Free Republic

PAKISTANI President Pervez Musharraf today called for a ban on the "defamation of Islam" in a speech to the UN General Assembly in which he took a veiled swipe at Pope Benedict XVI for his remarks linking the Muslim faith to violence. "We also need to bridge, through dialogue and understanding, the growing divide between the Islamic and Western worlds," General Musharraf told the 192-member assembly. "It is imperative to end racial and religious discrimination against Muslims and to prohibit the defamation of Islam." In an indirect reference to Pope Benedict XVI, he said, "It is most disappointing to see...

By common consent among historians, the modern history of the Middle East begins in the year 1798, when the French Revolution arrived in Egypt in the form of a small expeditionary force led by a young general called Napoleon Bonaparte—who conquered and then ruled it for a while with appalling ease. General Bonaparte—he wasn't yet Emperor—proclaimed to the Egyptians that he had come to them on behalf of a French Republic built on the principles of liberty and equality. We know something about the reactions to this proclamation from the extensive literature of the Middle Eastern Arab world. The idea...

<...SNIP...> In free societies, the best weapon against those who choose not to fight is simply to tell the public — constantly and candidly — why we should fight. This is true even in ugly wars that present only bad and worse choices. Western armies always do better when a Pericles or a Franklin Roosevelt explains — rather than asserts — how difficult the task is, what the enemy is up to, and how we will, as in the past, ensure its defeat. For all the talk of Vietnam, one forgets that America has so far been quite successful in...

<...snip...>In only one respect does the Field Manual recognize any difference between lawful and unlawful combatants: The latter may be separated from their compatriots. Otherwise, terrorists who have violated the rules of war by targeting civilians and fighting out of uniform are to be treated exactly like POWs and considered honorable fighters who have a right to keep their secrets. So Iraqi and Afghan insurgents won't even face the prospect of your average good cop/bad cop routine. The manual allows for a watered down version called "Mutt and Jeff" in which interrogators can affect different personalities. But the Manual admonishes...

ELEANOR HALL: A former CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) director and chief adviser to New York's Terrorism Preparedness Taskforce has described the conflict against al-Qaeda as the "fourth world war", and he predicts it will go on for decades. James Woolsey was director of the CIA under President Clinton and was an arms control negotiator under presidents Reagan and Bush Senior. He's critical of US administrations from Jimmy Carter to Bill Clinton for failing to tackle Islamic terrorism more robustly. James Woolsey has been speaking to Paolo Black. JAMES WOOLSEY: I think that war will go on for decades, like the...

It is now becoming trite to write of the American military “failure” in Iraq. But recently this purported setback has been lumped together with the Israeli problems in southern Lebanon to suggest an end to the long dominance of the Western Way of War — an approach to warfare that has usually allowed Western soldiers to do what they wish abroad, from Alexander at the Indus to the Europeans in the 20th century. Supposedly the Islamists have not only evolved beyond the old, failed Arab paradigm of feebly copying Western conventional practice (remember the 1967 Six-Day War or Saddam’s disaster...

George Bush recently declared that we are at war with "Islamic fascism." Muslim-American groups were quick to express furor at the expression. Middle Eastern autocracies complained that it was provocative and insensitive.Critics of the term chosen by the president, however, should remember what al-Qaida, the Taliban, Hezbollah, Hamas and other extremist Muslim groups have said and done. Like the fascists of the 1930s, the leaders of these groups are authoritarians who brook no dissent in their efforts to impose a comprehensive system of submission upon the unwilling.Osama bin Laden urged Muslims to kill any American they could find, and then...

To: National Desk Contact: Department of Justice, 202-514-2007 WASHINGTON, Sept. 5 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The following fact sheet on anti-terrorism efforts was released today by the Department of Justice: The highest priority of the Department of Justice since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has been to protect Americans by preventing acts of terrorism. The ability of the Department to identify and prosecute would- be terrorists, thereby thwarting their deadly plots, has improved dramatically over the past five years thanks to: a core set of structural reforms, the development of new law enforcement tools, and the discipline of a...

We know what the terrorists intend to do because they've told us — and we need to take their words seriously. Thank you all very much. (Applause.) Thank you all. Please be seated. General Hendrix, thank you for the invitation to be here. Thanks for the kind introduction. I'm honored to stand with the men and women of the Military Officers Association of America. I appreciate the Board of Directors who are here, and the leaders who have given me this platform from which to speak. I'm proud to be here with active members of the United States military. Thank...

LONDON (EJP)--- Prominent British film director Ken Loach has called for a boycott of state-sponsored Israeli cultural institutions in response to Israel’s actions in Lebanon, and has encouraged others to follow suit. The 69-year-old winner of this year’s Palme d’Or award at the Cannes Film Festival has also refused an invite to attend this year’s Haifa Film Festival in protest against Israel’s actions during the recent hostilities in Lebanon. He said: “I support the call by Palestinian film-makers, artists and others to boycott state sponsored Israeli cultural institutions and urge others to join their campaign. “Palestinians are driven to call...

Hezbollah’s black-clad legions goose-step and stiff-arm salute in parade, apparently eager to convey both the zeal and militarism of their religious fascism. Meanwhile, consider Hezbollah’s “spiritual” head, Hassan Nasrallah — the current celebrity of an unhinged Western media that tried to reinvent the man’s own self-confessed defeat as a victory. Long before he hid in the Iranian embassy Nasrallah was on record boasting: “The Jews love life, so that is what we shall take away from them. We are going to win because they love life and we love death.” Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad trumps that Hitlerian nihilism by reassuring the...

Poll about whether or not Islamofacism is a 'real' threat.

A senior military spokesman says there is clear evidence that Iran has directly aided insurgents in Iraq. Those comments follow Iraq's deadliest month since the U.S.-led invasion, in terms of civilian casualties. In the Baghdad neighborhood of al Mashtal Thursday, there were the familiar scenes that have become daily reminders of Iraq's insurgency -- burned out cars, wounded rushed to hospitals, and U.S. and Iraqi troops cleaning up the mess after another suicide bombing. One car blast about 100 meters from the al-Rashad police station killed two civilians and injured at least five others. Sectarian violence in Iraq culminated in...

Neoconservatism is hard to pin down as discrete political theory; Mr. Podhoretz [prefers] "tendency." In any case, as a practical matter, it denotes the mentality of those who moved from somewhere on the political left to somewhere on the right, primarily during the late '70s. It had "two ruling passions," according to Mr. Podhoretz. On the one hand, the neocons were repulsed by the countercultural '60s radicalism that came to dominate the American liberal establishment. On the other, they argued for a more assertive, muscular foreign policy (at the time in response to Soviet expansionism). ... The "war on terror,"...

To see the context of this remarkable article I suggest one see the Wall Street Journal editorial today by Joseph Rago in opinionjournal.com It gives a comprehensive view of America's war against international terrorism and why we must not waver even - especially! - in Iraq.

Yesterday on this page, in a serious and thoughtful survey of a world in crisis, Richard Holbrooke listed 13 countries that could be involved in violence in the near future: Lebanon, Israel, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Uzbekistan, Somalia. And in addition, of course, the United States. With those 14 nations Holbrooke could make the case for what I describe as "an emerging third world war" -- a long-running conflict whose latest manifestation was brought home to Americans yesterday with the disclosure in London of yet another ghastly terrorist plot -- this one intended to...

The Shiite mullahs who rule Iran and have seized the leadership of the Islamofascist war against us are as dangerous an enemy as America has ever faced. Although we have chosen to be deaf to them, their war aims have never been secret. They have been shouting them out on the world stage to a billion listening Muslims, ever since they handed us the first of many humiliating defeats in 1979.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said recently that “we are in the early stages of what I would describe as the third world war.”  Citing fresh examples of North Korean belligerency, Islamic terrorism in India, ongoing fighting in Afghanistan, insurgency in Iraq, support for Hezbollah terrorism by Iran and Syria, the related fighting between Israel and Lebanon, and the arrests of terrorists aspiring to murder Americans, Gingrich analogized the current state of affairs to the Great War and World War II.  In politics, the term “war” is sometimes used metaphorically in ways that do not shed precise light on the...

The Shiite mullahs who rule Iran and have seized the leadership of the Islamofascist war against us are as dangerous an enemy as America has ever faced. Although we have chosen to be deaf to them, their war aims have never been secret. They have been shouting them out on the world stage to a billion listening Muslims, ever since they handed us the first of many humiliating defeats in 1979. These Persian mullahs and their followers aim to restore Islamic supremacy in the 21st century by leading all Muslims everywhere to victory in a great global jihad against America,...

I really try to avoid vanity posting but in this case I have to. I watched with fascination the documentary Obsession on Google video. The documentary about the Islamic war on the West quickly moved up the most viewed and rated films until it was removed by Google. I wonder if there is a connection that it was replaced with a Moonbat film titled 911 Cover Up which is now rated as #4 on the list. There is something very wrong here that people need to know. Below are the inks to Google's video home page and to the disgusting...