obama the Nihilist. Maybe another strike for Jesus? Folly knows no bounds, and prevails easily regardless of race and/or denomination.
Yes, Menachem, this is very sad. That the Jews vote liberal is a travesty/tragedy—and absolutely against their best interests. (Like the feminists and homosexuals: what do they think their fate will be if the Muslims triumph?)
I’m an observant Christian, and I firmly believe that the West’s appalling lack of resolve has everything to do with its secularization. The countries of the West—far too many of them socialist, Canada, included—have turned their backs on the G_d of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus, as well as on their Judeo-Christian histories. (E.g., The European Union Constitution deliberately, and I’d say maliciously, left out ANY mention of Europe’s Judeo-Christian roots.) G.K. Chesterton said, “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.” Most folks in the West have fallen for anything—the worst example being the election of a Marxist moron called Obama.
Canada has a reasonably good leader in the Conservative PM, Stephen Harper, who makes Obama look like the nitwit he is. E.g., During Obama’s 2009, four hour visit to our capital, Ottawa—Obama said how happy he was to be in Iow . . . whoops!—Harper spoke, in a statesman-like way, in English and French, from notes. On the other hand, Obama looked like a bobble head, as his swung from side to side, teleprompter to teleprompter. (As Bugs would say, “What a maroon!”)
Harper’s Conservatives are making some changes in policy to counteract the worst aspects of creeping Sharia, but not anywhere near enough. At the moment, the Conservatives have a minority government—a combination of our four very left-wing parties outnumber the Conservatives in Parliament—and they won’t be able to make, even if they want to (e.g., Harper hasn’t yet said that multiculturalism’s a failure), any sweeping changes until they get a majority. Conservatives here are like Republicans in the USA: academia, the MSM, and all other cultural elites slam them at every opportunity. It’s hard to get a majority with the deck so astonishingly stacked against one.
It was a very pleasant surprise to see Salim Mansur, a scholar and a gentleman, featured here today. His journalist job is with Sun Media, that’s launching Canada’s first ever Fox-like TV network next month. Yeah! Of course, the elites are screaming bloody murder and, being the tolerant and diversity-loving folks they are, have done everything possible to block Sun Media. I hope we’ll be seeing Professor Mansur on our TV screens some day soon!
Yes “Lookout” indeed we have a great Prime Minister. What’s interesting is that I find many of our fellow Jews who once voted liberal, are now going Conservative because of Harper. He is a principled man, who knows what’s right from wrong, and doesn’t sit on the fence about it.
As for Obama, I once spoke to my American Jewish friends about him and I was appalled at how defensive and angry they were that I would even say something negative. I couldn’t believe their reaction. I’m sorry to say, they are lost Jewish souls and are in for a rude awakening.
Can’t wait for our version of Fox News!
Canada, yes, I’m hoping that Canadian Jews will wake up and smell the coffee, re PM Harper. He’s been a true supporter of Israel, unlike the lefty Liberals, for whom the Jews have traditionally voted. Your news on that score is very encouraging.
Why should this Jew fear the Maker? He talks to me when ever I need instruction and I listen.
Thank You Salim… Excellent letter, Two sentences from your letter that struck home are…
(Ten years after 9/11, the West has as leaders Obama and Cameron, Sarkozy, Berlusconi, and Merkel still clinging to the fantasy that Islamists are merely a Middle Eastern version of Milton and Locke, Tocqueville and Mill, leading the reform of the Islamic civilization that once gave us Alhambra and the Taj Mahal, Omar Khayyam and the tales from the Arabian Nights.)
(The fault, as Cassius reminds Brutus, is in ourselves, a decaying civilization that will be saved (if it will be) not by the snobs in Washington and New York, London and Paris, Rome and Berlin, but by our version of the unsophisticated children of truckers who are now waking up from the drug-induced stupor of their parents’ and grandparents’ generation.)
Profound and enlightening essay, but one quibble. We constitutional-conservative Americans do not elect our leaders to “run our lives.”
You know that, so do I, and so do most posters here at PJM.
I’m not sure our “political class”, in either party, understand this. I am sure, however, that our “enlightened elite’” on the left reject the principle out of hand.
As Daniel Webster once said,
“There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.”
cheers
eon
Feel free to share your insight with our present administration and the media. If they’ll listen. You do recall, during 2008, the scattering of idiot media commentators who slipped and remarked how Obama would “rule?”
Oops. Fortunately the machine worked as planned. Even today we still know more about Sarah Palin, the losing VP candidate, than we do about Obama.
On second thought, the media would listen. Then they’d snicker at what an ignorant teabagger you were, and suggest you have a shrine to the mythical Constitution “those people” are always going on about.
We’ve been betrayed. America was betrayed.
How can such a brilliant and insightful man remain chained by a religion founded by a charlatan and murderer? I suspect you claim to be a muslim in an effort to continue to have influence with your brothers, if in name only, so as to save some from their hell on earth. Perhaps in your own brilliance you have actually eschewed religion completely as simply the never ending wish fulfillment and salve for the human condition. Look deeper. This impossible universe we cannot comprehend did not create itself.
Just as most, or rather nearly all Christians can dismiss the more bloodthirsty parts of the Old Testament, I don’t see why modern Muslims can’t accept the interpretation of “jihad” as an inner struggle, or look on the more bloodthirsty elements of the Koran and the Hadith as archaic and not relevant.
Granted, it’s tricky, considering the eagerness jihadis have to slaughter fellow Muslims who aren’t on board.
The historian Tom Holland wrote that while in the west we often complain that Islam has not had a Reformation, it might be more apt to lament that they have not had a Canossa. Pope Gregory was more subversive and revolutionary than he knew, for in insisting on the Church’s prerogatives against the secular authority of the Holy Roman Emperor, he laid the ground work for separation of church and state. This idea is an abomination to fundamentalist Islam.
I think your OT analogy is weak.
A more accurate one would be if the Gospels had been blood thirsty.
They aren’t — but the Koran is.
Why is it weak? The OT is where you find all the terrific begattings and slayings, which so captivated the protagonist of A Clockwork Orange. The whole point of being a Christian is accepting that the arrival of Jesus fulfilled God’s promise.
However, I can see your point if you mean the Gospels supersede the OT… in which case we ought to ask how the Jews manage to avoid being bloodthirsty (okay, that’s a rhetorical question – the Jews have millenia of commentary and analysis to rely on, something that is halal to Islam. Allah’s word to Mohammed is unquestionable).
Salim, many in America were not awake as this hurricane of history has rolled upon us. The overspending in our culture and the plethora of easy credit rocked so many to sleep in our and other cultures.
Having said that, we are now fully awake and “Morning in america” is about to experience the full disinfecting light of the lies of the liberals and the flawed leadership of the republicans. We know what is important and we are now battling the forces of evil in the media who protect and prevaricated about the intentional murder of America by the liberal elites and the Progressives in both parties.
It is going to be close but I have great faith in God and in the American people. We are fighting for our very country. fellow Patriots and believers in Democracy throughout the world will have to fight many of their own battles. America is here but it is also time for the rest of the world to wake up out of their centuries long sleep of paternalism and tyranny. Common sense can only point to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness as the true things that all humans must want. My prayers go out for all of us in our pursuit of FREEDOM!
Good post and good points but I think Arbatov was probably being a bit more traditional Communist in his outlook. Suggesting that without the Soviet boogeyman the Capitalist warmongers would no longer have any fig leaf to justify their ways.
God bless you, sir, for so adequately summarizing where we are and how we got here. Not since Judge Bork’s book have I read such a piquantly phrased precis of our decline.
I see this mentality daily weather speaking to someone directly such as my parents who are hardcore Democrats and believe the Democratic Party are the be all to fix everything our Conseritive/Republican Party has evidently screwed up when in fact you state it very nicely the flower children of the 50′s & 60′s are what I like to refer to as the MeMe Generation where they feel so entitled to everything and where they all voted for someone on their Look’s and wether or not they were nice when they spoke to someone and what there demeaner was.
It didn’t matter if they knew what they were talking about on any given subject no not one bit, you just had to have a full set of Teeth, nice family, and was good looking and that’s where the old saying comes from I believe is they would say “My Great look’s will get me far in the Political arena” I to when I was young & Stupid would fall for the same ideology and would use those very same standards as to who I was going to vote for in my first election and of course my parents played a big role as they would preach to me who was the candidate to vote for. But if we don’t change this ideal of thought around and do it soon than were going to be in a bad place and it’s not as nice a place as Egypt currently is now. They have more fire in the belly than anyone group or faction does within our Borders today but I will say the TP has been a go getter to fight for what we believe and what Regan would have believed in as well.
Salim, the politicians our parents elected sold us into slavery when the surplus monies from Social Security were used to buy the votes of the poor instead of saving assets for their own generation’s retirement years. That ponzi scheme was started by LBJ by the way. That happened during the Soviet period – sovietism was really just a masrikova for Great Russian imperialism in any case. You can go back a bit farther on socialism security, but up until then the effect was marginal. The wealth transfer was used by American politicians to breed more poor dependents who would vote for yet more wealth transfers, again controlled by the politicians, who lined their pockets (and that of their friends) in the process. Democratic corporatism (which is in fact the actual, clinically stated form of our current government, wherein both parties are democratic corporatist [the variant of fascism, not the widely bruited government of and by big business according to left "liberal" propaganda], they just support different client interests) has bankrupted itself – they’ve run out of plunder and it is going to get ugly. This is in fact, a significant opportunity for the Salfists and their allies in Teheran. Too bad for us Americans. I’m not saying we can’t or won’t overcome the challenge, just that it will be very costly when it finally comes to blows. And it will come to war. Best case is Vienna, 1683. This is going to be a civilizational challenge for the West. Meanwhile the Chinese are looking for their opportunity. I wonder whose side they will weigh in on, their debtors (us), or that of the Islamists and their oil?
It is true that after the fall of the USSR, America ran out of enemies. But I thought that was the point, as Reagan told us, to defeat the Commies.
But there was always another enemy lurking in the corner — the Chicoms. They were always there in background. Remember back to the movies like the Manchurian Candidate. Islam was never considered an enemy back then.
I agree that the present President is woefully out of his depth during this crisis. When the crisis comes at midnight what we got what this pathetic little man looking Presidential and managing to do more harm than good. I suppose this is the smart diplomacy that we are getting.
These are very troublesome times. In the midst of this little crisis (yes this is a little crisis), we get a dismal performance. Imagine what will happen when something really big happens. Events such as the Chicoms buying up most of the wheat, the Caliphate launching an attack on Jordan or Lebanon will
really make us regret the fact that Obama was elected to this office.
Shalom Salim,
You are truly a man of intellectual rigor, capable of separating fact from fantasy, unlike western leaders, particularly the PC addled leaders in Washington.
It is not for nothing that monstrous jihadists believe they are winning.They are.They are winning the war of ideas,where they brazenly trumpet jihad and the Caliphate, as opposed to our leaders who are not only terrified to name the enemy, but are ashamed of their western ideals.
Either the Islamists will prevail or the west will.It won’t be both.My money is on the jihadists, they mean what they say,act aggressively and with ruthless abandon to support their ideas.IF only our leaders would do the same!!
Thank you Salim for a truly outstanding article.
One small point I would like to add is that not only is the highest civilian office in the US tarnished so utterly, but also the highest ranks in the US military are likewise tarnished. Of course political correctness has always been a major factor in deciding who gets promoted from O-6 to Flag Rank, but now it appears not only political correctness but Leftist Ideology has become the ONLY factor in deciding who receives generals or admirals stars.
Speaking as a US Army junior officer (many, many years ago), I was never surprised to see our civilian politicians of both parties being 1-notch short of traitors, but unfortunately now I am seeing our Flag Officers becoming the same – which is something I never expected. Therefore sadly, I can not believe anything that comes from any Flag Officer, either Active or Retired. And unless the American people stand up and take back this government, I expect it only to get worse.
I have no respect for either McChrystal or especially George Casey. Sestak, a total idiot, actually made it to 3 stars before his own subordiantes turned on him and got him demoted. There are no real George Pattons or Douglass McArthurs anymore, men who actually understood what war was and HOW TO WIN them. Luckily, we finally are beginning to grow a generation of real men again. Lets pray its not too late.
I have never read a more succinct summation of what we in the west face or a better explanation of how we got to where we are. The fact that it could be accomplished in two pages speaks volumes about the wisdom of the author.
My heart too beats with the fearful optimism that we will wake from our ignorance in time to preserve our society…only time will tell
Look, Mr. Mansur, when someone else is pressing upon us, there are limited options, some unpleasant, like war. When we are pressing upon ourselves, all we have to do is wise up. The Soviet Union fell because Communism is not a viable system in the long run – too many inefficiencies. So it will be for any system that can be bested by innovations. The worst thing we can do in the West is be impatient. Sometimes things need to get worse before they get better.
Let me just give you an example: Mr. Obama’s healthcare system is a disaster. But we live in magic times. It is not this or that system that will save our health, but progress in research. There are companies working right now on universal flu vaccines. How much suffering and disability will be saved when this product comes to market? Medical costs will decrease and people will be happier. Nothing to do with Obama or British NHS. Of course, people will live longer and there will be fewer jobs in the healthcare sector, placing other stresses upon our system, but that’s OK too. We will find a way to cope. That is what humans do.
Peace
Jerry…right on! Capitalism is the mother of innovation. Innovation is the mother of progress. Unfortunately we are in now the hands of socialists looking for the ephemeral “social justice” or something. What they give us is expanding poverty. Check out the history of USSR and all the rest of the socialist experiments. We must drive them back to their cubicles in academia or where ever they came from in the first place. We must also deal with the likes of George Soros & ilk who are the great enablers of much of this foolishness.
I had written in disbelief, as I watched the primaries unfold, of how American voters could be so beguiled by a charlatan of the Harold Hill type from The Music Man and vote for Obama. I was wrong in my overestimation of reason and experience among American voters as a check on the naivete of the university crowd and the duplicity of Lenin’s “useful idiots” in free societies.
Depressing, eh ?
…to narcissists of the “sixties” generation the pathetic sense of immortality. These are the folks the people have elected to run their lives, protect their cultural legacy, hold back the enemies of freedom, maintain balance of power in strategic and vulnerable regions of the world and, as Burke reminded his own generation, maintain the promise of the present and inheritance of the past as trustees for the unborn generations of the future.
Beyond depressing.
…the West has as leaders Obama and Cameron, Sarkozy, Berlusconi, and Merkel still clinging to the fantasy that Islamists are merely a Middle Eastern version of Milton and Locke, Tocqueville and Mill, leading the reform of the Islamic civilization that once gave us Alhambra and the Taj Mahal, Omar Khayyam and the tales from the Arabian Nights.
Signs of life as Cameron and Merkel have made recent public statements that “multiculturalism” doesn’t work. Sarkozy followed suit yesterday.
Berlusconi is, obviously, preoccupied. Obama is, of course, utterly hopeless on the subject of modern day Islamists and how they’re attempting to re-configure human existence.
Eloquent, artful and spot-on. I’ve felt like this since at least 1994, and have been derided as a wet blanket, a killjoy, a curmudgeon. But it’s undeniable that there is a crisis of confidence in America today, the effects of which I’ve seen from boardrooms to trailer parks. Something has hollowed out what used to be the bedrock of America, setting us on a path of mindless consumption, suicidal addiction and enervating self-pity. I don’t know if we can get it back, honestly.
Dear Salim Mansor,
That Obama Advanced through the politicl ranks so fast is from startling; had his rise not been so sudden, people would have seen through him before he got the nomination. In fact, had the news on Rev. Wright been common knowledge before Super Tuesday, he would never had won the nomination. The fact that Hillary so so slow to explore the Obama Wright relationship can be ascribed to Patti Soltis, Hillary’s campaign chair -and an Obama mole.
That loud metallic ringing sound you hear in the background is the hammer hitting the nail on the head. America now has a new enemy in Islam, an enemy which, should its most radical elements get enough weapons of mass destruction to do so, will not adhere to any concept of Mutually Assured Destruction to keep them from literally destroying the West. Rather they will adhere to the concept of Martyr Assured Destruction, or as Tom Lehrer put it in his song “We’ll All Go Together When We Go”:
…”And we will all bake together when we bake.
There’ll be nobody present at the wake.
With complete participation
In that grand incineration,
Nearly three billion hunks of well-done steak.”
It therefore behooves us to quit kissing their buttocks AND START KICKING IT…HARD!
Is what we are seeing due to the removal of an enemy or is it that the collapse of communism is now being followed by collapse of socialism and liberalism?
How could it have been said any better!
I enjoyed reading this because you are on target so much. I hadn’t thought about the part about how Russian Communism helped keep the other group of extremists in check. As to who gets voted in, I still don’t trust those diebold machines. And most the people don’t know jack and don’t care to enlighten themselves, even the ones who call themselves informed and all for human rights, etc. The media does a lot to keep things from being exposed that should be and some stuff that should be left at the door. I think when people go through a long period of time where there is a lot of dissention and disagreement, they tend to vote for or cause a political situation that is extremely to the other end of the spectrum or so totalitarian that it begs belief, but it is reality.
This is simply a superb piece, and the first I’ve read in a long time that I can agree with entirely. It reminds me of how the Democratic Party, after failing miserably to reduce the number of Black Americans with the brutality of their wholly owned subsidiary the KKK, succeeded at last via ‘keep abortion legal.’ Loss of an open and obvious enemy is just plain confusing, and makes the shades harder to discern. Back when the Soviets were firebombing villages in Afghanistan a leftist couldn’t crow too loudly without being seen as a traitor, but now an open traitor (during the Cold War) such as John Kerry can be nominated for president and win just shy of half the vote.
I don’t hold out much hope while the Boomers are in charge, and I’m none too sure how my own generation will handle things. There is cause for hope in my generation, however; most of us despise the Boomers, and for that reason alone will avoid their footsteps. Incidentally by Boomers I do not mean the entire Baby Boom generation, just those who did everything they could to destroy the world they were born into, and now feel nostalgic for it and buy 60s throwback Camaros and Mustangs.
As a boomer, I can tell you we’re not real crazy about the next generation either. (Tho’ I won’t be as rude as to say we “despise” you, tho’ “not all of you.”) The Tea Party that probably saved Western Civilization in 2010 is all ages, but very much a boomer group
Two observations:
Obama carried an almost insurmountable advantage over McCain into the 2008 election. He was the “clean” African American the Democrats had been hoping for. All the independents and not a few Repubicans willfully ignore his ideology and his tiny resume’ so they could vote for a black man and convince themselves they were not the racists they were constantly labeled by the race mongers in our society.
Second, if the Russions, a/k/a the Soviets, constituted a disciplining force for the West that now seems absent, a theory that may have some merit, then the West had better begin to pay more attention to China. The Chinese have the potential to be much more of a threat than the soviets.
While I beleive Red China has been flying under the radar for 2 decades, I also find that Red China , as a communist country, cannot survive as one. None can. Just as Arbatov predicted the West would struggle without an enemy, Communism cannot survive without capitalism. The USSR needed the lend lease program and our grain to survive. Red China suffered killer famines and thousands dead in natural disasters because of communisms inability to provide material goods quickly due to bureacratic bungling. Same with islam-hundreds of billions in oil revenues and STILL Islam cant provide simple things like decent housing or a solid quality of life. Red China only thrives today because of Western companies who moved there because of the govt policies of the West that drive out business. If the West decides to leave, a communist China will never rise again. Only a capitlaist China would survive.
A wonderful essay to say the least.
Reminds me of why the drug wars are so bad. I concluded that when they got rid of the Mafia (for the most part) that the government created a void. The Mafia operated in an organized fashion with a hiarchy whereas the hoodlums of today don’t care who they shoot, or why, because none of them expect to live past 25.
As always the law of unintended consequences kicks in.
Sexual excesses and drug induced stupors? We could use a lot more outlaw bikers.
Mr. Mansur is correct about American internal politics, less so about international politics. It is now quiet obvious that a significant fraction of Americans hate Exxon, and George Bush far more than Osama Ben Laden. I find this bizarre, but it is a fact. The frat party antics at Abu Ghraib, changed the world. Photos of naked prisoners were deemed infinitely worse than decades of slaughter, by entrenched killers, over 25 % of the globe. The handling of the prisoners at Gitmo, has broken our Judiciary, Legislature, and Executive branches of government. No leader can answer a simple soldier’s question, “What do I do with this guy?”
Internationally, educated people knew that following the collapse of the USSR, a system resting on terror and the gun, that billions of repressed peoples would struggle against their local war lords. Like a deadly onion, if you peel off one layer, a fatal layer again lays on the surface. The WARSAW nations, and Yugoslavia boiled: now Islam is boiling.
No one knows the future, will it resolve peacefully and positively? For people who can read, the statements of Joe Biden, Hillary, and Obama are clearly self contradictory, by the hour. Their positive political power, among the “Arab street” is zero. They are far more united on solar cells, and outlawing coal combustion, than on free Muslims. Regulating dangerous US nuclear power plants is far more important to them than stopping the spread of Bush’s “non existent” WMD. They respond to their navel gazing constituency.
The Muslims also have a conundrum of which no one is allowed to speak. A small fraction, but millions, within their religion hold that it is OK to kill non believers, even Muslims who hold differing religious interpretations. This slaughter has spread from the nations of Islam to all continents. Terror is their evangelistic technique. But we all now live in the atomic age; this is no longer a feasible control technique.
Reviewing the cards, I expect mushrooms will grow in the US, and elsewhere. God help us all.
Well stated.
I am proud to have Salim as a friend. Those of us who know him can tell you reams about his courage, honesty, intellectual rigour. This is, simply stated, one of his finest essays on political matters. It is remarkable for the breadth of ground covered in such a short piece. Salim’s wisdom shines through. If only our political leaders would pay attention and act accordingly!
Salim is a Muslim in name only. Might as well make it official and leave Islam and become a Jew. Does he have anything good to say about Muslim countries?
As a former Marine and a Muslim, I am proud of my service to this country but I am also disgusted with these token Muslims, who despise their heritage and religion so much, as to degrade and attack it at any given moment.
Nothing worse than a disloyal man.
Excellent thought. May he leave your cult of doom and join a tradition that provides a framework for life, life and continuity. You too.
So, “deepthought,” which do you consider yourself to be first and foremost? American or Muslim?
Interesting. From my reading he despised the radical jihadists, the terrorists.
So since you think he is disloyal then do you support the radical jihadists because they are Muslim? Do you support terrorists or would you turn them over to the authorities if you knew about their plans? Do you support military action against those who attack this country?
Is it disloyal to fight murderous thugs killing civilians under cover of jihad? And are you disloyal to your country?
Of course he’s disloyal to the United States of America. He’s only loyal to the Islamic States of America, that future mirage where everyone lives (and dies) under sharia law, a “holy” land without anything we hold dear. The equal rights begun in our Revolution, completed after our Civil War, and fully brought to life in our civil rights movement will be no more in that misshapen vision.
A big part of the problem is that we look at the small fraction of muslis (although millions, yes) without realizing that majorities in every muslim country may not say they want to kill the infidel, but they will back sharia law. It’s not unusual to see percentages like 75%, 65%, etc. of the population in muslim countries being in favor of the death penalty for apostasy, for instance. Add to those millions who want to kill us several more million who want us and everyone under sharia with all its attending horror, and the problem grows exponentially.
Dear ‘Michael’,
Don’t be brainwashed and blinded by Mr. Mansour’s spin – he is only brave in the fact that he lays bare his hypocricsy and intellectual fraud, hoping PC fools like you will believe it.
You state “From my reading he despised the radical jihadists, the terrorists.” And Mr. Mansur even reinforces this when he rails against “the evil nature and ideology of the men who planned and executed the (9/11) deed.”
But if you open your eyes, you will understand that this is a BIG FAT LIE.
By proclaiming himself as a Muslim, he affirms his alliance to Muhammed, and Muhammeds Islamic teachings and morality.
But Muhammed WAS the very ‘radical jihadist’ that he supposedly despises. Muhammed was the archetypal Islamic Jihadist, every bit as evil and barbaric as the ‘radical jihadists’ of today, and there is simply no way to dispute this FACT.
And “the evil nature and ideology of the men who planned and executed then (9/11) deed” is undeniably THE SAME evil nature and ideology preached and imposed by Muhammed, and the SAME ideology to which he chooses to swear his moral and spiritual allegiance to.
Mr. Mansur is a dangerous dissimulator. He is an info-mercial Islamist selling his cheap Islamo-moralist crap on late night TV to the weak minded.
He is the Constitutionalist Shariaist, the anti-terrorist who worships the worlds most vile terrorist, the liberty loving subjugationist.
DON’T BELIEVE HIM. BELIEVE THE TRUTH.
Well-said. Those who claim to be muslims but “not really” are still allowing that they follow a murderous torturer and rapist.
I never dreamed that I could ever stand up in the defense of a man with a Muslim name but in this case, I am convinced, the only thing Muslim about Mr. Mansur is the name. No one with the clarity of his mind could be a Muslim or a devotee of any other religion. Belief is the lowest form of thinking. Mr. Mansur must be an atheist. And this corroborates my contention that until all the world gives up on the fiction of God and religion, there will never be peace in the world. In stark contrast to Mansur’s clarity of mind, we have you, Anonymous, a nut.
Perhaps it is because Mr. Mansur has determined Islam in not a religious party but a faith Deepthought? Islam is not a political party, or at least it is not intended to be, anymore than my Jesus is a leader of a political party.
Faith in God is something much greater than politic.
m aformer marine also. And your comments about jews make me doubt your service. Most marines know our who our friends our. Criticizing Dr Mansur for merely pointing out the obvious tells me your first loyalty is to the barbaric Koran, not America. Frankly, your attitude disgraces my marine corp.
“On the intent nobody knows you’re a dog.”
Or in this case a “former Marine” and a Muslim. Why didn’t you go for the tried and true “As a concerned Christian conservative” for your concern trolling?
As cliche and blase as it sounds to beg for impeachment…I really can’t think of any politician that deserves it more than our present CIC.
He has demonstrated such a complete lack of competence in foreign affairs, domestic affairs, the economy, and even the politics of race as to be considered not merely incompetent, but downright dangerous.
There was a story that received some coverage here in Canada of a 71 year old woman, who is arthritic, and armed only with her purse (and its contents) gave the business to 6 thugs who were using sledge hammers to get inside a jewelry store.
How much coverage did that receive in the US?
The other point is, as long as growing numbers of people conclude, “Enough
is enough”, the tipping point to real change is closer. Rather than the faux change offered by the Muslim in the Oval Office.
Fox News carried that story (with video) several times a few days ago.
A friend of mine in Israel met Arbatov many many years ago in the old Soviet Union. He assured my friend that the Soviet Union would destroy the US.
And yes, it is a tragic commentary on the national personality that someone like Barack Obama was elected President. Sadder still that his popularity is still so high.
Mr. Mansur here is talking about the degradation of American society that lead up to the stupefying election of the empty suit, Barack Hussein Obama in 2008. You all may not agree with the descriptor, “stupefying” but that describes my reaction almost perfectly and his analysis, in my humble opinion, is dead on. It continues to stupefy me that to this day Obama’s approval rating is near 50%. How is this possible other than that this prima donna continues to impress almost half the American populous with his strut and shuffle routine and his considerable oratorical skills that allow him to slip, slide and lie effortlessly with little fear of opposition except from a relatively feckless and relentlessly and successfully demonized Right. Obama shows no alarm regarding his chances for reelection in 2012 recognizing from personal experience that his chances are excellent. He is relying on what appears to be a relative constant, a majority of the American electorate are woefully ignorant, apathetic, narcissistic and extremely vulnerable to misinformation. Look how well that worked in 2008.
Geppetto, sadly to say, you’re right. We, the people, are responsible for our own actions. We are responsible (not all of us, but over 50% of us, which is a huge percentage) for electing this zero absolute called Obama and still maintain his so called popularity high when he is in his way to transform all of us in slaves with his sardonic smile. Why people like slavery?
The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities-
Sophocles
Dear Mr. Mansur,
Having read your letter, it is clear that you are an intelligent, learned, thoughtful man. But it is also clear that you are in a state of delusion and an intellectual fraud. These truths are betrayed by your worship of the worlds most evil, intolerant, violent, barbaric ‘religion’ known as Islam.
You claim an affinity for liberty, a championing of liberal democracy, and a respect of such western political icons as Reagan, Thatcher, Washington and Lincoln, yet you CHOOSE submission to an oppressive, totalitarian theology, and revere as your moral guide one of the most sadistic, sociopathic, evil barbarians in the pantheon of human history, Muhammed.
These positions are antithetical, Mr. Salim, and if you are intellectually and spritually honest you must admit this truth.
I reiterate that Islam is your CHOICE. While some pious Muslims may be identified by their zebibah, there is no genetic marker that makes one Muslim. You CHOOSE Islam, in spite of your knowledge of the evils it teaches, mandates and inflicts worldwide against non-Muslims and Muslims alike. You CHOOSE Islam in spite of your knowledge of other religions and ideologies that are clearly morally superior.
You know that the prime directive of Islam is the violent subjugation of all non-Islamic territories and peoples, and jihad is the highest calling of all Muslims. You know that Muhammed was a serial killer, a brutal torturer, a heartless amputator, a sociopathic decapitator, a sadistc mutilator, a slaver, a looting stealing thief, a serial rapist, a human slave trafficker, a sex trafficker, a woman hating misogynist, a perfidious liar, a mass murdering genocidist and a self proclaimed terrorist. Yet you CHOOSE to be a Muslim.
By any objective standard, your holy prophet Muhammed should be reviled not revered, and he should have been incarcerated not venerated. Yet you CHOOSE to be a Muslim.
Islam claims the prophetic lineage of Judeo-Christianity, co-opting Moses and Jesus as lesser prophets to the ‘uswa hasana’ Muhammed. Yet Muhammed violated every one of the Ten Commandments, and in his teachings, mandates and life examples was an absolute anti-Christ. Yet you CHOOSE to be a Muslim.
Mr. Salim, we might be able to trust the veracity of your screed if you had the integrity to state the truth about Muhammed and Islam, and reject them both. Until then, you remain just another intellectual fraud.
~ The Infidel Alliance
Infidel,
Your comment to Mr. Mansur was well written. And it is truth. You obviously have a talent with the written word. But let me ask you a fair question.
Do you not find a liability in the tone of your message? Mr. Mansur is no intellectual fraud. Mr. Mansur is a friend to Israel; he points out the shortcomings in the practical application of the Muslim faith today; he’s a friend to America; he is capable of discerning political reality and right from wrong.
Jesus Christ would not approve of the tone of that response, no matter how true. One wonders if you would have condemned the Good Samaritan too for his imperfections.
There’s a time for war and a time for peace. With your obvious talent, you could be far more effective with a lighter touch.
Dear ‘Tex Taylor’,
No. I do you not find any liability in the tone of my message.
Islam and those who profess to follow the teachings, mandates and morality of Islam MUST BE CHALLENGED AND HELD TO ACCOUNT.
Islam is so full of hatred, sadistic violence, intolerance, misogyny and Koranic mandated martial imperialism, people like Mr. Mansur must be engaged directly and we must demand how he can be a friend of a Jew when his religions clearly saysy in black & white “O you who believe! do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends; they are friends of each other; and whoever amongst you takes them for a friend, then surely he is one of them; surely Allah does not guide the unjust people.” – Koran (5:51)
And we must challenge people like you who claim Mr. Mansur is ‘a friend of Israel’ when Mr. Mansur’s faith proclaims “Allah’s Apostle said, “The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say. “O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him.”" – Bukhari (52:177)
These things simply cannot be reconciled. And we must stop being so naive about the truth about Islam and Muhammed.
No matter how erudite and moderate Mr. Mansur is, every time he goes to the mosque for Friday prayers, he propogates an ideology bent on our destruction.
AS for Jesus condemning my tone, I’ll take my chances. I think the lives that might be saved and the human suffering that might be avoided by challenging Islam and Muslims directly is worth risking my soul. And it is the truth regardless of the tone.
Sincerely,
~ The Infidel Alliance
Then in the matter of fairness and truth, that which you have now demanded twice in comments, you should not only challenge Mr. Mansur and me, but Jesus too. Because He clearly told all of us within questioning “what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul?”
A shame, because Mr. Mansur appears to be a man of reason and good will. And if he is a man of good will as I suspect and his excellent letter suggests, I would wager your challenge to determining truth in the right context and tone might be a tipping point to a conversion of a new way, the eyes being opened to Islam’s inherent weaknesses and inconsistencies, and a wonderful ally of like mind in return.
There are times Infidel that the club the only alternative. But as a pragmatic approach, I would suggest an initial appearance with meekness a more effective method in changing hearts and minds.
I suspect both you and I have asked, “Where are those moderate Muslims who seek peace and love their country?” Well, here you are.
The problem Rex is that as far as main stream Islam is concerned, Salim, all Muslims who think like him, and all so called moderates, are all apostate according to the most basic principles of Islam. Until they, like those in the streets of Egypt, are ready to demand the ouster of the leaders of their religion, they will someday come to a choice, either join jihad or be killed as apostates to Islam. I fear that choice will come much sooner that any realize and I don’t pin much hope on the income. The leaders of Islam across the world will not go quietly into the night as has Mubarak, they will slaughter their own with the same glee as they did Daniel Pearl.
Dear ‘Tex Taylor’,
My relationship with Christ is between me and Christ, but thanks for your concern.
One thing you seem to overlook is that Islamic Jihad and the threat of Muhammeds Islam savages other peoples and religions much more than it does the United States and American Christendom.
Hindus, Sikhs, Zoroastrians, Baha’i, Buddhists, Jews, Copts, Chaldeans, Ahmadis, pagans, animists, athiests, gays, women…..all are routinely targeted by Muhammeds Islamic Jihad all areond the world.
Jesus wouldn’t want us to surrender, forget and forsake these souls to Islamic evil, would he?
you delude yourself.
the problem is that there is no moderate muslims because there is no moderate islam.
if Salim was as you say a moderate then there is a fatwa on him …if there is not I will judge that he has the blessing of the not moderates in the muslim community. they (muslims who practice islam) are not shy about the teachings of the Mohammad.
good man you. Its nice to see someone like myself who beleives ISLAM IS the PROBLEM. read my post below. Moslems largely are not “terrorists”. what they do is to ENABLE terrorists. Go look just recently-the head of the 2 largest “secular” moslem groups in the US are telling moslems NOT to co-operate with the FBI and other police authorities. Thats NOT what I call a “religion of peace”. Thats what I call the enemy.
Yeah, I’ll take my chances too. Though The Christ was a man who would not break a bruised reed nor snuff out a smoking flax he was also a man who called the ultra-hypocrite Pharisees ‘whited sepulchers. A description of ultimate insult for those charlatans at that time.
I remain convinced, as I alluded to in my early comment to this thread, that Mansur is no moslem at all but rather maintains the front so as to influence the other members of the cult … as he IS, obviously, a good and caring man. He needs to consider that a better tack would be to reject the evil that is islam outright and use his station to explain why. Often and thoroughly.
He and a million like him will never reform islam. It is rotten from the head. Begun by a monster and propagated by equally monstrous men.
well said infidel.
that indeed is the start point to dialog, if muslims cannot separate themselves from the path of the prophet then it is either willful deceit or as you say intellectual fraud.
Perfectly exactly accurate.
I think you are squarely on the mark.
Considering what is well known about the utter depravity and all-consuming evil that was Mohamed it is inconceivable that an educated, intellectually honest individual could find anything to worship about such a man.
It has been said by myself and others that Islam could be compared to a football game in that “radical Islamists” would be analogous to the players on the field and “moderate Muslims” are their fans who pay their salaries and root them on.
Their is absolutely nothing within Islam to “moderate”
A rational person will REJECT Islam.
Bravo to you, Infidel, for telling the truth. If we can’t name the enemy and can’t detail its actions, then we have no hope of victory. Obama and all liberals pull the blanket over their heads, peek out once in a while, and hope this will all just go away. In the meantime, we are marching toward a civilizational split, the outcome of which may not be what we hope for.
Every once in a while, you come across an article so good, you read it twice just to make sure it was as good as you thought the first time.
It was.
There is nothing to add besides to emphatically state Bravo! Articles like this are why I keep returning to PJM.
Thank you Mr. Mansur. Your insight and wisdom are noted for future reference.
The day after 9-11 I knew- I KNEW- I saw it- and I tried so hard to tell people No-Bama PLEASE- I know you hate GWB, I once did too- but my eyes have been opened by KNOWLEDGE and research into ISLAM-the WHY everyone was asking but not seeing — I saw GWB was right about the axis of evil-then I looked into Obama- and it was not good,,very ugly, -traitorous and jewhating– I said if we elect the pro Muslim/pro marxist anti American we will all pay dearly- my sister called me a racist, my mom said- hush, they said those things about Jews too, you are being prejudiced- I lost friends whjo could not understand the change in me- No one understood more than former communists and those who had fled Islam- they knew too
I loved this essay Salim thanks
It is an article of faith that changing one’s behavior comes only after hitting rock bottom. I am afraid the national immaturity that elected Obama has not yet peaked, and the rock bottom has not yet even been approached. I am also afraid it will be blood-covered.
A most insightful and edifying column.
This excellent analysis is like reading the results of an autopsy performed on a still-living patient.
Salim:
I feel like you are my brother. We share the same understanding.
This 9/11 evil goes way back and the corruption of which you speak does also.
I agree that Chomsky is one of the most evil and also Ayers. But we mustn’t forget Soros (nee Shcwartz) the unrepentent Nazi collaborator whose wealth is founded on stolen money from Jewish people murdered in the Holocaust and, even moreso, all those U S State Department traitors going back as far as 100 years who, among other crimes, covered up for and abetted the ex-Mufti Jerusalem in escaping justice and exposure for his war crimes; and acted as communist agents, and their successors are still there. We need to withdraw from the UN. It will surely collapse without us and our money. It is only an agent for our enemies.
But I can tell from the comments, the sleepers have awakened.
I believe only at most 10% of Americans are the evil Commie types and as much as another 10% are “useful idiots”. All the rest are AMERICANS and good and decent ones. Once we jettison PC and the commies, we will also relegate the Islamists to the dustbin of history. And once more there will be no enemy. I believe Mr. Arbitov will be proven wrong after that.
To Alim Monseur.
Don’t be too pessimistic. True US voters were appalling ignorant in falling for Obamas lies in 2008, but at least they learned quickly, and with the Tea Party, and the 2010 elections, we righted things pretty quickly. Obama can still do lots of damage till 2012, as is now apparent in Egypt, but it will hopefully end by 2012.
Ill tell you what my view of a decent moslem is. Whalid Phares and Bridget Gabriel, two very brave EX moslems who had the guts and courage to LEAVE the “religion” and tell the truth about it. Mr Mansur is proof of what Ive said about much of Islam. Hes not a terrorist. But he is an ENABLER of terrorists. That applies to MOST moslems. By refusing to question the dictates of the Koran and look at THEMSLEVES as the problem, Islam creates the seeds of hatred , bigotry and intolerance. By taking sides with ideologies as godless Communism, Islam will further maginalize itself. The day WILL come when PC will end and freedom will rise again. its inevitable, because communism and Islam BOTH carry the seeds of there own destruction in there warped, senseless ideolgies. Niether can survive without someone else to blame for there failures. it truly is that simple.
Brigitte Gabriel has never been a Muslim. She grew up as a Maronite Christian in Lebanon.
Great article. Early in, I was reminded of an essay I read a year or so ago at American Thinker, “Did Communism Fake its own Death in 1991?”
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/01/did_communism_fake_its_own_dea.html
More food for thought.
Great essay!
If this website ever deigns to allow my comments to be posted, it would be a neat and novel thing for me. I can’t post comments, yet I still get the daily helping of Daily Digest spam. Go figure.
I am reminded by this essay of another I read last year at AT:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/01/did_communism_fake_its_own_dea.html
The last two years of arms sales, and this past election point in the right direction. Unless, you are a leftard. Then it means Holy Sh##!
Wh Salim is undoubtedly correct in his analysis it should be remembered that Osama Bin Laden is a byproduct of the Cold War. He learned his trade, built up his base and sharpened his strategic thinking under American auspices as one of the mujahadeen in Afghanistan fighting against the Soviet occupation. This was the first stage of his now world-wide Jihad. Afghanistan was the Cold War laboratory in which Islamic militancy – always present but until the Iranian Revolution more or less dormant – mutated into a more easily exportable ideology.
No. Osama bin Laden is not a ‘byproduct of the Cold War.’
He is a PRODUCT of Muhammed, Islam and Islamic jihad theology. He is inspired by Allah, follows the mandates of Muhammed, and is commanded by the Koran.
The universal Islamic jihad didn’t begin in 1980′s Cold War Afghanistan. It began in 7th century Arabia, and has continued unabated ever since against every kind of people on every continent.
It hasn’t just targeted the United States. It has targeted the Pesians, the Byzantines, the Armenians, the Anatolians, the Berbers, the Spaniards, the French, the Eastern Europeans…and that was just in the early history of Islam.
Is anything I said above factually incorrect? In it’s fight against the USSR and global communism the US empowered Bin Laden because he also loathed the Soviets and was willing to kill them. The Taliban and Al Qaeda resulted. The mujahadeen insurgency in Afghanistan was an opportunity for the US to interdict Soviet expansionism. They seized it. The wisdom of such acts of realpolitik is revealed only by their results. In this case the result was catastrophic. It was also at the time one of the “unknown unknowns”.
Of course BL is a product of Islam; indeed it is his raison d’etre, but the Cold War as played out in Afghanistan turned him from just another wannabe extremist into a global actor. If the Soviets had not invaded Afghanistan, if the US had not got behind the mujahadeen allowing the war to be prosecuted successfully, we’d have never heard of him.
There is no moral lesson to be drawn from all this. It was what it was. The Soviet and American mistake was to ever get involved in Afghanistan, a locus unicum of no strategic value whatsoever; a tar-baby without the baby.
Dear ‘liamascorcaigh’,
You ask “Is anything I said above factually incorrect?” Yes, there is. You said “This was the first stage of his now world-wide Jihad.” First stage???
Why are the Balkans full of Muslims and how and when did they first get there? How do you think Zoroastrian Persia became Islamic, and when? What happened to Byzantium, and when? Why do Muslims call Spain ‘al-Andalus’ and how and when did it get that name?
The ‘now world-wide Jihad’ is actually THE ISLAMIC WORLD WAR which has been raging unabated for 1,400 years on every continent exxcept Antarctica.
THE ISLAMIC WORLD WAR?? Let’s look at the facts. Islam against:
- the Catholics in the Philippines (routine slaughter & beheadings)
- the Christians in Indonesia (routine slaughter & beheadings)
- Australian tourists in Bali (blown up…twice)
- the Buddhists in Thailand (routine slaughter & beheadings)
- the Hindus & Sikhs in India (hundreds of years battling the Islamic Jihad)
- the Jews in Mumbai (slaughtered)
- the Zoroastrians & Baha’i in Iran (virtually exterminated)
- Islamic converts to Christianity in Afghanistan (death fatwa)
- ancient Buddhist statues in Bamiyan, Afghanistan (blown up)
- the Armenians (genocide)
- the Chaldean Christians in Iraq (routine persecution, slaughter & church burnings)
- the Jews in Israel (routine attacks against civilians, threat of 2nd genocide)
- the Jews in Yemen (nearly exterminated)
- S. Korean & German tourists in Yemen (blown up)
- the Coptic Christians in Egypt (routine persecution, slaughter & church attacks)
- the Christians & animists in Sudan (genocide)
- the Christians in Kenya (constant Jihadist threat from Obama’s homies)
- the Christians in Nigeria (routine Jihadist attacks)
- U.S. embassies in Tanzania & Kenya (blown up)
- the athiests in Europe (the prime target)
- the native French in Paris (torched car terrorism)
- Jews in Paris (read the grisly story of Ilan Halimi, a Jewish shop clerk who was kidnapped, tortured and killed in 2006)
- the native Swedes in Malmo (Islamic rape brigades)
- the native Dutch in Amsterdam (routinely terrorized)
- Dutch politicians (Geert Wilders & Ayyan Hirsi Ali – death fatwa)
- Dutch cinematographers (Theo vanGogh savagely murdered by an Islamist in broad daylight)
- Dutch cartoonists (Kurt Westergaard – death fatwa)
- Dutch newspaper editors (Flemming Rose, Jyllands-Posten’s culture editor – death fatwa)
- Train commuters in Spain (blown up)
- Tube commuters in London (blown up)
- Airports in Scotland (blown up)
- Jews in Argentina (blown up)
- Jews in Caracas (blown up)
- Twin Tower office workers in N.Y. (blown up – twice)
- Defense workers in the Pentagon (blown up – airliner jihad)
- Army/Navy military recruiters in Little Rock (gunned down by an Islamist)
- Soldiers in Ft. Hood Texas (gunned down by an Islamist)
- Pedestrians at the U. of N. Carolina (run down with an SUV by Islamist)
- Journalists like Daniel Pearl (savagely decapitated by Islamists)
- Nick Berg, Kim Sung-il, Piotr Stanczyk, Jack Hensley, Eugene Armstrong, Paul Johnson (savagely decapitated by Islamists)
- Jewish centers in Seattle (slaughtered by Islamist Jihadist)
- Jewish centers in Toronto (slaughtered by Islamist Jihadist)
- Infidel Delta Airlines passengers (underwear bomber)
- Times Square pedestrians (SUV bomber)
- Soccer fans in Uganda (Blown up while watching the world cup)
- Christian doctors in Afghanistan (savagely slaughtered by the Taliban)
And on, and on, and on……
It is Islam against everyone, everything, everywhere that is not Islamic.
It is Dar al-Islam against Dar al-Harb. Islam against us, not us against them.
This didn’t just start afer we armed bin-Laden’s mujahidin. It’s the ISLAMIC WORLD WAR…always has been…since 622ad.
~ The Infidel Alliance
Amen to that. Your wisdom is much appreciated. In reading the article and comments. each time I see something wrong and start to comment on it, I look down and see that you have already done so and more more succinctly and adamantly than I ever could. Your voice is exactly what those still in denial need to hear.
Salim, you have good reason to fear this turmoil.
Nowhere in the Middle East is there anyone espousing anything like true Democracy. Actually, the opposite is taking place.
Even in the United States; An individual whom says he is “liberal” turns out to be more close minded, and inflexible, than a dictator like Mubarak. This is no other than Obama himself.
Autocracy is in vogue. And the U.S. is leading this trend.
They will stumble and fall as often as they need to, it’s called cultural advancement and they are to be congratulated for the attempt.
Let them have their one man, one vote, one time, they will learn from the experience, and next time they will achieve a true democracy. Let’s face facts, cultural advancement comes glacially slow, even when there is an example of the most successful culture in history (USA) to imitate.
“Example is the School of Mankind, and they will learn at no other.” Edmund Burke
This means Mankind only learns the hard way.
Great comment. Particularly the Edmund Burke quote. A very brilliant yet hard to define man.
England, as well as other countries in Europe are confessing to the obvious, ‘..multiculturalism is a failure’, conclusion, even though Mr. Burke spoke of such conclusions 250 years ago.
“The British Empire must be governed on a plan of freedom, for it will be governed by no other” – Edmund Burke during the Hastings trial.
The most insightful Englander of the 20th Century for me hands down is Winston Churchill.
Churchill’s reaction after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, lighting a cigar and declaring, ‘We have won after all’.
Expectedly, Obama’s first order as CiC in the WH was removing Churchill’s bust from the Oval Office. What a c andy ass as a supposed ‘Leader’.
I am SO inspired by the number of times “DEMOCRACY” is referred to in the Quran!
Allah Ak Rebar!
Agreed! Worshiping the god named Allah, and following Mohammad who raped, and murdered, is not going to bring Democracy.
DaOne, and company are fools.
Hashem is a stern god in the sense that the law of gravity is stern . If you are old or infirm the law of gravity remains the same. So too with the lord of hosts , he has created the universe and the universe has laws . Transgress those laws and you suffer . Not because suffering is desired but because life is imposssible without those laws. We obey the laws we know of not because we love the laws but because ignoring them brings pain and death . So in that sense we fear the lord . Not because the lord is cruel but because the lord cannot be merciful .
“…the Lord cannot be merciful” is blasphemous. Our Lord, Jesus Christ, came down from heaven and died on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins, and you charge Him with a lack of mercy? He offers eternal happiness to all who will repent and live in obedience to Him, and you find Him without mercy? He is perfect, ergo, perfectly merciful.
If He is not merciful, you have a bleak eternity ahead of you.
“So 9/11 is the fault of….. the decadent West?”
Yes, because your socialist governments in the name of multiculturalism, affirmative action, so-called refugee quotes, and other policies from the communist left, have willfully let the muslim enemy invade your countries. Muslims didn’t present themselves to battle with siege engines or armies like in the old days when they besieged Vienna, these days it’s your stupid government which let them in, and your stupid education system brainwashed you into submitting to each of your enemies demands and to denounce as racist hate speech any attempt to fight back the islamic invasion.
We have had Muslims immigrate for years. The difference was that they, like every other ethnic or religious group were expected to assimilate America values and enter mainstream culture. Italians, Irish, Chinese, Hispanics, Jews, what have you, they all came to America to be Americans.
The identity politics of the sixties, ridden to election victories by (Social) Democrats, put an end to that. Asking immigrants to assimilate was tantamount to genocide. It also had the benefit of planting immigrants in ghettos, dependent upon their Democrat paymasters for social services. Just because those policies have also permitted an influx of unassimilated hostile xenophobes is no reason for the Democrats to abandon their ticket to power. For one thing, they believe they “own” all of these ghettoized groups.
Joe McCarthy was a drunk. Elected to Congress by a lot of Wisconsin drinkers.
I resemble that remark!
I guess even us drunk redneck Wisconites can things right once in a while. Just like McCarthy was right about communism. Otherwise known as state capitalism.
Funny thing is, we are more a communists nation now than a capitalist one. How much of the country’s GNP is directly related to the government? That should answer that.
UHY….where do I start..this is a great descussion..I agree with almost everyone. such unfinished important questions..enough for 8 hours of round table philosphizing with you wise buddies.
Today I attended a three hour lecture by a former State Department bueuarcrat who hobknobbed with biggerst political celbraties from 1957 to 9/11 all on an intimit frist name basis. From Ick to Nixson to Carter. Reagan to all the Kennedy boys.Johnson, he was also a diplomat at virous European and African countries for 30 years
He gave a Two hour non-stop talk on the parts of history in that period hehad direct contact with. It was like a fairy tale told with compleate sincerity and authority..only it was all told through eyes of a 5year kid watching a B- spy movie. All the people and the events were real but It was told by a blind-folded ambassaor who seemed misunderstood nothing he was talking about. Or course all the other people remained setted and were pretending to understanding. His sense of contemoray American history was very warped.The lecture was to be about the riot in the middle east were their was nothing to worry about. and Israel was perfectly safe
and the Moslem brotherhood was harmless,,There soon be aa moving to geather with all the different forces. i was not up to being a kad-fly this afternoon and i was deprssed by the ignorance in the room so I just left
Just wanted to add to the discussion, I wonder what all those Muslim militias would do if they were called up by their mullahs? You know, the ones right here in the US.
http://www.chroniclewatch.com/2010/04/09/muslim-militias-in-america-against-america-is-a-ok/
We are soooo stupid. We allow our government to allow immigration from country’s that are at war with us.
Not quite as bad as Britain though, they have Muslims that go to war in Afghanistan against their own country and then go home to Britain to rest up and recoup. All the while getting income from the British government.
Sorry folks, I do not think we have a chance with the absolute insanity of our governments.
I always enjoy reading PJM articles, even those I disagree with from time-to-time, imagine my ‘suepreez’ when the distinguished Dr. Mansur contributed an insightful piece. I was listening to Puccini’s, ‘O mio babbino caro (sp?)’ when reading and was quite choked up throughout.
Commenter Eon’s #3 comment gave an equally compelling response to said article. Thank you.
Take care all.
MR. Mansur gives a peek into not only his genius but the genius of Georgi Arbaton. Both based on common sense , logic and unadulterated truths.
I salute them both.
American Christian Infidel
Michael Canzano
Islam is the problem.
Solve the problem.
God bless.
too bad the politicians don’t know this simple truth.
“Just ponder how a third-rate community organizer — from the most incestuously corrupt political region in the U.S…I had written in disbelief, as I watched the primaries unfold, of how American voters could be so beguiled by a charlatan of the Harold Hill type from The Music Man and vote for Obama.”
Thank you. That is probably the best description yet I have seen of Barack Obama.
Last night I spent some time reading Salim Mansur’s Frontier Centre piece on the failures of multiculturalism in the west, and this morning this ‘letter’. It is also raining. Altogether a good day for bananafish. Arbitov’s sage comments are spot on, but is has to be clearly stated how much energy the western left has invested in convincing us that Islam is not our enemy (in spite of two wars and many soldiers lost and a steady parade of violent assaults on our society) because they know how galvanizing a concentrated resistance can be, and they know the dangers to their self-flagelistic anti-Americanism.
There is a long way to go to rid ourselves of the insipid guilt in our intellectual core that seems to be driving this, a guilt which , along with a frightening disregard for history and it’s lessons, is being passed along to too many of our children. And it’s not just the cultural foppishness, but extends to the entire ‘save the world’, ‘save the earth’, ‘save the poor Africans’ conceit.
When will we re-learn the art of just living our own life, and stop watching ourselves live it, and let others do the same.
Too late for that I guess.
Prof. Mansur seems to assume that Obama is only an empty suit, clueless, ignorant, unintelligent. But that is not rational. Obama has considerable intelligence and the skill to think on his feet making him a formidable debater. Mansur makes the same mistake about Obama that many of us make generally about actors as well as politicians – they are not necessarily stupid. The ability to charm, convince, to debate well all require intelligence and psychological skills.
Please, all of us need to remember that we underestimate our opponents to our own peril! Although Obama is a relative tyro in politics, he is clearly adept at the game or he would not have captivated 1st the seasoned cynical Democrats, then the hungry liberal media, and finally the American electorate. He could very well win reelection.
We cannot possibly fight Obama and his planned destruction by assuming he is dumb and doesn’t know what he is doing! He has already crippled the US in the future by radically increased debt. He favors legalistic approaches which enriches lawyers but destroys enterprise and new inventions or drugs. He wants environmental rules which will prevent growth. He knows that bureaucratic controls over businesses and higher taxes will make many more people unemployed and will enslave the contributing members of society as much as the noncontributors. He knows that the ruined economy will mean a weak US unable to defend itself at home, let alone internationally.
Is it not clear that what Obama wants is a statist dream country with no national pride or prerogatives, beholden to the demands of foreign dictators and a corrupt UN, which would supersede our own laws? This would be a land where everyone would be equalized in an economic depression, with an equally lousy education [thanks to our quality teachers' unions] and an equal but downtrodden dull existence of despair, with no individualism or creativity permitted. This looks like what the Democrats led by Obama feel is a not unreasonable price to pay for social costs. That we cannot afford any of these is just too bad for us! And that this sure would look a lot like the former USSR is also too bad for us!
This is what I believe is Obama’s radical agenda, not that he is ignorant and unintelligent. Prof. Mansur needs to reassess Obama based upon his having an agenda rather than being an empty suit.
I do think that foreign problems were not on his radar screen, though. And his weltanschauung is based upon the Islam that pervaded his childhood. So of course he has a deep affection, awe, and pride for Islam and difficulty accepting the evils committed by committed muslims. It is also clear that his conversion to Christianity was a purely useful self serving move – to marry a high class Christian black woman, to be more accepted as a typical casual Christian in a dominant Christian country. He has no religion than getting ahead or is a nonpracticing muslim.
There is another issue in Obama’s success that Prof. Mansur did not address – that our media and educators are dominated by irresponsible radicals who push an agenda identical to Obama’s. The American people have to work HARD to get an unbiased education and unbiased news. We are all swimming upstream in that respect.
I agree with daughter of Israel that Obama’s abilities (to nefarious ends) should not be underestimated, but I don’t agree with her when she writes, “Obama has considerable intelligence and the skill to think on his feet making him a formidable debater.”
With due respect, when does he “think on his feet” or debate anyone? Minus TOTUS (Teleprompter Of The US), Obama usually sounds like a moron. (With TOTUS, head in the air, back and forth like a tennis ball, he looks like a moron too.)
To #76 Daughter of Israel:
You state re Obama, “He has no religion than getting ahead or is a nonpracticing Muslim.”
I believe, based on the following (and much more not mentioned), that Obama hates G-D, Christianity and Judaism and is a devout Muslim deeply committed to global Islamic conquest as taught in the Koran.
Obama communicated to the ummah – the global Muslim community from day one, that serving Islam was his top priority. Obama’s first official phone call was to PLO Muslim leader, Abbas. Immorally respected by past and present U.S. administrations, Muslim terrorist leader Abbas, financed the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games. Obama’s first interview was with Al-Arabiya, Muslim TV station.
In October, 2009, the Obama administration co-sponsored a UN resolution with Egypt to ban speech that defames religion (Islam). A massive attack that threatens the freedom and safety of every non-Muslim on earth.
Obama Bows low to Saudi King:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fd425zfw5Ew&feature=related
In the Judeo-Christian nation that is America, President Obama makes no attempt to hide his hate for G-D, the Bible, Judaism and Christianity:
Obama Mocks & Attacks Jesus Christ And The Bible
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hi-V_ilJu0w&NR=1
Obama: “My Muslim Faith”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKGdkqfBICw
Obama: Muslim call to prayer one of the Prettiest Sounds on Earth
http://www.arkjournal.com/2008/06/obama-muslim-call-to-prayer-one-of.html
To Steve Skubinna:
Regarding your comment on the Jewish Scriptures, Old Testament, G-D has given each one of us a conscience to KNOW that it’s wrong to hurt other people. Things took place that were ONE TIME ONLY occurrences. There were people who were so filled with such terrible hate, violence and murder that G-D’s judgment came upon them. Just as it did in the flood:
Genesis 6:5 The L-RD saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6. The Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.
Genesis 6:13 G-D said to Noah, The end of all flesh has come before Me; for the earth is filled with violence because of them..”
Jesus, the Jew, taught from the Jewish Scriptures in the synagogues and in the Temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Israel.
It was, and is, from the Jewish Scriptures that people learned of G-D’s amazing love, kindness, forgiveness and mercy. Such as leave the corners of produce/grain in fields for the needy. In Proverbs 31, we are told to speak up and “defend the rights of the afflicted and needy. Isaiah 1 Defend the orphan, plead for the widow.”
Jewish Scriptures, Micah 6:8 And what does the L-RD require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-D.
G-D gave the Law, the Ten Commandments, for the protection of innocents, as: YOU SHALL NOT MURDER. And that murderers were to be put to death (to prevent more innocents from being murdered).
Teaching from Jewish Scriptures, Jesus declared in Matthew 7:12 Treat people the same way you want people to treat you for this is the Law and the Prophets.
Republicans need to stop talking about the deficit. Only the wealthy care. But all Americans want our way of life to continue and will be horrified if they knew all the Islamic anti-Americanism taught in schools and mosques in our own country. If they knew how militant groups are feted and funded by this administration here and around the world, they would wake up. Stop being boring and speak up. It seems that all our politicians are PC. The only way to defeat the Progressive-Islamic alliance is to wake up the American people.
#79 Cynthia,
Unfortunately and tragically for our country and other Western nations, the mainstream media have absolutely no intention of waking people up. We are betrayed by both politicians and media. Our freedom and Western civilization hang in the balance.
The author is only half right. The Soviet Union, per Golitsyn, *did* fake its own death, in order to remove itself as the target. Communism then went underground, only to pop up like mushrooms(or metastasizing cancer) all over the world. The Islamic groups that the SU trained in their sophisticated terrorist techniques are likewise metastasizing. Both Islam and Communism operate by lies and deception, and neither can be trusted. They seem to like taking turns being the good cop and the bad cop – pointing the finger at the other as the real evil.
Certainly, our Western culture grew soft, but that too was engineered by the Gramscian Marxists, aided by the international communists, and had been underway for a long time before the SU collapse.
McCarthy was right. Islam, per the Koran is wrong. The author should face the whole truth.
please give this letter maximum exposure.It expresses everything that I cannot.A very humbling read.
“Just ponder how a third-rate community organizer”
How do you know that he was third-rate? What information do we have about what he did as a community organizer? The news media was as interested in exploring that as they were in exploring the rest of Obama’s background. How do we know he was not first-rate or second-rate? To say that he was a third-rate community organizer rests on as much evidence as the claim that he is intellectually brilliant or that he has an ideal temperament–basically none.
“from the most incestuously corrupt political region in the U.S.” Is that the Midwest or Illinois or Chicago? In any case, is it more corrupt than Louisiana or California or any large metropolitan area that effectively has one party?
However, I shared your astonishment that the people of the United States could elect a man of the far Left as President.
“All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reaches us, it must spring up amongst us. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.” – Abraham Lincoln
I disagree that the writer is blaming America for the decisions of its enemies. I think he is saying that we were ill-prepared for the transformation of the world following the end of WWII in 1992. Yes, I said “WWII in 1992.” In my view the “Cold War” was the second stage of WWII, which in Europe began with the socialists formally allied with their fascist and national socialist cousins. But I also view the history of the world since the late 19th century as an ongoing struggle between those who embrace various collectivist ideologies which view humans as incapable of governing themselves (like farm animals or Sims) and those like Americans, who to one extent or another view mankind as ungovernable by a political elite – that collectivism is a dead end that will lead inevitably to human extinction. Those who embrace this ideology of the American Revolution believe that humans, like biospheres, require diversity, that just as an environment requires biodiversity, the human species requires decision-making to be widely spread through the mechanism of a market. Centralize decision-making and we will die.
It was decadence that led us to think that history had ended and everyone would get along. But don’t be so hard on us. Understand that we have been under assault internally, culturally, for 100 years. Those who think like our collectivist enemies have embedded themselves in our cultural and academic sectors, as well as our government bureaucracies, especially the foreign policy bureaucracy, for a long, long time. Several generations have been raised without being taught who they are or why their relationship with their government is exceptional in a history dominated by tyranny and brutality, or that the principles of our founding remain the last, best hope for humankind.
Add to the slow burrowing of the worm, we have had several quantum leaps when progressive collectivists have won electoral power: the “progressives” of the early 1900s culminating in the administration of Woodrow Wilson, FDR, 40 years of Democrat control of the House, LBJ and now Obama. They have embedded a structure, beginning with social security and building to a tipping point with Obamacare, to gradually inculcate dependency on government and design a structure into which our society can be collapsed into with a little “nudge” or a little more chaos and crisis.
Meanwhile, at least since the late ’60s, pressure has been building from below to bankrupt our society with unsustainable demands for benefits – the “Cloward -Piven Strategy.” That’s how the crisis will be built.
Finally, many progressive collectivists (or whatever weasel term they choose from time to time to camouflage their true ideological predilections) who originally imported Fabian socialism to America, are committed to eroding American sovereignty and establishing “global governance.” That is the “open society” of George Soros.
The focus of the comments is on Islamism, but don’t think for a minute the left wing of collectivism died with the Soviet Union or that it is insignificant because it doesn’t currently control an aggressive expansionist nation-state. Like Islamism, it is an ideological movement, and as al Qaeda has proven, NGOs can wage war using the military doctrine of unrestricted asymmetric warfare (“terrorism”). Like the right and left wings of collectivism in the ’30s, Islamism and European collectivism are aligned and colluding to bring down the U.S. because the ideology of our revolution is their number one enemy. We have been their enemy for over 100 years because we believe individual rights come from God and cannot be diminished or supplemented by man. We see evidence of this collusion all over the current uprisings in Northern Africa and the Middle East. There are historic precedents for this, including the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem who ran Hitler’s Arabic language propaganda radio network and helped organize an SS Division of Balkan Muslims, Persia which changed its name to Iran in part because the national socialists taught them they were Aryans, and the Baath parties of Iraq and Syria, which claimed to combine the “best” of socialism and fascism.
Do we still believe certain rights are granted to us at birth by God and that man can neither alienate nor supplement them (with, e.g., Soviet constitutional rights like those to housing, medical care, a job, vacations)? Do we still believe that among those rights are those of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Do we still understand, as the Founders did, that happiness is synonymous with virtue or that the “pursuit of happiness” was understood to necessarily imply the right to private property? Do we understand that the American Dream has nothing to do with material goods or comfort, and everything to do with the ability of individuals to govern themselves, or, as John Adams put it – our constitution is only for a religious and moral people?
History has not yet ended, and the republic is not yet lost. Work for a revival of our constitutionally limited republic in the spirit of our revolution – not that of the French, Russians, Cubans or Chinese. Understand that ours is a nation based on ideology, not ethno-linguistic similarity, religion, imperial ambition or tribal relations.
Good read. Forgive my glossing over the some of the less salient points, but this is what I got from the essay:
1. Islam (or Islamic Extremism) is a clear and present danger to the west
2. America, by virtue of not having a military counter, is in a drunken stupor
3. America (and/or the west) must be more vigilant to protect against the Islamic threat (point 1)
All true, but absent context and scope. The west (and the US specifically) built an entire economy coined with petroleum. By careful application of carrot and stick they have been able to command the world’s production to remain (and prop up the) dollars, and are able to set outrageous and unreasonable value to petroleum to enable the unprecedented usury–allowing the funding of the “orgy”, as the OP aptly put. I posit that the maintenance and continuation of this status quo is the actual governing principal behind the west’s foreign policies; As such, we must continue to pay lip service to Islam lest we offend all our partners in this collusion; God truly does have a sick sense of humor to place the oil in Islamic countries.
All the “freedom” the west enjoys is purchased with petro dollars. All our unreasonable standard of living is sustained with it; we cry in dismay about our inability to create “jobs” where in fact we’ve long since moved the functions to places where they costs are more commensurate with the production. We spend billions of dollars on corporate and social welfare so those who wont work for peanuts will not starve or go without television. Our “freedom” only works because we’re too rich, fat, and stupid to realize its not the “freedom” that is of value, its our standard of living.
Which of course is the conundrum. None of us wants to say that the emperor is naked, so instead we use code. “Freedom” is another word for our freedom to take everything and pay the china price, without having to earn it. The problem is that we are so vocal, we forget that this word is only applicable to us, and when some brown people in some part of the world that sew our clothes, stamp our electronics, or mine our minerals start wanting this “freedom” too there is nowhere for them to get it from- its ours. I think the OP is right on the money that this condition is directly related to the end of the cold war- Iran was Carter’ed, Iraq was Bush’ed, Egypt was Obama’ed.
If we wish Islamism to deflate as a world power, we must make petroleum worthless– and slit our proverbial wrists in the process. I dont think anyone truly wants that, which explains why no one is in a terrible hurry to tell King Abdullah to make Sharia law more liberal.
Islam Right Now
President Bush was furious over 9-11. His answer was an attack on Islam itself. He choose Iraq and after a huge effort managed to establish a functioning democracy. The purpose was to destablize Islam itself.
Everybody laughed a Bush for attempting the impossible, but now the chickens are coming home. Those crazy Islamic peoples think they should live decent lives like other people in the world.
When the people of Iraq stood fast in the initial voting lines while blo0d was actually running in the gutter the present disorder in the middle east should have been predictable. The fear that the “brotherhood” or other radical types will take over in the middle east is absurd. These people want freedom and they will not accept anything less. It will be messy, but not much worse than Chicago.
I think it will turn out well.
I don’t believe Obama’s election is a result of the fall of the soviet union. Jimmy Carter who was also very liberal was elected during the height of the cold war.
Only a few people were fooled by obama. Most of his supporters think he is not liberal enough. But few though enough moderates were fooled to elect him. One extenuating factor is that his oponent was unpalatable.
The real lesson of the 2008 elections is that the party system in the US does not put forward good candidates.
to put it another way, Back 60 years ago, Joseph McCarthy was correct after all. Like the moslems today make no secret or there desires for a world caliphate, the communists never did either. Antonio Gramsci layed out the playbook for them over a century ago. Mao Tse Tung (in the “little Red Book”) always said a marxist world takeover was the goal. Lenin said much the same thing. Islam today is just using the lefts playbook, something learned from the KGB in the 70s. Too bad for both of them, there own greed and prejeduces will eventually be both there undoings, since niether Islam or communism fills the need men have for human freedom.
The sad thing is, McCarthy was correct without realizing it. He only wanted a cause to ride to notoriety, and perhaps higher office. He was a fraud and huckster, who accidentally was right.
But since he was a fraud and huckster, he damaged anti-Communism thereby. Even today many leftists sneer at anti-Communism and compare it (invariably) to the Salem witch trials. The difference was and is, Communists are real.
I hope all former left-wingers now supporting PJM read this, and if they can, prove it wrong.
McCarthy was right because he was fed information by the FBI, who being under Truman’s Justice Dept., couldn’t say what they knew. Read Blacklisted by History, 2007, M. Stanton Evans, Crown Forum, and see whether anyone can disprove any of the important references in the over 22 pages of footnotes.
This is important, especially since the following typical examples are not common knowledge of the general public. Should not we all be concerned with how much else the MSM and the left wing have kept from the American Public?
J.F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy were admirers of McCarthy and stated so publicly. Robert Kennedy worked for McCarthy for a time and McCarthy became Godfather to one of Robert’s children. Why are they not reviled like McCarthy?
But it is a gross injustice to history for the public to not realize the final result of the famous waving of a phonograph record in front of the media by Senator Millard Tydings, D, MD, claiming proof that McCarthy was lying. (See Book page 244, and Congressional Record July 20, 1950). Tydings later admitted in court and on-the-record that he did not have a recording but had what he had been told was a verbatim copy of a contested McCarthy radio speech, (see Depositions of Tydings in U.S. District Court, DC, September 3, 1952.). This of course had no standing and therefore Tydings admitted he did not have the evidence that he claimed to have, yet this was a defining moment in the acceptance of the Senate Report on McCarthy. How many of us tell everyone of these and the other false deceptions given and documented in the book, that were used by the Democrats to try to take McCarthy out?
There is much more to the story that should be highlighted to the public, but the bottom line is McCarthy and the FBI were right, but both the Democratic and following Republican Presidents rallied around their parties, eventually killing the messenger and greatly contributing to the Communists winning China. We would likely have had a free China like Taiwan has become, instead of a Communist China, and we would not have a nuclear North Korea to contend with today, if both Truman and Eisenhower had listened to the criticism of their security problems given by McCarthy and others. The evidence is on the record, one may check it out and then hopefully get this left wing version of history corrected.
J.F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy were admirers of McCarthy and stated so publicly. Robert Kennedy worked for McCarthy for a time and McCarthy became Godfather to one of Robert’s children. Why are they not reviled like McCarthy?-RightGunner
Because the Kennedys had glamour, youth, money and a well-connected family. McCarthy did not.