The Palestinians of Gaza, whatever anyone may think of them, are not in a direct war with the US and the war was not requested by the US.

I do find it refreshing that so many are actually waking up to the threat of radical Islam. It is about time. Sadly, the lack of coverage of this issue for so long makes most believe this is somehow a new phenomena. It is not. Radical Islam dates back to the days of Mohamed.

Islam is a religion that grew by the sword and ruled by the sword. The name of the religion tells it all. In Arabic it means Surrender. It is not a religion of peace and tolerance as some would like us to believe.

It is a culture of submission and absolutism. All is in the hands of God and all for God. The individual is nothing except a tool for God. There is no respect for the individual or the ability to create and develop. That is why Moslem countries fall so far behind the rest of the world.

Those who referenced the Arab world’s production are absolutely right. I point another fact. The number of books translated into Greek (10 million people) is ten times larger than those translated into Arabic (300+ million people) and 90% of that is done in Lebanon, where the Christians dominate that sector. Lebanese Christians do not need the Arabic versions since they all read English and/or French.

The Taliban, Al-Qaida and others are reflective of all this as they reject all things modern.

Unfortunately this fact has been obscured for too long by narrow economic interests and the obsession with Communism. In fact communism masked this issue more than anything as the Soviet Union straddled the divide between Islam and Christianity for most of the 20th century. In the few places the two met, there was war. Oil interests lead the West to simply ignore the Christians and paint them as intolerant monsters and actually defend and support Islam.

I read all the whining about how the US liberals are abandoning Israel and recall the old story about Nazi Germany (The author eludes me) “They came for the communists and I did not speak out for I was not a communist, … the Jews … the Gypsies… etc.., when they came for me there was no one left to speak out”.

However, it was not just the liberals. All US administrations for decades have ignored the issue of Islamic fundamentalism and often helped create the problem.

The Taliban and Al-Qaida were supported, trained and armed by Washington to fight communism.

Khomeini was also supported in his take over from the Shah, as the Shah was opening channels to the Soviets, and Islam was deemed the best guarantee against communism.

Washington went to war in Yugoslavia in defense of Bosnia, which was a focal point of Islamic fundamentalism and later became the main route for fundamentalists in Europe to go fight our troupes in Iraq.

Washington ignored 25 years of the Sudanese Government’s genocidal war against its Christians in the south and continues to do so. All we hear is Darfur, because they are Moslems and the Saudis want us to talk about them.

The whole Moslem world treats its Christian minorities as Dhimmis and denies them their most basic rights, but we are OK with that.

The Arabs have waged a 35 year war in Lebanon in the name of “Arabism” which is nothing but a euphemism for Islam. They have worked hard to eradicate the last place Christians still have rights in the region, and the US more often than not took their side.

Hizbullah has only become an issue when the Saudis wanted it out of the way. But, for 30 years, the Lebanese Christian suffering was acceptable to the West.

The list goes on and on. Pakistan against India, Armenia (Nagorno-Karabakh), East Timor, Ethiopia-Eritrea, Cyprus, etc.

Israel and the Jews never complained and often were part of that policy.

I do not hate the Jews or deny them any rights. I have had this discussion with too many Jews over the years, explaining that this will eventually get to them. Some agreed, but felt helpless to change things. Some had too much arrogance to believe that this tsunami would ever touch them.

I will never forget listening to Jewish leaders in Washington arguing against any recognition of the Armenian massacres by the Turks a century ago. They feared that recognizing those genocidal acts would reduce the potency of the Holocaust. How one genocidal act would reduce another was beyond me. But, none of them stopped to think that denying those acts would only allow them to happen again and eventually happen to them.

Now it is knocking at their door, and … there is no one left to speak. I hope we are not there yet.

The liberal agenda you speak about has effectively made people ashamed to proclaim they are Christians. How can they defend Christians when they are ashamed to proclaim their own Christianity?

I have heard this way too many times. When I brought up the issue that Christianity in the Middle East was at stake, the answer is almost always an emphatic “We are not a Christian country” This is not an issue for us.

When we explained that places like Lebanon were merely the first steps in the Islamic march Westward, we were dismissed with similar notions.

Then comes 9/11, and the proof. But, even now we are still incapable of actually naming the enemy.

We have a war on “Terror”. Terror is a tactic, not an enemy. You cannot have a war on a tactic. We must identify the enemy, if we are ever to have a chance of winning.

The enemy is RADICAL ISLAM a fanatic movement bent on dominating the world by force and willing to kill anyone in its way. It is not every person born in the Moslem world. But, if left to grow it will eventually include all.

Are we willing to make that stand?

Are we willing to face the fact that this is a religious war?

Are our Jewish friends willing to accept that we fight back as Christians? And, not continue to fear that our Christianity is a threat to them.

Cadmus

The fighting between different factions of the enemy reminds me sharply of the squabbling between different tribes of Orcs depicted in the Lord of the Rings. Of course, in this case the real problem is that one of the factions has custody of the Ring…

Time to end the squabbling by destroying Barad-Dūr.

You are getting close to a question that I have had. I am wondering if the Jews on this thread have any anecdotal evidence of Jews who voted for Obama now regretting that decision. Personally, my Jewish friends all (with the possible exception of one) voted for McCain. They do not seem aware of any of their coreligionists who have changed their minds yet. This surprises me. Can anyone provide signs that I’m wrong?

Regarding the intersection of Chinese and Jews. Years ago I read a book that claimed that the very surname of Chou-en Lai indicated that he had Jewish ancestry.

Make us want to say be careful what you wish for.

Eisenhower made a bet, a wrong bet, on Arab nationalism by supporting Nasser. Whether its his fault in the particular or the overall fault of the CIA and the State Department is better left to historians but surely it must have been obvious to more astute and nuanced individuals at the time that no socialist, nationalist Pan Arabist movement was ever going to be friendly to the US and the West. At best they could be neutral to the US and the West, playing off the West against the Soviet Bloc such as Yugoslavia. Nasser was not fooled by this, he saw the US take out less than friendly leftist regimes in Iran and Guatemala in the years before Suez. The British and the French also noticed this as well. They saw the US take action that contradicted the piety of the colonial independence movements when it suited the US national interest yet the US had no problem shafting them when it came to their national interests. In the end besides India and a handful of countries, can anyone say that the former colonies are really better off since independence?

Please don’t get me wrong, I believe that the US should always act in its national interest, every other nation does and the US has no obligation to sacrifice its interest. What the US needs to do is get a more complete and nuanced concept of its long term national interests and be more consistent particularly with allies the US needs and desires for the long term. Arabs are a one trick pony, all they have to offer is oil and no matter what they say or do, they need to sell the oil in order to eat. If push were to come, the oil states would starve to death if the US embargoed their ports faster than the US would suffer severe economic harm from an Arab oil embargo. On the other hand, countries with real economies and real scientific, technical and industrial capabilities that can be extremely damaging to the US are not nations we need to be throwing under the bus, particularly those we have a friendly and beneficial relationship with. And would we want to? How would that benefit us in the long run? Again we need to think out the calculus of our long term national interest.

Pakistan is in trouble because of contradictions built into it at birth. It was born as an Islamic country. It is now threatened with being swallowed by violent Jihadists from up in the hills. The goal is to find the military and political will to deal with this. Governments, both civilian and military in Pakistan, have dodged this issue and now are confronted with a challenge to the very existence of the entire county.

So on second thought I take it back. Israel and Pakistan are threatened by the same thing; Jihadis. Their very existence is threatened. I hope we do not cripple their ability to fight this threat. The since 9/11 we must realize the Jahadis target us too.

Kilgore joined the SLA after graduating from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1969.
Barbara Bodine, Joe Wilson, James Kilgore…

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) – The last captured member of the Symbionese Liberation Army, the radical 1970s-era group notorious for bank robberies, killings and the kidnapping of newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst, was released from prison Sunday, a corrections official said.

James William Kilgore, 61, was paroled from High Desert State Prison after serving a six-year sentence for the murder of housewife Myrna Opsahl during an April 1975 bank robbery.

Kilgore had eluded arrest longer than any of his fellow SLA fugitives. His cover unraveled after the 1999 arrest of his former girlfriend, Sara Jane Olson, who had become a doctor’s wife in St. Paul, Minn. Olson, formerly known as Kathleen Soliah, was paroled from a California prison in March.

The gang of mostly white, privileged would-be revolutionaries led by a black ex-convict also was responsible for the murder of Oakland school superintendent Marcus Foster, bank robberies, and the attempted bombings of Los Angeles police cars. Joseph Remiro is serving a life sentence for Foster’s 1973 murder.
—
” They were an extremely misguided group of idealists. They really believed they could make the world better by what they did,” Jordan said. “I just think they tapped into some mythological fairy story. ”

Sorry about that, Mum,
and oh, btw: Happy Mother’s Day!
Jon Opsahl, whose 42-year-old mother was shot to death by another SLA member as she deposited a church collection 34 years ago, expressed sympathy in a recent interview for a man he called an idealist who
“got in with the wrong crowd.“