M. A. Muqtedar Khan: France's radical secular fundamentalism will not enhance civil peace

The radical secular fundamentalism of France will, in my opinion, enhance rather than diminish the prospects of a clash of civilizations. Secular, Westernized Muslims have little influence in the Muslim world. Islam has become the dominant idiom of the Muslim world and the West must find a way to cooperate and coexist with moderate/liberal Islamists who believe in democracy, tolerance and pluralism, but within the Islamic rubric. French-style secularism is neither welcome in the Muslim world, nor in the US, nor by a majority of French Muslims who now constitute about one-fifth of the French population.

Kahn is a visiting fellow at Brookings Institution and director of international studies at Adrian College in Michigan.

I have written previously about the issue of the French banning Muslim head scarves and how it did not "sit right" with me when I think of government facilitating the truest of freedoms on behalf of its citizenry.

From the Iddybud archive February 11, 2004:

Opinion: "French Assembly Votes to Ban Religious Symbols in Schools"
What do you think about this assembly vote? I am not at all comfortable with it. When a government attempts to wipe away all outward signs of the spirit, it would seem to be only for the promotion of a non-spiritual, 'religion-void' society. Is this not what the most infamous authoritarians of the past have attempted to do?

Spain 10 days after the elections-
11 days after the bombings

Gustavo de Arístegui: "The terrorists had more than one reason to strike against Spain..it's folly to think they struck us simply for Iraq."

Jose Maria Aznar: "My government has told the truth. I can put up with political criticism, but I will never accept being accused of lying or manipulation. These are accusations that are intolerable, and which soil the memory of the victims. Some forget that it is this memory, and nothing else, that should be guiding our actions today.."

Ivo H. Daalder: The Warning in Spain's Election-Governments that ignore the wishes of their own people—and that over time fail to convert them to their cause—will likely suffer the consequences at the polls. The same goes for governments that manipulate information or mislead their voters. It is a lesson all democratic governments, interested in reelection, would do well to heed.

See The Gotham City 13..just don't drink the koolaid!


click on photo for the rest of the flavors.

What's wrong with
Joe Lieberman?

Read this NYT article.
Senator Joe Lieberman says he saw "no basis" for the accusation that the Bush administration was too focused on Iraq in the wake of 9-11 and that he thinks "we've got to be careful to speak facts and not rhetoric and not to go about what happened in the past so totally that we divide ourselves."

The only thing, in my opinion, that will unite Americans is awakening them to the cold, honest truth.
Politics be damned.

Senator Lieberman, unfortunately, seems to be imprisoned in a Senatorial civility-cage while serious abuses of American democracy are allowed to take place in the false name of the "uniting".

Let's not "play nice". If we fail to unite with honesty, we'll only send out the message that lies from leaders are acceptable.

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UPDATE: See Rubber Hose's comments about the Lieberman "no basis" statement.

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UPDATE: Carpetbagger Report weighs in on Lioeberman's statements.

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UPDATE:See DHinMI's Letter to Lieberman at Daily Kos

Article on Richard Clarke brought to you by the same woman who all-too hastily brought you Chalabi's lies about WMDs

The New York Times has sunk to a new low. Miller should be writing classified ads instead of giving us serious news. The Times buried the story, no less. As mentioned on The Howler blog yesterday:

If you still don’t know what the New York Times has become, this morning’s edition puts your questions to rest. Richard Clarke is found at the bottom of page A18, where his startling new book and 60 Minutes interview are treated by White House stenographer Judith Miller. Before offering an abbreviated listing of Clarke’s striking claims, Miller gives unnamed Bush officials plenty of space to speculate about his troubling motives..

The assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin

"When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there. . . . Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
— Luke 23:33–34

"Let the terrorist die unshriven.
Let him go to hell.
Sooner a fly to God than he..."
--Jewish writer Cynthia Ozick


Poof! There go the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Here comes cooperation between the many militant Palestinian factions to wage attacks. Hamas will respond in Israel, we can have no doubt. Violence will surely escalate.

My first reaction is a bitterly sarcastic "Nice going, Mr. Sharon." Then, the conflict of conscience settles in. At the Anonymoses blog, Dave says:

As Dag Hammerskjold once said: "Forgiveness breaks the chain of causality." Something like that. It is no longer acceptable that the rich and powerful can want to fight, but the poor and powerless are the one who, in every way, pay.

Can Palestinians keep their rage under control, and actually forgive?
Can Israelis?

Some problems are solved. Some are resolved. But some are simply dissolved.

Here's to a renaissance of conscience...that subtle organ that has been bred out of us. It may be necessary, but will certainly be a welcome addition to our jaded personalities.

Dave's thoughts on conscience bring to mind something Emmanuel Swedenborg said:

"We have a conscience about what is good, and a conscience about what is fair. Our conscience about what is good is our inner self's conscience, and our conscience about what is fair is our outer self's conscience. Conscience about what is fair is doing things according to civil and ethical law from an outer love.

I'm certain the Israeli people are conflicted about what is good and what is fair when they see their children blown up while just trying to make their way home on the city bus. The Jewish faith is a likely guide to the conscience of the state, albeit a democracy (much as American governance is guided by those whose Christian faith runs through their ethical decision-making minds, whether some of us would like to admit it or not). That state-conscience must rule by what they believe is fair in "outer-love" for the society. So--do we imagine the assassination as "fair" in the conscience of the Israeli government? It is up to the individual to decide. There is no right or wrong answer, I'm afraid.

I think Sharon acted hastily. Yet--I am conflicted..and if I understand Swedenborg correctly, I know am not alone.

Because of this assassination, I know there will be dreadful retaliation. More violence. Reinforced and enhanced terrorist cooperation. I wonder if imprisoning Yassin would have made any difference. He was a 68-year-old man, though. A quadriplegic, no less.

Israel claims the policy of assassination will continue. No one is immune.

Alas, here I sit thinking aloud. Moral clarity....moral clarity..why do you elude us, tease us, betray us?
Is forgiveness more powerful than moral clarity?
Is turning the other cheek a political possibility? Or would that be too crazy-Christian a proposal?
Could forgiveness be more powerful than terror?

Is there any real virtue to hate?

Preliminary Rulings From 9/11 Commission

The most important point to remember, in my opinion, is that we had a pre 9-11 world and a post-9-11 world. Those worlds are nearly strangers to one another.

Point from the AP article:

Both civilian and military officials of the Defense Department said that neither Congress nor the American public would have supported large-scale military operations in Afghanistan before Sept. 11, 2001.

The GOP Clinton-witch-hunters would have gone all 'WAG-THE-DOG' on Clinton if he'd asked for a ground war on terror. They would have called him a distractor.

Here's one small example from a 1999 article about Clinton and his terrorism warnings:

"...Bill Clinton is riding high since his "not guilty" verdict and, unfortunately, the Republican Congress is letting him get away with his foreign and domestic grabs for power. Kosovo is much more important to Americans than just pictures on the evening television news about a faraway conflict.

First, it's a "wag the dog" public relations ploy to involve us in a war in order to divert attention from his personal scandals (only a few of which were addressed in the Senate trial). He is again following the scenario of the "life is truer than fiction" movie Wag the Dog. The very day after his acquittal, Clinton moved quickly to "move on" from the subject of impeachment by announcing threats to bomb and to send U.S. ground troops into the civil war in Kosovo between Serbian authorities and ethnic Albanians fighting for independence.........

Second, by putting U.S. troops in Kosovo, Clinton is provoking terrorist attacks by Islamic radicals connected to Saudi renegade Osama bin Laden, who has declared a worldwide war on Americans. Fanatics bent on jihad against the "Great Satan" United States could hardly ask for a more tempting target than Americans deployed close to terrorist bases in northern Albania.

(note: It appeared Schlafly would rather have had us appease than fight so Bin Laden wouldn't bother us. In reality, Schlafly was wrong, anyhow. Bin Laden was supportive of Albanian Muslims/KLA, and curiously, so was the U.S.).

..Even more dangerous, entering the Kosovo war may provoke terrorist retaliation within the United States. It's not only our U.S. troops who will be put in mortal danger. Bin Laden has stated unequivocally that all Americans, including "those who pay taxes," are targets.

(note: So we should have appeased Bin Laden??)

Clinton predicted on January 22 that it is "highly likely" that a terrorist group will attack on American soil within the next few years. He is using this risk as the excuse to create a Domestic Terrorism Team headed by a military "commander in chief," with a $2.8 billion budget. We should not underestimate the deceit and deviousness of Clinton's plans to use aggressive presidential actions to wipe out public memory of his impeachment trial......

(note: An excuse. Hear that? Using terrorism as an excuse.....what a fool.)

Clinton has already issued a Presidential Decision Directive to authorize military intervention against terrorism on our own soil. Secretary of Defense William Cohen said in an Army Times interview that "Terrorism is escalating to the point that Americans soon may have to choose between civil liberties and more intrusive means of protection."

Deputy Secretary of Defense John Hamre has been floating the idea of designating a unit of U.S. troops as a Homelands Defense Command to take charge in case of a terrorist attack on U.S. soil. Hamre argues that the military's role should be formalized under a four-star general, and he has even speculated about creating a bi-national command with Canada called the "Atlantic Command."

The far-reaching nature of the plans being discussed within the Clinton Administration is indicated in the Autumn 1997 Parameters, the scholarly publication of the Army War College. The article predicts that "the growing prospect of terrorism in our own country . . . will almost inevitably trigger an intervention by the military." The article casually adds, "legal niceties or strict construction of prohibited conduct will be a minor concern."

(note: General Tommy Franks recently said the same thing about those "legal niceties".)

The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 is supposed to protect us against a President using the Army to enforce the law against civilians. The spectacle of the military patrolling the streets of U.S. cities is something that should happen only in totalitarian countries and in movies like The Siege....."

--Phillis Schlafly [Schlafly Report March, 1999]

This is how divisive politics helped bring about 9-11. Shame on all who participated then..and now.

Tough love: Walter Cronkite to John Kerry

Mr. Cronkite repeats the message I was sending last Friday in my article titled "Wishing for a less cloudy forecast- John Kerry Needs to Clear Up".

Mr Cronkite addresses Senator Kerry:

Certainly your sensitivity to nuance, your ability to see shades of gray where George Bush sees only black and white, explains some of your difficulty. Shades of gray don't do well in political campaigns, where primary colors are the rule. And your long and distinguished service in the Senate has no doubt led to genuine changes in some positions. But the denial that you are a liberal is almost impossible to reconcile.

When the National Journal said your Senate record makes you one of the most liberal members of the Senate, you called that "a laughable characterization" and "the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen in my life." Wow! Liberals, who make up a substantial portion of the Democratic Party and a significant portion of the independent vote, are entitled to ask, "What gives?"

Let's hope Senator Kerry listens.

From Logos Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture
Four Challenges for Moral Theology in the New Century
by Michael S. Sherwin, O.P.



Secularists please indulge me in my theological diversion here. I found this article to be politically attractive from a Catholic/Christian standpoint. It begins by the author invoking four challenges for us to befriend as metaphysical poet Richard Crashaw spoke of in his poem entitled “Wishes to His (Supposed) Mistress". In place of the mistress, theology is carefully set. In light of our persistent confronting of the challenges of history, of nature, of graced moral development, and of the spiritual life, we may see the truth of Crashaw's poetic insight within ourselves.

From American Prospect:
Don't feel sorry for
Colin Powell
He has no one to blame but himself

...On the most critical issue confronting the United States, the rise of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism, Powell helped Bush implement a course of action conceived by the neocons. What he didn't do -- because he couldn't -- was propose a different course of action that might have led to the same goal of political reform in the Arab world but that wouldn't have involved waging an unpopular war on a trumped-up pretext, a war that has extracted an enormous cost in American lives and American prestige. Bush, by most accounts, is an impressionable sort -- "malleable," as one Bush family friend uncharitably puts it -- but selling him on an alternative vision would have required actually having one, which Powell plainly did not. That alternative vision -- hardheaded about the dangers facing the U.S. but aware that the war on terrorism can't be won without international cooperation -- will have to wait for a Kerry administration.

Scalia quacks mockingly at justice and democracy

The arrogance! They must either think the American public is incredibly naive or that we just don't care.
I haven't talked to one person yet who thinks Scalia's refusal to recuse himself from this case looks good for him, the Supreme Court, or Cheney.
Who the hell do these people think they're kidding?

Le Monde:
The America that will vote for Bush

I found this article to be quite interesting because the writer raises realistic points that Democratic stategists are seemingly failing to grasp or take seriously. Those voters who embrace the falsity of the right wing populists aren't some extremist group. They are everyday "Joe-Americans".

Excerpts from the article:

Republicans are still the party of corporate management, but they have also spent years honing their own populist approach, a melange of anti- intellectualism, promiscuous God-talk and sentimental evocations of middle America in all its humble averageness....Bush is merely the latest and one of the most accomplished in a long line of pro-business politicians expressing themselves in the language of the downtrodden.......This right-wing populism works; it is today triumphant across the scene; politicians speak its language, as do newspaper columnists, television pundits and a cast of thousands of corporate spokesmen, Wall Street brokerages, advertising pitchmen, business journalists, and even the Hollywood stars that the right loves to hate.......The all-Americans despise the affected elites, with their highfalutin ways and that’s why they vote for plainspoken men like George Bush..........liberals refuse to take backlash populism seriously. They simply don’t bother to answer the stereotype of themselves as a tasteful elite, seeing it as a treacherous and obvious deceit mounted by the puppetmasters of the right...........they believe that conservative populism is merely camouflage for racism, which they believe to be epidemic in the US. The problem, they think, is neo-Nazis or right-wing militia types like Timothy McVeigh. That’s the real expression of middle America, the thing we ought to be investigating.

Political obsession with behavior:
"...without the so-called "libertine" or "secular humanist" enemy, as the Christian Right would call them, where would the Republicans be?"

Step right up-
get your Dubya action figure

Blogger Con II
Coming April 17th

Anonymoses on the nobility of Richard Clarke

Excerpt:

A Renaissance of Conscience?

But I think there will be a renaissance of conscience, if you will. And that those who know things will come forward, and realize that their loyalty too has been abused. And that lives are being lost needlessly, and because of incompetence, greed perhaps, and pressures which simply should not have been allowed to enter into the decision-making process, while those that should have been...were ignored.

NYT Magazine
Al Franken, Seriously

..He wants to have Paul Krugman, Kevin Phillips and the Clintons as guests. Also Gary Bauer, G. Gordon Liddy, Chris Rock and Michael Moore. He wants to feature national-security experts. He wants it to be in part a homage to old-time radio. He plans to have Bob Elliot, one of his radio heroes, come on to revive an old character.........Though he says he is interested in sticking around, Franken has reportedly signed only a one-year contract. ''I'm doing this because I want to use my energies to get Bush unelected,'' he told me. ''I'd be happy if the election of a Democrat ended the show.''.......... Franken, who is 52, was born in New York City, but he was raised in the heartland of liberalism: Minnesota. He counts the Minnesotans Hubert Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy and Paul Wellstone among his political heroes......

What we knew about Pakistan-one year ago and what we're doing today

To the Bush administration:
Don't ever try to tell the American public that you didn't know what Dr. Khan and the Pakistani government were doing.
The big story broke on February 2 of this year. Talk about late-breaking news.

A year ago on Iddybud:

The UN has documented that in October 1990, i.e. just two months before the US-led Operation Desert Storm to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait, Dr. Khan allegedly offered Iraq through an unnamed intermediary the technology to "manufacture a nuclear weapon". Baghdad said it rejected the offer fearing an American trap, and Pakistan denied the offer as a fraud. But the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) listed it as a key unresolved issue in a 1999 report to the UN on Iraqi arms programs. In light of the potential for further radicalization in Pakistan - and especially after the experience of after Sept. 11, 2001 – it is only to be expected that the US will want to become physically involved in the safekeeping of Pakistani nuclear weapons; reports suggest it may already have some kind of guardianship role. If acknowledged, of course, any such development could have a devastating effect on Musharraf's rapidly deteriorating domestic credibility.

Sunday Herald UK: "Ask No Questions"

The US press may finally be realising it was hoodwinked over the war … but the coverage of Madrid proves it hasn’t learned

I consider this opinion to be close to all I've been believing and stating about the American media since I premiered this blog over a year ago. When you read the summary of editorial positions of the principal Scottish and UK newspapers in the run-up to war in Iraq, you may see a startling variance in opinion from what we saw in the American press.

Excerpt:

Headlines have told their story. “Iraq’s arsenal was only on paper” admitted the Washington Post recently. “So, what went wrong?” Time magazine wanted to know. Even the right-wing Wall Street Journal was obliged to report that: “Pressure rises for probe of pre-war intelligence”. The cat was out of the bag: they’d been had. Yet why had publications with vast editorial resources been such easy marks? And why had sceptics and dissidents been silenced?

The answer to the second question is simple: the great American newspapers censored themselves. They became, if you like, patriotically deaf. In the post-9/11 atmosphere they had no editorial strategy for coping with George Bush’s moral authority, and no editorial will to devise one..

_________________________


This is my own statement from March 25, 2003:

I think we need to carefully consider the daily-changing reasons, fabrications and innuendo our own government has thrown out into the ether in order to justify this war.
The visions of cheering, dancing sugar-plums and Iraqis waiting with open arms and open hearts for their liberation.
People were led to believe this would be the case. The media reinforced that vision every day.

It just isn't so.

A lot of things the government has been telling us haven't turned out to be "so".

When we fail to question, we fail as a democracy.

We just can't assume a sense of blind loyalty and think our best interests are at the heart of all this.

Op-Ed News: Why are we in Iraq? Stupidity? Bad Judgement, Lies? Deceptions?

Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism chief to President Bush, has released new information on how the Bush White House failed to heed the warnings of national security officials, were slow to act on these warnings, were quick to blame Iraq and were unable to make the long sought after connection between Iraq and al Qaeda.

Independent: Rumsfeld 'wanted to bomb Iraq' after 9/11


Did you know?

Could the devastation of September 11 been diminished in any degree had the government’s information been made public in the summer of 2001?

On July 5th, the government’s top counter-terrorism official, Richard Clarke stated to a group gathered at the White House, “Something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it’s going to happen soon.”

The group included the FAA, the Coast Guard, the FBI, the Secret Service, and the INS. Clarke directed every counter-terrorist office to cancel vacations, defer non-vital travel, put off scheduled exercises and place domestic rapid response teams on much shorter alert.

“Frankly, I find it outrageous that the president is running for re-election on the grounds that he’s done such great things about terrorism. He ignored it. He ignored terrorism for months, when maybe we could have done something.”

--Richard Clarke [Sunday Herald]

Newsday: 100,000 at NYC rally as protests gather nationwide


AP photo-NYC 3-20-04

In the early afternoon, [Mayor] Bloomberg estimated the crowd at about 30,000. But organizers said later that number had grown to more than 100,000 people, stretching for more than a dozen blocks through Manhattan.

One year on, and still the hard core march the world over. [Independent UK]


See a wonderful summary of the day's events in New York at Hanging Out With the Duchess