McCain Won't Stop Using "Islamic Terrorist"

Subtract "Islamic" from "terrorism" and what do you get?

The hundred-plus attacks by the Tamil Tigers and a couple Basque separatist bombs. That's pretty much it. All the rest of terrorism in the modern era is Islamic -- or Islamist -- terror, but that doesn't stop so-called "moderate Muslims" from trying to force a language change on all of us who see jihad for what it is:

A coalition of American Muslim groups is demanding that Sen. John McCain stop using the adjective "Islamic" to describe terrorists and extremist enemies of the United States.

Muneer Fareed, who heads the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), told The Washington Times that his group is beginning a campaign to persuade Mr. McCain to rephrase his descriptions of the enemy.

"We've tried to contact his office, contact his spokesperson to have them rethink word usage that is more acceptable to the Muslim community," Mr. Fareed said. "If it's not our intent to paint everyone with the same brush, then certainly we should think seriously about just characterizing them as criminals, because that is what they are." (Washington Times)

Criminals? Criminals are people who perpetrate crimes -- usually very small crimes that don't result in deaths -- for the purpose of monetary gain. Islamic terror fails to comply with that common definition.

Conversely, when I think of "religious fanatic," I think of someone who's no earthly good because their head's in heaven. This mindset typically has no violence attached to it; rather, it has an over-abundance of religious enthusiasm. What harm it causes is typically within the family, and is psychological, not physical.

But Islam has managed to bring the two together under its jihad-tent, creating religious fanatic criminals who use the actual words of the Qu'ran to justify heinous attacks on innocents.

Besides, McCain is hardly painting everyone with the same brush. He says "Islamic terrorists," which is different from "Islamic peaceniks," "Islamic supporters of Israel's right to exist," "Islamic counter-terrorists," "Islamic people who think it's OK for the West to publish Mohammed cartoons," and other pretty much non-existent Muslims. And yes, it's also different from "Islamic folk who go to mosque and raise their kids and don't want a part of all this political mess."

To his credit, McCain is sticking to his guns:

An aide to Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee who is counting on his pro-Iraq war stance to attract conservative voters, said the senator from Arizona will not drop the word.

Steve Schmidt, a former Bush White House aide who is now a McCain media strategist, told The Times that the use of the word is appropriate and that the candidate will continue to define the enemy that way.

"Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda represent a perverted strain of Islam at odds with the great many peaceful Muslims who practice their great faith peacefully," Mr. Schmidt said. "But the reality is, the hateful ideology which underpins bin Ladenism is properly described as radical Islamic extremism. Senator McCain refers to it that way because that is what it is."

It makes more sense, much, much more sense, for us to call on Obama and Clinton to start addressing Islamic terror than it does for McCain to stop using the phrase. To listen to the Dem candidates and debates, terror just isn't an issue, which may be the way Muneer Fareed and ISNA would like it, but if they really want to make terror a non-issue, they should focus on their religion's sicknesses, not McCain's statements.

Sweet Irony, Jihadist Style

In a sweeping mulit-culti gesture, Virginia gov. Tom Kaine appointed a diverse mix of citizensto a state commission on the benefits and costs of immigration and the effects on federal immigration policies on the state. Included was Muslim American Society president Dr. Esam S. Omesh.

Well, it appears that one of the costs of immigration is that you get an anti-Semitic, holocaust-supporting, jihad-loving Islamofascist on state commissions:

Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine examined online videos Thursday that show a man he appointed to the state Commission on Immigration condemning Israel and advocating "the jihad way," his spokesman said.

In a video that appears on YouTube, Muslim American Society president Dr. Esam S. Omesh is shown at an August 2006 rally in Washington denouncing an invasion of Lebanon by the "Israeli war machine."

Omesh ... also accused Israel of genocide and massacres against Palestinians and said the "Israeli agenda" controls Congress.

In a separate, undated video, Omesh tells a crowd of Washington-area Muslims: "...you have learned the way, that you have known that the jihad way is the way to liberate your land."

That video was credited to Investigative Project, a Washington-based organization that investigates radical Islamic organizations. (Breitbart/AP)

You can find YouTube's Omesh videos here. The man has beliefs as vile of those of the KKK, and those beliefs should preclude him of holding a position of influence in an American state.

London Jihadists Specifically Targeting Women?

Whoever parked that gasoline- and nails-packed silver Mercedes in the thick of London's club scene didn't want to kill just infidel Westerners; they wanted specifically to kill young women who wear revealing clothes at London's clubs.

The Daily Globe reports:

More than 1,000 people were inside for a 'Sugar 'n' Spice night' which the club calls the 'finest ladies' night in London'. There were thousands more in the surrounding streets and neighbouring clubs.

It could have happened on any night, but it happened on "Sugar 'n' Spice Night," when the club was full of young women wearing the opposite of burkhas, drinking alcohol and, in at least 73 cases, looking for a little decidedly non-virgin sex.

How did these more- pious- than- us Islamist jihadists, so true to their Mohammed, know about the club chicks? Simple: They went there, probably often if the behavior of the 9/11 jihadists is any indication.

Torn between worldly lust and Islamic guilt, did they seek counseling to deal with their issues? No, of course not.

They packed a Mercedes with gasoline and nails and set out to kill the source of their lustful desires.

Islam ... the religion of peace. And perversion.

Ah, Those Liberated Muslims!

Islam's ongoing battle to keep women ignorant, cowed and underutilized continues. This time in our ally, Pakistan:

All throughout the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), Pakistan's impoverished western border with Afghanistan, lie the ruins of barbershops and music and video stores – symbols of Western-oriented life that religious extremists have destroyed in a growing wave of violence.

Now Islamist militants have a new target, and if they are successful, observers say their campaign could be disastrous for Pakistan's future.

In what appears to be an escalating spree over the last year, extremists have bombed at least four girls' schools and circulated violent threats warning girls to stay at home. While no girls or school staff have been killed, girls in some areas have stopped attending classes – marking a direct blow to Pakistan's national enterprise of "enlightened moderation," which posits female education as a central pillar. ...

Pakistan has one of the highest rates of female illiteracy in South Asia, at about 60 percent, and the lowest rate of primary school enrollment for girls, at somewhere between 42 and 48 percent. Those shortcomings are particularly pronounced in the NWFP, which, as of 2004, had the lowest ratio of female enrollment of any province in Pakistan, according to the International Crisis Group (ICG). In areas like the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), where the government's presence has historically been weakest, only 1 percent of women and girls are literate. (CBS)

Of course you can't keep women oppressed if you give them the confidence that comes with education. Of course you can't swagger around like the dish I saw once in a Thai restaurant -- it was called King Prick -- if women aren't given any option to stay with you.

The Pakistani government is pushing for reforms that would move the country up to ... oh ... the mid-1800s, especially in the NFWP, where 70 percent of the education development budget has been allocated to girls' schools, resulting in the opening of more than 300 primary and middle schools for girls in the region in the last three years.

And of course the Islamists, being the ones who are closer to the heart of Islam, respond with bombs.

Another U.S. Islamist Attack Foiled

The initial press reports call the six foiled terrorists "nationals of the former Yugoslavia," which, given the battles Islam has waged for centuries to wrest Adriatic lands from Christianity, is a pretty keen alternative to coming right out and saying "Islamofascist terrorists."

MOUNT LAUREL, N.J. - Six nationals of the former Yugoslavia were arrested early Tuesday on charges they plotted to attack the Fort Dix Army base and "kill as many soldiers as possible," federal authorities said.

The six were scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court in Camden later Tuesday to face charges of conspiracy to kill U.S. servicemen, said Michael Drewniak, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in New Jersey. Five of them lived in Cherry Hill, he said.

A law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity because documents in the case remain sealed, said the men were arrested as part of a joint federal and local investigation.

The officials said the attack was stopped in the planning stages.

Let's hear it again for the Patriot Act! Once again it appears to have functioned as it was supposed to -- allowing authorities to capture bad guys before they could kill good guys. Only a bad guy, a pathetically clouded-thinking liberal or a too-extreme privacy hawk can't understand that.

Things You Don't See In Israel and America

My friends Peter and Rita, who live in Israel, have seen their daughter serve her mandatory military service and worry as their son faces his military time durng this very tense time in Israel's history. The future's impossible to read, but they know their son, raised in a Christian home with deep Messianic roots, never, never, never would have done this:

The boy with the knife looks barely 12. In a high-pitched voice, he denounces the bound, blindfolded man before him as an American spy. Then he hacks off the captive's head to cries of "God is great!" and hoists it in triumph by the hair.

A video circulating in Pakistan records the grisly death of Ghulam Nabi, a Pakistani militant accused of betraying a top Taliban official who was killed in a December airstrike in Afghanistan. ...

The footage shows Nabi making what is described as a confession, being blindfolded with a checkered scarf.

"He is an American spy. Those who do this kind of thing will get this kind of fate," says his baby-faced executioner, who is not identified.

A continuous 2 1/2-minute shot then shows the victim lying on his side on a patch of rubble-strewn ground. A man holds Nabi by his beard while the boy, wearing a camouflage military jacket and oversized white sneakers, cuts into the throat. Other men and boys call out "Allahu akbar!" — "God is great!" — as blood spurts from the wound.

The film, overlain with jihadi songs, then shows the boy hacking and slashing at the man's neck until the head is severed. (AP)

Unthinkable, isn't it, that Islam glorifies the teaching of jihad, which results in the total moral corruption of the soul of a 12 year old who should still be an innocent? Child abuse, Islam style.

While the Islamists glorify the boy, we in the U.S. are appalled by the heartless cruielty of a different abuse: Alec Baldwin's verbal lashing of his young daughter. It should cost him his career (will it?), because in America, we worry about the effects his harsh and hateful words will have on a young heart.

How differently the Judeo-Christian and the Islamist worlds treat harsh and hateful words said to a child!

Christians Fleeing A Deteriorating Lebanon

In a region full of basket-cases, competition for the title of most unstable country in the Middle East is intense. Iraq's an easy pick, but increasingly, it appears that Lebanon will be the first Middle Eastern country to fall into Islamist civil war.

The reason: The stabilizing Christian population of Lebanon is fleeing the country as fast as they can find a way out.

Under a longstanding agreement, Christians hold one-half of the seats in Lebanon's government even though historically they've been only about a quarter of the population. This over-representation forces a jittery peace between its roughly equal Shi'a and Sunni populations. But the rising and hostile tide of radical Islamism is threatening the demographic underpinnings of that balance, reports the Washington Times:

BEIRUT -- Christians are fleeing from Lebanon to escape the rise of radical Islam and growing fears that the trend will result in a Sunni-Shi'ite civil war, with minority Christians trapped in the middle.

In a poll to be published next month, nearly half of all Maronites, the largest Christian denomination in the country, said they were considering emigrating.

Of these, more than 100,000 have submitted visa applications to foreign embassies, according to the poll. Their exodus could rob the country of an influential minority, which has acted as an important counterbalance to the forces of Islamic extremism.

About 60,000 Christians have left since the summer's war between Israel and Hezbollah. Many who remain fear that a violent showdown between rival Sunni and Shi'ite factions is looming.

"If we love our children, we have to tell them to get out," said Maria, a Christian mother from the northern city of Tripoli who refused to give her surname for fear of reprisal. "When my daughter finished her high school, I sent her to Europe, and I will follow her if I can."

The rising tension between Shi'ite and Sunni factions and the rising anti-Christian actions of radical Islamists aren't the only things destabilizing Lebanon's Christian community. WashTimes reports that the Christians are evenly split between those who back the Sunni-dominatedcentral government and those who side with the Shi'ite opposition, led by Hezbollah.

It seems like the Christians have any number of ways to lose in this deteriorating situation, so get out they shuld -- just as we should open our doors to them. It is in America's interest to offer a special haven to Christians who are oppressed by Islam, because they would live here as strong allies for us in any future conflict with the Islamists, just as we could depend on our Cuban and Vietnamese populations to give a bit more in a conflict against Communists.

Of course, in our PC world, I'm pipe-dreaming. Somehow it's become incorrect for a nation founded by Christians on Christian principles to offer Christians in distress any sort of preferential treatment. Our doors must be equally open to Muslims and Christians.

In principle, that's a fine idea. In practice, it's as if our top immigration bureaucrats are drinking too much tea with the Mad Hatter.

Let's Have More Of This!

You gotta love it!

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan (AP) - Local and foreign militants fought a gunbattle in northwestern Pakistan, leaving about 30 dead, officials said Tuesday, the second clash this month in an area where the government is urging tribesmen to move against al-Qaida-linked fighters.

The clash between Uzbek militants and tribesmen broke out near the town of Wana on Monday and continued Tuesday, a senior military official and a senior government official said. Both spoke on condition of anonymity because they were unauthorized to make media comments.

The two officials, speaking in Islamabad, said the clash was between pro-government tribesmen and foreign militants. However, a local intelligence official said the fighting was part of a feud among rival militant groups.

A clash between tribesmen and Central Asian militants in South Waziristan earlier this month killed 18 people.

Apparently, the body of an Arab who was in Pakistan with al Qaeda forces was found by his terrorist colleagues, who blamed the Uzbeks, and a goodly number of both have now met their maker -- who, it turns out, isn't who they thought He was. Neat.

Also of note: Two school children were killed and 20 injured in the fighting when a stray shell hit their school bus. Americans were not blamed for the incident.

Iran Nuclear Scenarios Call For Tough Talks

Caroline Glick, the brilliant and aggressive columnist for the Jerusalem Post, lays out three scenarios for what would happen if Iran becomes a nuclear power. Here is the most optimistic of the three:

In the most optimistic scenario, Iran would not attack Israel or any other country with its atomic arsenal, but would rather use it as an instrument of international and regional influence. In this scenario, Iran would reap economic advantage from its nuclear status by threatening oil shipping in the Persian Gulf and so jack up worldwide oil and gas prices. A massive economic dislocation in the oil consuming countries would no doubt ensue. In this state of affairs, all international economic sanctions against Iran would disappear and states would begin fighting with one another for the right to develop Iran's oil and gas fields and refining capabilities.

Operating under Iran's nuclear umbrella, terror groups like Hizbullah and Al-Qaida would feel free to attack at will throughout the world. The rates of terrorism - of both the organized and lone wolf variety - would increase exponentially.

Regionally, Iran would work to export its Khomeinist Shi'ite revolution. It would increase its interference in both Iraq and Afghanistan and so neutralize and defeat coalition and NATO efforts to stabilize those countries.

As to Saudi Arabia, there can be little doubt that Iran would seek to foment an uprising of Saudi Shi'ites who happen to live as a repressed minority on top of the Saudi oil fields.

Hizbullah's aim to overthrow the Saniora government in Lebanon would receive unprecedented Iranian assistance that would likely lead to the Shi'ite takeover of the country. So too, under the Iranian nuclear umbrella, Palestinian terrorism against Israel, and Syrian adventurism against Israel would rise steeply. The regimes in Egypt and Jordan as well as Saudi Arabia would be sunk into chaos, insurgency and war as they themselves entered a nuclear arms race the likes of which the world has never seen.

And it goes downhill from there, ending basically with the global spread of radical Shi'ite jihad and sharia, and the destruction of America.

From this, Glick concludes that the Bush Administration was wrong to "reconsider its decision to abandon the Bush Doctrine, [which] eschewed appeasement of terror-supporting, weapons of mass destruction-proliferating enemies of the free world." She worries that the initiation of low-level, informal talks with Tehran will necessarily lead to appeasement, and that there is no room for a appeasement with Tehran.

I agree about appeasement, but not about talks being a mistake. There is also this diplomatic scenario: We communicate with Iran that the only gift we will give them if they stop their nuclear program is their continued existence. It's "speak tough and carry a big stick" diplomacy, and we need to start it now.

In North Korea, the Bush Doctrine is intact (for now, at least) because the grounds of the agreement give L'il Kim Jong Il nothing until he concedes. Concede/get, concede/get. L'il Kim is isolated, remote and broke, so this can work, with proper toughness and oversight.

Iran is a different story. It's central on the world stage, it's resource-rich and it's actively involved in actions against the U.S. I think this has made the Bush administration understand that the Doctrine doesn't say "don't talk," it says "don't negotiate," and that now is the time to talk, and talk tough, to Tehran.

Read Glick's three options and see if you don't agree. If we are going down a road that could lead to a massive strike on Iran, we need to be talking to them now to let them see the clarity of our resolve and the options available to them other than being on the losing end of a conflict with America.

Hat-tip: Real Clear Politics. Art: BerryBurger

Religion Of Peace Aims For Big Christian Slaughter

Strategy Page reports:

Police and troops on Sulawesi [Indonesia] were put on high alert, because military intelligence had picked up information indicating that Islamic radicals from all over Indonesia were moving to Sulawesi in an attempt to launch a spectacular attack on local Christians. Australia has warned its citizens to stay away from Central Sulawesi, where most of the violence tends to take place.

To make matters worse, the Christians are ready to strike back if the Islamic terrorists go after them again. Over the last few years, some 2,000 people have died in religious strife on Sulawesi. The Islamic radicals need a spectacular operation to revive declining enthusiasm for the cause (of global Islamic conquest).

I wasn't aware that there is declining ethusiasm for the radical Muslim cause. No change surprises me because everything's cyclical, and even the most backwater Muslim must see that the latest round of Islamist violence has not moved the movement forward.

Still, the very fact that the Indonesian Islamists can assemble forces for a slaughter of Christians -- and think that spilling Christian blood is a good way to recruit more terrorists -- is indication that there's still far too much enthusiasm for the cause.

If this much news of the plot is available in advance, it would seem even the overwhelmingly Islamic Indnosian government could work the intelligence and save the Christians -- but will they? It's a real test for the Religion of Peace -- a no-brainer for all other religions, but a test for Islam.