22 Comments

1. Sasha:

This is something that has driven me wild since 1979. Since that time, any woman who has visited Iran has had to don one of those blasted head scarves. Why didn’t we all insist we wouldn’t do this? Instead we bowed and scraped and, by so doing, gave credence to the whole bunch of theocratic thugs. Very, very stupid, if nothing else.

Mar 29, 2007 - 12:17 pm 2. Buddy Larsen:

Where is NOW when you finally need it?

“Oh, you folks are cannibals? How nice!”

Mar 29, 2007 - 12:40 pm 3. dclydew:

Pathetic. Of course, a debate I recently had with a Muslim woman involved her explaining how the covering of hair, breasts, legs etc was actually a sign of equality…. Apparently, her argument was that if men couldn’t see your body, then they would listen to your word more readily.

You gotta love the mental gymnastics people go through to justify their religious dogmas and taboos.

Mar 29, 2007 - 12:49 pm 4. Buddy Larsen:

Well, she has a pretty good feminist point–but the question is, wouldn’t she be better off if she had a choice.

Mar 29, 2007 - 12:52 pm 5. ricpic:

Yes, it’s obscene. But it could get worse. They could cut her head off. And what would the Brits do then? My guess: nothing.
Of course the Brits have an excuse, of sorts. They’ve downsized the Royal Navy to the size of Belgium’s navy. No joke. They can’t project much in the way of power anymore.
What’s our excuse for not wiping the pond scum off the face of the earth? After Danny Pearl.

Mar 29, 2007 - 1:19 pm 6. Lem:

What could the Islamist possibly offer when their biggest fears are their own woman?

This incident may not be enough of a causus belli for an invasion, but we can blockade them very very quickly. We have them flanked east and west and two carriers on their southern shores.

For what is worth, either there is a power struggle in Iran and no one person is in charge. Or (more likely) they have red too much into our Iraq congressional morass and are repeating the Hisbollah / Israel power play believing they have nothing to loose.

Mar 29, 2007 - 1:50 pm 7. Shinobi:

As an American woman the idea of being forced to cover my head or my entire body because someone else finds it offensive is completely abhorrent to me.

I remember reading about a woman in on a bus who was forced to put on hijab at gun point. And so now I know that if I go to the middle east I will start carrying my own damned gun. And if they want me to put on that hijab they better shoot faster than me, and then they can put it on my cold dead body. (No current plans to travel to the middle east obviously.)

Mar 29, 2007 - 2:57 pm 8. Sally-O:

I’m with Roger on all of this being a test of my anger-management.

I fully support the inclusion of women in the armed forces, but there’s still something incredibly depressing about reaching this point in the history of the West.

We have a woman and mother out there on the front lines defending a civilization which grants such status to women, and she’s been kidnapped, wrapped in Islamic garb and paraded before the cameras.

And where is the response of the “women’s rights activists?” Not to be seen or heard.

Mar 29, 2007 - 8:22 pm 9. Barrett:

While I agree with Roger and wonder where all the Rosies and Jane Fondas are, it misses the point. Why is there no response?

The multi-culti crowd with all of its political correctness has so far taken the debate out of how America and the West needs to confront Islam. You can’t criticize, debate ideas, or make judgments because you may offend someone.

The discourse today in the Democratic Congress is about how much bloodshed there is in Iraq and how it must be our fault and if we just left everything would be fine. The “blame America first” crowd is clueless of the plan the mullahs have for us.

We foolishly project our values and think that we are dealing with reasonable people at heart. This is dangerous and nonsensical.

One reason Westerners do not understand the truth about what Islam teaches is that our educational system has failed to teach real history. No one knows history.

How else could you could have a member of Congress use a copy of the Koran that Jefferson used to try to understand the mind set of the Barbary pirates and say that its inclusion in his library showed that Jefferson somehow put it on the same level as the Bible?

Roosevelt and Churchill had copies of Mein Kampf. Were they Nazis? Collective ignorance, wishful thinking and fear of speaking the truth allowed that ceremonial spectacle.

Google Dar al-Har and Dar al-Islam. You will see that Islam is very much about this world.

The history of Islam one of subjugation. In the Islamic world view, you are either in the House of Islam or the House of War. A Muslim’s duty is to spread Islam and force is an expedient method. For the more radical Islamists, you are a Muslim or dead.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali has a death threat on her head for (i) leaving Islam and (ii) writing the film Submission. (They got Theo already.)

Our physical distance has historically protected us from Islam. However, the Europeans have allowed almost any Muslim from their former colonies to emigrate to Europe. Now there is large, rapidly growing Islamic population, which is increasingly out of control. (The mullahs understand demographics.) There are 8 million Muslims in the US. When does this population erupt just as in England?

Islamists have a longer view of the world that us. It’s a Trojan horse strategy. They are very cooperative until they reach critical mass and feel they are strong enough to attack.

I can’t remember the specific word from the Koran, but it allows and encourages Muslims to lie as long as it advances Islam. Even contracts are worthless. You cannot trust a single word that comes from the Iranians. By the time the truth comes out, it will be too late.

As I noted earlier, a Muslim cannot leave Islam without being subject to death. All of the Islamic countries have laws where execution is the fate of those who convert from Islam. If one leaves Islam, that person be definition enters the House of War. When the Islamic militants come knocking, do you think moderate Muslims will die for their infidel friends? Fear is one of the two great motivators.

Maybe Steven Mitchell was right the other night in his strategy for Iran. We are in a clash of civilizations and only one will be left.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali believes that Islam must inject modernity into inflexible, inhumane traditions just as the West discarded it’s violent religious past. I don’t know how that gets accomplished with people who do not see any value in progress.

Mar 29, 2007 - 8:48 pm 10. Barrett:

Oh yes, women are second class citizens under Islam with terrible prospects under the Islamists. How tragic and Barbaric?

The only thing lower are the unconverted.

Oh Rosie? Hanoi Jane? Ellen Degenerate? NOW? Where are you?

Mar 29, 2007 - 9:16 pm 11. Terry Gain:

“Of course this kind of battering ram approach to religion and women betrays an obvious psycho-sexual sickness in Islam that goes back to Mohammed that polite society dares not speak aloud”

Perhaps, if polite society were prepared to discuss the fact this so called prophet took a 6 year old for a wife we might be able to defend ourselves from this “religion”.

Excellent post Barrett. Shinobi, it’s not that they find your body offensive. It’s that they find it so attractive that they can’t help themselves. So you must cover up lest Muslims do what Mohammed did. There was no crime of statutory rape back then but how do we reason with people who choose to follow a pedophile (and polygamist)?

Perhaps, in order to reciprocate for the requirement of scarves we should insist that all male Muslim visitors to America wear a male chastity belt.

Mar 29, 2007 - 9:26 pm 12. Buddy Larsen:

But the key point on the cover-the-female-body thing is, an American woman is free to do so, or not, as she wishes. This the Islamists cannot abide.

Yet Rosie the Feminist was on tv this very day saying that the Iranians were in the right, and that the kidnapping was a set-up by you-know-who to get a war started. I guess in her version the mullahs are robots with no choice in the matter.

She also chimed in on 911, that “fire doesn’t melt steel” so, Bush hit the WTC (presumably so he could become popular like Hitler, who probably also had a 30% approval rating by mid 1945).

But, this is ABC (a Disney property), five days a week, talking to your mom & sisters.

There is something bad loose on the land–we better get frosty. Who knows how short time is.

Mar 29, 2007 - 10:15 pm 13. Bostonian:

My NYT-reading mom has forbidden any discussion of politics, but the last time we discussed Islam, she was astonished and horrified that I thought Islam was somehow different from other religions.

Some time last year, she gave me a copy of William Safire piece about a word she had never heard: “Islamofascism.”

She reads the NYT cover to cover whenever she can. Yet we are years into WW 4 before she has heard the term that half the country is using to describe the enemy.

I doubt very much that the NYT has done much to educate her further. And she will accept no other input.

This is why I hate the Times. They have a death grip on the liberals of my parents’ generation.

Mar 30, 2007 - 7:32 am 14. TM Lutas:

The mullahs seem to have targeted their efforts at breaking leading seaman Turney. Is there any doubt that if they could have gotten letters and statements from all the prisoners, they would have? Yet we only get them from Turney.

Now’s not the time to rehash the full debate on whether she should have been there but I suspect that a great deal of the reason that NOW et al are keeping their heads low is because if they show up, they inevitably will launch that debate full throat. For one, I’m glad they have the good sense to shut up at the present moment and we shouldn’t hope for a change of behavior. It will only go worse.

Mar 30, 2007 - 8:44 am 15. Steven Mitchell:

“The multi-culti crowd with all of its political correctness has so far taken the debate out of how America and the West needs to confront Islam. You can’t criticize, debate ideas, or make judgments because you may offend someone.”

To repeat myself, the C.S. Lewis quote is relevant again–paraphrasing: “We build men without chests, and are surprised that they have no courage.”

Iran is one of those nasty problems that can’t be fixed without making a big mess. That is, in the short term, anything we do will make things worse than they are now. Unfortunately, Iran is also one of those problems that probably won’t go away without someone fixing it. The big problem with some of our populace is the refusal to face up to facts when the choices range from bad to worse.

If Iran was given thought proportionate to global warming (compared to the threat), we’d have worldwide mobilization to pull out the mullahs root and branch. But getting excited about global warming is another way people have of avoiding more serious issues.

Mar 30, 2007 - 8:52 am 16. Paul Hager:

Roger – you are spot on. Before I read your statement, I saw the news that a Royal Navy seaman had also been put on Iranian TV. Although the seaman also gave a coerced confession, HE WAS IN UNIFORM. It was crystal clear that putting Turney in civilian ISLAMIC garb was sending a double message: (1) the “proper place” of women is subservient to men, unlike in the West and (2) that the West itself is decadent and feminized.

I’ve longed for the day when the first squadron flying in to bomb Iranian targets includes women aviators. I’m for making it sooner, rather than later.

Mar 30, 2007 - 11:54 am 17. Peg C.:

Islam and Islamists alike deeply loathe and fear women. Women are the root of all evil to them; women make men lose control. The religion and ideology is so loathing of women it’s breathtaking. It’s a lot like our domestic serial killers who torture and murder women for being “sluts.”

Also — Buddy, I can’t agree on any feminist urge in that woman who liked covering herself to force men to hear her words. That’s way too much like battered wives who develop all kinds of enabling and co-dependent mechanisms to prevent battering as much as possible. “If I just don’t say or do anything that makes him angry with me…”

Also, keep in mind it’s the women of Islam who enforce female genital mutilation. I don’t hear any of our vaunted feminists taking umbrage with that (not so that we’d notice, anyway).

There is a concerted effort underway by Islamists and nutjob mullahs in Minnesota to get Sharia law instituted there one outrage and lawsuit at a time. Do Western women have a clue what Sharia law means for women? Do they care?

Mar 30, 2007 - 5:53 pm 18. Barrett:

Peg C.,

Men smart, women smarter….

I grew up in a family where the intellect and character of my both my parents is unquestionable. My Dad is someone I can only hope to be.

My Mom, my older sister and twin sister are exceedingly bright, well read and articulate. My older sister is a PhD. My Mom probably sees the danger the most.

My professor sister wants to believe that her Muslim students (of which there are several) are moderate.

I asked her to politely (which me must be in our multi-culti world) confront her students with the question why is there no outrage amongst Muslims (leaders or otherwise) about the barbarism relfected in suicide bombings, blowing up children, the killing of innocent civilians, the inhumane subjugation of women and so on.

To date, I have no answer. My sister intuitively understands the threat, but does not want to acknowledge it IMO.

The women of America are the backbone of our society. We need the women of this country to stand up and face the difficult choices in front of us. If they do, many more men will have the courage to do what is necessary.

As Steven Mitchell observes, to act now is to make things worse in the short run. However, it may be the only way to survive and to leave our children a free world to live in.

The price of freedom has alway been great for those with any sense of history.

Mar 30, 2007 - 6:56 pm 19. Retread:

“As Steven Mitchell observes, to act now is to make things worse in the short run.”

Doesn’t standing up to a bully always work this way? Confrontation, instead of ducking, necessarily involves, well, confrontation, and the possibility of a fight.

However, it may be the only way to survive and to leave our children a free world to live in.”

Reminds me of G K Chesterton:
“War is not ‘the best way of settling differences; it is the only way of preventing their being settled for you.”

Mar 31, 2007 - 7:04 am 20. Henry Bowman:

Barrett,

The reason that most modern liberals do not criticize the mullahs is that they do not perceive the difference between the mullahs and the west. They have lost the ability to discriminate. There is a nice video presentation by Evan Sayet explaining this. I never heard of this guy, but he lives /works in Hollyweird, so Roger probably knows him. See

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaE98w1KZ-c

Mar 31, 2007 - 8:22 am 21. Buddy Larsen:

Let me easy-up the Sayet link. Heritage foundation: “How Modern Liberals Think”.

Mar 31, 2007 - 8:33 am 22. Ray:

EU Referendum is reporting that a BBC camera crew was with the British sailors and marines while they boarded the original freighter. The camera crew was then returned to the Cornwallis prior to the kidnapping. They are suggesting that the reason for not asking for American assistance during the hostage taking was because of the presence of the BBC crew.

British Commodore Nick Lambert was in charge not only of the British vessels (his flag ship is the Cornwallis), but also in charge of the entire task force which included several well armed U.S. ships.

The Commodore had only to order the Americans to stop the hostage taking and they would have done so. This “new” information is creating waves of shock in both British and American military circles.

Apr 2, 2007 - 11:03 am

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