Boker tov, Boulder!

"The character of the protesters is not liberal"

Clueless in Washington

by Caroline Glick

.... Since the Muslim Brotherhood spinoff Islamic Jihad terror group murdered Mubarak’s predecessor president Anwar Sadat in 1981, Egypt has been governed by emergency laws that ban democratic freedoms. Mubarak has consistently rejected US pressure to ease regime repression and enact liberal reforms in governance.

This reality has led many American commentators across the political spectrum to side enthusiastically with the rioters. A prestigious working group on Egypt formed in recent months by Middle East experts from Left and Right issued a statement over the weekend calling for the Obama administration to dump Mubarak and withdraw its support for the Egyptian regime. It recommended further that the administration force Mubarak to abdicate and his regime to fall by suspending all economic and military assistance to Egypt for the duration.

The blue ribbon panel’s recommendations were applauded by its members’ many friends across the political spectrum. For instance, the conservative Weekly Standard’s editor William Kristol praised the panel on Sunday and wrote, “It’s time for the US government to take an active role… to bring about a South Korea/Philippines/Chile-like transition in Egypt, from an American-supported dictatorship to an American-supported and popularly legitimate liberal democracy.”

The problem with this recommendation is that it is based entirely on the nature of Mubarak’s regime. If the regime was the biggest problem, then certainly removing US support for it would make sense. However, the character of the protesters is not liberal.

Indeed, their character is a bigger problem than the character of the regime they seek to overthrow.

According to a Pew opinion survey of Egyptians from June 2010, 59 percent said they back Islamists. Only 27% said they back modernizers. Half of Egyptians support Hamas. Thirty percent support Hizbullah and 20% support al Qaida. Moreover, 95% of them would welcome Islamic influence over their politics. When this preference is translated into actual government policy, it is clear that the Islam they support is the al Qaida Salafist version.

Eighty two percent of Egyptians support executing adulterers by stoning, 77% support whipping and cutting the hands off thieves. 84% support executing any Muslim who changes his religion.

When given the opportunity, the crowds on the street are not shy about showing what motivates them. They attack Mubarak and his new Vice President Omar Suleiman as American puppets and Zionist agents. The US, protesters told CNN’s Nick Robertson, is controlled by Israel. They hate and want to destroy Israel. That is why they hate Mubarak and Suleiman.

WHAT ALL of this makes clear is that if the regime falls, the successor regime will not be a liberal democracy. Mubarak’s military authoritarianism will be replaced by Islamic totalitarianism. The US’s greatest Arab ally will become its greatest enemy. Israel’s peace partner will again become its gravest foe. 

 

Read it all.

Breaking: FL Judge Finds ObamaCare UNCONSTITUTIONAL

Hot Spit! and Baruch Hashem!

Federal Judge in FL finds for 26 states: Congress exceeded its authority when it required Americans buy health insurance. The Individual mandate struck down: unconstitutional and unseverable.

No articles yet... stay tuned.

Egypt Unfolding

One has to wonder if the entire world is not unravelling.  

Here's an interesting take on events in Egypt from Joel C. Rosenberg (Who is he?):

In the past several days, the dynamic of the protests in Egypt has changed rapidly, and not for the better. What started out as a genuine and positive pro-freedom movement is being steadily coopted by the Muslim Brotherhood and other violent and extremist forces. There is now a growing risk that the overthrow of the Mubarak regime could lead either to an authoritarian military regime, or a Radical Islamist regime. We must pray neither scenario comes to pass. The people of Egypt would be further oppressed. The U.S., Israel and the West would be endangered....

.... For the first first few days of last week, most of the initial protestors on the streets of Egypt were peaceful, respectful, somewhat educated, and poor to middle class. I believe they were genuinely calling for an end to the Mubarak regime’s corruption and authoritarian rule in order to achieve more freedom, more opportunity, a better economy, more and better jobs, and a democratic government that would respect and protect their human rights and civil rights and set them free from the stagnant, stultified, oppressive Egyptian system they have suffered under for so long.

However, beginning on Thursday and accelerating throughout the day on Friday, the situation began to change dramatically....

 

 

 

Now the first bit of this next excerpt may sound a little odd coming from someone named Rosenberg, but that doesn't take away from the gist of his opinion. The quandry he describes is widely shared. 

.... I find myself in a quandary. I strongly support the right of the Egyptian people to have free elections and free markets and true opportunity in the 21st century. What’s more, I want the Church to be free to share the gospel and win Muslims to faith in Jesus Christ, make disciples and plant new congregations without government oppression and without violent attacks by Radical Muslims. I do believe Mubarak has stayed too long. He has not responded to the yearning of the Egyptian people to be free. His day is coming to an end.

That said, however, I don’t want to see the Muslim Brotherhood win. For all of Mubarak’s sins, he is not a Radical. He doesn’t want to launch a jihad against the U.S., Israel or the West. He has maintained the peace treaty with Israel. He has worked to counter the Hamas movement in Gaza. He is strongly opposed to the Iranian nuclear weapons program and has worked closely with the West to counter it.

The Obama administration needs to be careful to support positive change in Egypt and support human rights there, without cutting the legs out from underneath Mubarak precipitously, the way President Carter did to the Shah of Iran in 1979. The Shah had his many flaws, no question about it. But Carter’s actions helped trigger the Islamic Revolution and led to the rise of the Ayatollah Khomeini, the loss of an American ally, and the rise of a terror-exporting country that has gained in lethality ever since. We dare not make the same mistakes with Egypt.

 

Were everything equal, I would agree that "we dare not."  But Obama's middle name is Audacity (you silly infidel... you thought it was Hussein?) so I'm not holding my breath to see if he does the right thing.  

Remember the Cairo Speech, and see this leftist perspective of late as an example of the "thinking" on the other side:

... it is imperative the administration provide a more robust and strategic response to these events, given what a new Egypt could portend for the entire region.

President Obama himself provided a blueprint for this new approach in his June 2009 Cairo speech. Many progressives, this writer included, were thrilled by what we saw as that speech's promise to move away from a Middle East policy in which political freedom was subordinated to the perceived imperatives of counter-radicalism, and toward a more measured opening of political systems to greater participation and accountability. Progressives have likewise been disappointed at the lack of follow-through. These continuing uprisings offer the president an opportunity to make good on that promise.....

.... Given the amount of right-wing energy being spent scaring Americans about extremist Muslims under their beds and "creeping Sharia" phantoms in their closets, such a shift in posture toward engaging with Islamists is far easier talked about than implemented. But this is a policy fight that the administration must take on.

Casting "Islamism" writ large as inherently violent and irretrievably hostile to democracy is not only incorrect; it also strategically short-sighted.

It deprives us of a potentially valuable tool for isolating and dividing violent Islamists like al-Qaeda, with whom we have nothing to talk about, from nonviolent ones like the Muslim Brotherhood, with whom we very possibly do....

 

In the meantime, I don't mind this at all:

Laura Rozen is reporting that Obama has invited Brookings Institute scholar Robert Kagan and former Bush deputy national security adviser Elliott Abrams to the White House to discuss the situation in Egypt today

 

David Hazony has some "unfashionable thoughts" from Israel -- well worth reading.

America Transmogrified

trans-mog-ri-fy ~ to change in appearance or form, esp. strangely or grotesquely; transform.

 

 

U.S. grain prices should stay unrelentingly high this year... the latest sign that the era of cheap food has come to an end.

 

 

Fulfilling the campaign promise:

"We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... That's not going to happen."

 

I'm thinking Cuba, but Dhimmedia is embracing The Won to an even greater extent:

In his new book, The New Evolution Diet, De Vany argues if we really want to get fit, we should follow the lead of our ancient ancestors, Paleolithic humans who lived as nomadic hunter-gatherers some 40,000 years ago.

 

Hey, if they can make Islamic jihad palatable to Americans, it's not that all that much of a leap to hunter-gatherers.

Does Dhimmedia really think it can kasher a pig?

 

Dan Friedman writes from NYC:

They turned a terrorist named Arafat into a Nobel laureate and his PLO into a “peace partner” called the PA.  Now they’re at it again, laying the groundwork for acceptance of the Muslim Brotherhood by putting lipstick on a pig.

It is the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its law on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet"  

--Hassan al Banna (1906-1949), founder of the the Muslim Brotherhood.

 

 

 

According to Muslim Brotherhood operative Mohamed Akram, their objective is to transform pluralistic societies into Islamic states, sweeping away Western notions of legal equality, freedom of conscience,  freedom of religion and freedom of speech.

Don't forget their (1991)  "Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America" [pdf].  The English translation starts halfway through the document, beginning on page 16 (handwritten in the lower right corner).

And remember this, too:  Just a year ago, Janet Napolitano and senior staff met in Washington with three organizations directly associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. She spent an hour and a half briefing them on Department of Homeland Security counter-radicalization and anti-terrorist programs. 

Go figure.

For more background see also this 1995 lecture, "The Tolerant Pluralistic Islamic Society: Origin of a Myth" by Bat Ye'Or, who coined the term dhimmitude and who was (coincidentally?) born in Cairo.

To my mind, the current Egyptian "revolution" bears all too much similarity to the Iranian revolution -- only back then evil was more easily recognized.  Even by dhimmedia.

 

 

 

 

Rutgers has been bad news for a long time

I remember when Abe Greenhouse got off without serious consequences when at Rutgers he slammed a pie in the face of visiting Israeli dignitary, Natan Sharansky -- back in 2003.

Now that it's years later, and nothing has been done along the way to stop this sort of thing ... we shouldn't be surprised by this:

Hundreds of Jewish students and supporters were barred from attending an event comparing Israel to Nazi Germany at Rutgers University on Saturday.

 

 

Got Cuts?

 

Whirled peas is easy to visualize, but try to imagine our federal budget.

With the help of this student, it can be done in a minute and half:

 

   

 

p.s.  I'm still reeling over the fact that our government is twice the size it was ten years ago, and 27% larger than it was just two years ago.  Oy gevalt.

The Inevitable Islamists

From reports at the dead grey lady:

 ... among more affluent Egyptians, some said the country needed stability more than upheaval. After [a] night when men took to the streets armed with broom sticks and kitchen knives to defend their home against looters in Heliopolis, one resident, Sarah Elyashy, 33, said:

 “It has been the longest night of my life. I wish we could be like the United States with our own democracy, but we can’t. 

We have to have a ruler with an iron hand.”

 

 

 

Daniel Greenfield: The Fall of the Strongmen 

.... Most of the 'reformers' are usually fighting for either a takeover by the local socialist party or the local Islamist party. The general public will join in the stone throwing and the looting, without necessarily taking sides. Often the socialists and the Islamists will actually cooperate to bring down the dictator. Then one will take power and begin killing the other.

Western media rarely bother to report this, either out of ignorance or due to propaganda. They treat most of the crowd scenes as popular uprisings, which they are but not in the sense that the people will get to decide one way or another. Only that they get a chance to take part in the brief spurt of violence before being ordered to go home....

... the Islamists are ... inevitable.  Islam manufactures a group identity that may be paper thin, but it still more solid than recently manufactured national identities for regional Arabs who are expected to see themselves as Egyptians, Syrians, Jordanians or Iraqis. Islam bridges tribal identities better than strongmen do. Its rulers will ultimately still reward their own families and favor their own tribes, but the process will take place under the guise of Islam. 

When Mohammed invented Islam, he took existing beliefs and laced them up into a grand tribal identity. Islam is the meta-tribe, less a religion than a makeshift political system based on tribal alliances with the convenient sanction of a deity. Islam expands by creating a two-tier system that puts non-Muslims on the bottom, and encourages Muslims to wage constant war against them. None of this makes for a stable system, but it does make for a very volatile and expansionistic one. Arabs who will not die for Saddam or Ben Ali or Mubarak, will die for Islam. 

The Islamists may not take over in Tunisia this time, but they will take over sooner or later. There and all across the Muslim world....

 

When Democrats Rule...

There's a message in this for the entire country.

 

 

 

Will Egypt end up in the hands of Islamists?

That's the g'zillion-dollar question.

Michael J. Totten quotes Barry Rubin:

The chances for democracy and liberalism are different in every country. Tunisia has a good chance because there is a strong middle class and a weak Islamist movement. But in Egypt look at the numbers in the latest Pew poll.

In Egypt, 30 percent like Hizballah (66 percent don’t).  49 percent are favorable toward Hamas (48 percent are negative); and 20 percent smile (72 percent frown) at al-Qaida.

Roughly speaking, one-fifth of Egyptians applaud the most extreme Islamist terrorist group, while around one-third back revolutionary Islamists abroad. This doesn’t tell us what proportion of Egyptians want an Islamist government at home, but it is an indicator.

In Egypt, 82 percent want stoning for those who commit adultery; 77 percent would like to see whippings and hands cut off for robbery; and 84 percent favor the death penalty for any Muslim who changes his religion.

Asked if they supported “modernizers” or “Islamists” only 27 percent said modernizers while 59 percent said Islamists.

 

 

 
September 1, 2010 - Muhammad Husni Sayyid Mubarack, Benyamin Netanyahu, Barack Hussein Obama, Mahmoud Abbas and ‘Abd Allah ibn al-Husayn ... walk to the East Room of the White House.