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Fallaci died yesterday, September 15, in Florence, Italy.In her memory, I offer an introduction to Ms Fallaci that I delivered on November 28, 2005, at a Center for the Study of Popular Culture event honoring her, chaired by David Horowitz. Her talk that evening, at the 3 West Club in New York City, was latterly incorporated in her book, The Force of Reason. I believe this was her final public appearance. It is my great pleasure to introduce Oriana Fallaci to you.Born in 1930 in Florence, Italy, she was brought up in an anti-fascist family and her father was...

I contributed to a symposium at National Review Online about 9/11 that asks "Did It Change Us?" My brief response follows. To read the other eight writers, go to (link) 9/11 changed much for conservatives, little for liberals. Conservatives tend to see the United States, Western culture, and even civilization itself under assault from a barbaric totalitarian force in some way connected to Islam. They perceive a cosmic struggle — reminiscent of those in World War II and the Cold War — over the future destiny of mankind. Liberals tend to have a far more relaxed view of the situation,...

In a statement today, Al-Qaeda's American rep, Adam Gadahn (né Adam Perlman, whom the FBI seeks "in connection with possible terrorist threats against the United States"), has this to say: If the Zionist crusader missionaries of hate and counter-Islam consultants like Daniel Pipes, Robert Spencer, Michael Scheuer, Steven Emerson, and yes, even the crusader-in-chief George W. Bush were to abandon their unbelief and repent and enter into the light of Islam and turn their swords against the enemies of God, it would be accepted of them and they would be our brothers in Islam." So, Al-Qaeda wants me and my...

This is an expansion on debg's summary of Adam Gadahn's Al Qaeda videotape, available for download at http://www.lauramansfield.com/j/nnnnmn-1.rm. debg: He spent a long time saying we are ignorantGadahn did indeed spend a long time calling us "ignorant." After Zawahiri's introduction, he also accused us of "rapturously applause" when Israel wages war, of assenting to our governments' "atrocities in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere in the Muslim world." He also accuses us of "voicing our approval" of the so-called desecration of the Koran at Gitmo, and of our "yellow press and tele-evangelists insulting the 'Prophet' Muhammad [piss be upon him - my...

The "Azzam" Threat: A prelude to Future Jihad in AmericaOver at the Counterterrorism Blog the ever-insightful Walid Phares has posted a preliminary explanation and analysis of the new videotape from Azzam the American, aka Adam Yehiye Gadahn. A few choice details: [...] In short, the “Azzam” video reconfirms clearly, in an English language that academic translators won’t be able to distort, that al Qaeda’s movement worldwide and in the United States is seeking total annihilation or conversion of the enemy: American and other democracies. 4) Argumentation tactics: The “speech writer,” emulating many commentators on al Jazeera or al Manar, hopes...

TWO DAYS after Aug. 10 -- when British authorities broke up an alleged plot to blow up multiple aircraft over the Atlantic Ocean -- the "moderate" Muslim establishment in Britain published an aggressive open letter to Prime Minister Tony Blair. It suggested that Blair could better fight terrorism if he recognized that current British government policy, especially with regard to "the debacle of Iraq," provides "ammunition to extremists." The letter writers demanded he change his foreign policy to "make us all safer." One prominent signatory, Labour MP Sadiq Khan, added that Blair's reluctance to criticize Israel increased the pool of...

The Terrorist Murder of a Palestinian ApologistBy Daniel PipesFrontPageMagazine.com | August 28, 2006 An Italian named Angelo Frammartino, 25, espoused the typical anti-Israel views of a far-leftist, as he expressed in a letter to a newspaper in 2006: We must face the fact that a situation of no violence is a luxury in many parts of the world, but we do not seek to avoid legitimate acts of defense. … I never dreamed of condemning resistance, the blood of the Vietnamese, the blood of the people who were under colonialist occupation or the blood of the young Palestinians from the...

As staff at some of the world’s most prestigious press organizations effectively take Hizbullah’s side in its war with Israel, they inadvertently reveal a profound transformation in the logic of warfare. Some examples of their actions: · Reuters: Adnan Hajj, a freelance photographer with over a decade’s experience at Reuters, doctored his pictures to make Israeli attacks on Lebanon look more destructive and Lebanese more vulnerable. His embellishments created thicker and darker plumes of smoke from bombing raids and posed the same woman bewailing the loss of her bombed-out residence in three different locations. Reuters fired Hajj and withdrew 920...

Many of us are only concerned with reputation and image, our image in the media, and the reputation of the Muslims in the world, but they do not care about reforming the original source, their children. When US President George W. Bush described those who plotted to kill thousands of passengers in ten airliners as Muslim fascists, protests from a number of Islamic societies in the west and the east were voiced against this description. What is wrong with using a bad adjective to describe a terrorist as long as he is willing to personally call himself an Islamist; declares...

In his first response to the major terror airline scare in London, President Bush said on August 10, “The recent arrests that our fellow citizens are now learning about are a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation.” His use of the term “Islamic fascists” spurred attention and controversy, especially among Islamists. At a pro-Hezbollah rally in front of the White House, on Aug. 12, the crowd (in the Washington Post’s description) “grew most agitated when speakers denounced President...

"There will be an international force [in Lebanon], because all the key players want it," an American official asserted recently. He appears to be right, as even the Israeli government has embraced the plan, announcing it "would agree to consider stationing a battle-tested force composed of soldiers from European Union member states." The key players might "want it," but such a force will certainly fail, just as it did once before, in 1982-84. That was when American, French, and Italian troops were deployed in Lebanon to buffer Israel from Lebanon's anarchy and terrorism. The "Multinational Force" collapsed back then when...

President George W. Bush has made democratization a central focus of his administration's Middle East policy. He declared during his second-term inauguration: "It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world."[1] But how successful has this effort, known as the Bush doctrine, been? Elections in Iraq and the Palestinian Authority favored Islamists, many of whom embrace violence and consider liberal democracy anathema. Does the instability inherent in democratization undercut U.S. and European security? Is the...

The blame for the current fighting falls entirely on Israel's enemies, who deploy inhuman methods in the service of barbaric goals. While I wish the armed forces of Israel every success against the terrorists in Gaza and Lebanon and hope they inflict a maximum defeat on Hamas and Hezbollah while taking a minimum of casualties, erroneous Israeli decisions in the last 13 years have led to an unnecessary war. For 45 years, 1948-93, Israel's strategic vision, tactical brilliance, technological innovation, and logistical cleverness won it a deterrence capability. A deep understanding of the country's predicament, complemented by money, will power,...

How do Muslims worldwide think? To find out, the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press carried out a large-scale attitudinal survey this spring. Titled “The Great Divide: How Westerners and Muslims View Each Other,” it interviewed Muslims in two batches of countries: six of them with long-standing, majority-Muslim populations (Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Nigeria, Pakistan, Turkey) and four of them in Western Europe with new, minority Muslim populations (France, Germany, Great Britain, Spain). The survey, which also looks at Western views of Muslims, yielded some dismaying but not altogether surprising results. Its themes can be grouped under three...

What Muslims think Daniel Pipes, THE JERUSALEM POST Jun. 27, 2006 To find out, the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press carried out a large-scale attitudinal survey this spring. Titled "The Great Divide: How Westerners and Muslims View Each Other," it interviewed Muslims in two batches of countries: six of them with long-standing, majority-Muslim populations (Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Nigeria, Pakistan, Turkey) and four of them in Western Europe with new, minority Muslim populations (France, Germany, Great Britain, Spain). The survey, which also looks at Western views of Muslims, yielded some dismaying but not altogether surprising results. Its...

How do Muslims worldwide think? To find out, the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press carried out a large-scale attitudinal survey this spring. Titled “The Great Divide: How Westerners and Muslims View Each Other,” it interviewed Muslims in two batches of countries: six of them with long-standing, majority-Muslim populations (Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Nigeria, Pakistan, Turkey) and four of them in Western Europe with new, minority Muslim populations (France, Germany, Great Britain, Spain). The survey, which also looks at Western views of Muslims, yielded some dismaying but not altogether surprising results. Its themes can be grouped under three...

In a stunning setback, the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ defamation suit against Andrew Whitehead of Anti-CAIR has been dismissed with prejudice. The Anti-CAIR website, www.anti-cair-net.org, reports a “mutually agreeable settlement,” the terms of which are confidential. However, Whitehead notes that he issued no public apology to CAIR, made no retractions or corrections, and left the Anti-CAIR website unchanged, so that it continues to post the statements that triggered CAIR’s suit. Specifically, CAIR had complained about Whitehead calling it a “terrorist supporting front organization … founded by Hamas supporters” that aims “to make radical Islam the dominant religion in the United...

Summary: Islamist Watch combats the ideas and institutions of nonviolent, radical Islam in the United States and other Western countries. It exposes the far-reaching goals of Islamists, works to reduce their power, and seeks to strengthen moderate Muslims.

Since I argued in this column last week that Israel can and must defeat the Palestinians, a barrage of responses have contested this thesis. Some were trivial (Haaretz published an article challenging my right to opine on such matters because I do not live in Israel), but most raised serious issues that deserve an answer. The ancient Chinese strategist Sun Tzu observed that in war, "let your great object be victory," and he was echoed by the 17th-century Austrian war thinker, Raimondo Montecuccoli. Their Prussian successor Clausewitz added that "War is an act of violence to compel the enemy to...

If you were a securities company who actually lost employees in the WTC September 11, you would jump at the chance to support a symposium on terrorism, right? How about if you were a major airplane manufacturer who watched helplessly as four planes you might have had a hand in crafting disintegrated on television? Or maybe a supplier of weapons for the law enforcement who bravely and selflessly ran into those burning buildings? Surely companies such as these would recognize the need for such a symposium, and quickly respond to requests for support, right? Wrong. Very, very, wrong. Welcome back,...