Bruce Bawer: The Peace Racket
If you want peace, prepare for war.†Thus counseled Roman general Flavius Vegetius Renatus over 1,600 years ago. Nine centuries before that, Sun Tzu offered essentially the same advice, and it’s to him that Vegetius’s line is attributed at the beginning of a film that I saw recently at Oslo’s Nobel Peace Center. Yet the film cites this ancient wisdom only to reject it. After serving up a perverse potted history of the cold war, the thrust of which is that the peace movement brought down the Berlin Wall, the movie ends with words that turn Vegetius’s insight on its head: “If you want peace, prepare for peace.â€
This purports to be wise counsel, a motto for the millennium. In reality, it’s wishful thinking that doesn’t follow logically from the history of the cold war, or of any war. For the cold war’s real lesson is the same one that Sun Tzu and Vegetius taught: conflict happens; power matters. It’s better to be strong than to be weak; you’re safer if others know that you’re ready to stand up for yourself than if you’re proudly outspoken about your defenselessness or your unwillingness to fight. There’s nothing mysterious about this truth. Yet it’s denied not only by the Peace Center film but also by the fast-growing, troubling movement that the center symbolizes and promotes.
Call it the Peace Racket.
Dennis Prager: If It’s Bad for America, It’s Good for Democrats
One of the two major political parties of the United States has linked all its electoral hopes on domestic pathologies, economic downturns and foreign failure.
It is actually difficult to name any positive development for America that would benefit the Democratic Party’s chances in a national election.
Name almost any subject, and this unhealthy pattern can be discerned.
Mark Steyn: A bad case of malignant narcissism
In my book, still available at all good bookstores (you can find it propping up the wonky rear leg of the display table for Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”), I try to answer this question by way of some celebrated remarks by the acclaimed British novelist Margaret Drabble, speaking just after the liberation of Iraq. Ms Drabble said:
“I detest Coca-Cola, I detest burgers, I detest sentimental and violent Hollywood movies that tell lies about history. I detest American imperialism, American infantilism, and American triumphalism about victories it didn’t even win.”
That’s an interesting list of grievances. If you lived in Poland in the 1930s, you weren’t worried about the Soviets’ taste in soft drinks or sentimental Third Reich pop culture. If Washington were a conventional great power, the intellectual class would be arguing that the United States is a threat to France or India or Chad or some such. But because it’s the world’s first nonimperial superpower the world has had to concoct a thesis that America is a threat not merely to this or that nation state but to the entire planet, and not because of conventional great-power designs but because – even scarier – of its “consumption,” its very way of life. Those Cokes and cheeseburgers detested by discriminating London novelists are devastating the planet in ways that straightforward genocidal conquerors like Hitler and Stalin could only have dreamed of. The construct of this fantasy is very revealing about how unthreatening America is.
Victor Davis Hanson: Why they hate, and like, us
The more confident a nation is, even when poor, the more likely it seems to admire America. Some of our best supporters turn out to be one-billion person India (59 percent favorable rating), Japan (61 percent), and South Korea (58 percent) — all democratic, capitalist juggernauts, and appreciative of liberal American trade policy and U.S. military support. Again, should we Americans value the friendship of such democracies — or that of a China that cheats on international trade accords and intimidates its neighbors?
So it is encouraging to be admired by idealistic populations in Africa and Eastern Europe, and shown friendship by India and Japan. But perhaps it is equally to our credit that a bullying China and Russia, a dictatorial and intolerant Middle East, and smug nations of Western Europe seem to resent us, especially our support for democratic change abroad.
Dennis Prager: Why “Islamophobia” Is a Brilliant Term
What do anti-Semitism, racism and Islamophobia have in common?
In fact, nothing.
But according to Islamist groups, Western media and the United Nations, they have everything in common. Anti-Semites hate all Jews, racists hate all members of another race, and Islamophobes hates all Muslims.
Whoever coined the term “Islamophobia” was quite shrewd. Notice the intellectual sleight of hand here. The term is not “Muslim-phobia” or “anti-Muslimist,” it is Islam-ophobia — fear of Islam — yet fear of Islam is in no way the same as hatred of all Muslims. One can rightly or wrongly fear Islam, or more usually, aspects of Islam, and have absolutely no bias against all Muslims, let alone be a racist.
The equation of Islamophobia with racism is particularly dishonest. Muslims come in every racial group, and Islam has nothing to do with race. Nevertheless, mainstream Western media, Islamist groups calling themselves Muslim civil liberties groups and various Western organizations repeatedly declare that Islamophobia is racism.
Christopher Hitchens: Why are we so scared of offending Muslims?
Before me is a recent report that a student at Pace University in New York City has been arrested for a hate crime in consequence of an alleged dumping of the Quran. Nothing repels me more than the burning or desecration of books, and if, for example, this was a volume from a public or university library, I would hope that its mistreatment would constitute a misdemeanor at the very least. But if I choose to spit on a copy of the writings of Ayn Rand or Karl Marx or James Joyce, that is entirely my business. When I check into a hotel room and send my free and unsolicited copy of the Gideon Bible or the Book of Mormon spinning out of the window, I infringe no law, except perhaps the one concerning litter. Why do we not make this distinction in the case of the Quran? We do so simply out of fear, and because the fanatical believers in that particular holy book have proved time and again that they mean business when it comes to intimidation. Surely that should be to their discredit rather than their credit. Should not the “moderate” imams of On Faith have been asked in direct terms whether they are, or are not, negotiating with a gun on the table?
The Pace University incident becomes even more ludicrous and sinister when it is recalled that Islamists are the current leaders in the global book-burning competition. After the rumor of a Quran down the toilet in Guantanamo was irresponsibly spread, a mob in Afghanistan burned down an ancient library that (as President Hamid Karzai pointed out dryly) contained several ancient copies of the same book. Not content with igniting copies of The Satanic Verses, Islamist lynch parties demanded the burning of its author as well. Many distinguished authors, Muslim and non-Muslim, are dead or in hiding because of the words they have put on pages concerning the unbelievable claims of Islam. And it is to appease such a spirit of persecution and intolerance that a student in New York City has been arrested for an expression, however vulgar, of an opinion.
David Shalom: The Israeli Left remains the greatest threat.
With the left-wing Labour Party’s decision to teach Nakba to Israeli, Arab school-children, David Shalom’s The Enemy Within could not be better timed.
The late Rehavam Ze’evi (H.y.d.) wrote in the Hebrew-language Moledet party publication, some 14 years ago, about the menacing phenomenon of the Israeli left-winger, whose daily betrayals embitter the lives of us all. If left unchallenged, he will literally bring us all down together. As it was then, it is more so today.
The Israeli Left remains the single greatest threat to the Jewish people in their homeland. It can be argued that their actions, inactions, their spin and media manipulation, have caused more damage to Israel than those of the PLO and Hamas. It must be remembered that it was the Left that imported these terrorists to our shores through the treacherous Oslo Accords. Their goals, couched in the falsely deluding language of peace and liberalism, are inimical to those very ideals. In fact, their true path lies in the destruction of a sovereign Jewish state in the Land of Israel. It is imperative that we understand the left-wing phenomenon we face in order to decelerate the forces pushing Israel to self-destruct.
Israeli, Arab third-graders to be taught ‘Nakba’
Nakba is the Arab term for “catastrophe”, or more specifically: the establishment of the state of Israel. In fact, the most important day of the year for Palestinian Arabs is the anniversary of this “catastrophe”, called… wait for it… yup… Nakba Day.
Well, this so-called Nakba (Israel) happens to be the only plural society in all of the Middle-East, extending equal rights to all of its citizens, including Arab-Muslims. Israel is also the only nation in all of the Middle-East governed by a democratically elected government; has an independent judiciary that enforces secular laws; and freedom of the press.
Being a Jew in an Arab-Muslim country (assuming Jewish presence hasn’t been entirely prohibited) is often dangerous to one’s health. Being an Arab-Muslim in Israel means having the right to participate in anti-government dissent, without any fear of retribution. In fact, being an Arab-Muslim in Israel means you have the same opportunity as any other Israeli citizen, to participate in the government – Arab-Muslims hold seats in the Knesset. Where in the Arab-Muslim world can a non-Muslim, forget Jew, enjoy such equality?
The Palestinian Arabs have spent these last 60 years not building their own functioning society, but reveling in some sort of perpetual victimhood, while teaching martyrdom and Jew hatred to their children. Well, this diet of Jew/Israel hatred will no longer be limited to the children of the Palestinian territories; it’s coming to Israel:
Arab schoolchildren in Israel will be taught next year that the founding of the State of Israel was a tragedy (Nakba in Arabic) in accordance with a widespread Arab view of the event.
The Education Ministry, headed by Prof.Yuli Tamir (Labor), has approved adding the Arab version to the curriculum in response to calls by Arab nationalists who requested the “Nakba†version be taught in their schools.
The new directive approves a Grade 3 textbook “Living Together in Israel,” which was written by Arabs who left their homes during the 1948 War of Independence and claim that Israel took their land. The textbook evenhandedly points out that the Arab nations refused to accept the United Nations partition plan creating the Jewish State and a new Trans-Jordan country.
Definition of national suicide: allowing your enemies – who have repeatedly tried, and failed to annihilate you – to write your history books.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali: “You grew-up in freedom, and you can spit on freedom because you do not know what it is to not have freedom. I do.”
Ayaan Hirsi Ali was a guest on a recent broadcast of On The Map, a CBC news program hosted by the nauseatingly anti-American Avi Lewis.
Here we have a study in contrasts: on the one hand we have courage, grace, and gratitude, and on the other we have condescension, naiveté and cognitive dissonance.
Oh, and do buy Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s book: Infidel.
h/t: Hot Air
Mark Steyn: There is no reason for Islam to moderate itself in a land that declares it worships only hockey and donuts
The other day I found myself on a panel with “Ibn Warraq,” the pseudonymous Muslim professor–or, as he sees himself, non-Muslim professor. Born in British India, raised in Pakistan, educated in Scotland and now resident in the United States, Professor Warraq has spent his whole life on the ever-moving frontier between Islam and the rest of the world. But, for all his scholarly research, he’d been asked by the organizer of the conference we were at to frame the issue in personal terms. So he said that awhile back he’d been in Mississauga visiting his niece. And, while they were talking, her children came into the kitchen and were eagerly anticipating a forthcoming hockey game between an American team and a Canadian team–presumably the Maple Leafs, though Professor Warraq is evidently not a great follower of the NHL. At any rate, the kids were excited about cheering for the Canadian team because, after all, they’re Canadians and they wanted their fellow Canadians to win.
And their mom rebuked them sharply: “You are not Canadian. You are Muslim.” Ibn had been depressed about this, as well he might be. There are many people who might say I am a Christian first and a Canadian (or American or Irishman) second and would regard it as entirely reasonable to place their obligation to the Almighty above their allegiance to the Queen. It would not prevent them being functioning members of a civil society. But the professor’s niece was demanding not that their Muslim identity supersede their Canadian identity but that it supplant it entirely.
