Scott Spiegel

What have we learned in the 10 years since Islamic terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon?  Several lessons spring to mind:

1. There is nothing President George W. Bush could have done to prevent terrorist acts in his first eight months in office, of which his post-9/11 critics would have approved.  Even after 9/11, liberals have loudly disapproved of profiling at airports, surreptitiously monitoring terrorist communications, and fighting al-Qaeda militarily abroad.  Imagine how they would have reacted if Bush had attempted any of these strategies pre-9/11.

2. Poverty does not cause terrorism; it is both unnecessary and insufficient to the task.  Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to blow up Northwest Flight 253, was the son of a wealthy Nigerian banker.  American Taliban John Walker Lindh went to high school at a “California Distinguished School” in SoCal.  In contrast, poor people the world over—rice farmers in China, untouchables in India—do not rise up en masse to wreak havoc in suicide bombings.  Modern-day terrorism is caused by individuals’ adherence to an ideology that encourages terrorist acts against innocent civilians—an ideology that usually happens to be Islamist.  Not all Muslims are terrorists, but almost all modern-day terrorists are Muslims.

3. Liberals have amassed a formidable glossary of imprecations they invoke whenever commentators scrutinize the radical nature of Islam: alienating Muslims, being at war with Islam, being Islamophobic, demonizing the other, engaging in inflammatory rhetoric, hijacking a peaceful religion, singling out people because of their religion.  None of these terms is objective enough to mean anything.

4. The criticism that the U.S. shouldn’t be vocal in our support of Israel is specious.  In supporting Israel, our anti-terror stance gains consistency and moral credence to reformists in hostile regimes who are potentially open to our ideas.  Israel is also the U.S.’s front line in the war on terror, and, if supported, may have the guts to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities if we don’t get around to doing it.

5. Announcing that we are at war with Islam does not constitute recruitment propaganda for the enemy.  Minnesota’s Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to the U.S. House, declared, “I don’t want [al-Qaeda] to be able to stand up and claim… ‘America is at war with Islam.’  That’s one of their main recruiting arguments.”  Actually, one of al-Qaeda’s main recruiting arguments is, “The infidel is wicked, and his weakness and inability to stand up to us prove that our cause is just.”  An argument that would hurt recruiting would be, “America is at war with Islam, and you are going to get blown to smithereens if you fight for us.”

6. Waterboarding isn’t torture—it’s a resistance training technique routinely carried out on U.S. special operations forces, and leaves no permanent physical or psychological damage.  Waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques have been spectacularly successful in uncovering imminent terrorist plots and killing 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden.

7. Troop surges are a winning strategy, as demonstrated in Iraq, Afghanistan, and even Libya.  As John McCain noted in his support for the second Afghanistan surge, half-measures in war “lead to failure over time and an erosion of American public support.”  We should never again fail to send an adequate number of troops to get the job done, as soon as they are needed.

8. Bush had to withhold from the public reams of documents about chilling terrorist threats we faced; when newly sworn-in President Obama was briefed on this intelligence, he suddenly did an about-face on almost every campaign promise he had made to reverse his predecessor’s policies.  In just his first 100 days in office, Obama implemented a surge in Afghanistan (followed by a larger surge later that year), asked Congress for $83 billion more for Iraq and Afghanistan without funding benchmarks, stepped up Predator drone attacks in Afghanistan, supported renewal of the Patriot Act, invoked the state secrets doctrine, reversed his opposition to rendition, rejected Democrats’ call for a Truth Commission, filed a brief claiming the U.S. can indefinitely hold anyone who supports Al-Qaeda or the Taliban, supported denial of habeas corpus to Bagram prisoners, revived military tribunals at Gitmo, opposed release of Abu Ghraib photos, and failed to do anything to close Gitmo.  It seems as though Commander-in-Chief Bush knew better than Alinskyite community organizer Obama did after all.

9. War is less expensive than Democrats’ wasteful domestic social programs.  Eight years of the Iraq War—including training and preparation for the 2003 invasion—cost less ($709 billion) than Obama’s useless stimulus bill ($787 billion).  U.S. involvement in the Libyan conflict cost the same ($1 billion) as the first 48 hours of Obama’s failed Cash-for-Clunkers program.  Defense spending constitutes 20% of the federal budget, and foreign aid just 1%, whereas entitlement spending on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid make up 43%.

10. Liberals have learned absolutely nothing since 9/11, except that Islam is much more peaceful, tolerant, and pro-U.S. than they’d ever dreamed; KSM should be tried in the same court as people who eat trans fats while drinking Four Loko and smoking in bars; and Muslims were the real victims of 9/11.

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• How the United States returned to its congenial pre-9/11 ways (fullcomment.nationalpost.com)
• The war on terror 10 years on (macleans.ca)
• Babble of an extremist: Seumas Milne defends his post 9/11 essay which blamed attacks on US actions & support for Israel (cifwatch.com)
• 9/11 and the Successful War (terorismsicontraterorismdotwordpressdotcom.wordpress.com)
• 9/11: what have we learnt? (telegraph.co.uk)

Image by Scott Spiegel via Flickr

Random thoughts and observations on last week’s terror attacks in Norway (per Thomas Sowell):

Just when the mainstream media was finally starting to learn that virtually every ideologically motivated mass murder attempted in the past 30 years has been committed by an Islamic extremist, some anti-immigration nut in Norway has to go and spoil it.  It’ll take us 30 years to retrain them.

The mass shooting perpetrated by Anders Behring Breivik that left scores dead at a children’s day camp at Utoya Island “puts the spotlight on right-wing extremism in Europe,” as the New York Times helpfully noted, and “typifies a new breed of conservative extremists,” in the Financial Times’ words.  Yet the 9/11 attacks, the London bombing attacks, the Spain bombing attacks, the Mumbai bombing attacks, and eight million other blatant, graphic examples of Islamist-fueled mass murder somehow never seem to “put the spotlight on Muslim extremism” worldwide.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg mistakenly predicted that failed Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad was “[h]omegrown, maybe a mentally deranged person or someone with a political agenda that doesn’t like the health care bill…”  Attorney General Eric Holder urged us not to jump to conclusions about the ideological motivations of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hassan, who delivered a PowerPoint presentation to doctors on slaughtering infidels and roared “Allahu Akbar!” before his murderous rampage.  The Council on American-Islamic Relations sniffed that Washington, D.C. sniper John Allen Muhammad had no Muslim connection and was most likely a right-wing redneck.  But one loon in a Scandinavian village-state shoots up an island, and suddenly conservatism is on trial worldwide.

Some news outlets initially attributed the violence in Oslo to Islamic terrorists.  One such outlet was Al Jazeera.

A group called Helpers of the Global Jihad, which initially assumed the shooting had been committed by Islamic terrorists, immediately announced their support for the perpetrators of the attack before later renouncing it.

Some honest liberals are admitting that the World of Warcraft-loving, Dexter-watching, Unabomber manifesto-reading Breivik is not a stand-in for conservative thought, anti-Islamist concern, or worry about mass immigration accompanied by lack of cultural assimilation.  Froma Harrop, for example, writes, “What Breivik is not is a ‘right-winger’ in any conventional sense of the term.  Calling this crackpot such puts him on a political spectrum occupied by people arguing about real things in the current century.  Even ‘right-wing extremist’ is pushing it.  Once you place the likes of Breivik in the political debate, you distort the views of others concerned with similar-sounding issues.”

Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, to whom the Norwegian shooter has been compared, was revealed to have had Muslim conspirators, including accomplice Hussain Al-Hussaini.  Clinton’s Justice Department inexcusably declined to follow up on leads linking McVeigh to Al-Hussaini.  Perhaps it would be prudent to wait a bit to see just who or what turns up in Breivik’s checkered past.

In the last two years, the media have jumped to the following conclusions: Jarred Lee Loughner, who shot Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords, was a Tea Party fanatic; James von Brunn, who opened fire in D.C.’s Holocaust Museum, was a conservative racist; Andrew Joseph Stack, who crashed his plane into an IRS building, was an anti-federal government conservative; James Lee, who tried to blow up a Discovery building, was an anti-government militia member; John Patrick Bedell, who fired on police in the Pentagon, was an anti-Obama zealot; and Michael Enright, who stabbed a Muslim cabdriver in lower Manhattan, was a bigoted Ground Zero Mosque opponent.  In fact, these kooks turned out to be leftists (Loughner), Bush-haters (von Brunn), anti-corporatists (Stack), environmentalists (Lee), 9/11 truthers (Bedell), and Ground Zero Mosque supporters (Enright).  Given the media’s track record on predicting the ideological leanings of would-be mass murderers, it’s odd there are so few reporters humble enough to wait and find out the full story about Breivik’s motives and associates before branding him a “radical right-winger.”

No anti-terror groups are likely to propose building an anti-Islamic monument on Utoya Island.

It will be interesting to learn why “right-winger” Breivik blew up Oslo’s Oil Ministry and not, say, the Ministry of Children, Equality and Social Inclusion.

The Oslo attacks were swiftly condemned by the Islamic Council of Norway, a lovely, state-supported organization that favors the death penalty for homosexuals.

The entire Oslo police helicopter crew inexplicably went on vacation days before the shooting at Utoya Island, an arrangement that prevented police from getting to the shooter until 90 minutes after the shooting began.  It’s not unreasonable to suspect that the serial killer timed his attack to coincide with the helicopter crew’s vacation.

Norwegian police typically don’t patrol the streets armed with guns—or any weapons, for that matter.  It seems unlikely that Breivik would have carried out his attack with such abandon in a better-patrolled area, say, Central Park.

In a column titled “Breivik and His Enablers,” New York Times op-ed contributor Roger Cohen writes that a good way to honor the death of recently deceased “Jewish girl” Amy Winehouse is “to confront the latest iteration of a European bigotry that kills.”  And Times editors wonder why no one reads their paper anymore.

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Liberals have been howling over the media’s claim that Osama bin Laden’s killing has “renewed” the debate over enhanced interrogation techniques, when any sensible patriotic American surely recognizes these as unconscionable acts of barbarism (though shooting an unarmed man in the face is apparently still acceptable).

In fact, any sensible patriotic American understands that such techniques are justified, indispensable tools for intelligence gathering in a war against Islamist savages who don’t respect the Geneva Conventions or any other international law.

But liberals love trying to confuse us with the two controversies surrounding EITs: their humaneness and their efficacy.  So if they can’t convince normal Americans that splashing water on a terrorist’s face—a technique carried out on our own special forces as part of their training—is an unspeakable atrocity, then they simply switch subjects and claim that EITs aren’t effective.

Just how ineffective are EITs?  Well, Pakistani-born, al Qaeda devotee Hassan Ghul experienced them several years ago at a CIA “black site” prison in Poland, and pretty soon he was singing like a canary about the alias of a trusted courier to bin Laden at his Abbottabad compound.

Ghul wasn’t waterboarded, but al Qaeda operations chief Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was.

Liberals, who are naturally only concerned about our well-being, soberly inform us that waterboarding and other forms of “torture” do not lead to reliable information—that detainees simply lie in order to make the interrogation stop.

That’s OK!  It turns out that our intelligence agencies are sharp enough to deal with just such a contingency.

Mohammad and his successor Abu Faraj Libbi separately lied about the name of the courier Ghul had provided.  The fact that two top al Qaeda members had fabricated a key piece of evidence clued U.S. intelligence officials in to the fact that it was important, which eventually led to the discovery of the courier’s name—and the location of bin Laden’s compound.

Liberals’ lethal push to use only “humane” interrogation techniques recalls the joke about the drunk looking for his keys under the lamppost, even though he didn’t lose them there, because the light is better.  (“Why are we politely querying the al Qaeda operations chief in a comfy lounge after his dinner of free-range chicken with mango chutney at Camp Gitmo?”  “Because it’s more humane that way.”)

Here’s an analogy liberals may comprehend: What do enhanced interrogation techniques and embryonic stem cell research have in common?

Answer: We don’t engage in enhanced interrogation techniques because we know for sure that they will immediately work, or exactly what information we will obtain from them.  We do it because we know there may be valuable intelligence to be gained by interrogating key members of prominent terrorist networks.

Similarly, scientists don’t propose carrying out embryonic stem cell research because they know for sure that it will immediately lead to life-changing breakthroughs and cures for fatal diseases.  They do it because they know there may be valuable information to be gained by carrying out this type of research, in addition to the less controversial adult stem cell research.

Some conservatives argued that the newly elected President George W. Bush was right to single out embryonic stem cell research as a particularly insidious technique that should not, unlike thousands of other research techniques, receive renewed federal funding.  These commentators boasted about the wisdom of his decision after adult stem cell research seemed to yield more promising treatment potential than embryonic stem cell research.

As any real scientist knows, the reason you do research is because you don’t know what you’re going to find.  If you downplay one area of research because it conflicts with your religious views, and that area proves less fruitful than a better-funded, less religiously problematic area, then it’s not because you had an open mind beforehand.

What if embryonic stem cell research someday takes off like wildfire and leads to numerous promising cures?  Will the same conservatives still insist it was wise to limit federal funding to adult stem cells decades ago?

We know that EITs indirectly led to information that helped identify bin Laden’s location.  What if we knew that waterboarding directly, demonstrably, inarguably produced the critical intelligence in this operation?  Would liberals still condemn the technique as “torture” and call Bush a war criminal?

EITs are used to fight terrorism; stem cell research is used to fight disease.  Like stem cell research, EITs must be attempted without prejudgment about their effectiveness if the goal is to save human lives.

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Here’s a fun fact regarding President Obama’s Saturday announcement that the U.S. would finally be getting around to joining the international coalition to use military force against Libya’s Colonel Moammar Qaddafi in retaliation for his having unleashed government firepower against rebels.  Guess how many times Obama used any of the following words in his speech: victory, victorious, win, winning, defeat, right, just, moral, triumph, success, good, evil.  (Hint: it’s the same number of controversial NCAA Final Four picks he made last week.)  That’s right—0!

In contrast, he managed to squeeze in all of these words and phrases: international (10 uses), allies (6), partners (6), community (5), United Nations (3), not acting alone (3), coalition (2), league (2), council (2), coordinate (2), agree, join, meet, part, and union.

With so little emphasis on what we’re actually doing in Libya, how we’re going to do it, and with what expected results, an alien visiting Earth might be forgiven for wondering why we need to engage in so much coalition-building to do it.

What kind of corporation launching a new product deemphasizes: the product, the technology required to develop it, the need for it in the market, and the projected sales; yet fills up their business plan with reams of details on which contractors they’re going to generously give business to, which stores they’re going to offer their product to, which companies’ toes they’re going to avoid stepping on, and which corporations they might someday merge with?

The message Obama has been sending the world is: we’re not necessarily going to do anything about Libya, and we’re definitely not going to take the lead on it, but if there are lots of others of you who are going to do something, then we’re right there with you.

There are good arguments for and against bombing Libya; a sane case can be made either way.  A surprising number of liberals have come out in favor (Hillary Clinton, John Kerry); a surprising number of conservatives have come out against (Andrew McCarthy, Haley Barbour).

I happen to favor air strikes, though not without being able to see the other side’s point.  The idea that we should butt out of Libya, Egypt, Iran, etc. is premised on the notion that no matter what we do, Middle Eastern dictators will be replaced by worse dictators of the hard-line Islamic variety.  I reject this idea, and I don’t care about the warning the do-nothing crowd has offered that radical Islamist groups favor removing these tyrants.  Just because those groups support toppling Ahmadinejad, Mubarak, and Qaddafi doesn’t mean we can’t support it, but for different reasons.  They support it because it’s their best chance to install Islamic leaders; we support it because it’s our best chance to install pro-liberty leaders.  The choice isn’t “Do nothing” or “Topple the dictator and let the chips fall where they may”—the missing alternative is “Topple the dictator, and make sure someone better gets in there.”

That said, if I were Leader of the Free World, I think I would have circulated an inkling to the globe what my position was one way or another, pretty early on, before any action were too late.

Instead, Obama has given the impression that he wanted to find out what the cool kids were doing so he could join them and be part of the crowd.

It wouldn’t be so bad if we could believe that Obama has been seriously, meticulously scrutinizing the situation in Libya, weighing his options, not committing until the exact right time.  (It wouldn’t be so bad, in other words, if Obama hadn’t been spending his time playing golf, announcing his bracket picks, and practicing his Brazilian Portuguese.)  But given his talk during the 2008 campaign about the necessity of international consensus and the arrogance of acting alone, odds are he was waiting until a critical mass of world players signed on before sticking his scrawny neck out.

There are three possibilities that explain Obama’s dithering on Libya, none reassuring.  First: he had no idea what to do, was being pushed back and forth by pro- and anti-invasion camps in his administration, and simply went with the international consensus once it coalesced.  Second: he favored invasion, but didn’t want to take action until there was international support.  Third, and most disturbing: he didn’t favor invasion, but decided to go with that option once the world’s players came out for it.

Given Obama’s hemming and hawing on Afghanistan, whereby private accounts suggest he didn’t want to initiate a troop surge in 2009 but did so anyway, and given his indirect ties to Qaddafi via Reverend Jeremiah Wright and Louis Farrakhan, I fear the third possibility most likely.

Behold a president who acts, not because he believes the United States has a unique historical and moral standing in the world and should take the lead on rectifying injustice, and possibly not even because he thinks it’s the right thing to do, but because… everyone else is doing it.



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On Monday President Obama offered a creative, efficient method for prosecuting terrorists affiliated with the 9/11 attacks or the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq: namely, military tribunals in a secure island compound you may not have heard of called “Guantanamo Bay.”

Back on the home front, Representative Peter King, Homeland Security Committee Chair, has planned a hearing for Thursday on whether al-Qaeda is trying to recruit young Muslims in the U.S. and whether Muslim Americans are sufficiently cooperating with federal officials to ensnare would-be domestic terrorists such as American-born Ft. Hood shooter Nidal Hasan.

The most infamous failed attack on American soil in the past several years was U.S. citizen Faisal Shahzad’s attempted car bombing in Times Square, which was thwarted only because a suspicious hot dog vendor happened to be looking in the right direction at the right time.

Naturally, last Sunday hundreds of willfully naïve, politically correct New Yorkers gathered in Times Square, steps from where Shahzad tried to kill hundreds of New Yorkers, to protest King’s hearing as racist and Islamophobic.

In an effort to dilute the impact of King’s investigation and make it harder for the nation to ask honest questions about the threat of Muslim youth recruitment, Obama had his national security advisor speak at a mosque in northern Virginia to assure Muslims that the federal government was not disproportionately examining Islamic groups.

Minnesota’s Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to the U.S. House, declared on Sunday that focusing on one religion more than any other was wrong, though he graciously allowed that it was OK for us to scrutinize “radicalization.”  Radicalization of what?  Lady Gaga’s fashion sense?

According to Ellison, “To say we’re going to investigate a religious minority… is the wrong course of action to take.  I don’t want [al-Qaeda] to be able to stand up and claim… ‘America is at war with Islam.’  That’s one of their main recruiting arguments.”

Actually, one of their main recruiting arguments is, “The infidel is wicked, and his self-imposed weakness and inability to consistently stand up to us prove that our cause is just.”  An argument that would hurt recruiting would be, “America is at war with Islam, and you are going to get blown to smithereens if you continue to fight for our side.”

Ellison insisted that in order to stop recruitment of domestic terrorists, we need to engage Muslim-Americans rather than frighten them.

In fact, there are two kinds of Muslim-Americans: those who would never dream of getting involved in terrorism, and those who might in their wildest fantasies toy with the notion.  The former have nothing to fear, and the latter need to be frightened out of their wits at the consequences of taking up arms against their fellow citizens.

Why is this controversial?  What if we said that there are two kinds of Americans: those who would never dream of committing mass murder, and those who might contemplate it in their wildest fantasies, and that the latter need to be frightened out of their wits via correctional deterrents and police presence at the possibility of carrying out their plans?  Would that be an “anti-American” policy because it deterred potential mass murderers who happened to be American?

Our intelligence shows that Muslim-Americans have become more, not less, radicalized since 9/11.  Aren’t we allowed to even ask why that might be happening?

Immediately after 9/11, liberals were hysterical about the possibility of a never-to-materialize spike in anti-Muslim “hate crimes.”  Why are we still, 10 years later, bending over backwards not to offend members of Muslim communities?  Why aren’t Muslim Americans going out of their way to dispel stereotypes and prove what a spectacularly helpful resource they are in deterring terror?

One obtuse protestor stationed outside Representative King’s office last week declared, “A bomb doesn’t differentiate between a Muslim and a non-Muslim.  We are just as afraid of extremists as anybody else.”  Yes, but is a bomb planter differentiated by being disproportionately Muslim vs. non-Muslim?

While we’re on the subject of differentiation, is al-Qaeda so quick to avoid “demonizing” the U.S. and obliterating nuances among Americans’ political ideologies?  Do they distinguish between “radicals” and innocents when choosing targets for their bombings and shootings?  “The Great Satan” is not exactly a paragon of subtlety.

Here’s a glossary of by-now-meaningless terms liberals should be banned from using in the conversation over King’s hearings: alienating Muslims, at war with Islam, demonizing, hijacking a peaceful religion, inflammatory rhetoric, Islamophobia, McCarthyism, singling out, witch hunt, and xenophobia.  Hey, liberals, let’s play a giant game of Taboo: can you explain why it’s wrong to demand greater cooperation from Muslim communities in helping catch terrorists and greater condemnation against acts of terror without using any of the above words?

Instead of our endless back-and-forth, advance-and-retreat, catch-and-release, shoot-ourselves-in-the-foot, Tom and Jerry farce of a policy, let’s set our traps right where we need them and stop liberals’ cat-and-Muslim game once and for all.



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If Hosni Mubarak is a crooked card dealer guaranteed to stiff anyone who plays at his table, most conservatives’ reaction to the events unfolding in Egypt has been to throw their support to the house rather than pro-Western Egyptian protestors, simply because the latter might not win the game against the Muslim Brotherhood.

In the early 1990s, when the U.S.S.R. disintegrated and Soviet provinces began deposing their Communist overlords and electing pro-reform leaders, I must have missed the barrage of sworn affidavits from fringe groups in every Eastern European state promising they would never attempt to form voting blocs that would influence their nations’ parliaments.

I don’t recall President Reagan speaking out against demoralized Eastern bloc peoples who yearned to breathe free, telling them to zip their lips, stay home, and put up with political oppression, because neo-Communist groups might someday try to swoop in and fill the power vacuum.

The number of conservatives who have been getting it wrong, and liberals who have been getting it right, on Egypt is embarrassing.

For example, Mark Levin claims that the Eastern European revolutions were different, because those nations had a “tradition” of democracy before they were enslaved by Communists.  Oh?  So no nation can become democratic unless it was democratic at some point in the first place?  Doesn’t that preclude half the world from ever becoming democratic?

When did the political party that won the Cold War decide it would be prudent to wave the white hankie and let monsters—I mean sweet, dear friends of the U.S.—like Mubarak stay in power over the wishes of their subjects?

If Mubarak were to stay in office, as most on the right are demanding, he would be unlikely to unilaterally meet protestors’ demands to institute freedom of the press and assembly, release hundreds of incarcerated political prisoners, and revoke the never-ending so-called emergency laws that give the Egyptian government perpetual unchecked power to crack down on anyone deemed a threat to its rule.

But a new leader—even Mubarak’s recently named vice president, Omar Suleiman—would have a plausible excuse to implement new policies, and the changing of the guard would allow Mubarak to save face.  Such pro-liberty developments would be especially likely if buttressed by the support of Egypt’s armed forces, which have pledged not to fire on the Egyptian people and have so far come down firmly on the side of the anti-Mubarak protestors.

Mubarak may be the new Iranian Shah of 1979, and President Barack Obama may be the new President Jimmy Carter, but that doesn’t mean the Muslim Brotherhood is the new Ayatollah Khomeini.

The Muslim Brotherhood, evil as it is, has 100,000 supporters in a country of 80 million, about .1% of the population.  Recoiling in mortal terror over the possibility of the Brotherhood managing to take over Egypt is like worrying that the Natural Law Party will win the U.S. presidential election and force everyone to practice transcendental meditation.

Even if the Brotherhood is better organized than most other political groups in Egypt, the bad example of Carter supporting the toppling of the Shah only to let him be replaced by the Ayatollah serves as a valuable warning that the West cannot let just anyone take Mubarak’s place.

As I wrote last week, the problem with our administration’s reaction to the turmoil in Egypt isn’t that Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are doing too much—it’s that they’re doing too little.  They should not only encourage this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to bring down a dictator, but work with regional players, pro-Western dissident groups in Egypt, and opposition leaders (excluding the treacherous Mohamed ElBaradei) to ensure that power is transferred to the right people after Mubarak goes.  They should threaten to freeze military aid and withhold recognition of any new Egyptian government that does not meet certain preconditions such as honoring Egypt’s existing peace agreement with Israel.

No one agrees more than I that neither Egypt nor any Middle Eastern country would be safe with anything like the Muslim Brotherhood or any other faux-moderate, terrorism-supporting, Sharia-loving group close to the reins of power.  The fact that Obama would even speak to members of such an organization other than to tell them to get the hell out of the way is a deep, disfiguring scar on his foreign policy.

But when you’re playing a high-stakes game like regime change, sometimes you have to roll the dice and take a risk; you can’t always guarantee the outcome.  The Right should man up, encourage pro-Western forces to exert their utmost influence on Egypt, and stop lecturing Egyptians to accept the status quo of tyranny and terror.

Conservatives would do well to remember these words from George W. Bush’s second inaugural address: “The great objective of ending tyranny is the concentrated work of generations.  The difficulty of the task is no excuse for avoiding it.  America’s influence is not unlimited, but fortunately for the oppressed, America’s influence is considerable, and we will use it confidently in freedom’s cause.”

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Liberals mocked George W. Bush’s “Forward Strategy of Freedom,” sneering that it was corny and idealistic, wouldn’t work, and didn’t suit exotic, backward, brown people who wouldn’t know what to do with liberty if it fell in their laps.

In the years since U.S. forces ousted the Taliban in Afghanistan and deposed Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the world has beheld a remarkably long line of popular uprisings in Middle Eastern and Eastern European states that has thoroughly vindicated Bush’s approach.

Four months after U.S. Marines took Baghdad in Operation Iraqi Freedom, a quivering-in-his-boots Muammar Gaddafi acknowledged Libya’s responsibility for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing and paid billions in compensation to relatives of victims, and to those of the UTA Flight 772 bombing and the Berlin discotheque bombing.

Three months later we witnessed the Rose Revolution in Georgia, in which the public protested against rigged parliamentary elections, removed President Eduard Shevardnadze, and installed reformist Mikhail Saakashvili.

In 2004 we watched the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine, in which protestors kept Viktor Yanukovych from assuming office as Prime Minister after fraudulent elections and instated pro-reform Viktor Yushchenko.

In 2005 we observed the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, in which citizens rioted to protest the assassination of pro-Western former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, the presence of tens of thousands of Syrian troops, and the rule of a pro-Syrian government.

Days after the Cedar Revolution, we had the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan, in which protestors ousted corrupt President Askar Akayev.

In 2009 we monitored the Green Revolution in Iran, in which thousands of citizens rioted over the rigged presidential election that kept Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in power.

In December 2010 we saw the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia, in which protestors ousted secular autocrat Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, the first ever peaceful removal of an Arabic leader.

Earlier this month in Yemen, protestors marched in Sanaa and called for the removal of President Ali Abdullah Saleh.  Protestors in Albania demonstrated against Prime Minister Sali Berisha.

Over the past week, millions of protestors in Egypt have rioted in Cairo, Alexandria, and Suez, demanding the ouster of autocratic leader Hosni Mubarak and the release of hundreds of political prisoners.  Mubarak has since fired his cabinet and claimed he will not run again after serving out the final year of his current term, but has not responded to protestors’ demands.

Egyptian protestors modeled their protests after Tunisia’s, which in turn were made possible by the chain of protests and regime changes leading back to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Given Egypt’s size and prominence in the Arab world, deposing Mubarak would likely spur a wave of protests against other autocratic regimes in the region.

So what has Obama’s response been to all of this activity in his first two years in office?

Why, his response has been to cozy up to Soviet-influenced Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, illegitimate Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, Islamist Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, genocidal Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and autocratic Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak.

Obama has been courting tyrants in fulfillment of the self-defeating strategy of “engagement” with the world’s most brutal, unreformable despots.

Unfortunately, he has offered less encouragement for those trying to overthrow these despots.

When Iranians rose against the mullahs and were slaughtered in the streets, Obama dawdled a week before raising an eyebrow over the carnage.

When Tunisians rose against their autocratic government, Obama waited until the deposed president had safely fled to Saudi Arabia, then preached “calm.”

Now Obama’s tepid response to Mubarak has been to murmur, “What is needed are concrete steps to advance the rights of the Egyptian people”—as if Mubarak and the rest of the world didn’t know that.  Obama has failed to call for Mubarak’s resignation, free elections, or a pro-liberty government, or to spotlight Egypt’s abysmal human rights record, out of fealty to the fallacious notion that Egypt is a reliable U.S. ally and must be appeased.

There are grave concerns over what types of leadership would replace those deposed in Tunisia and Egypt, including Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood that would try to creep in and institute Sharia.  But the original demonstrators—not the riffraff who want to loot and steal, not the convicts released from jail, not the Brotherhood—were grassroots and pro-liberty.  The impulse of any genuinely pro-freedom Egyptian protestors is to be commended, not discouraged.

I have a problem with anyone who would tell everyday Egyptians that they’re not allowed to protest because their “allies” aren’t sure whether a new government would be better or worse than the current horrid one.  Anyone who could look in the eyes of courageous Egyptians who want to live in freedom from censorship, repression, and fear of their government and tell them to shut up and go home does not care whether Egyptians ever have freedom.

Contrary to popular opinion among many conservatives, Obama has not been doing enough to encourage and guide such popular revolutions while in office.  The U.S. should be standing up for freedom-seeking protestors and working with regional players to capitalize on power vacuums to ensure that pro-liberty governments take office.

Sadly, Obama’s approach to the flurry of popular uprisings has been, not to condemn tyrannical governments and encourage pro-liberty regimes, but to waffle on regime change and coddle dictators.

Every time Obama fails to stand up for liberty abroad, he discourages oppressed peoples from toppling the tyrants who rule them.

Obama’s policy is the opposite of Bush’s.  It is a Backward Strategy of Oppression.

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• Egyptian regime begins to reveal its strategy (guardian.co.uk)
• Egyptians angry at U.S. for not backing protests (sfgate.com)
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• Egyptians wary of U.S.’s shifting position on Mubarak (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
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In anticipation of President Barack Obama’s primetime address to the nation last night on the Iraq War, columnist Eugene Robinson wrote, “Now that the Iraq War is over… only one thing is clear about the outcome: We didn’t win.”

Actually, I can think of about 12 things that are clearer about the outcome of the Iraq War than the conclusion that we didn’t win: (1) Obama was wrong about the surge, (2) Vice President Joe Biden was wrong about the surge, (3) President George W. Bush was right to ignore Congressional Democrats and the Iraq Study Group and order the surge in 2007, (4) insurgent violence dropped precipitously after the surge was implemented, (5) if Democrats had had their way on the surge in Iraq, per Harry Reid’s declaration that “this war is lost,” it would have been lost, (6) Biden was wrong about dividing Iraq into ethnic partitions, (7) Biden is a loon for claiming that the Iraq War could be one of the great successes of the Obama administration, (8) Iraq is now the fourth-most politically free Middle Eastern country, after democracy Israel, republic Lebanon, and constitutional monarchy Morocco, (9) General David Petraeus’ Iraq surge set the model for beating back insurgents and winning in Afghanistan, (10) despite liberals’ bleating about its expense, eight years of the Iraq War—including training and preparation for the March 2003 invasion—now turn out to have cost less ($709 billion) than Obama’s useless trillion-dollar stimulus bill, (11) Bush’s popularity didn’t sink to the level that Obama’s is at now until late 2005, two-and-a-half years into the Iraq War and well into Bush’s second term, and (12) Obama’s address last night was full of bromides, revisionist history, and platitudinous prescriptions for the future that have little relation to what will actually need to be done in the War on Terror according to a fair evaluation of conditions on the ground.

But then I’m not Eugene Robinson, who recently called those who wanted an investigation into Park51 mosque supporter Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s radical ties “loudmouths,” “fraidy-cats,” and “professional victims,” dismissed Tea Partiers as racists, and called Dr. Alveeda King a “puppet” for appearing at Glen Beck’s Restoring Honor rally.

Oh, and: (13) if anyone deserves to give a triumphal speech marking the end of combat operations in Iraq, it is Bush, Petraeus, Vice President Dick Cheney, or Kermit the Frog—anyone but Obama, who opposed the war from the start and voted as U.S. senator to defund it.

And: (14) Obama has learned nothing about the danger of prematurely promising to remove our troops by a certain date and the fortifying effect this has on our enemy, as demonstrated by his declaration in his speech that we will begin removing troops from Afghanistan in July 2011 according to his preordained schedule, and by his standing commitment to remove all 50,000 troops still stationed in Iraq by the end of 2011.

Not to mention: (15) the most factual elements of Obama’s address could have been cribbed from a Bush speech on Iraq from five years ago, such as “We must never lose sight of what’s at stake.  As we speak, al Qaeda continues to plot against us,” and (16) Obama wasn’t honorable or honest enough to give Bush credit for the surge, saying only that “[N]o one could doubt President Bush’s support for our troops, or his love of country and commitment to our security,” which is about as controversial to his antiwar base as saying, “No one could doubt President Bush’s support for his family, or his love of his wife and children.”

Robinson’s liberal fantasy proclaims, “The war was on its way toward becoming a disastrous failure until the country’s Sunni minority turned against the al-Qaeda jihadists who had flooded into Iraq to fight against the hated Americans,” then adds, as an afterthought, “and Bush’s troop surge, ably led by Gen. David Petraeus, capitalized on this shift of allegiance.”  Yes, sectarian conflict facilitated conditions in which the surge could flourish, but: (17) Bush and Petraeus were savvy enough to recognize this shift in conditions on the ground, prepare a successful strategy to take advantage of it, execute this strategy despite the histrionics of Congressional Democrats, and persist until it yielded its intended results.

Give Obama credit for this: his Iraq speech was the best speech he has ever given from the Oval Office.  Of course, the only other Oval Office speech he’s given was on the BP oil spill, an address that even liberal supporters at MSNBC and The New York Times panned as amateurish and ineffective.

Bonus fact!: The Brookings Institution’s Iraq Index reports that 79% of Iraqis believe that conditions in their country will be the same as or better in 2010 than in 2009—more than you can say for residents of the United States.



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The landing gear of the American Airlines plane that terrorists flew into 1 World Trade Center on 9/11 smashed through an unoccupied building two blocks away at 45 Park Place where Muslims now wish to build a monument to Allah.  The engine of the plane landed in the street behind the building.

Presumably Islamist hijackers wouldn’t attack the rebuilt World Trade Center if the new mosque might be damaged in the process.  Will Obama thus be endorsing the building of the mosque as a creative, Islam-sensitive, preventive security measure in the war on terror?

It’s true that those who wish to build Cordoba House—now the swanky- and Manhattan-sounding Park51—technically have the freedom to do so, since they are purchasing the land and have the right to build whatever they want on it if they adhere to zoning regulations.

This right is contingent on the mosque’s funders not being supported by sponsors of terror from Middle Eastern countries with which we are at war—an assumption that is highly suspect and should be investigated vigorously and precipitously.  We already know, for example, that the chief sponsor of the Cordoba Initiative, which is providing $100,000 in funding for the mosque, is the radical Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who has refused to denounce Hamas as a terrorist organization.  We also know that President Obama sent Rauf, using taxpayer money, on a Middle East “good will” tour on which he will be hitting up Islamist leaders for donations for the mosque.

(Meanwhile, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has announced her preference to investigate, not the funders of the mosque, but the funders of opponents of the mosque, which leads us to the logical conclusion that she will soon be snooping around Harry Reid’s e-mails.)

Given that Muslims traditionally build mosques on territory they have conquered, a mosque near Ground Zero would be an incontrovertible statement of conquest regarding the terror attacks on 9/11.

Opponents of the mosque have attempted to prevent its construction through eminent domain laws by declaring the site a city landmark, but the New York City Council rejected that argument and allowed the project to proceed.

Mayor Bloomberg announced that building the mosque is an expression of the noblest principles of this country and that anyone who objects should keep quiet.

Last weekend, Barack Obama came out forcefully for the construction of the mosque in front of a bunch of Muslims at a White House-sponsored Ramadan dinner: “Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country.  That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan.”

Someone evidently told Obama that his instinctive loyalty to anything anti-American, especially Islamist, would probably not go over well with the rest of the country, so he backtracked the next day and announced that his strong desire to have the Ground Zero mosque built was not an “endorsement” but rather a general statement about the religious liberty of property owners.  Next Obama will be claiming that he didn’t say property owners have religious liberty—only that people have the right to express their opinions about whether property owners have religious liberty.

Hamas cofounder Mahmoud al-Zahar expressed solidarity with his ideological buds Obama and Bloomberg, claiming that Muslims absolutely, simply “have to build” the mosque there.

Members of the Cordoba Initiative may have the legal right to build, but those who justifiably oppose a mosque near Ground Zero have rights, too:

•    Construction workers and unions have the right to boycott work on the project, as New York resident Andrew Sullivan recently committed to doing (no, not that Andrew Sullivan—the patriotic one).  In the extreme, this could prevent the mosque from being built; at a minimum, it could drive up the costs of building the mosque, perhaps prohibitively, by awarding the work to higher bidding contractors.

•    Muslims who oppose the mosque have the right to boycott and refuse to attend or contribute financially to it; if enough do so, it could be driven out of business.

•    Private citizens have the right to open businesses close to the mosque that are offensive to Islamists—not to be jerks, but to make the point that Muslims are not as tolerant when we stick them in the eye by planting something culturally odious near a sacred site as we are when they do it to us.  See, for example, Red Eye host Greg Gutfeld’s plan to build a gay bar that caters to Islamic men a couple of doors from the mosque.  I also propose the following businesses: non-halal butcheries, lingerie shops, and liquor stores.

(Hey—let’s open a day care center right near the mosque, because surely Islamists oppose the notion that women might have careers and not stay home all day caring for their infants.  Whoops—Park51 is slated to include a day care center among its amenities!)

Just because those who wish to build the mosque have the legal right to do so does not mean the majority of Americans who oppose it have no legal recourse in preventing it from existing.  Call my suggestions the libertarian approach to preventing the Ground Zero mosque from fulfilling its planners’ intentions.



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Recently the mainstream media was howling with derision over the fact that Sarah Palin had written a few words on the inside of her hand to remind herself of the key themes she wanted to address in her speech at the Tea Party Convention in Nashville last week.

Admittedly, one would have expected subjects such as Energy, Tax Cuts, and Lift American Spirits to be top-of-mind for Palin, who has consistently and admirably embodied these stances throughout her career, including her 2008 vice-presidential run.

What the MSM did not explain was how Obama’s ubiquitous reliance on his TelePrompTer, including at a recent pep talk with sixth-graders in Falls Church, Virginia, somehow reflected a greater skill at extemporizing or a more masterful command of facts on his part.

The Associated Press chided Palin for relying on a memory aid after having mocked Obama’s use of his TelePrompTer.  It’s true: Palin did jot down a few notes to help her stay focused during her 40-minute Tea Party Convention keynote address, the second-most important speech of her career.  Was Obama’s five-minute chat with 11-year-olds at Graham Road Elementary School so important to his legacy that it required twin, six-foot-tall TelePrompTer monitors to help him get every word right?

Meanwhile, Joe “Gaffe-tastic” Biden has continued to demonstrate his propensity for committing more blunders in any given week than Palin has made in her entire life.  Appearing on Larry King last week, Biden stated that the Iraq War “could be one of the great achievements of this administration.”

This is the same Iraq War, you’ll recall: (a) that Obama voted against, (b) that Biden voted for but later turned against, and (c) whose troop surge Obama and Biden voted against and denounced throughout 2008, even after it had demonstrably worked.  In 2007, Biden condemned General David Petraeus as “dead flat wrong” for wanting to go through with the surge rather than immediately withdrawing our soldiers and partitioning Iraq into three ethnic regions.

It would be one thing if circumstances had improved dramatically in Iraq since Obama took office, and the administration had acted quickly to remove troops ahead of schedule, thus saving the U.S. time and money and improving relations with Iraqis.  But the drawdown of 90,000 troops currently taking place was spelled out in 2008, according to a George W. Bush-negotiated arrangement, the Status of Forces Agreement, and is unfolding exactly as written.  So Obama doesn’t even deserve credit for “ending” the war in Iraq.

Saying that Iraq could be one of the great successes of the Obama administration is like saying that the stagehand who pulled the curtain on the debut of Così Fan Tutte is responsible for one of the great successes of the Metropolitan Opera House.

Then there’s Biden’s nutty defense of the Justice Department’s decision to read Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab his Miranda rights after just 50 minutes of questioning.  Biden noted that the Bush administration gave the same treatment to shoe bomber Richard Reid in 2001.  Unfortunately, Biden is blissfully ignorant of the fact that the military commissions to detain Islamic terrorists had not even been set up by the time the shoe bomber had struck.  Reid attempted his attack three months after 9/11, whereas Abdulmutallab attempted his attack eight years and three months after 9/11.

Let’s not forget that Biden was one of the chief opponents of the Afghanistan surge Obama reluctantly ordered in late 2008.  Biden had argued behind the scenes for increasing drone attacks to pick off Al-Qaeda members, and against sending more troops to fight counterinsurgents.  Fortunately, Obama didn’t listen to Biden, and the surge is already demonstrating results, as in Tuesday’s apprehension of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the most significant Taliban capture in over eight years.

This has been the pattern for a year-and-a-half now: Palin makes true statements—that the Vice-President is the head of the Senate, that the health care bill would require panels of bureaucrats to ration care—that are denounced as “gaffes” and “lies,” while Biden regularly weaves twisted fantasies out of cotton candy and is heralded as the voice of wisdom and experience.

The clincher that the MSM held Palin to a higher standard than Biden throughout the 2008 presidential campaign is that they constantly compared her record to Obama’s, not Biden’s.  (“The Republicans’ #2 doesn’t have that much more executive and business experience than the Democrats’ #1!”)

It takes a serious degree of intellectual dishonesty for Democrats to claim we are safer with Biden as Vice President than we would have been with Palin.

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