Wednesday
October 31 09:14 PM EST
THE EUNUCHS ARE
WHINING
By Ann
Coulter
We've finally given
liberals a war against fundamentalism, and they don't
want to fight it. They would, except it would put them on
the same side as the United States.
With the media
suffering from fainting spells, the country is being run
by people who can splice cables and land jets on ships in
the dark of night. These are men, a subspecies of
Americans heretofore invisible to the elites. But now the
elites are complaining that the men aren't working fast
enough.
Not exactly
smashing stereotypes of liberals as mincing pantywaists,
the left's entire contribution to the war effort thus far
has been to whine. In lieu of a military response against
terrorists abroad and security precautions at home,
liberals would like to get the whole thing over with and
just throw Jerry Falwell in jail.
Walter Cronkite,
better known as president of the Ho Chi Minh Veneration
Society, has compared the Rev. Falwell to the Taliban. In
response to Falwell's comment that gay marriage and
abortion on demand may not have warmed the heart of the
Almighty, Cronkite proclaimed it "the most abominable
thing I've ever heard."
Showing the
dispassion and critical judgment that earned him the
moniker "the most pious blowhard in America," this
self-serving, multimillionaire Martha's Vineyard boob
accused Falwell of "worshipping the same God as the
people who bombed the Trade Center and the Pentagon (news
- web sites)."
Liberals compare
Jerry Falwell to the Taliban, but then are furious with
George Bush for not being Jesus Christ. Evidently, what a
president is supposed to do when the girls are scared is
develop complete omniscience and omnipotence. Thus, the
media repeatedly expound upon the proposition that what
Bush should have done in response to the anthrax mailings
is: Instantly produce the culprits and put an end to this
madness!
The New York Times
has been issuing daily harangues on this point. The cover
story of last Sunday's Week in Review section ("Efforts
to Calm the Nation's Fears Spin Out of Control") lectured
Bush: "People in the grip of fear want information that
holds up, not spin control."
Men are out in the
driving rain trying to change a tire, while the womenfolk
sit in a warm roadside cafe demanding to know what's
taking so long. Just pipe down! The men are working as
fast as they can.
In fact, no one is
in the "grip of fear" over anthrax except the media and
their most gullible targets, liberal women. Liberal
soccer moms are precisely as likely to receive anthrax in
the mail as to develop a capacity for linear thinking.
But the media are working overtime to create a Princess
Di-like hysteria in Manhattan suburbs.
Every death,
including the thousands murdered in the womb every day,
is sad. But let's not forget that the mass mailing of
anthrax spores has killed only four people so far. These
are tragic occurrences, as are the deaths from car
accidents, drowning and fire since the attack. So far the
anthrax mailings don't hold a candle to the slaughter of
9-11.
But the Times is
furious with Bush every single moment he delays in
bringing back the halcyon days when liberals could attend
Calvin Klein fashion shows free of anxiety. "Again and
again in recent weeks, administration officials tried to
reassure the public; again and again, the situation
proved more serious than the officials had
suggested."
It seems that a
more soothing response to a bio-terrorism scare would be
for the administration to have God-like omniscience about
the anthrax mailings, including predicting all future
mailings.
Frank "No, No,
Nanette!" Rich recently emitted an interminable screech
on the op-ed page of The New York Times denouncing the
Bush administration for not solving the anthrax cases
already: "The most highly trumpeted breakthrough in the
hunt for anthrax terrorists -- Tom Ridge's announcement
that 'the site where the letters were mailed' had been
found in New Jersey -- proved a dead end."
As Irish playwright
Brendan Behan said: "Critics are like eunuchs in a harem:
They know how it's done, they've seen it done every day,
but they're unable to do it themselves." (It's no
surprise Rich is afraid of the mail: He's afraid of me.
Just last night he refused to be in the "Politically
Incorrect" greenroom with me.)
Go listen to a
Rodgers and Hammerstein sound track and try to stay calm,
Frank. Patriotic Americans are doing their best to
protect theater critics quaking in their Upper West Side
redoubts.
Maureen Dowd,
another hysterical Times columnist, is still indignant
that George Bush wouldn't have asked her to the prom.
"Polo at Yale is a bit different than the Afghan
version," she sniffed. Three weeks into the war and she's
already calling it "Operation Quagmire."
Women -- and I
don't mean to limit that to the biological sense --
always become hysterical at the first sign of trouble.
They have no capacity to solve problems, so instead they
fret. But despite the fearful fifth columnists whiling
away the war naysaying America's response, we will win
this war.
You just stay warm,
girls; the men are fixing the car.
Making
the Air Safe for Terror
Turning
airplanes into safe zones for hijackers.
By
Dave Kopel, research director, Independence Institute
& Captain David Petteys, retired United Airlines
pilot, Marine helicopter pilot in the Vietnam War, author
of Marine Helo
September
16, 2001 9:30 a.m.
We will
not allow the enemy to win this war by restricting our
freedom of mobility," claimed Transportation Secretary
Norman Mineta, as he announced a series of restrictions
that will sharply reduce mobility.
If one
has to arrive at the airport two or three hours before
boarding, many businesspeople will choose not to fly. The
immediate alternative is driving, especially for trips of
less than 500 miles, and in the long term,
videoconferencing will be bolstered.
Families
with small children will find air travel even more
onerous. No longer will grandma be able to meet mom at
the airport gate, and help her take a baby and a toddler
down the concourse. No longer will Aunt Joan be able to
escort her 11-year-old niece to the boarding gate.
Spending two or three hours in an airport before a flight
will make travel all the more difficult and stressful for
children, and many families will choose to vacation by
driving rather than flying. Air destinations like
Disneyworld will suffer substantially in the long run.
As Glenn
Reynolds argues in his InstaPundit weblog, bans on steak
knives in first class, bans on pocket knives among all
passengers, prohibitions on plastic cutlery in airports,
and similar measures fulfill the terrorist goal of
portraying America is incapable of meaningful response.
In addition, measures further disarming the law-abiding
on the plane only worsen the current policy of turning
airplanes into safe zones for hijackers.
The
30-year-old FAA anti-hijacking strategy was built on the
following assumptions:
That the
hijackers are not suicidal (hence the negotiating teams,
etc.).
That the
weapon of choice would be a metal object such as a pistol
(thus the airport metal detectors).
That the
flight crew would remain in control of the aircraft
(leading to elaborate signaling procedures and delaying
tactics for hijacked aircraft).
That the
flight crew should NOT to resist the hijackers (hoping to
open negotiations and resolution).
All these
assumptions were rendered null and void on Sept 11, 2001.
The first
people to realize this were the heroes of United Flight
93. Thanks to cell phones, they realized that their plane
had been turned into a weapon. And they resolved to die a
little sooner as they fought to save thousands of lives,
rather than to sit still and wait. What a wonderful
rejection of the advice that the gun-prohibition lobbies,
the depend-on-government lobbies, and much of the media
have been droning into the American public for so long.
In truth, "Give the criminals what they want. Don't
resist," isn't always safer. In a shooting in a subway or
school, passivity can get you and dozens more people
killed. In a hijacking, it may get thousands more killed.
Suppose
that in September 1941, Nazi or Japanese terrorists armed
only with knives had taken the controls of a plane, a
train, or a bus. Would the Americans of 1941 have obeyed
all the hijackers' instructions, or would they have
rushed the hijackers en masse, knowing that some
passengers would die, but that the hijackers would be
stopped? If America is to be "changed forever" by the war
which began on September 11, 2001, the first change
should be the end of the culture of passivity.
The most
constructive step taken by the Secretary of
Transportation was to begin placing armed federal air
marshals on random flights. Back in the early 1970s, the
last time that air marshals were in routine use on
domestic flights, they were often armed with .44 magnum
snub-nosed revolvers. The revolvers often carried
"prefragmented" ammunition, such as the Glaser round,
which is composed of buckshot pellets.
The short
barrel of the revolver means that the round is fired at
relatively lower velocity. Fragmenting rounds have very
low penetrability &emdash; since their kinetic energy is
dispersed in many small projectiles, rather than in a
single bullet, and since they are less dense than regular
bullets. Glaser fragmenting rounds typically will fail
even to penetrate a wood door.
The
tradeoff is that such bullets tend to produce shallow
wounds, which reduces their ability to instantly kill or
incapacitate their target.
Perhaps
not too far in the future, dart guns, or other high-tech
"less than lethal" weapons might become practical for
airplane use, but for now, however, firearms are the
usable weapon.
With
prefragmented ammunition, the chance of a stray round
penetrating the aluminum body of the plane is virtually
nil. With less exotic ammunition, it is theoretically
possible, but hardly certain, that a stray bullet could
penetrate an airplane's body.
What
would happen in such a case? Would the plane crash
instantly? World War II veterans may remember that B-17
bombers which had numerous holes ripped open by hostile
machine gun bullets had a legendary ability to stay
aloft.
Unlike
the B-17, however, modern commercial aircraft are
pressurized for passenger comfort. Today's commercial
airliners have pressurized cabin altitudes that climb to
a maximum of around 8,000 feet (which amounts to about
8.6 psi pressure differential compared to the outside
atmosphere).
Could a
couple of holes from the biggest bullets in the world
&emdash; about a half-inch in diameter &emdash; cause an
explosive decompression? Not really. The higher pressure
cabin air would start to leak out, but the difference
between the inside and the outside air pressure would not
be sufficient to rip the plane's frame apart.
There is
only one known instance in which a bullet hole in an
aircraft frame yanked objects across the plane, expanded,
and sucked a person out into the sky. That was the James
Bond movie Goldfinger. The movie was not intended to
teach real-life lessons about physics.
Should
the laws of physics somehow be altered so that a stray
bullet could cause an explosive decompression, a big hole
in a plane doesn't cause a crash. What's really dangerous
about a sudden loss of cabin pressure is that passengers
can't breathe. The procedure is to put on your oxygen
mask and do a "High Dive" to 10,000 feet (or to 3,000
feet above the highest terrain &emdash; which means if
you were west of Denver you would only dive to 17,000
feet before leveling off), thus entering an atmosphere
that can sustain life. In fact, the altitude limitation
placed on aircraft is based on their ability to descend
to a breathable altitude in a given amount of time.
Would a
direct hit on a hydraulic line cause a crash? No, because
modern commercial aircraft are built with redundancies to
cover the failure of any single system.
And even
if Goldfinger were real life and a small hole in an
airplane frame could cause a crash, that is still a
better result than the plane being turned into a weapon
against an American city.
We can no
longer allow the assumption that hijackers are not
intending to kill thousands.
So armed
air marshals are a good idea, but there are some
limitations. The number of air marshals cannot even come
close to providing full coverage for commercial flights.
How can
we make it a certainty that every potential hijacker
knows that there is no possibility he will gain control
of an airplane?
The most
realistic plan is to apply the policy behind air-marshal
deployment on a broader scale, ensuring that every plane
is protected.
Federal
law has always allowed federal law-enforcement personnel,
such as FBI agents, to carry their firearms on board.
Even though federal agents have sometimes committed
crimes, including murder, on balance the law promotes
safety.
The
policy should be expanded to allow state and local law
enforcement personnel to carry firearms. Currently, state
and local law enforcement must be on-duty (or required to
go on duty immediately upon arrival). How stringently
these rules enforced varies among airports and airlines.
What
about pilots? Some have proposed armoring the cockpit
wall and door, and locking pilots in for the duration of
the flight. It appears that Tuesday's hijackers killed
stewardesses in order to draw pilots out of the cockpit.
This ploy was necessary because current anti-hijacking
training stresses keeping the cockpit secure. If pilots
were locked inside (with the key held by somebody on the
ground), pilots would become de facto prisoners &emdash;
a visible triumph of the terrorist objective of
destroying America's strength as a free society. Also,
the cockpit is intended to be an exit route for
passengers in case of a crash.
It is
already legal for pilots and stewards to carry firearms
on a plane, if they have the consent of the airline, and
they have "successfully completed a course of training in
the use of firearms acceptable to the Administrator" of
the Federal Aviation Administration. (14 Code of Federal
Regulations section 108.11.)
On
Wednesday, the Front Sight Firearms Training Institute in
Southern California announced that it would offer free
defensive firearms training to certified commercial
airline pilots. Front Sight's announcement was
accompanied by endorsements from commercial pilots who
have trained with Front Sight.
Both
airlines and the federal government ought to encourage
pilots and stewards to take the appropriate training, and
become ready to protect their passengers. Surely if we
can trust a pilot with a $50 million plane and the lives
of three hundred passengers, we can trust him not to use
a gun in way that would endanger his passengers or
himself.
Shooting
somebody from a few feet away doesn't require expert
marksmanship. In a hijacking, unlike in many situations
faced by police on the ground (e.g., responding to a
domestic violence call), it will usually be quite clear
who the criminal is. There are always risks that a
particular hostage, or somebody near the hijacker, might
be wounded or killed by a missed shot. But this is still
better than everyone on the plane being killed, or
thousands of people in some nearby city being killed.
Of course
some gun-prohibition advocates will object. "We don't
trust flight crews with weapons" they may say. "Putting a
gun in a volatile situation just makes things more
dangerous," they insist. But Sept 11th makes a shamble of
these arguments. At least on airplanes, "the best defense
is to put up no defense &emdash; give them what they
want," is no longer valid. (The quote comes from a book
by the late Pete Shields, the former President of Handgun
Control, Inc. Guns Don't Die: People Do, p. 125.)
Whatever
increases the safety of the flight crew increases the
safety of the passengers. No two groups of people have
interests that are more aligned.
And yes,
even though stewardesses can sometimes get nasty with
passengers, they too are capable of carrying firearms
responsibly. Israel's El Al airline arms its flight
stewards and pilots.
What
about passengers being allowed to protect
themselves--rather then being forbidden even to have
plastic knives?
First of
all, in a situation like Tuesday's hijackings (and we can
never again assume that hijackers intend not to hit a
building), then even the most inept response by an armed
passenger would do no net harm, and might even help. In
other words, if a passenger with a high-powered hunting
rifle confronted some hijackers, shot at them and missed,
and killed some other passengers, all the passengers are
doing to die soon anyway. If the bullets rip open the
airplane frame, and cause a catastrophic decompression,
then it is much better for the plane to crash under
circumstances in which the hijackers cannot control it,
than at the time and place of the hijackers' choosing.
But the
risks of armed passengers can be substantially reduced.
First, a passenger who wants to travel armed should have
to possess a valid concealed handgun carry license. The
majority of states currently issue such licenses to
qualified applicants.
Second,
the passenger would have to identify himself at the
airline at check-in. This would allow him to carry a
firearm past security. Flight attendants would not serve
him alcohol (or would serve only a single drink). Like
the air marshals, passengers would have to bring only
firearms from a list of particularly suitable guns, and
would have to use ammunition with high frangibility. If
necessary, airlines could even supply (for a fee) the
appropriate type of ammunition.
If
necessary, passengers who wish to carry on-board might be
required to pass a special training class related to
firearms on planes, similar to the classes required for
flight crews.
Now the
idea of armed passengers is extremely offensive to the
gunphobics who have spent the last thirty years
inflicting their aesthetic sensibilities on the America,
and turning airports, schools, and too many workplaces
into "gun-free zones" &emdash; which in practice has
meant turning them into criminal safety zones, where it
easy to kill a lot of people &emdash; especially people
who believe that "the best defense is to put up no
defense &emdash; give them what they want."
A second
objection is that armed passengers will get irritated
with flight delays, rude stewardesses, etc., and start
killing people. Nearly identical objections have been
raised nearly everywhere the handgun carry licensing laws
have been introduced, and in every single state where the
laws are in effect, these mean-spirited warning have been
proven to be false. Data from states such as Florida show
that people with concealed handgun permits are much, much
more law-abiding than the rest of the population.
Given the
vast number of witnesses to any potential crime, and the
guarantee that there will be other armed people on the
plane who won't tolerate misconduct, a plane would be an
especially unlikely place for a person to expect to get
away with misusing a gun.
Years
ago, airlines used to offer "smoking" and "non-smoking"
flights. It would be interesting to see what would happen
if airlines began offering "armed" and "unarmed flights."
Which planes do you think that would-be hijackers would
prefer to take?
We also
know that the greater publicity given to an anti-crime
program, the greater its potential deterrent effect. The
introduction of sky marshals ended hijackings, without a
single marshal having to fire a single shot. When
Kennesaw, Georgia, enacted a nationally publicized law to
require mandatory gun ownership for families, violent
crime and home burglaries plunged. Again, the
announcement of a viable program to stop criminals
resulted in crime being stopped without a need for
actually firing weapons.
Of course
planes are not the only possible targets of the war being
waged by bin Laden and the governments which support him.
We don't know where they will strike next. The evil
governments and groups which nurture terrorism have so
much to resent about the United States, because so much
of the United States is a demonstration of why freedom
prospers and dictatorship and dark ages theocracy fail.
What we do know is that shopping malls, schools, and
other public places will be safer if terrorists will
encounter immediate opposition. Law-enforcement officers
cannot be everywhere, but an armed, trained citizenry can
be. As John Lott, now a scholar at the American
Enterprise Institute, details in the second edition of
his book More Guns: Less Crime, the introduction of
concealed handgun licensing laws leads to a drop of
approximately 90% in mass killings in public places.
Anyone
with a gun &emdash; an air marshal, a law-enforcement
officer, a pilot, a stewardess, or a trained citizen
&emdash; could make a mistake, and there is no guarantee
that a mistake will never be made. But the nationwide
American experience of air marshals and law-enforcement
officers carrying guns on planes, the experience of the
many states which issue handgun permits to law-abiding
peaceful citizens, and the experience of El Al's flight
crews all suggest that these risks are relatively small.
It would
be possible to decide to allow the armament of only some
of the categories of people we have discussed in this
article. But the safest strategy is for all of them to be
armed, if they so choose, and if they pass appropriate
training and background checks, and carry appropriate
weapons. When we make it near-certain statistically that
on every commercial flight, some of the crew and a few of
the passengers will be armed, then we create the
near-certainty that never again will the enemies of
freedom be able to use American aircraft as a weapon
against American cities.
We can
also guarantee that allowing passengers and crew to carry
the tools to defeat hijackers will not impose massive
delays on the American traveling public or sharply reduce
the utility of air travel for business and public, and
therefore will not significantly harm the free American
economy. The same cannot be said of the Department of
Transportation's' current approach.
Forwarded from former Marine Corps Fighter Pilot,
Bob Matthew's.
From Don Hanna.
CHALLENGE AND RESPONSE
Jack Wheeler, September 12, 2001
While you and I burst into uncontrollable tears as we
saw on television the collapse of the World Trade Towers,
knowing we were witnessing thousands of fellow American
lives snuffed out before our eyes, there were people
throughout the Middle East laughing and dancing in the
streets, celebrating the tragedy.
The great historian Arnold Toynbee based his Study Of
History on an analysis of why some cultures flourish and
some do not. All cultures face various challenges, from
their environment and other cultures. It is a culture's
capacity to respond to these challenges that will
determine its success or failure. If that capacity is
positive, the culture can thrive; if it is negative, the
culture is doomed.
The culture that most faces the great challenge of
survival or extinction today is not America's. It is the
culture of Islam in general, and Arab culture in
particular. It must respond soon to the mortal challenge
facing it &endash; and if it does not, America and
Western Civilization must quickly bring about its
demise.
The most ironic aspect of the Arabs' challenge is that
it is internal. What they must respond to and overcome is
not a challenge from their external environment nor any
other culture. It is a challenge they have created and
must exorcize from within themselves. There is a Djinn,
an evil genie, inhabiting the Arab soul. Its Arabic name
is al-Hasad, the Demon of Envy.
For Moslems, envy is haram, behavior explicitly
prohibited by the Prophet Mohammed himself. In Sura
(chapter) An-Nisa' 4:32 of the Koran, Allah through
Mohammed says: "Envy not one another." A hadith or Saying
of Mohammed admonishes Moslems to: "Keep yourselves far
from envy; it eateth up and taketh away good actions,
like as fire eateth up and burneth wood." In another,
Mohammed warns that no Moslem may go to Paradise after
death unless "his heart be free of envy."
Two years ago (October 1999), I wrote a column
entitled "The Impotence of Islam." I explained that
"Islam has tragically become a religious dead-end, ruined
by the great social poison of the 20th century, envy.
Marxist Communism is fueled by class-based envy towards
'the rich exploitative bourgeois'; Nazism fueled by
race-based envy towards 'the rich exploitative Jews';
while Moslem terrorism is fueled by a culture-based envy
towards 'the rich exploitative West.' And what is the
source of envy? Impotence. The hatred of the success of
others due to the conviction that you are not capable and
competent enough to similarly succeed, so your goal
becomes to destroy that which you cannot achieve for
yourself."
Further, "envy is always directed most strongly at
those who most clearly demonstrate one's impotence by
their success, such as one's neighbors or closest
competitors. Arabs and Jews, for example, claim the same
individual as their ancestor: one son of Abraham, Isaac,
fathered the Jews, while another son, Ishmael, fathered
the Arabs. One tribe stays put, the other goes out into
the world and comes back as economically, culturally,
scientifically accomplished as any tribe in history
&endash; and proceeds to create a new country, Israel,
flaunting all their achievements right in the Arabs'
face. This has driven Arabs enviously &endash; and
masochistically -- insane."
For it is masochism that is the definitive
characteristic of envy. Envy is not simply hatred of
someone for having something you don't &endash; it is the
willingness to destroy yourself as the price for
destroying those of whom you are envious. The realm of
envious insanity goes far beyond ordinary criminal
insanity, and into a region of true and monstrous
evil.
It is al-hasad, envy, which is the source of
bottomless and suicidal-bomber hatred Palestinians have
for the Jews, and that Arab and Moslem terrorists have
for America and the West. Until the Djinn of al-Hasad,
the Demon of Envy, departs from Arab souls, there can be
no peace between Palestinians and Jews, and between
Moslems and America.
And yes, between Moslems in general, not just the
terrorists &endash; for it is the challenge of the Moslem
world to rid its religion of the cancer of al-hasad.
Al-hasad is their cancer. It is no longer enough for
Moslems to utter pro forma denouncements of terrorism as
"un-Islamic." It is now their responsibility to prove to
us they are doing something about it. Moslems can only do
this by and for themselves. We have our own challenges to
deal with.
The first is to understand that it doesn't matter who
"masterminded" the terrorism of September 11. We do not
need to determine with conclusive evidence who did it. We
must launch instead a comprehensive and annihilative
assault on the entire network of Moslem terrorism. Osama
bin Laden, Hamas, Hezbollah, the PLO, the Islamic Jihad,
every single outfit that has conducted, been involved in,
or advocated terrorist acts &endash; whether they had
anything to do with September 11 or not &endash; should
now be a target and wiped off the earth.
And more: Not only must the terrorist groups be
extinguished but the governments that support them.
Specifically the governments of Syria, Iraq, Iran, the
Afghan Taliban, and the Palestinian Authority must be
militarily liquidated. No trials. No capturing any
terrorist and "bringing him to justice." Every terrorist,
every Ayatollah, every Syrian and PLO and Iraqi
government thug from Yassir Arafat and Saddam Hussein
down, should be hunted down and killed with whatever
military force is required. This is what being "at war"
means.
War means destroying your enemy physically and
destroying his capacity to resist. It means victory.
Congress has not formally declared war since December of
1941. It is time for Congress to do so now, to declare
war against all terrorist groups and those specific
governments supporting them. (It may not be necessary,
however, to include Egypt. It should be sufficient to
publicly point out to the Egyptians that a Sword of
Damocles is poised above them called the Aswan Dam. The
Egyptians are to be good little boys and girls and abjure
from any and all involvement with terrorism, for should
Aswan be blown all of Egypt will be under twenty feet of
water.) Then the war must be conducted to be won
ruthlessly and quickly.
There have been many references to "America's terrible
swift sword" in retribution for September 11. The
"terrible" part is that retribution must be absolute and
annihilative. But the "swift" part is equally vital. We
must eliminate our enemies before they have time to
strike back with germ and biochemical warfare. They won't
be aiming at killing tens of thousands of Americans next
time, but hundreds of thousands or even millions. Let
that sink in.
This is a fight to the death. It is not a fight of our
choosing. America is being attacked not for its vices,
but for its virtues; not for its moral failures, but its
moral success as the freest, most productive, and most
prosperous nation history has known. We are up against an
enemy fully as evil as the Nazis or Communists. We must
annihilate this enemy and do so immediately.
This enemy has been given a name: "Jihadism," the
Jihad or "Holy War"
envious Moslems are conducting towards Western
Civilization. Its proponents must be dealt with
militarily, hunted down and shot. But the moral disease
of Jihadism itself can only be cured by the world Moslem
community. The cure lies in that community embracing a
positive response to the challenges facing it. Such a
response was developed a hundred years ago at the
beginning of the 20th century by Moslem intellectuals in
Central Asia. It was called "Jadidism," advocating a new
("jadid"), flexible, and dynamic Islam. Instead of
treating the words of Mohammed as sacred petrified
fossils, the Jadidists considered them as guides to the
future, asking themselves not what Mohammed said
centuries ago in the context of his day, but what he
would say now if Allah brought him back to earth today.
The Jadidists wanted Islam to embrace and flourish in the
modern world. Tragically, the Jadidists were crushed by
the Soviets in the 1920s. Now is the time for their
revival.
Thus the struggle is ultimately Jihadism vs. Jadidism
within Islam. Our job is to physically eliminate the
advocates of the former, while forcefully encouraging
Islam as a whole to embrace the latter. We must see to it
that leading Moslem teachers (such as at the University
of Cairo), Moslem writers, journalists and radio
commentators everywhere promote Jadidism, and admonish
against al-hasad. No more hate, no more envy. They must
make sure every Moslem contemplating a martyr's death
understands that he will not go to Paradise merely
because he died in a Jihad against Israel or America. If
he wants all the wine and women Allah promises him in
Al-Waqi'ah (Sura 56 of the Koran), the Djinn of al-Hasad
must not possess him. His heart must be free of envy.
And if it is not, if he continues to laugh and dance
on Middle East streets over the depraved slaughter of
Americans, then we must speedily provide him the martyr's
death he deserves.
Jack Wheeler
Freedom Research Foundation
©copyright 2001 Dr. Jack Wheeler and the Freedom
Research Foundation.
To ALCON: A thought provoking editorial! Don
Hanna.
The barbarians will learn what America's all
about
By Leonard Pitts Jr., Syndicated columnist:
They pay me to tease shades of meaning from social and
cultural issues, to provide words that help make sense of
that which troubles the American soul. But in this moment
of airless shock when hot tears sting disbelieving eyes,
the only thing I can find to say, the only words that
seem to fit, must be addressed to the unknown author of
this suffering.
You monster. You beast. You unspeakable bastard.
What lesson did you hope to teach us by your coward's
attack on our World Trade Center, our Pentagon, us? What
was it you hoped we would learn? Whatever it was, please
know that you failed.
Did you want us to respect your cause? You just damned
your cause.
Did you want to make us fear? You just steeled our
resolve.
Did you want to tear us apart? You just brought us
together.
Let me tell you about my people. We are a vast and
quarrelsome family, a family rent by racial, cultural,
political and class division, but a family nonetheless.
We're frivolous, yes, capable of expending tremendous
emotional energy on pop cultural minutiae, a singer's
revealing dress, a ball team's misfortune, a cartoon
mouse.
We're wealthy, too, spoiled by the ready availability
of trinkets and material goods, and maybe because of
that, we walk through life with a certain sense of blithe
entitlement. We are fundamentally decent, though
— peace-loving and compassionate. We struggle to
know the right thing and to do it. And we are, the
overwhelming majority of us, people of faith, believers
in a just and loving God.
Some people, you, perhaps, think that any or all of
this makes us weak. You're mistaken. We are not weak.
Indeed, we are strong in ways that cannot be measured by
arsenals. Yes, we're in pain now. We are in mourning and
we are in shock. We're still grappling with the unreality
of the awful thing you did, still working to make
ourselves understand that this isn't a special effect
from some Hollywood blockbuster, isn't the plot
development from a Tom Clancy novel.
Both in terms of the awful scope of its ambition and
the probable final death toll, your attacks are likely to
go down as the worst acts of terrorism in the history of
the United States and, indeed, the history of the world.
You've bloodied us as we have never been bloodied
before.
But there's a gulf of difference between making us
bloody and making us fall. This is the lesson Japan was
taught to its bitter sorrow the last time anyone hit us
this hard, the last time anyone brought us such abrupt
and monumental pain. When roused, we are righteous in our
outrage, terrible in our force. When provoked by this
level of barbarism, we will bear any suffering, pay any
cost, go to any length, in the pursuit of justice.
I tell you this without fear of contradiction. I know
my people, as you, I think, do not. What I know reassures
me. It also causes me to tremble with dread of the
future.
In days to come, there will be recrimination and
accusation, fingers pointing to determine whose failure
allowed this to happen and what can be done to prevent it
from happening again. There will be heightened security,
misguided talk of revoking basic freedoms. We'll go
forward from this moment sobered, chastened, sad. But
determined, too. Unimaginably determined.
You see, there is steel beneath this velvet. That
aspect of our character is seldom understood by people
who don't know us well. On this day, the family's
bickering is put on hold. As Americans we will weep, as
Americans we will mourn, and as Americans, we will rise
in defense of all that we cherish.Still, I keep wondering
what it was you hoped to teach us. It occurs to me that
maybe you just wanted us to know the depths of your
hatred.
If that's the case, consider the message received. And
take this message in exchange: You don't know my people.
You don't know what we're about. You don't know what you
just started.
But you're about to learn!!!
A far cry from Peter Jenning's derogatory remarks on ABC,
regarding our President!
TRIBUTE TO THE UNITED STATES
This, from a Canadian newspaper, it's worth
sharing.Widespread but only partial news coverage was
given recently to a remarkable editorial broadcast from
Toronto by Gordon Sinclair, a Canadian television
Commentator. What follows is the full text of his
trenchant remarks as printed in the Congressional
Record:
America: The Good Neighbor.
"This Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the
Americans as the most generous and possibly the least
appreciated people on all the earth. Germany, Japan and,
to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy were lifted out of
the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions
of dollars and forgave other billions in debts.
None of these countries is today paying even the
interest on its remaining debts to the UnitedStates. When
France was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the
Americans who propped it up, andtheir reward was to be
insulted and swindled on the streets of Paris. I was
there. I saw it.
When earthquakes hit distant cities, it is the United
States that hurries in to help. This spring, 59 American
communities were flattened by tornadoes.Nobody helped.
The Marshall Plan and the Truman Policy pumped billions
of dollars into discouraged countries. Now newspapers in
those countries are writing about the decadent, war
mongering Americans.
I'd like to see just one of those countries that is
gloating over the erosion of the United States dollar
build its own airplane. Does any other country in the
world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the
Lockheed Tri-Star, or the Douglas DC10? If so, why don't
they fly them? Why do all the International lines except
Russia fly American Planes? Why does no other land on
earth even consider putting a man or woman on the moon?
You talk about Japanese technocracy, and you get radios.
You talk about German technocracy, and you get
automobiles. You talk about American technocracy, and you
find men on the moon - not once, but several times - and
safely home again.
You talk about scandals, and the Americans put theirs
right in the store window for everybody to look at. Even
their draft-dodgers are not pursued and hounded. They are
here on our streets, and most of them, unless they are
breaking Canadian laws, are getting American dollars from
ma and pa at home to spend here.
When the railways of France, Germany and India were
breaking down through age, it was the Americans who
rebuilt them. When the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New
York Central went broke, nobody loaned them an old
caboose. Both are still broke.
I can name you 5000 times when the Americans raced to
the help of other people in trouble. Can you name me even
one time when someone else raced to the Americans in
trouble? I don't think there was outside help even during
the San Francisco earthquake.
Our neighbors have faced it alone, and I'm one
Canadian who is damned tired of hearing them get kicked
around. They will come out of this thing with their flag
high. And when they do, they are entitled to thumb their
nose at the lands that are gloating over their present
troubles. I hope Canada is not one of those."
Stand proud, America! Wear it proudly!!