Who Cares About Libya? Republicans Should Stay on Message
So far, the Arab ballot box has given us Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, a supposedly moderate Islamist party in Tunisia, an Iranian-allied regime in Iraq, and… a putative success in Libya, celebrated by the Wall Street Journal editorial page with the pronouncement, “Once again, Arabs demonstrate their desire for self-government.”
UPDATE: Al-Ahram reported July 10, “Wartime rebel Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril took an early lead in Libya’s national assembly election, according to partial tallies released on Monday that pointed to a weaker than expected showing for Islamist parties. If confirmed that trend would set Libya apart from other Arab Spring countries such as Egypt and Tunisia where groups with overtly religious agendas have done well – although Jibril insists his multi-party alliance is neither secular nor liberal and includes sharia Islamic law among its core values.” (Emphasis added; hat tip to Andrew Bostom).
The “once again” part is dubious, for the WSJ does not mention where else this “desire for self-government” has produced the desired result. But the Republican establishment, having signed on to the Bush Freedom Agenda and its gigantic cost in blood and treasure, cannot gracefully back away from a discredited ideological commitment. While the obnoxious military and the unspeakable Muslim Brotherhood square off in Egypt, and the tech-savvy democrats of Tahrir Square disappear, the WSJ praises the one Arab election that appears to justify the grand enterprise of exporting democracy. Why beat up on other conservatives? Because focus on the supposed Libyan success lets the Obama administration off the hook at a moment when Republicans should pillory the president for coddling a terrorist nest like the Muslim Brotherhood.
The WSJ editors wrote:
It’s fashionable these days to say that NATO’s intervention in Libya left that Arab country no better off, but tell that to the Libyans who joyously voted in free elections on Saturday. An election alone does not a democracy make, but Libyans understand it’s better than the tyranny of Gadhafi & Sons, Inc.
The vote for a new legislative body wasn’t perfect but went off better than expected. Armed groups in the eastern, oil-rich region around Benghazi stormed a couple of polling stations, and tribal groups in the south tried to sabotage the vote. Yet a majority—with an estimated turnout of 60%—defied the threats. The post-election celebrations around Libya were the most spirited since Moammar Gadhafi’s demise in October.
Preliminary results indicate a strong showing by a secular alliance headed by a former rebel leader, Mahmoud Jibril. The Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists may also claim a large share of seats in the 200-member General National Congress once official results come out this week.
Libya has twice Egypt’s GDP per capita (about $6,000 vs. $3,000). It has no shortages of fuel or food. It has the world’s 10th-largest proven petroleum reserves. If there is a pie to divide, it is at least possible for sectarian and political factions to agree to divide it, and there is less incentive to extreme risks. Libya, moreover, has only 6.4 million people, less than half the population of Cairo. Its capital, Tripoli, has only 1.7 million, a tenth the size of Cairo. Libya is no more typical of the Arab world than is the Saudi monarchy, which remains in power because it has enough money to buy off any prospective opposition, at least for the time being.
With massive NATO intervention and a lot of money to spread around, it is not difficult to stabilize Libya (or, for that matter, Tunisia, with $4,300 GDP per capita and 10.4 million people). It is also easy to keep Saudi Arabia stable because the regime has enough money to buy off prospective opponents, at least for the time being. To compare Libya to Egypt is inappropriate. It is the sort of thing that “political scientists” who think in terms of “political models” might do. I avoid contact with such people in case whatever ails them might be contagious.
Egypt has some 82 million people of whom perhaps 40 million live on $2 a day. Nearly half of all Egyptians are functionally illiterate and perhaps two-fifths are unemployed or marginally employed. They live on subsidies from a government that is on the verge of bankruptcy, and (as I posted yesterday) have been kept from catastrophe by droplets of Saudi help. The Obama administration’s ideological obsessions and incompetence are driving the largest Arab country into a disaster. Republicans need to stay on message here.
***
Related at PJ Tatler: Calls to Destroy Egypt’s Great Pyramids Begin
And from Andrew C. McCarthy: Happy Spring: Sharia Will Rule Egypt
Thumbnail and image courtesy shutterstock / Dudarev Mikhail
David – Do you have any sense from the meetings you’ve attended as to whether Romney would attempt to maintain this policy if elected?
My impression of Romney’s foreign policy advisers, feel free to correct me, is they are for the most part Bush the Younger Neo-Con retreads. Although for the accounts I have read Romney spends zero time with them.
That’s my impression, too, although the pool of listed “advisers” is quite broad; it seems to include every Republican who wants a job in Washington. There’s no indication Romney pays any attention to them. He doesn’t strike me as the kind of CEO who staffs out a problem and picks which junior analyst recommendation to follow.
Hmmm…what stunned me about Romney’s comments about Russia was you’d think somebody from an investment banking/private equity background would’ve been more sensible and not drunk the koolaid from Randy Scheunemann or other failed “we are all Georgians now” advisors. Sorry MarcH but these people do together constitute what Andrei Tsygankov calls the (eternal) ‘anti-Russia lobby’. And if you know of any Randy Scheunemann-ski in Russia lobbying on Hugo Chavez behalf for permanent Russian bases there, I’m all ears. Which makes the looming massive cognitive dissonance among those Beltway denizens who describe themselves as Israel’s best friends if Obama gets a second term and pushes Israel towards getting more public with the Kremlin all the more amusing…
Poor Putin, besieged by paranoids. Good thing he has you to carry a few spears for him.
BTW, my comment at #1 was a question to David on possible Romney policy towards MB w/no mention of Russia. It must be Syria that’s bugging you.
“younger neo-con retreads” – well, your view dove-tails w/the Nation, Huff-Po and Colin Powell (http://www.thenation.com/article/167683/mitt-romneys-neocon-war-cabinet#, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/23/colin-powell-mitt-romney-foreign-policy_n_1538945.html).
While one can blame the so-called “neo-cons” for failure in Iraq II (and they have certainly been blamed, some well deserved), I’d say SoS Powell gets the blame for the failure of Iraq I. Nevertheless Powell is depicted as some kind of wise old-man in the MSM and left media. This is the man whose legacy includes the “Pottery Barn Doctrine” in foreign policy (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364×1138510).
I very much doubt that Romney has drilled down to this level of detail, nor should he at this point.
I agree that, in most cases, Romney shouldn’t be discussing foreign policy ”tactics“. But I think a statement on whether his administration will offer a strategy of continuing to support and engage with “Islamists (MB in Egypt , government of Iran)” or instead back up traditional allies and humiliate enemies would be a way for voters to distinguish him from BHO (if voters even care about foreign policy in 2012).
At this stage of the campaign such a statement would serve no useful purpose. It’s a rabbit warren out there. Better to stay on message.
Well, as a voter, it would be useful to me.
If elections are in some sense about ideas rather than just political tactics it would be useful to the U.S.
Mentioning Fast and Furious or the drones that have people freaked out would actually be more useful at this point than slamming the State Dept.’s engagement with the Muslim Brotherhood. He can’t well cross McCain by saying he wants to arm Syrian Islamists, now can he? At times like this I often wonder if the deranged Mike Savage might be right that Mittens is a ringer.
The WSJ speaks for mainstream Republicans now? Do the Bain Capital and Goldman Sachs types now represent what conservatism is?
Thats my impression as well. Figuring out the angles to making a buck off the misery of the Middle-Eastern people must make sleeping at night rather difficult.
I don’t know about making a “buck off of misery”, but charades to camouflage policies of appeasement of states engaged in terrorism and nuclear armament doesn’t seem to make the practitioners and cheerleaders of those charades at all uncomfortable.
On the other hand. will the Muslin Brotherhood (Ikhwan) have to shoulder the blame for the ensuing catastrophe?
David: You are well aware that Egypt is in the early days of an upheaval that will transform the region. Will the MB try to accomodate the Army? Will the Army be allowed to retain its control of the tourist rackets and most of the economy? Too early to say. Will Egypt try to seize the Libyan oil when the eastern provinces attempt to secede? While you are right to chatise the vaguely 3d worldism of Obama’s so-called foreign policy, but you cannot overlook the decades of currying the corruption of Mubarak which has brought us to this place. Our ME policy was about oil and nothing else. That interest is going to languish as we pump more oil and gas at home, as we should have done in 1945. And Opec is going to die. Will it be replaced? Possibly in the distant future but we are looking at a world without a reserve currency. Can anything replace the dollar? Not visible. And the dollar has been ruined finally by the morons who have occupied the White House for decades.
I lived in Sinai for almost a year, have traveled widely in Egypt. Illiteracy is way above 50%, education is pathetic. The Christians will be in grave danger. No point in getting ahead of ourselves about where this is heading but a region that has received several trillion dollars from the West over the past half century, has a GDP smaller than Spain’s. It is going to very ugly and very bloody. Whither Turkey is really our only interest. How Israel can thrive, even survive, in the bloody hell that is coming over the next several decades, is a hard question. I expect in the near term Greater Israel is going to look more like a reality than ever.
The dollar’s a long way from ruined — we’re still the leper with the most fingers, and there’s time to fix our problems thanks to the even greater idiocy of others.
“Nearly half of all Egyptians are functionally illiterate and perhaps two-fifths are unemployed or marginally employed. They live on subsidies from a government that is on the verge of bankruptcy,”…sounds exactly like the obama/Dem plan for the USA.
The Obama administration’s ideological obsessions and incompetence are driving the largest Arab country into a disaster. Republicans need to stay on message here.
The problem is that the Left and its shameless, unabashed stream of liars and dissemblers (poster children David Axelrod and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz) pull republicans off message.
They’re out there avoiding Obama’s ineptitude and downright subversion every which way they can, selling class warfare, harping on Romeny’s wealth.
Given Obama’s glaring and amply demonstrated “ideological obsessions and incompetence”, a Pet Rock should be beating him 25 points by now.
I would argue those being pulled off message are “establishment” Republicans. Those are the very simpletons we need to mark with smoke right before we fire for effect.
Egypt is going to go full-on Sharia Law muslim, at least until it tears itself apart after two or three decades of the Islamic charade.
In the bad old days of the Cold War, the penurious Egyptian tyrants had the Soviet Union to bankroll them and to provide the weapons and training needed to at least maintain the fiction of Arab world leading strength. What nation today has the wherewithal and the need to indirectly confront the US through Arab agents acting once again as proxies in the bigger battle? China? A wistfully resurgent Russia under Tzar Vladimir the Lesser?
For the Arab muslim world to dig itself out of the thousand year deep cultural hole they find themselves in, it would have to become apostate and foreswear Mohammad and his murderous desert cult. I don’t see that happening in this century (I will, for one, not live to see it). As this part of the world is now, it is unfitted for democracy and we Americans waste out time trying to make it into something that it cannot become. In the long run, it may be more cruel to even make the attempt to improve the lot of the Arab Street, because the street suffers a great deal in the process and it always fails.
Perhaps a posture of pragmatism is in order. Leave them to rot, and murder each other as they wish and as their peculiar religion dictates, but stand ready to intervene with calculated violence if they ever attempt to export their brand of barbarity outside of their borders. It is clear that the muslims have never responded to any communication from the West, except when force is successfully applied, and that response has historically been only temporary quiet. I could live with that.
The only real problem with them falling into the depths of self induced ignorance is the big chunk of human history they will take away from us. They’ve already started discussing how to destroy the pyramids, the treasure trove of artifacts in Egypt will be utterly destroyed by these idiots.
I wonder how many “useful idiots” around the world will comply with the plea to return “looted” artifacts to Egypt that will no doubt be re-doubled by the islamists (so they can be destroyed)?
“muslim effluvia”
How is this bigoted comment different from bathroom graffiti or a post at Kos?
Please favor us with your Constitutional Law acumen to describe the legal mechanisms by which you hope to remove “muslim effluvia” from the United States. Do you plan to include U.S. citizens? How about Iraqis and Afghans who have served bravely beside U.S. forces as interpreters and were granted immigration status in return?
You wrote: “[...] who have served bravely beside U.S. forces as interpreters and were granted immigration status in return?”
Don’t ever forget that Islamic law (Sharia), which by definition is believed and accepted by Muslims, unambiguously requires Muslims to kill non-Muslims as soon as they can seize power to do so:
“Fight and slay the unbelievers wherever you find them” -Quran 9:5, et al.
This Sharia law can be seen in action recently in the state-sponsored genocides of non-Muslims carried out in Sudan and Bangladesh, in the terrorism against Christians in Nigeria, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan, and in every other place where Muslims have the ability to murder non-Muslims.
Incidentally, the US government also recruited Nazi war criminals after WWII to help the US in the Cold War, but that didn’t change the fact that they were Nazi war criminals:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/12/us/12holocaust.html
“Don’t ever forget that Islamic law (Sharia), which by definition is believed and accepted by Muslims, unambiguously requires Muslims to kill non-Muslims as soon as they can seize power to do so”
Usually it’s the Left which straitjackets itself into doctrinaire thinking. Unfortunately it can also occur on the Right. Case in point, since 9-11 the silly “Religion of Peace” meme has found its mirror image in the silly “all Muslims are essentially android-zombies with an inevitable default to ‘kill the infidels’” meme.
It’s too bad that this diverts energy from important issues such as (as DPG points out below), dealing with Iran’s mullahs before they field nuclear weapons. It’s also shameful that there are Americans who would feel anything but gratitude to the Iraqi and Afghan translators who serve and served bravely alongside our troops.
“It’s also shameful that there are Americans who would feel anything but gratitude to the Iraqi and Afghan translators who serve and served bravely alongside our troops.”
In a sane, non-PC world, the only translators employed by the military would have been non-muslim.
Part of the difficulty we Americans are faced with is what to do in dangerous situations where we have no qualified non-Muslim translators in their subtle regional dialect. This is yet another example of Americans being at a severe cultural disadvantage ‘on-the-ground’ in Asian wars.
We faced this anxiety with the Japanese after their attack on Pearl Harbor. How to determine who is a double agent? That anxiety was such that Franklin Roosevelt quarantined all Japanese residents here in early 1942, many of whom were legal American citizens.
Doubtless many (the Nisei) were completely loyal…but we had no way of knowing.
Doubtless also, the Iraqi and Afghan translators working in dangerous situations alongside Americans are “marked men” among their co-religionists who seem to read and follow the same Koran as these translators do while on our payroll…or….are they?
This would seem to raise the lethal/delicate question of why can the Muslim translators working physically close to Americans while reading and adhering to the same belligerent Koran verses demanding extinction of non-Muslims, without being labelled as apostates?
Can Muslims have things both ways? What exempts these Muslim translators from the ire of their co-religionists?
Raymond Ibrahim, fluent in Arabic, had an interesting article on hypocrisy being permitted among Muslims living amongst us unwashed infidels so long as it serves the long-run purposes of Islam……
cf: “How Taqiyya Alters Islam’s Rules of War
Defeating Jihadist Terrorism
by Raymond Ibrahim
Middle East Quarterly
Winter 2010″
Here’s a paste,
“Islam must seem a paradoxical religion to non-Muslims. On the one hand, it is constantly being portrayed as the religion of peace; on the other, its adherents are responsible for the majority of terror attacks around the world. Apologists for Islam emphasize that it is a faith built upon high ethical standards; others stress that it is a religion of the law. Islam’s dual notions of truth and falsehood further reveal its paradoxical nature: While the Qur’an is against believers deceiving other believers—for “surely God guides not him who is prodigal and a liar”[1]—deception directed at non-Muslims, generally known in Arabic as taqiyya, also has Qur’anic support and falls within the legal category of things that are permissible for Muslims.”
So…dear readers….you are a Platoon Leader in combat in Afghanistan with an assigned local dialect translator who is a local Afghani……who has vetted him? How?
…Please permit my last post here on this chimerical/lethal subject:
[Raymond Ibrahim again:
"Implications
Taqiyya presents a range of ethical dilemmas. Anyone who truly believes that God justifies and, through his prophet's example, even encourages deception will not experience any ethical qualms over lying. Consider the case of 'Ali Mohammad, bin Laden's first "trainer" and long-time Al-Qaeda operative. An Egyptian, he was initially a member of Islamic Jihad and had served in the Egyptian army's military intelligence unit. After 1984, he worked for a time with the CIA in Germany. Though considered untrustworthy, he managed to get to California where he enlisted in the U.S. Army. It seems likely that he continued to work in some capacity for the CIA. He later trained jihadists in the United States and Afghanistan and was behind several terror attacks in Africa. People who knew him regarded him with "fear and awe for his incredible self-confidence, his inability to be intimidated, absolute ruthless determination to destroy the enemies of Islam, and his zealous belief in the tenets of militant Islamic fundamentalism."[46] Indeed, this sentence sums it all up: For a zealous belief in Islam’s tenets, which legitimize deception in order to make God’s word supreme, will certainly go a long way in creating “incredible self-confidence” when lying.[47]“….End paste]
Thanks, if you’ve read through these posts.
I read through your posts.
And am in agreement that continuing to expend lives and treasure in these wholly unpredictable conflicts abroad is insane.
And someone in our state department tells us to wait and see what Morsi portends for Egypt, that attaining “power” should tame down the Muslim Brotherhood (cold day in hell when that happens, anywhere) didn’t anticipate that Morsi wouldn’t confront the military over its continued control ?
Who (Kerry ? Hillary? Panetta ?) dreams up such ridiculously unrealistic scenarios ?
I think taqyia is overblown, because lying has been a part of conflicts since the beginning of time. I mean, I would certainly had few qualms about lying to Germans if I had been living during the second world war…
Taqiyya is beyond lying. It’s complete mindset sanctioned, recommended, even celebrated, when speaking to or dealing with certain individuals, those outside Islam, the unbelievers/the infidel.
You get kudos within Islam for your skill at misrepresenting the truth, for your competency at lying and deception.
And you have the supremely ridiculous rationale that it’s all in service to God’s word.
#39 to Norwegian
#40 to Charlie Griffith
(reply function not working)
I still don’t like the term taqyia, especially the way you use it. You make makes all muslims into scheming, vicked liars and that’s not good at all.
#44 Norwegian
Not even close to being true, your ridiculous claim about what I do to all Muslims in describing taqiyya.
Imam Rauf, you may have heard of him, was the chief promoter of building a mosque in Lower Manhattan in very close to proximity to Ground Zero.
In promoting this mosque and in telling American audiences one thing and Arabic speaking audiences another, he is more or less the poster child of an individual who will freely use taqiyya to conceal the truth and misrepresent facts to the unbeliever.
I still find the use of the term taqyia objectionable, because it so quickly will turn into “all muslims are liars.”
That is not to say that I am unaware of the links between many mosques and the brotherhood or Saudi Arabia.
Charlie Griffith and Ed L –
Charlie did raise a reasonable question: “What exempts these Muslim translators from the ire of their co-religionists”? My answer: Translators operating with US forces “outside of the wire” in a COIN environment don’t have to be from the immediate vicinity and can wear “disguises” (sunglasses, facemask). You are correct that a good tactic for any insurgency would be to intimidate, “flip” or kill any locals associated with the COIN or government forces. That’s one of the tremendous challenges of COIN warfare.
Ed L opined, “In a sane, non-PC world, the only translators employed by the military would have been non-muslim. “. Uh Ed, there aren’t too many non-Muslim native level Pashto, Dari, Hazara, Uzbek, etc. speakers. The typical U.S. military graduate of the Defense Language Institute (for example an enlisted human intelligence operator) is probably not good enough to communicate well with rural locals who are frequently illiterate and speak in dialects. DoD, late in the game, started a program in 2009 to provide true U.S. military language/cultural experts for AfPak (http://www.jcs.mil/page.aspx?id=52) but there is no way there would be enough of them to be assigned at platoons and company level in the field.
The best testimony to the bravery and loyalty of the local national Afghan and Iraqi interpreters who served with US forces are the many examples of U.S. small unit leaders with whom they served who went over, under and through numerous bureaucratic hurdles to bring them to the US. Your argument is with those combat veteran captains, lieutenants, 1st sergeants, platoon sergeants and (of course) USMC gunnery sergeants.
There are plenty of Assyrian/Chaldean Christians who could have been used in Iraq. Further – vide Sibel Edmonds, I don’t doubt for an instant that the entire domestic translation service is honeycombed with jihadist plants.
As for Afghanistan, the entire, worthless project is a testament to political correctness.
With regards to your earlier plaintive squeals about the constitution, what do you propose ? Is it “unconstitutional” to ban any further muslim immigration into the USA ? to not kow-tow to the ones already here ? Because, if it is, eventually you just end up like Europe, where the muslim immigrants are starting to look very ominous indeed.
I began this exchange with you after you made an extraordinarily bigoted comment which compared Muslims to sewage and hoped that all or virtually all Muslims in the U.S. would somehow be removed. Your comment was so deplorable that PJM has apparently removed it (thanks PJM). Are you backing off of that? If you want to w/draw your bigoted comment and discuss how the U.S. and other Western countries can best address the various threats presented by Radical Islam I expect there will be an opportunity on another thread.
Daniel Pipes has assessed that Muslims as a group can be roughly divided into traditional (majority) radicals (minority) and moderates (small minority). He’s pessimistic about the future of the Muslim world in the modern era and is one of the foremost authorities on Muslim violence (internal and external) but he still advocates engaging with moderate and traditional Muslims to try to influence things and support US policy goals. Why is your picture of all Muslims as having an inevitable default to “kill the infidels” correct and Pipes’ wrong? How do you account for the US combat commanders leaders who have fought incredible bureaucratic battles to bring the local national Iraqi and Afghan interpreters who lived and served alongside U.S. forces in battle to the US? Why do you account yourself as more expert on the possibility of Muslims being our allies than they?
There are plenty of Assyrian/Chaldean Christians who could have been used in Iraq as interpreters– All native Arabic speakers were encouraged to apply. US forces assessed whoever applied and hired as appropriate. In fact, many local national (LN) Iraqi interpreters were non-ethnic Arab Kurds. I don’t recall many Assyrian/Chaldean LN interpreters but there were many US nationals from those groups. The problem was getting native speakers willing to go out-of-the-wire on missions with US forces.
Your authority for your absolute certainty that “the entire domestic translation service is honeycombed with jihadist plants” is Sibel Edmonds?!?. Edmonds worked for a short time as a contract translator for the FBI, left after an ambiguous whistleblower case and is now focused on peddling Jewish conspiracy theories (http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/04/18/is-israel-the-sole-determinant-of-us-presidential-elections/, http://sibeledmonds.blogspot.com/2006/10/israel-turkey-neocon-nuclear-agenda.html, http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/whos-afraid-of-sibel-edmonds/). Great source!
I’m done with this thread. Feel free to have the last word.
No, I don’t back off from that deleted statement, however intemperate it was, because what exactly is the alternative. What is your proposal ? Just keep on letting in thousands of muslims every year ? Another Dearborn, Michigan every five years ?
You could even compare the interpreters granted asylum to the Harkis from Algeria being allowed to live in France. They were Muslims – ostensibly “on our side” – yet their children are radicalised and hate France.
Since you are in a hissy fit and are “done with this thread”, I’ll let you hoist yourself on a petard planted on a PC edifice of your own making.
“All native Arabic speakers were encouraged to apply” – it would be difficult to concoct a more pathetically PC sentence than that.
This sort of statement reeks of hysteria. The Israelis are establishing national service to include Muslims (a fifth of their population) and accept Muslims in the army as volunteers. How many Muslims do you actually know? Why don’t you ask the Israelis how they get along with a lot (if not all) of Israeli Arabs?
Quite a few, actually, and mostly Palestinians. Also some Palestinian Christians…with a story of their own.
Hysteria and caution can sometimes be confused…I only hope all works out well.
thnx
Desperate times call for desperate measures.
What’s desperate? The Israelis have a tougher situation than we do and they manage to get along with a Muslim minority of 20%. There hasn’t been an effective terror attack on US soil for years. There’s reason to be concerned, and vigilant, but desperate? The one really urgent thing is to take out Iran’s nuclear capability. Now that might become “desperate” if we don’t do anything about it.
David.
The key is ‘minority’. When and if Israeli muslims ever got close to 45 or 50% color Israel gone.
It is interesting that the Islamic leaders failed to read their own Koranic doctrines. If in 1948 they had stayed put they could have out bred Jews and taken over Israel in the Knesset. As the leading Anti-Malthusian you are more aware of the numbers than most.
Duh.
Read VDH ‘Mexifornia’ and La Raza agi-prop.
ta
28. David P. Goldman
What’s desperate?
Sorry ,that wasn’t in response to the article but to another comment – there appears to be some gremlins in the message threading.
The spending. The message is the spending. The message is the excessive into debt government spending. A debtor nation is a national/international security risk. The message is not about revenue, it is about outflow. All of us ordinary fools know that if we spend more than we make, we are at risk of bad things.
Would the Republicans stay on message and task? Would they promise us what we want to hear and then not cut into the trillions of outlays and services on the debt? Would our politicians cut into their own favorite programs/bribes/pork to keep us from going over the fiscal cliff? The leper with the most fingers still has leprosy.
Keep in mind Libya had zero debt before NATO. It is tragic that people still believe that NATO’s intervention in Libya was a humanitarian intervention. The most relevant thing this article and comments have enlightened me about is the absence of any good reason to see what PJMedia has posted . Goodness Grief! Anyone who actually believes that story should have had the presence of mind to show the little responsibility it would have taken to read a 32 page document (The Green Book)that outlined the direct democracy that was Libya before NATO. And anyone who did read that would know with absolutely no doubt that FUKUS (France, U.K., and the U.S.) did just that. Liars and thieves. Read the Green Book. Simple.
I don’t understand. If Libya was a “direct democracy” before the NATO intervention, what was the function of Moammar Khaddafi (or however they’re spelling it now)?
Gaddafi was their leader, he was their representative within the United Nations And African Nations. He held no role in Libya’s government. The Green Book explains their system in brilliantly simple style. There existed approximately 2700 people’s congresses’s in a country of less than 6 million people. As I mentioned the Green Book is very short and easy read that puts the entire Libya smokescreen in perspective. Best Wishes!
Mr. Goldman,
I’m not criticizing you for your throwaway line, “Republicans should stay on message.”
But I thought it was the most crucial part of your piece. Republicans should stay on message.
Except they don’t have a message. In fact, nobody around here seems to know what “message” means. Which is not surprising because it’s an ambiguous word that has no place for the people charged with communicating to voters why they should vote for one Mitt Romney.
There are two parts to the communication objective. Only two.
The strategy. And the execution.
So for, Mitt has no strategy. And no executions. I can say that because his ” compelling reasons not to vote for Obama, but to “vote for me” haven’t been articulated. Nobody can remember them. So far, Mitt’s communications team is playing badminton white Obama’s people are playing thug, lying Chicago politics.
Mitt’s strategy could be: Look at the dismal record of Obama and how he tries to avoid talking about it. Here’s what I’d do to fix things.
An execution could be the Obama people burning all the incrementing evidence (the things they’ve done that have wrecked the recovery).
This could be done in check list fashion as evidence (examples of Obama’s idiocy) is thrown into the Presidential incinerator.
Meanwhile, Republicans have been throwing mud on the TV screen in the form of Obama’s own words and showing how he’s a hypocrite and liar. It’s not working. It’s bad strategy and benefit-bereft executions. Yet, Hannity applauds it, and nobody on his show knows enough about the communication business to say these executions stink. It’s heavy handed stuff that’s the first and worst thing creatives think of. Independents and moderates hate these kinds of executions.
With a doubt, the Mitt McCain people are true incompetents at running a campaign.
Newt was an easy target. Obama is a moving target.
The way I see it, the only thing Mitt’s communication people good at is running around the conference table imitating chickens with their heads cut off every time Obama attacks Mitt. Every attack seems to take them by surprise. Mitt is no George Patton in the political wars. In fact, Mitt, in real wartime, could be fired for incompetence in the face of the enemy. In the business, we call Mitt’s communication’s advisers everything from “political hacks and nincompoops to rank amateurs.
At this point, Mitt doesn’t have the faintest idea how to hire people to develop a real attack plan (a strategy). At this point he should just attack, attack, attack. Just like Obama is doing.
Attack on every front. Attack Obama, for instance, for being a drug taking example for America’s youth by his admitted illegal cocaine use.
Execute enough attacks on Obama till Obama can’t defend against all of them. Blow Obama’s campaigns to smithereens like Patton chewed up France, Germany and Austria. Politics isn’t for the faint of heart. Or the stupid of mind. The stupid of mind are running Mitt’s war strategy and communications. They’re making this a real horse race when the only thing they’re qualified to be doing is cleaning out the stalls.
Wake up Mitt. Before it’s too late. No vacations you idiot. Attack. Attack. Attack. You have a mainstream media against you. You won’t find an Ernie Pyle in the whole corrupt bunch. Hannity is so clueless about Mitt’s mistakes I can’t stand to watch him anymore.
Today Rasmussen has Mitt on top 47% to 44%. That’s pathetic. Romney should have a ten point lead of likely voters.
Point your ordinance at Obama and open fire. You’ll get moderate democrats and independents in droves.
At this point Mitt is at best an ineffective counter puncher.
And I thought McCain was bad.
While Ike had BBDO, in New York, pro bono, to create his campaigns against Stevenson, Mitt’s high priced political hacks are giving him the coordinates to the Bermuda triangle.
In the end, after a close loss, Obama will be viewed as such a radical American hater that he didn’t get enough votes to win, despite Romney’s terrible campaign.
Fans, if Romney is the best the Republicans can do, it might be time to make some changes.
Actually, Mr. Romney has a 15 point lead among likely voters, but the same AP that would put 11 reporters into fact-checking Ms. P’s biography and put none, nada, zero, zilch on Mr. O’s (ghost written) words (to say nothing of the MSM writ large) would never consider framing a poll to extract this result. We can depend on them doing exactly the opposite until the day after the election when they say “unexpectedly” yet again.
Mr. R surely knows this and more. Which would lead most to a fairly “conservative” (quiet) approach to the election – only speaking out when others have misspoken in his name and on topics where it is important that the electorate know how his position will inform his term (including “that’s a State’s business, not the Federal Government.”)
@ 10. rachel peepers:
Way past time. This is the last time I vote for a president I’ve had zero chance of selecting in the primary. Just saying the GOP better get the message or I go for a third party.
Mitt is nowhere near my candidate. BUT I’d prefer he keep the present course and avoid the pitfalls until at least three weeks before the election. And stop worrying over the polls. They looked the same way at this stage of the game when Reagan went against Carter, and look how that turned out.
Yes, but that was Reagan who was a fighter and an excellent communicator. I hate to say it but Mitt doesn’t strike me as a Reagan type.
The national polls are hollow. All that matters is state by state, and that’s where Obama is still doing all too well in the Midwest, even in states that have been devastated in this economy like Ohio. Romney doesn’t even have a big lead in Florida, a state he should be running away with given how anti-Israel this administration has been.
So the Libyans had an “election.” Big deal. Once the Muslim Brotherhood takes over, it will end up just like Hezbollah or Hamas. One man, one vote, one time. And they haven’t even really started fighting over the oil wealth yet. Soon you’ll have militia violence spinning out of control as tribes fight over who will rule the country. In short, you could end up with Somalia on the Mediterranean. We overthrew a country without thinking about what would come after that. Sound familiar? We did the same thing in Egypt. Aren’t we tired of going into Muslim countries and actually making things worse? Time we stayed out of conflicts that have aboslutely nothing to do with us AT ALL.
“Aren’t we tired of going into Muslim countries and actually making things worse?”
Good question – especially when we have great evidence that muslims are capable of mucking up things all on their own.
Example: Iran.
Carter could have avoided that pariah – Obama has followed very narrowly in Carter’s footsteps – and managed to make the ME 10x more dangerous.
Obama may be able to gain some traction with the idea that “It was Bush’s fault” when the chaos hits the ME hard and the fallacy of the ‘Arab Spring’ dies – I probably would not defend Bush in that argument.
Really don’t give a flip about either…the radicals have taken over, we just need to sit back and when they try to reach out and cause harm to us, JDAM..’Nuff said…Conservatives/Republicans need to stay on point that we don’t need to put our fingers into this, look at Libya and Egypt, Syria will be the same soon…Leave them to their mud huts and flinging poo at each other..
Mr. Goldman:
I’m not trying to doubt you on this, but could you refer me to
some reliable sources for the $2 a day figure. Two dollars a day
is orders of magnitude below Egypt’s per capita GDP.
Frequently cited by official sources, eg
http://www.afdb.org/en/countries/north-africa/egypt/human-and-social-development/
Obviously we have let the Arabs and the Egyptian people down.
As one astute analyst wrote: “And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
Oh, that was Obama….speaking about Americans…Pennsyvanians, no less. Nevermind.
An Outstanding observation!
http://www.CrassPanderingToYourFringeConstituantsGoneWrong.com
……this last sentence of Mr Goldman’s sums thing up tersely:
“The Obama administration’s ideological obsessions and incompetence are driving the largest Arab country into a disaster. Republicans need to stay on message here.”
They do indeed.
What Republicans need to do is spend election money on a nationwide advertising (forgive that word, but I can’t think of a better one..) effort to educate our indifferent entitlement seeking electorate to the dangers which the Obama administrators have exposed us to by their “outreach” (another nauseous term) to Muslim/Islamic activism and subversion increasing in our America on a daily basis. Physical dangers ought to trump entitlement checks…..but don’t…. in this election cycle.
The latest outrage is Obama inviting the Muslim Brotherhood’s influential new president of Egypt to our America….chief-executive to chief-executive type of thing.
“Equal Opportunity” taken to an obscene level.
The Muslims/Islamists newly emergent amongst us are salivating.
So as far as Libya itself goes, it’s only one cog in the advancing wheel of Islam.
That the largest Arab country is on shaky, shifty sands (!) is only part of the Muslim/Islamist social unrest that should be contained within Islamic-controlled countries. Maybe encouraged by selective special activities by our specially trained operatives to sow even more discord within Muslim/Islamist sectarian divisions.
Our (American) threat is Islam’s penetration of America itself, in all of its subtle emanations; our indifferent, preoccupied voters haven’t absorbed this brutal fact despite the blood lost during the past decade.
Main concern: “Where’s my entitlement check?..sure glad I voted for Obama again…”
All of this assumes that we (the US) can and should be influencing, even dictating, what happens in the Middle East. Are we really ready to overthrow or undermine the democratic decisions of other countries? How about we just leave them alone, stop trying to corrupt their processes? In the case of Egypt, a trend towards Sharia will destroy their tourism industry, a huge part of their economy. Let’s live up to our ideals and stop meddling in the affairs of other sovereign nations.
…point taken…..but our idealistic passivity in abstaining from the internal affaires of (potentially) enemy countries won’t stop them from developing threats to our security.
We need to regain our Cold War mindsets…abundant parallels to Communist infiltration have already surfaced in and around the mosques and madrassas of Michigan and Northern Virginia.
Remember Greece and Italy and the Communist penetrations there in the late 1940′s and early 1950′s……ultimately, we won.
@ 15 Brutus has discovered a marvelous method of unringing a bell. All Hail Brutus! With his magic we are instantly absolved of all responsibility and empathy for the poor saps our own elite have disabused for political pandering purposes these past generations. It’s great to be guiltless again. All Hail Brutus! Suck it up, you guys.
How foolish the Italians were to give up Libya. The Arabs on the coast had no more right to interior oil than any Italian. Less in fact, the Italuans drew the giant borders giving them the territory. How stupid the West was – turning a million square miles of empty desert to undeserving Arabs merely because Italy seized the land and put it into one colony.
Steve….thanks for saying, “the Italuans drew the giant borders giving them the territory.”
Now for a bit of needed perspective:
From time to time I’ve liked to remind all of us (….here I go again….) that a one minute review of all of the extant borders in Central/West Asia were hand drawn in the Foreign Offices of the European colonial powers of the era previous to our current nasty mess. (cf: Sykes-Picot for starters…I like to cite that one because it was a good nucleus of trouble.)
The same goes, of course for North Africa (Britain, France Italy)….and other areas of Africa as they become more prominent in the news of the day.
I’d hope that more sentient folks might wonder at the tragic irony that we Americans are now, and have been since about 1917 or so….linger over that date,1917, awhile….the only ones with the apparent means to clean up and/or ameliorate these troublesome areas…..which became troublesome without America, with obscene amounts of American blood and dollars.
So, now is is the established fashion at the “United” Nations and elsewhere to point accusatory fingers at us Americans for having “bought” all of these virulent situations by intervening for a hundred different reasons, depending on the area. The former Colonial powers are now cash strapped and fighting-men strapped…we have a United Nations of United Third World Countries knee-jerk voting en masse against America.
So, let’s hear far less smug carping from the various European interests concerning America. We’re damned if we do, damned roundly if we don’t.
Now we’ve got severe problems of our own which need our dedicated attention.
Silly me. When I read the title of this article I was sure it would be about how foreign policy has no effect on American elections.
If foreign policy credentials determined who was elected President….
- McCain would have beaten Obama
- Gore would have defeated Bush
- Ford would have beaten Carter (O.K., Ford made a serious mistake about Poland). Then again, Carter would have beaten Reagan.
- Nixon would have beaten Kennedy
The voters really don’t care about foreign policy and Romney’s lack of a credible foreign policy is probably one of the least of his problems.
I know, some of you are thinking foreign policy should be considered important in Presidentital elections, I agree. But even during “police action” times, foreign policy is mostly ignored by voters.
Said @8 “For the Arab muslim world to dig itself out of the thousand year deep cultural hole they find themselves in, it would have to become apostate and foreswear Mohammad and his murderous desert cult.”
Bear with me here, as this comment pushes the limits of the topic a little, and is a tad convoluted.
I am reminded of various discussions of IQ. What it is, why certain groups seem to score better than others etc. The excuses abound. I am beginning to suspect a fundamental flaw in the whole concept, specifically, Intelligence is the not the correct variable…Culture is. For the sake of discussion call it CQ. It seems that IQ is dependent variable based on CQ, and that CQ is the correct measure of performance. Then what social features does CQ measure. I suggest a few:
1. Does a culture feed itself?
2. Does a culture reproduce itself? (both population and ‘cultural identity’)
3. Does a culture offer an homogenous, consistent view of itself?
4. Does a culture offer its membership internal growth and class mobility?
etc.
Just thinking.
ta
Egypt today is 80 million and rising, dirt poor and dependent on the oustide world for survival, you point out.
The odds that any gov’t will be succesful is slim, obviously. Could it be that this will prove to be the undoing of the islamist parties? Are they receiving a poisoned chalice?
I mean, if they were to grab power 1-2 generations from now, these countries would be much bigger, with Europe shrinking and aging at the same time…
Questions: What is the likelihood that –given their profound needs– Egypt would be tempted to roll over the border and seize part or all of Libya? If so, what response would come from the West, from NATO? Some Egyptian Coptic Christians suggest that they need to form some kind of alliance with the MB –as an alternative to the more rabidly anti-Christian groups– a modus vivendi being better than no vivendi. Is that a practical goal? If not, what other options have they? Is emigration an option? If so, to where? Ethiopia?
The Libyans would not like it and given their oil, would get NATO assistance, me thinks. Given that the country is basically a big desert, any Egyptian troops would travel by a few roads or go inland in scorching heat. I wouldn’t fancy it if I was Egypt…
What Romney really should point out about Libya—
Mr. Goldman, I have looked at the BIS detailed report for June. As of 12/31/2011, banks from the 43 reporting countries owed Libyan banks about $66B and had assets from Libyan banks of about $1B. [footnote 1 see table 6A, P. 31] the BIS is the Bank for International Settlements, and is kind of a clearinghouse for central banks. Meaning Qaddafi had control of a stash of $65B deposited in international banks. Not counting gold, loot, and camels. I recall the transitional government got the international community to recognize their central banker while their forces were still skirmishing on the road to Misrata (March 19, 2011). Two days after the Security Council froze Libya”s Central Bank accounts.[footnote 2] Whatever the election results, they are not going to give parliament or a front-man the keys to the Central Bank. (Heck, we don’t either, some things are too important for politicians.)
The whole thing looks like a hostile takeover of a very fat soverign investment fund. Since about 50% of Libyans are under 18, and half the adults are women, that leaves about $40,000 US dollars per man. Even better, they aren’t going to share with the old regime”s supporters. They can continue to buy off support from the people with the interest, pocket new oil income, and now Al Qaeda has all the funding they will ever need.
Obama’s crack National Security Council was rolled by wily bunch of long-term planners. I’m not sure about France and UK.
Am I wrong, or did these Al Qaeda trained jihadis just get us to hand then enough funding to buy Pakistan, North Korea and Belarus?
1 http://www.bis.org/publ/qtrpdf/r_qa1206_anx6a.pdf
2 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-21/libyan-rebel-council-sets-up-oil-company-to-replace-qaddafi-s.html
And don’t forget water! Gaddafi had let’s not forget tapped into the world’s largest paeleo-water aquifer and had spent approximately 60 billion dollars to Bechtel and other contractors developing what the west referred to as ‘The madmans river’. Never mind that Gadaffi had never allowed one monsanto seed to be planted in Libya and aside from conspiring with the other oil bearers to no longer sell resources for anything but gold-backed currencies. Look into how much land in Africa is being bought up by multi-national corporations for the purpose of growing gm crops that can be banked as green carbon credits to counter the carbon tax that the IMF will be collecting globally.
#20 Norwegian and #21 Mike Walsh point out (…to me, at least) the futility of us Americans roaring in with our drones, low level strafing runs and skip bombing or whatever it’s called now, cyber jamming, and other neat stuff we don’t know about publicly….to alter …permanently….any of this labyrinthine steaming cauldron called the West/Central Asian Theatre….now expanding throughout North Africa, and emerging, now, in the sub-Saharan African “Nations”.
American technology along with our massive kinetic (nice new word seen around) abilities are simply not going to make one whit of a long-run difference to the murderous interpretation of the Muslim’s Koran, which by its very nature is deeply lodged inside the brain matter of the indoctrinated Muslim.
We Americans simply aren’t going to make any lasting changes to the equivalent of the Korean War era of “brainwashing”; now in the guise of the strictest application of the Muslims’ Koran verses….at least…according to those Muslims themselves. Just ask them.
We Americans simply aren’t internationally minded, so we have trouble grasping the metastasizing nature of an alien jihadist concept originating in the far away Cradle of Civilization, er, Arabia, not the same thing at all…right? ….. among its currently constituted artificial borders.
Hammurabi and Cyrus, call your offices. Pharaohs…report.
This why I want our young War Fighters out of there. Let these Muslims slice each others’ sectarian throats….including of course among the…Libyans.
Ask Maliki and Karzai what they’re doing just now with our bundles and bales of cash of the past decade, not to mention the irreplaceable American lives. Wait for their candid answers.
Egypt is a basket case, but an important one given the Suez-canal and it’s size in the Arab world, even if they don’t have oil.
I really don’t know what one should do with such a country. Few natural resources and a population that is half illiterate and possibly mad, given that 80 % want sharia and 25 % vote for salafists.
To me, the whole country comes across as really aggressive, from top to bottom, but they are very vulnerable. Not enough food, one source of water only (the Nile), a dam that can be blown up (Aswan) and no sofistication in terms of industry.
Good point about Suez.
That damned Canal again…remember this bit of paste from Google on that Suez Crisis?
..”The attack followed the President of Egypt Gamal Abdel Nasser’s decision of 26 July 1956 to nationalize the Suez Canal, after the withdrawal of an offer by Britain and the United States to fund the building of the Aswan Dam, which was in response to Egypt’s new ties with the Soviet Union and recognizing the People’s Republic of China during the height of tensions between China and Taiwan.[17] The aims of the attack were primarily to regain Western control of the canal and to remove Nasser from power.”
Yet another circular piece of history coming around to bite us again. Infiltrated Communists supplanted this time by infiltrated Muslims/Islamists.
We should be reviewing that Cold War mess again….but perhaps now Suez is not such a useful blackmail club in favor of the mercurial Egyptians.
Another parallel to the Cold War (this time around) is Putin’s Russia lurking in the background with twitching tail ready to pounce (again) where its paws can grab anything useful….remember Syria in those days…..?
This time around we don’t know just what, if anything, the British (England, Scotland, Wales) can contribute along with the French right now as concerns Egypt……what materiel?….what men?..what cash?….see (yet again) how the former Colonial powers drawing these still existing borders are remaining ironically in the shadows, while we Americans, ironically, are the only ones with the means to do anything to “intervene”?…and expected to “intervene”. Sickening, hypocritical repetition.
This American is weary of our “Intervening” anywhere……should we wait for the condemnations?…and lack of materiel support?….it’d be only a matter of time before the U.N. Human Rights Council Members en bloc (those paragons of virtue) roundly condemns us, and….should we “count the ways”?…that the United Nations will condemn America…again.
Randy’s comment above makes a very good point. Besides all the speculation about Gaddafi suddenly turning toast after promoting his African gold dinar (more than likely it was simply a matter of his age combined with all that light sweet crude being under an aging megalomaniac’s control), a hell of a lot of the Libyan government’s sovereign wealth fund was simply stolen or spent by Eurocrat banksters. Tossing him from power and making the new Libyan central bank beholden to the ECB was one way to cover that up.
When I did financial analysis I would and my customers would try to determine a range of outcomes for a particular company, with in a range, including in max and min.
What is wrong with us merely waiting with the proviso that we take action when we really feel the need, rather than playing Marxist and try managing a situation.
You give up your freedom when you commit to an outcome because you become more and more constrained over time. Why not instead, let them go and follow the situation as it develop rather than being oversold by people in the country.
It seems to me that Libya and the rest may have to solve their own problems.
Charlie Griffith and Ed L (34 & 35) –
Charlie did raise a reasonable question: “What exempts these Muslim translators from the ire of their co-religionists”? My answer: Translators operating with US forces “outside of the wire” in a COIN environment don’t have to be from the immediate vicinity and can wear “disguises” (sunglasses, facemask). You are correct that a good tactic for any insurgency would be to intimidate, “flip” or kill any locals associated with the COIN or government forces. That’s one of the tremendous challenges of COIN warfare.
Ed L opined, “In a sane, non-PC world, the only translators employed by the military would have been non-muslim. “. Uh Ed, there aren’t too many non-Muslim native level Pashto, Dari, Hazara, Uzbek, etc. speakers. The typical U.S. military graduate of the Defense Language Institute (for example an enlisted human intelligence operator) is probably not good enough to communicate well with rural locals who are frequently illiterate and speak in dialects. DoD, late in the game, started a program in 2009 to provide true U.S. military language/cultural experts for AfPak (http://www.jcs.mil/page.aspx?id=52) but there is no way there would be enough of them to be assigned at platoons and company level in the field.
The best testimonies to the bravery and loyalty of the local national Afghan and Iraqi interpreters who served with US forces are the many examples of U.S. small unit leaders with whom they served who went over, under and through numerous bureaucratic hurdles to bring them to the US.
#44 Norwegian
Not even close to being true, your ridiculous claim about what I do to all Muslims in describing taqiyya.
Imam Rauf, you may have heard of him, was the chief promoter of building a mosque in Lower Manhattan in very close to proximity to Ground Zero.
In promoting this mosque and in telling American audiences one thing and Arabic speaking audiences another, he is more or less the poster child of an individual who will freely use taqiyya to conceal the truth and misrepresent facts to the unbeliever.
After reading this from Robert Spencer’s “Jihad Watch” quoting Raymond Ibrahim [..fluent in Arabic...] I thought to myself, “Now, I’ve read just about all I need to know….”
There is something deeply, deeply [!]offensive about this arch rationalization of “Islam justifies all”….read this with an open [!] mind….
..”
Raymond Ibrahim: Sodomy “For the Sake of Islam”
Over at Gatestone Institute (via RaymondIbrahim.com where the relevant links appear) I introduce the Anus Jihad:”…
…..end paste…I don’t know to “link” it here, those piqued [!] must paste it into the “search” of our friend Dr. Google.
For some cyber-reason this pasted post her was up with those of the 11 and 12th July..but I think that it bears repeating here to indicate a hidden nature of oor Islamic enemy:
“28. Charlie Griffith
After reading this from Robert Spencer’s “Jihad Watch” quoting Raymond Ibrahim [..fluent in Arabic...] I thought to myself, “Now, I’ve read just about all I need to know….”
There is something deeply, deeply [!]offensive about this arch rationalization of “Islam justifies all”….read this with an open [!] mind….
..”
Raymond Ibrahim: Sodomy “For the Sake of Islam”
Over at Gatestone Institute (via RaymondIbrahim.com where the relevant links appear) I introduce the Anus Jihad:”…
…..end paste…I don’t know to “link” it here, those piqued [!] must paste it into the “search” of our friend Dr. Google.
July 13, 2012 – 2:07 am
Apologies in advance if this appears again in the wrong sequence….
“28. Charlie Griffith
After reading this from Robert Spencer’s “Jihad Watch” quoting Raymond Ibrahim [..fluent in Arabic...] I thought to myself, “Now, I’ve read just about all I need to know….”
There is something deeply, deeply [!]offensive about this arch rationalization of “Islam justifies all”….read this with an open [!] mind….
..”
Raymond Ibrahim: Sodomy “For the Sake of Islam”
Over at Gatestone Institute (via RaymondIbrahim.com where the relevant links appear) I introduce the Anus Jihad:”…
…..end paste…I don’t know to “link” it here, those piqued [!] must paste it into the “search” of our friend Dr. Google.
July 13, 2012 – 2:07 am