Immediate reform will follow.

Slade @54 – I think you are right re: structural flaw as a feature of Islam.

From what I’ve seen Lewis is the best scholar on Islam in the U.S. – I believe he is fluent in Arabic and Hebrew, and probably also Turkish and probably Greek too I would guess. I like him for his understanding of the West as it relates to Islam (and vice versa), and his respect and appreciation for Islam is a good foil to my increasingly negative view of Islam.

I’m sure you have heard the story about how, for some ceremony during the Clinton administration, Lewis was asked for a quote about peace from the Koran. He gave them one and everyone was happy. A couple of years later, for another ceremony (could that scumbag Arafat have been involved?) they asked him for another quote about peace, again from the Koran. He complied, and when they realized it was the same one as before, they asked Lewis for another. He replied, “There is no other.”

And of course there are the 3 inequalities…3 relationships firmly established by practice and tradition, as as Lewis says, “sanctified by Holy Writ”: believer/infidel, master/slave, and man/woman. Lewis points out that the infidel can become a believer, the slave can be freed, but the woman is always a woman.

Islam is the perfect warrior mythology – spare, self abnegating, everything is spelled out, your enemies are clear, your God, your family and your tribe are at the center of your life….and you get all the girls!

Of course, who is to say that the CIA will not agree with Obama’s policies.

A good point. 0 and CIA both firmly planted on the left. But so were nazis and communists, and commies hunted down social democrats ans socialists without mercy, when numbers and levers of power were on their side.

And 0 by his nomination already declared a war.

WRT Panetta: Panetta will not be able to stop the CIA screwing with Obama’s foreign policy, only seek retribution after the fact.

Of course, who is to say that the CIA will not agree with Obama’s policies.

It is my understanding that Weiner’s book is just that, a whine. He covered all the mistakes without any of the successes .

Sooner or later I will have to learn how to procrastinate.

lc: As that Lewis piece was written before the current fracas got started, it gives a
clearer view (IMO) of the fundamentals of
the human actions involved.

Back in late 2001, T. R. Fehrenbach penned
a column about “Ancient History and the struggle for the soul of Islam”. Copy NOT
available today, drat it.

Thrust of that one was that Wahab and the Wahabis gained credence when the Ottoman Sultan ceded Hungary to the Hapsburgs of Austria. It was a proper geo-political move
that rocked Islam up one side and down the other. (Imagine what we would feel like if James Dobson suddenly engaged in a same-sex marriage with Pat Robertson.)

The Wahabis grew like wildfire and then made such a nuisance of themselves that they got chased into the Saudi desert where they were able to do no harm until it was found that there was where Allah put the oil.

BTW, there wasn’t a USA when the Sultan went heretical on them, nor was there an Israel.
So why do these two get blamed? Lewis explores those reasons.

And the next big blow to Islam’s fanatics was after WW1 when Kernal Attaturk did away with the caliphate and instituted the modern Turkish state. This came about because the Sultan had allied himself with the Kaiser in order to spread the Peace of Allah. And it took Satan Himself—–officially called Pershing—–to thwart that noble endeavor.
You know, we do manage to grow the best Demonic Doughboys of them all.

Surely that will mean that Bill and Hill will have an inside track on everything those people are telling Obama, and may know before Obama about this, that or the other thing. Who would Panetta tell first, for example, if the CIA overheard someone describing Obama spending time in a Pakistani madrassah and being a Muslim? Or if the CIA were able to track donations into Obama’s campaign chest from the same Saudi princes who are funding Al-Queda both by proxy Americans and via internet donations.

I don’t understand why Obama would set himself up like this.

In my view.

Althought both contribute.