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Friday Afternoon Roundup - The Truth Hurts

Posted: 04 Sep 2009 03:29 PM PDT

To begin the Friday Afternoon Roundup, there's wobbling on
Afghanistan, mixed messages on Israel and Obama can't seem to do anything
right.

While the media is still in Obama's corner, lately it
doesn't seem like anyone else is. After a free ride, all of a sudden
anything Obama touches turn to dust. From ObamaCare, which is now the
subject of a long protracted Health Care Protest War, to Israel, where it
remains unclear what if any commitments have been made, even down to
Obama's plans to address the nation's youth and tell them how to serve
him... everything he does begins to implode.

The heavily promoted
boycott of Glenn Beck, promoted by the media of course, despite the
political thuggishness and conflict of interest involved in promoting a
boycott against a rival news network, has now turned around into
serious questions about Van Jones. Now Jones
is retreating from his own record, and the White House may be
retreating from Jones.

The Obama admin had clearly learned nothing
from its attack on Limbaugh, which only boosted Limbaugh's ratings. A
political attack against a single media figure cannot be sustained for
very long, and draws attention and boosts ratings. Had conservatives not
attacked Michael Moore as much, it is possible that he would have never
become as prominent. Beck is now serving as the flip side of that, and the
repeated attacks on him are a political dead end. The left can't seem to
understand that the political opposition is a niche that can never have a
vacuum except through political suppression and repression. If Glenn Beck
or Limbaugh die next week, others will step in to take their
place.

Similarly ObamaCare has become a disaster, and the Obama
admin escalating the conflict has only produced more controversy. And the
one thing sure to kill a major government proposal that will impact most
Americans is for it to become controversial. But Obama's radicals only
understand escalation. They can't accept real bipartisanship, which has
pushed even Grassley to the side.

And Obama's constant
speechmaking clearly no longer has the impact it once did. Which leaves
Obama with little in his arsenal, except the constant media coverage that
too is not producing the results it once did.

Moving on to the
roundup,

Andrew McCarthy at the NRO looks at the surge, post-surge
and why we go to war in the first place

We can’t change that about them, and it cheapens us when
we try. The State Department’s new “democratic” constitutions for
Afghanistan and Iraq are a disgrace: establishing Islam as the state
religion and elevating sharia as fundamental law. That is not exporting
our values; it is appeasing Islamism. It is putting on display our lack
of will to fight for our principles, which only emboldens our enemies.
Recall, for example, the spectacle of the Christian prosecuted for
apostasy a couple of years back by the post-Taliban, U.S.-backed Afghan
government. He had to be whisked out of the country because it’s not
safe for an ex-Muslim religious convert in the new Afghanistan. It’s not
safe for non-Muslims, period. We’re not building a democratic
culture.
Further, even if we could clear the hurdle that Islamists
don’t want Western democracy, there remains the problem that a Muslim
country’s becoming a democracy would not make us safer from Islamist
terrorists. It is illogical and counter-historical to suppose otherwise.
The 9/11 attacks were extensively planned, over long periods of time,
in, among other places, Berlin, Madrid, San Diego, Florida, Oklahoma,
and Connecticut. Clearly, thriving democracy in those places provided no
security. The doctrine that democracy is preferable because democracies
don’t make war on one another applies only if your threat matrix
consists of hostile nation-states. A transnational terror network with
no territory to defend and no normal economic system lacks the
incentives a democracy has to avoid war. And, far from discouraging
terrorists, democratic liberties work to their advantage.

We
can’t stop Muslim countries from being Islamist. That is their choice.
It should be no concern of ours who rules them as long as they do not
threaten American interests. When they inevitably do threaten us, or
allow their territories to be launch pads for terrorists, we should
smash them. But the price of defending our nation cannot be spending
years — at a cost of precious lives and hundreds of billions of dollars
— in a vain attempt to give people who despise us a way of life they
don’t want.

Meanwhile, we must accept that Islamism is our enemy
and has targeted our constitutional system for destruction by slow
strangulation via sharia. Instead of worrying about democracy in
Afghanistan, we need to worry about democracy in America. The surge we
need is at home: to roll back Islamism’s infiltration of our schools,
our financial system, our law, and our government. In addition to not
being universal, the “values of the human spirit” are not immortal. If
we don’t defend them in the West, they will die.

I would point out that we can stop it, but that nation
building is not the ideal tool for that. If Islamism was an issue only in
Afghanistan, the situation might be manageable, but it isn't. And the head
of the cobra is not on a mountain in Afghanistan, it's in a palace in
Ridyah, it's in government buildings in Karachi and skyscrapers in Dubai.
Oil money is the fuel of Islamism.

Oh My Valve has a great article
on the White House's Racist Israel Policy

As if Marack Pajama's racism toward the Jewish homeland
wasn't enough, his administration of stupid zombie leftist idiot morons
is taking the racism to the next level...paternalism. Arutz Sheva quotes
a senior US official who went on record with Politico's Ben Smith
saying:

"Netanyahu's at a pivotal moment. Depending on what he
decides, he could wind up with a very strong relationship with President
Obama and potentially become a historical figure in Israel."

In
other words, if Bibi is a good little Jew boy, lets the PLO cut out the
heart of the land of Israel, and withdraws to borders that Abba Eban
referred to as "The Auchwitz Lines," Papa Barry will give him poisoned
candy. That would certainly put Bibi in the history books; as one of the
greatest betrayers of Israel and the Jewish people. I hardly think
that's what he's going for, but that is how he will be recorded if he
makes the deal with the devils.

What would be historic would be
for Bibi to tell the White House to take their freeze and their
Falacstinian state and park 'em where the sun don't shine.

So,
just so we're clear, Bibi is supposed to submit to the suicide of Israel
so that Papa Poison will be good to him and pat him on the head before
he shoves us into the line of fire of Arab rockets from all
sides.

...

The US can cut off the money. The EU can demand
sanctions. None of these things have halted brutal regimes like North
Korea, Iran, or pre-war Iraq. A democracy like Israel with strengthening
ties with economic power houses like India has nothing to fear by doing
what it has had to do since it was born: stand on her own two feet. She
has done it before. She will do it again.

And indeed Israel can. It just needs to find the courage to
try. Sharon demonstrated that Israel could take the offensive and earn
less backlash than the usual policy of "negotiate, defensive policies,
occasional sorties" that has dominated Israeli politics for nearly two
decades.

The Vlad Tepes blog has the story and Barbara's Tchatzkah's has
the summary of the collision between Noami Wolf and Phyllis Chesler.
The original Chesler article can be found here, as well
as Chesler's reply to Naomi Wolf.

Naomi Wolf's original
article took the now popular PC approach of treating the veil as part
of Muslim culture which we Westerners misunderstand... and besides we
oppress women too with cosmetics and fashion line.

Of course a
fundamental difference is that women in the west are not forced to wear
cosmetics or do anything by some authority. Muslim women are. But the
larger issue is the way that Wolf's writing represents a larger trend in
revisionism toward women under Muslim dominion.

The West interprets veiling as repression of women and
suppression of their sexuality. But when I travelled in Muslim countries
and was invited to join a discussion in women-only settings within
Muslim homes, I learned that Muslim attitudes toward women's appearance
and sexuality are not rooted in repression, but in a strong sense of
public versus private, of what is due to God and what is due to one's
husband. It is not that Islam suppresses sexuality, but that it embodies
a strongly developed sense of its appropriate channelling - toward
marriage, the bonds that sustain family life, and the attachment that
secures a home.

This is all a nice speech, and Naomi Wolf and her cohorts
would be the first to mock it if it was addressed as a defense of say the
Promise Keepers or some Christian group. But somehow the same people who
mock abstinence education in the US, praise covering up women in order to
preserve morality.

But let's look at the semantic difference
between "repression" and "channeling". The goal of repression is to
"channel" the behavior of the people you repress along specific channels.
One could say that banning women from voting also "channels" their energy
into family life and home life. In fact that very argument was used to bar
women from voting by arguing that women belonged in the private sphere, in
the home life, not at the polling booth.

That strong sense of
public versus private that Noami Wolf refers to does not simply stop with
hair covering, it insists that all of a woman is sexual and therefore
private. You can see the final logic of that scenario in Saudi Arabia
where women must cover themselves from head to toe, and cannot drive and
are expected to mainly stay at home.

The bridal videos that I was shown, with the sensuous
dancing that the bride learns as part of what makes her a wonderful
wife, and which she proudly displays for her bridegroom, suggested that
sensuality was not alien to Muslim women. Rather, pleasure and
sexuality, both male and female, should not be displayed promiscuously -
and possibly destructively - for all to see.

Did anyone seriously assume that sensuality was alien to
the Muslim woman? It is baffling that a feminist like Noami Wolf would
somehow think that a system in which women are relegated to the home and
given fewer rights would somehow preclude this. In fact a system which
makes women wholly dependent on men would insure that women would want to
please their husbands. And pleasing their husbands is exactly what Noami
Wolf is describing here. It is ironic that Wolf has come full circle to
essentially arguing that women who exist only to please their husbands is
Muslim feminism.

Nor are Muslim women alone. The Western Christian
tradition portrays all sexuality, even married sexuality, as sinful.
Islam and Judaism never had that same kind of mind-body
split.

That of course is because Islam does not have a "mind" in
the first place. Islam is all "body". Muslim sexuality is treated as a
treat with which Allah rewards men. So for example Allah rewarded Mohammed
by letting him have more wives, or by Mohammed marrying his son's wife
because he found her attractive.

Judaism and Christianity have
codes of sexual behavior. Islam has codes as well, but it does not view
sex as an interaction between two people, but as a matter of male
appetite.

Among healthy young men in the West, who grow up on
pornography and sexual imagery on every street corner, reduced libido is
a growing epidemic, so it is easy to imagine the power that sexuality
can carry in a more modest culture.

That is ironic because the most modest Muslim culture is
Saudi Arabia where pornography dominates mobile phone use. To cite a BBC
article that Noami Wolf is surely not familiar with,

p to 70% of files exchanged between Saudi teenagers'
mobile phones contain pornography, according to a study in the
ultra-conservative Muslim kingdom. The study quoted in Arab News
focussed on the phones of teenagers detained by religious police for
harassing girls. The same researcher also found that 88% of girls say
they have been victims of harassment using Bluetooth
technology

So much for the "freedom from the male gaze" that Wolf
celebrates. Clearly it doesn't work.

But for a feminist, a quick
read of Naomi Wolf's blog demonstrates that she spends the bulk of her
energy fighting not for women, Muslim or otherwise, but for male Muslim
fanatics. The bulk of her
posts are about the evils of Gitmo and the injstice done to the
Taliban and assorted Islamist trash gathered up there.

Only one of
her top posts is about a woman. Sarah Palin, who she claims is set to
create some sort of Christian dictatorship.

There are none so blind as those who will not see.

IsraPundit has article by Ted Belman
that asks Jews to choose between Obama and Israel.

I think Phillips rightly pointed out that Jews embraced
Obama for his domestic views and not his views on Israel. Effectively
they are saying that they like his domestic policies so they go along
with him on his Israel policies. Then again many on the left or liberals
believe that to force Israel to give in is in her best interests. So
Obama has their support too.

Not me. Totally aside from shared
values, Obama’s means are not shared by true liberals including Jews.
Jews must evaluate what Obama’s plans for Israel are separate from his
domestic policies. Then they must choose whether to defend Obama or
Israel.

My own view is that most liberal American Jews care very
little about Israel, because they have no real sense of Jewish identity.
It's like the division between Irish Americans who can talk about the
politics in Ireland, and those to whom it's a sentimental beer and harp
logo, and Riverdance. Most of Obama's Jewish supporters are "Riverdance"
or "Fiddler on the Roof" Jews. The liberal streams they originate from had
discarded Jerusalem from their prayer books even before the creation of
the State of Israel.

They may have Jewish last names, but aside
from that they are essentially indistinguishable from non-Jewish liberals.
They are no more likely to take on Obama over Israel, than the Kennedy
family would be to take on Obama if he were to get into a diplomatic war
of words with Ireland.

Faith Freedom has
an op ed from the renowned Daniel Pipes on the Obama admin's approach
to counterterrorism

Barack Obama’s assistant for Homeland Security and
Counterterrorism, John O. Brennan, conveniently outlined the
administration’s present and future policy mistakes in a speech on
August 6, “A New Approach for Safeguarding Americans.”

To start
with, his address to the Center for Strategic and International Studies
in Washington, has an unusual tenor. “Sycophantic” is the word that
springs to mind, as Brennan ninety times in five thousand words invokes
either “President Obama,” “he,” “his,” or “the president.” Disturbingly,
Brennan ascribes virtually every thought or policy in his speech to the
wisdom of the One. This cringe-inducing lecture reminds one of a North
Korean functionary paying homage to the Dear Leader.

Specifics
are no better. Most fundamentally, Brennan calls for appeasing
terrorists: “Even as we condemn and oppose the illegitimate tactics used
by terrorists, we need to acknowledge and address the legitimate needs
and grievances of ordinary people those terrorists claim to represent.”
Which legitimate needs and grievances, one wonders, does he think
Al-Qaeda represents?

Brennan carefully delineates a two-fold
threat, one being “Al-Qaida and its allies” and the other “violent
extremism.” But the former, self-evidently, is a subset of the latter.
This elementary mistake undermines his entire analysis.

The entire thing is worth reading.

Square Mile Wife
meanwhile is organizing a counter to Code Pink, which in the Obama era, has
decided to focus on bashing Israel, specifically the AHAVA (Love)
cosmetics company.

She's also organizing an
Ahava Shop a Thon in London, so be sure to check it out.

The
Infidel Bloggers Alliance reminds us that September
17th is Constitution Day

Lemon Lime Moon helps Diane Watson
turn Obama into
a President who really does look just like her

Solstice has the latest from the National
Terror Alert Response Center

The Dame Truth looks at the coming
of Propaganda 2.0

The stakes get bigger as the scene darkens and We The
People turn on the lights in our ever growing commitment to expose the
darkness the surrounds this government and its Usurper in the White
House. Never before has a populace had so much access to knowledge and
communication, and never before have they needed it more. Thanks to
American ingenuity, resourcefulness and spirit of independence, we shall
restore our Republic to its former glory, a nation of laws based on its
Constitution and the sweat of our collective brows. Supreme Court
Justice Louis Brandeis said that sunshine is the best disinfectant, and
the time has come to shine it on all those who would presume to
undermine it. As we stagger out from under the cover of media induced
darkness, we rub our eyes in disbelief as we awaken from the dream that
was once our America.

Let us hope that this is indeed what comes to pass.