Faisal Shahzad, heartbreaker

When the identity of last weekend's Times Square (would-be) bomber was revealed as an ethnic Pakistani Muslim bent on killing Americans, hearts all across the Lefty world were shattered. Oh, how their hopes soared when initial surveillance video suggested the perpetrator was a white male; surely this was their Great White Teabagging Hope who would prove their thesis that Teapartiers are a rabid pack of violent racists. Even New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg speculated idly (and spectacularly irresponsibly) that it might be “somebody with a political agenda who doesn’t like the health care bill or something."

But when the distinctly non-WASPish sounding name Faisal Shahzad surfaced as the prime suspect, their hopes were dashed on the rocks of their own hatred. MSNBC anchor Contessa Brewer - evidently as stupid as she is beautiful - actually gave voice to her incoherent thoughts of disappointment and frustration:

I mean the thing is is that and I get frustrated and there was part of me that was hoping this was not going to be anybody with ties to any kind of Islamic country because there are a lot of people who want to use this terrorist intent to justify writing off people who believe in a certain way or come from certain countries or whose skin color is a certain way. I mean they use it as justification for really outdated bigotry.

And so there was part of me was really hoping this would not be the case that here would be somebody who is not the defined. I mean he’s accused he’s arrested you know I don’t want to convict him before it’s time to do so. He’s the guy authorities say is involved. But that being said I mean we know even in recent history you have the Hutaree militia from Michigan who have plans to let’s face it create terror.

Yes, Contessa, I do want to write off "people who believe in a certain way" if that "certain way" is that innocent people must die just for being Infidels. But in Contessa Land, it's just dandy to want to write off as violent, teabagging racists anyone who opposes their political agenda.

While Brewer was wetting herself over the possibility of a militia or Tea Party culprit, a contributor over at Lefty blog Daily Kos put up a now-embarrassing survey asking readers who they thought was responsible for the attempted bombing. The early results - before the suspect was known - are about what you'd expect:

An al Qaeda terrorist ---4%

An American sympathetic to al Qaeda ---5%

A militia wackjob ---30%

A teapartier ---32%

A religious (anti-abortion) wackjob ---9%

Got that? Before Shahzad was implicated, 71% of Kos readers were pretty excited about a right-wing connection to the Times Square bombing attempt. Here's a screen shot of the poll results from this morning, days after Shahzad became known...not a big improvement:

Even after the facts were known, there was too much stupidity to overcome to get the poll results to even approach reality.

But the poll is revelatory in one respect:

Religious whack-job (top or left depending on screen res) and not-a-religious-whack-job (right or bottom depending on screen res).

(Source: Leftist's Guide To Modern Thought)

Yeah, I made up that "source". So sue me.

One man's terrorist...

We may assume that Christopher Monfort, the accused Seattle cop-killer, isn't a Muslim. Why? Because law enforcement authorities have branded him a "lone domestic terrorist", unlike Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan who gunned down 13 people while reportedly yelling "Allahu Akhbar".

A man shot by police as he was sought in connection with the Halloween killing of a Seattle police officer has been identified as 41-year-old Christopher Monfort.

At a news conference Saturday, Seattle assistant police chief Jim Pugel called Monfort "a lone domestic terrorist."

So while everyone responsible for protecting US citizens from terrorist attack, from the President on down, ties themselves into knots not to call Hasan a terrorist, Monfort gets the label pretty easily.*

One man's terrorist is the same man's poor, suffering stress puppy.

* I should note that I don't have a real problem categorizing Monfort as a domestic terrorist, given the information in the article. But it seems there's an irrational fear of doing so when the perpetrator may have been motivated by Islamist ideology.

War of choice

In President Obama's speech to "the Muslim world" in Cairo, he perpetuated the notion that Afghanistan was a just war while Iraq was a bad one because it was a "war of choice". Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, this has been the term used by those who opposed the invasion to suggest that it wasn't justified or necessary.

But setting aside for now the question of which of the two wars were justified, aren't all wars wars of choice? President Bush could have chosen not to invade Afghanistan and drive out the Taliban just as he chose to invade Iraq and rid the world of one more despotic dictator. The fact that one choice may have been more evidently wise than the other is not relevant -- they were both wars of choice.

In the months preceding the invasion of Iraq, I wasn't convinced that the time was right for running Saddam out of town. The Bush administration, as well as that of Britain's then-PM Tony Blair, justified the action almost exclusively on the basis of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction program. I never doubted (and still don't) the existence of Iraq's WMD program at the time, but I also didn't doubt that, given the time allowed, Saddam had ample opportunity to erase the evidence. I gradually concluded by early 2003, though, that removing Saddam was necessary for a host of other reasons, not the least of which were his demonstrable ties to international Islamist terrorists*, even if those terrorists weren't directly connected to Osama Bin Laden and al Qaeda.

Ultimately, Iraq would have to be dealt with in the broader context of fighting and Bush appears to have asked the question "if not now, when?", to which one might add "at what cost of delay?". Bush knew he had a small window of opportunity to move against Saddam, the alternative being to leave the problem for his successor. Had Bush chosen to do so, what would his obsessive critics had to say if in the intervening years there'd been a terrorist attack on the US traced back to Saddam, or a situation forcing Barack Obama to deal with him?

* See, for example, Abu Nidal, killed in Baghdad in August 2002 by Iraqi agents, and Abu Abbas, captured by US troops in Baghdad in April 2003, right after the invasion.

Terrorism and piracy: Criminal or national security matter?

There's a good article in the Wall Street Journal by Mackubin Thomas Owens which draws parallels between global terrorism and the ongoing piracy problem off the east coast of Africa and the Obama administration's approach to both issues.

From the very words the new administration uses to describe events and the parties involved we learn much about how Team Obama views the problems:

It seems that our new president is desperate to do everything he can to distance himself from his predecessor, which is why his team has launched a campaign to rebrand the War on Terror. The results are mystifying. "Overseas contingency operations" [See note below. --ed.] is the new name for the war, while "man-caused disasters" is a euphemism for terrorist attacks.

[ ... ]

Instead of calling the detainees enemy combatants, the administration has opted to refer to them as "individuals captured in connection with armed conflicts and counterterrorism operations," or "members of enemy forces," or "persons who [the president] determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, and persons who harbored those responsible for the September 11 attacks."

Though these changes might seem superficial, unfortunately, they represent a substantive shift. They signal a return to the policy mindset that existed before 9/11, and the consequence will be material harm to U.S. security.

Which of course is exactly what many of us warned of during the campaign; namely that Obama, along with most Democrats, don't take very seriously the threat of international terrorism and have resumed a 9/10 way of thinking about the problem.

Owens then gets to the heart of the matter in terms of how to classify those who are caught engaging in illegal (by international norms) warfare or in hijacking (pirating) vessels exercising their rights of maritime navigation:

As the eminent military historian Sir Michael Howard argued shortly after 9/11, the status of al Qaeda terrorists is to be found in a distinction first made by the Romans and subsequently incorporated into international law by way of medieval and early modern European jurisprudence. According to Mr. Howard, the Romans distinguished between bellum (war against legitimus hostis, a legitimate enemy) and guerra (war against latrunculi, pirates, robbers, brigands and outlaws).

Bellum became the standard for interstate conflict, and it is here that the Geneva Conventions were meant to apply. They do not apply to guerra. Indeed, punishment for latrunculi, "the common enemies of mankind," traditionally has been summary execution.

Though they don't often employ the term, many legal experts agree that al Qaeda fighters are latrunculi -- hardly distinguishable by their actions from pirates and the like.

I said as much in this post nearly two years ago:

In fact, under international law, their legal status is closer to that of sea pirates.

Now, about that "overseas contingency operations" thing.

A "contingency operation" is a generic military term for any real-world operation carried out by our military in response to an event. It can range anywhere from humanitarian relief operations to evacuation of US embassy personnel during times of civil unrest to invading a country and replacing its government.

Nobody dreamed up the term "overseas contingency operations" to replace "Global War on Terror". My guess is someone in the Pentagon was preparing a paper for the new kid in the White House and was advised that the new kid didn't like the Bushism "Global War on Terror" and simply replaced such references to it with the generic term "overseas contingency operations". Imagine a memo with the line "operational costs associated with the Global War on Terror" modified to read "operational costs associated with overseas contingency operations" and you get the picture.

Sarah Palin: Prescient

Hot Air linked a couple of items under the heading "Quotes of the day" last night. First quote:

“Al Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America, and he’s worried that someone won’t read them their rights.”

Second quote:

“Miranda is an issue, it is a potential issue in prosecution.”

The first one is from a Sarah Palin stump speech during the campaign last fall, and the second is from a "senior Obama administration official" quoted here by the LA Times in an article describing the problems facing prosecutors as detainees are moved from Guantanamo Bay and put into the criminal justice system. Palin nailed it.

Never in our history - in wars declared or undeclared - have we prosecuted in the courts enemy combatants captured in the field. Never. What's changed now that makes some people think it's a good idea? Why the desire to extend constitutional protections to a jihadi captured in combat in Afghanistan?

In the seven plus years following 9/11, we've not had a single successful terrorist attack on US soil. I'm guessing all bets are off for the next four.

Is Kyrgyzstan base closure a big deal?

I pose this question because I really want to know...why is Kyrgyzstan's decision to close our airbase there such a big deal? The Reuters article describes the airlift hub as "vital for supplying U.S.-led troops fighting in Afghanistan". Despite 27 years in the Air Force, I'm not an expert on such matters, so maybe that's why I can't figure out what's so "vital" about the airbase.

Take a look at the map (click it if you need a larger version). Kyrgyzstan is land-locked and isn't significantly closer to Afghanistan than any US or allied airbase in Europe or the Middle East from where supplies and troops headed for Afghanistan might originate. OK, so it makes sense to have a nearby staging area outside the theater of operations IF the theater of operations is so hot you don't dare risk staging troops and equipment within it, say at Bagram Air Base. While Afghanistan is far from peachy, I'd say the Kyrgyzstan airbase is more convenient than vital. I just don't see why troops and equipment can't be flown directly into Afghanistan rather than first stopping in Kyrgyzstan.

I suspect what this is really about is the symbolism of a regional ally, an alliance which Russia has chafed at from the start. Russia paid Kyrgyzstan a paltry $2 billion and in return the Kyrgyz government is giving us the boot. The symbolism was important to the US as a display of broad consensus in the war on terror, but a constant rock in Russia's shoe.

Like I said...I'm not an expert on this stuff, so if anyone reading this has other ideas, I'd love to hear them.

'The normalization of evil'

Judea Pearl, father of the late Daniel Pearl who was murdered by Islamist terrorists in Pakistan in 2002, takes a whole host of people to task in a Wall Street Journal column, including Barack Obama prototype Jimmy Carter.

...somehow, barbarism, often cloaked in the language of "resistance," has gained acceptance in the most elite circles of our society. The words "war on terror" cannot be uttered today without fear of offense. Civilized society, so it seems, is so numbed by violence that it has lost its gift to be disgusted by evil.

[ ... ]

This mentality of surrender then worked its way through politicians like the former mayor of London, Ken Livingstone. In July 2005 he told Sky News that suicide bombing is almost man's second nature. "In an unfair balance, that's what people use," explained Mr. Livingstone.

But the clearest endorsement of terror as a legitimate instrument of political bargaining came from former President Jimmy Carter. In his book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," Mr. Carter appeals to the sponsors of suicide bombing. "It is imperative that the general Arab community and all significant Palestinian groups make it clear that they will end the suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism when international laws and the ultimate goals of the Road-map for Peace are accepted by Israel." Acts of terror, according to Mr. Carter, are no longer taboo, but effective tools for terrorists to address perceived injustices.

[ ... ]

The media have played a major role in handing terrorism this victory of acceptability. Qatari-based Al Jazeera television, for example, is still providing Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi hours of free air time each week to spew his hateful interpretation of the Koran, authorize suicide bombing, and call for jihad against Jews and Americans.

[ ... ]

At my own university, UCLA, a symposium last week on human rights turned into a Hamas recruitment rally by a clever academic gimmick. The director of the Center for Near East Studies carefully selected only Israel bashers for the panel, each of whom concluded that the Jewish state is the greatest criminal in human history.

Read the whole thing.

European (and now American) insanity watch

Why is it that when Europeans march in support of Palestinian terrorists and prosecute a legislator for telling the truth, Barack Obama is so eager to appeal to Europeans?

If you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance...

...baffle 'em with bullshit. It seems the Taliban are taking that advice seriously.

The Taliban claims its forces last year killed 5,220 foreign troops, downed 31 aircraft, destroyed 2,818 NATO and Afghan vehicles and killed 7,552 Afghan soldiers and police.

Greek paper: Jews to blame for Gaza strife...oh yeah, and financial crisis, too

Haaretz reports that Greek news source Avriani blames unspecified Jews (I guess all of them?) for the violence in Gaza and the global financial crisis. Oh, and they're also preparing for World War III.

After the American Jews acquired once again the world's wealth and plunged the planet into an unprecedented financial crisis, they started rehearsing for WWIII.

Oh, and that whole global love affair thing with Barack Obama? Yeah...you can forget about that.

The paper also blamed U.S. President-elect Barack Obama for "playing dead" in the present crisis by not saying anything against the Jews, urging him to prove that he is not owned by the Jewish lobby.

I, for one, welcome the age of "pure, delicious crazy".

Cynthia McKinney to provide aid and comfort to Hamas

Ousted Georgia congresswoman, failed Green Party presidential candidate, and batshit-crazy barking moonbat Cynthia McKinney will join 15 other barking moonbats in running Israel's blockade of Gaza in an attempt to bring medical aid to the Palestinians.

A group of international activists said it would defy an Israeli blockade and send a boat with medical supplies to Gaza from Cyprus.

Free Gaza Group spokeswoman Caoimhe Butterly said their 20-meter yacht Dignity would leave Larnaca port around 5 p.m. (1400GMT) Monday with 3.5 tons of donated supplies.

She said the yacht would carry 16 passengers, including former US Congresswoman Cynthia Mckinney, Cypriot lawmaker and doctor Eleni Theocharous and activists from Britain, Australia, Ireland and Tunisia.

Actually, I don't have any particular beef with the idea of bringing medical and relief supplies for Palestinian civilians in Gaza. I'd just rather see it done by an organization a bit more impartial than a group that calls itself "Free Gaza".

Oh, and by the way...the Israelis did "free Gaza" a couple years ago, and it hasn't worked out all that well.

UN Security Council a little slow on the uptake

The UN Security Council has issued a call for an end to violence in Gaza.

The U.N. Security Council called early on Sunday for an immediate halt to all violence in Gaza after a day of Israeli air strikes in response to rocket and mortar fire by Gaza militants against Israel.

"The members of the Security Council expressed serious concern at the escalation of the situation in Gaza and called for an immediate halt to all violence," said a statement read to reporters by Croatian Ambassador Neven Jurica, president of the council.

Funny...I don't remember the Security Council expressing any "serious concern" over the past year while Hamas launced 3,000 or so rockets into Israel.

Jihadi invasion of Facebook repulsed

A Facebook group known as Fursan Ghazawat Alnusra has been shut down by the company after being tipped off to their presence by Fox News.

A quickly growing jihadist group that used Facebook to spread its radical message has been shut down by the popular Web networking site after FOXNews.com alerted the company to the group's activities.

Facebook blocked the group, Fursan Ghazawat Alnusra — Arabic for "Knights in Support of the Invasion" — Thursday evening after the group swelled to about 120 members in just over one week.

The group had been exhorting its members to wage "Jihad to aid the religion of Allah and his Prophet."

Too bad. I would like to have written something on their wall.

Dial 'P' for pirates

Via my brother, Chuck, who left a comment on yesterday's post about going after the Somali pirates on shore.

A BBC reporter provides an amusing view into how she got the Somali pirates who are holding the Sirius Star supertanker on the phone.

It was a cold, dark, wet and miserable Sunday afternoon. I was in my car, driving my 12-year-old daughter and her friend back from a birthday party. I was tired and fed up from being in the car.

"Mummy, mummy," trilled a voice from the back. "I want to phone the pirates."

My daughter had heard me repeatedly trying to get through to the Somali pirates on board the Sirius Star.

They usually picked up the phone but put it down again when I said I was from the BBC. My obsession with getting through to them had reached the point that I had even saved their number on my mobile phone.

"Mummy, mummy, please can I phone the pirates for you?"

"No."

"Pleeeeez."

By this time, with rain battering my windscreen and cars jamming the road, I was at the end of my tether.

"OK", I said, tossing the phone into the back of the car.

"They are under P for pirates."

"Hello. Please can I talk to the pirates," said my daughter in her obviously childish voice.

I could hear someone replying and a bizarre conversation ensued which eventually ended when my daughter collapsed in giggles.

Of course, this being the BBC and all, the reporter can't help but feel sorry for the bad guys and educate us on the "root causes" of piracy:

A pirate, who called himself Daybad, spoke in Somali, calmly and confidently. He said Somalis were left with no choice but to take to the high seas.

"We've had no government for 18 years. We have no life. Our last resource is the sea, and foreign trawlers are plundering our fish."

OK, maybe that's not fair. We've known since Bill Clinton's first term that Somalia is 'profoundly under the shithammer'.

Somali piracy: Cutting it off at the source?

Now here's a great idea to fight piracy in Somalia that'll probably never get off, or in this case, on the ground.

Somalia's government has welcomed a call by the United States for countries to have U.N. authority to hunt down Somali pirates on land as well as pursue them off the coast of the Horn of Africa nation.

[ ... ]

Diplomats at the United Nations said the U.S. delegation there had circulated a draft resolution on piracy for the Security Council to vote on next week.

A draft text seen by Reuters says countries with permission from Somalia's government "may take all necessary measures ashore in Somalia, including in its airspace" to capture those using Somali territory for piracy.

Awesome, right? The US wants to do it, Somalia's government wants us to do it, so what's the hold up? Why even bother going to the UN if both of the lawful parties involved are in agreement? As a Somali provincial government official says:

"We are not happy because the United Nations never implements what they endorse," Abdulqadir Muse Yusuf, Puntland's assistant fisheries minister, told Reuters in Bosasso.

The hell with the UN. With both Somalia and the US in agreement, it seems there's no need for a UN Security Council resolution, and I'm pretty sure we'd have plenty of help in this effort from other countries.

NATO logistics depot hit in Pakistan

Some 160 trucks and other vehicles at a logistics depot in Pakistan were destroyed in an attack by "militants".

Militants blasted their way into two transport terminals in Pakistan on Sunday and torched more than 160 vehicles destined for U.S.-led troops in Afghanistan, in the biggest assault yet on a vital military supply line, officials said.

[ ... ]

The attackers fled after a brief exchange of fire with police, who arrived about 40 minutes later, Khan said.

The nine other guards who were on duty but stood helplessly aside put the number of assailants at 300, Khan said, though police official Kashif Alam said there were only 30.

Why do I get the feeling that Pakistan's being less than helpful?

A news parody comes to life

Via Hot Air.

Muslim students in Islamabad, Pakistan turned out in droves for a street protest over the Mumbai terror attacks. Er, to clarify, the protests were over India's reaction to the Mumbai terror attacks, not the attacks themselves. India's reaction, I hasten to add, has been limited to (accurately) naming Pakistan as the country of origin of the murderers.

Exit question (to once again pilfer a certain Hot Air blogger's shtick): If the "tiny minority" of Muslims who are bloodthirsty extremists is "only" around 8%, what percentage of Muslims are avid spectators?

I ask you, could The Onion have done any better than this?

Mumbai trutherism...already

The situation in Mumbai hasn't even finished playing out yet, and already there are people wondering if the attack might have been an American plot. The screen shot above is from my SiteMeter referral log where some douchebag in India googled the words "mumbai attack is an american conspiracy".

I wonder if these lunatic conspiracy theories will stop once Obama takes office. Eh, probably not even then.

Mumbai attack: New and improved terrorism

The situation in Mumbai hasn't yet wrapped up, with hostages being still held at the Oberoi Hotel. I've been watching streaming video from CNN/IBN, so hit the link if you want to track the situation.

It seems that several terrorist teams arrived on small Zodiac-type boats which may have been launched from a cargo ship anchored off Mumbai. All signs point to an operation by the Islamist militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is responsible for a long string of terror attacks in India. The main axe they have to grind is India's sovereignty over parts of the disputed Kashmir region, yet the terrorists are reported to have specifically targeted American and British hotel guests for capture.

In any event, this style of terrorism truly represents a shift in tactics from the usual random bombing attacks and is unlike anything we've seen in recent years.

Update: Fixed the cargo ship link...it now links to a longer article, but the mention of Indian navy boarding a cargo ship is further into the article.

'A nation of men, not laws'

Ace links to another great article by Victor Davis Hanson, in which Hanson says:

For years now we have been preached to that Guantanamo is a gulag where Korans are stomped and flushed (not laptops provided to the chief architect of 9/11), that we waged a foolhardy, amoral, and hopelessly 'lost' war against the Iraqi people, that the rich plundered the economy on the backs of the poor, and that the Constitution was burned so that covert agencies could play James Bond. I could go on, but you get the picture.

Given all that, are we now suddenly — in 1984-fashion — around late January either to be told all that was not quite so, or will we simply hear no more about how these Bush legacies have ruined America — or what exactly is the party line to be? There is still such a thing, after all, as Google.

Ace's closing remark - "A nation of men, not laws" - sums things up perfectly, for this is what we've become. This was evidenced in part by the sudden love among the left for the American flag immediately following the election. Their 'patriotism' seems to be conditioned on who's wielding power.

The more Obama walks back from his campaign positions, the more the Left's objections to George Bush become exposed as objections to the man and not his policies.