Thursday, April 25, 2013
The Ugly Choice in the Middle East. By David Rothkopf.
The Ugly Choice in the Middle East. By David Rothkopf. Foreign Policy, April 23, 2013.
The Seven Faces of Vladimir Putin. By Ivan Kratsev.
The seven faces of Putin. By Ivan Kratsev. Prospect Blog, April 24, 2013.
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Canada Is Now a Bulwark of Western Civilization. By Douglas Murray.
Canada Is Now a Bulwark of Western Civilization. By Douglas Murray. Real Clear World, April 24, 2013. Also at Gatestone Institute.
The Family is the Key to the Future of Faith. By Mary Eberstadt.
The Family is the Key to the Future of Faith. By Mary Eberstadt. Standpoint, May 2013.
U.S. Leaders’ Fingerprints Are On the Detonators. By Michael Scheuer.
U.S. leaders’ fingerprints are on the detonators. By Michael Scheuer. Non-Intervention Blog, April 21, 2013. Also at Foreign Policy Journal.
US policy partly to blame for Boston Marathon attack? Video. Jenna Lee with Michael Scheuer. Happening Now. Fox News, April 24, 2013.
Media’s Boston Meme: It’s Bush’s Fault. By Rush Limbaugh. RushLimbaugh.com, April 24, 2013. Audio at Daily Rushbo. (Rush attacks Scheuer).
Limbaugh Rails Against Media For Blaming U.S. For Boston Bombings As If “Islam Had Nothing To Do With This.” By Matt Wilstein. Mediaite, April 24, 2013.
US policy partly to blame for Boston Marathon attack? Video. Jenna Lee with Michael Scheuer. Happening Now. Fox News, April 24, 2013.
Media’s Boston Meme: It’s Bush’s Fault. By Rush Limbaugh. RushLimbaugh.com, April 24, 2013. Audio at Daily Rushbo. (Rush attacks Scheuer).
Limbaugh Rails Against Media For Blaming U.S. For Boston Bombings As If “Islam Had Nothing To Do With This.” By Matt Wilstein. Mediaite, April 24, 2013.
Chechen Jihad Meets American Republic. By John Batchelor and Michael Vlahos.
Chechen Jihad Meets American Republic. By John Batchelor and Michael Vlahos. Video. The John Batchelor Show, April 19, 2013. YouTube.
Chechens in America. By John Batchelor and Michael Schwirtz. Audio. The John Batchelor Show, April 24, 2013.
Struggle at Home Intrudes on Chechen Haven in America. By Michael Schwirtz. New York Times, April 21, 2013.
Chechens in America. By John Batchelor and Michael Schwirtz. Audio. The John Batchelor Show, April 24, 2013.
Struggle at Home Intrudes on Chechen Haven in America. By Michael Schwirtz. New York Times, April 21, 2013.
From Boston to Jerusalem. By John Allen Gay.
From Boston to Jerusalem. By John Allen Gay. The National Interest, April 23, 2013.
Should Americans Identify With Israel After Boston? By Sigal Samuel. The Daily Beast, April 23, 2013.
Should Americans Identify With Israel After Boston? By Sigal Samuel. The Daily Beast, April 23, 2013.
Legalize Polygamy! By Jillian Keenan.
Legalize Polygamy! By Jillian Keenan. Slate, April 15, 2013.
Slate Calls for Legalization of Polygamy. By Rush Limbaugh. RushLimbaugh.com April 24, 2013.
Slate Calls for Legalization of Polygamy. By Rush Limbaugh. RushLimbaugh.com April 24, 2013.
The Failure of Pluralism. By Robert W. Merry.
The Failure of Pluralism. By Robert W. Merry. The National Interest, April 24, 2013.
True Americanism. By Theodore Roosevelt. The Works of Theodore Roosevelt: American Ideals. New York: P.F. Collier and Son, 1897. Originally published in The Forum, Vol. 17 (1894).
Americanism. By Theodore Roosevelt. Speech to the Knights of Columbus, Carnegie Hall, New York, October 12, 1915. Immigration and Americanization: Selected Readings. Edited by Philip Davis and Bertha Schwartz. Boston: Ginn and Company, 1920.
Theodore Roosevelt’s Last Message. Constitutional Review, Vol. 6, No. 3 (July 1922). Also find it here.
Merry:
Around the turn of the last century, Theodore Roosevelt offered some blunt but friendly counsel to the large numbers of immigrants then making their way to America. “We have no room,” he declared in 1894, “for any people who do not act and vote simply as Americans, and as nothing else.” He noted that large numbers of immigrants had become “completely Americanized,” and they stood upon the same plane as “the descendants of any Puritan, Cavalier, or Knickerbocker among us.” But, he added, “where immigrants, or the sons of immigrants, do not heartily and in good faith throw in their lot with us, but cling to the speech, the customs, the ways of life, and the habits of thought of the Old World which they have left, they hereby harm both themselves and us.” Immigrants who remain “alien elements, unassimilated, and with interests separate from ours,” said Roosevelt, become “mere obstructions” to the current of American life. He summed up, “We freely extend the hand of welcome . . . to every man, no matter what his creed and birthplace, who comes honestly intent on becoming a good United States citizen . . . , but we have a right, and it is our duty, to demand that he shall indeed become so, and shall not confuse the issues with which we are struggling by introducing among us Old-World quarrels and prejudices.”
By today’s standards of political correctness, this TR manifesto, as it might be called, was an almost breathtaking demand for assimilation on the part of the country’s immigrants. It assumed a prevailing American culture to which newcomers would have to adapt if they wished to be successful in the New World. This view, prevalent and unremarkable in TR’s time, eventually was challenged by those who embraced what they called “cultural pluralism”—the idea that assimilation into a prevailing American culture was neither possible nor desirable and that America should encourage all to retain whatever cultural thoughts, impulses and sensibilities they brought from their lands of origin. That is the prevailing view today among intellectuals and policy experts.
These historical musings are prompted by the horrific human destruction wrought in Boston last week by Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, whose stealthy bomb assaults certainly seemed motivated at least in part by Old World impulses and sensibilities. Though many politicians and commentators seem intent on brushing aside the fundamental questions of immigration and assimilation posed by those pitiless acts, they really can’t be ignored. We must ask ourselves how we invited into our midst children from another land who would grow up to wreak such havoc upon innocent Americans going about their daily lives in their own country.
Journalistic coverage has focused, and no doubt will continue to focus, on every aspect of the lives of these two young men of Chechen origin—their family histories, their experiences on the edge of a horrendous ethnic and religious conflict, their difficulties making it in America, their parents’ separation, Tamerlan’s religious odyssey, his psychological dominance of his younger brother. All this is relevant and warrants attention. But none of it is likely to answer in any satisfying way the question on everyone’s mind: Why did they do it? As the old 1930s radio show used to ask, “Who knows what evil lurks in the minds of men?”
But if we step back and look at it in a larger context, the questions take on a broader scope—and perhaps a more ominous tone. These two brothers proved themselves incapable of heeding the Roosevelt manifesto, of leaving behind Old World quarrels and prejudices, of somehow fitting their intensifying Muslim faith into the everyday customs and mores of a welcoming American society. As Tamerlan told a campus-publication interviewer before his brutal assault on innocents, “I don’t have a single American friend. I don’t understand them.”
This raises a serious question about the level of success demonstrated by Muslims generally in assimilating into the Western societies that have received them over the past generation or so. The answer is that it is not a very high level of success at all. Of course hackles are inevitably raised among devotees of cultural pluralism whenever such broad generalizations are expressed. And these critics are correct in noting that the vast majority of Muslims blend into their adopted Western societies just fine. But large numbers of Islamic immigrants have had difficulty accepting the underlying precepts of their adopted Western nations, and currents of hostility run through the Muslim communities in those nations, including the United States.
“Muslims, particularly Arab Muslims,” wrote the late Samuel P. Huntington in his last book, Who Are We?, “seem slow to assimilate compared to other post-1965 groups”—post-1965 groups being the large numbers of non-Westerners who migrated to the United States after the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which ended the previous “national origins” formula that brought to U.S. shores primarily western and northern Europeans and replaced it with a preference based on skills and family relationships with U.S. citizens or residents. Huntington noted a Los Angeles poll showing that, as poll officials put it, “a significant number of Muslims, particularly immigrant Muslims, do not have close ties or loyalty to the United States.” The poll revealed that 57 percent of immigrant Muslims and 32 percent of those born in America said that, if given a choice of staying in the United States or migrating to an Islamic country, they would opt for an Islamic country. Fifty-two percent of the interviewees said it was “very important” to replace U.S. public schools with Islamic schools, while another 24 percent said it was “quite important” to do so.
Huntington draws a distinction between national security, concerned primarily with sovereignty, and societal security, concerned largely with national identity, the ability of a people to maintain their culture, institutions and way of life—in other words, the very things Theodore Roosevelt was concerned about in issuing his 1894 manifesto. “In the contemporary world,” writes Huntington, “the greatest threat to the societal security of nations comes from immigration.” And immigration without assimilation constitutes the greatest threat of all.
That’s because it often leads to internal immigrant communities that are isolated and insulated in varying degrees from the broader society. This has happened, of course, with North Africans in France, Turks in Germany and other immigrant groups in other European countries. And in nearly all instances there has been a backlash against immigration in general. Writes Huntington: “Immigration without assimilation thus generates countervailing pressures and usually cannot be sustained indefinitely.”
And yet there appears to be little recognition of this in the United States today, as reflected in the current congressional debate on immigration reform and in the journalistic reaction to the Tsarnaev bombings. In Congress, little focus has been devoted to the assimilation question posed by those bombings, and Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy of Vermont aggressively sought to intimidate his opponents in the immigration debate by alleging they were bent on using the Boston killings to “derail” the immigration bill. “A nation as strong as ours,” he said, “can welcome the oppressed and persecuted without making compromise in our security.” That sentence may be a bit hard to swallow by the families of those killed and maimed on Boylston Street.
And few journalists explored the story in the context of the assimilation question. Two exceptions bear notice. The Wall Street Journal, in its April 20-21 editorial, discussed the phenomenon of Muslim alienation turning into jihad in Western countries, citing particularly the London bombing of 2005, perpetrated by middle-class Pakistani immigrants from Birmingham, and the failed Times Square bomb attempt by Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Pakistan. “After the London bombings,” wrote the Journal, “many Americans took comfort in the belief that immigrants to the U.S. are better assimilated than they are in Europe. But that may be more conceit than fact, at least in regard to some young men.”
And Anne Applebaum, writing in the Washington Post, suggested also that the Tsarnaev brothers resemble “the second-generation European Muslims who staged bombings in Madrid, London and other European cities.” Educated and brought up in Europe, these young men nevertheless felt alienated there. Suggesting this phenomenon may be making its way to America, she writes, “We don’t expect to hear it from someone who grew up in Boston, a city that has taught generations of foreigners to become Americans in a country that likes to think of itself as a melting pot. But now it might be time to change our expectations. These terrorists are a lot less like the 9/11 attackers . . . and a lot more like the men known as the Tube bombers of London or the train bombers of Spain. Our response is going to have to be different—very different—as well.”
Whether a different response is in prospect remains highly speculative in a country that has abandoned the TR manifesto in favor of the cultural plurality advocated by people such as Senator Leahy—who, in warning his opponents about inserting the Boylston Street bombings into the immigration debate, issued a plea for “the dreams and futures of millions of hardworking people,” presumably future immigrants. It could be argued that Leahy and other national leaders have a higher responsibility to protecting the lives and limbs of current U.S. citizens enjoying the innocent experience of running or witnessing a marathon race in a great American city.
True Americanism. By Theodore Roosevelt. The Works of Theodore Roosevelt: American Ideals. New York: P.F. Collier and Son, 1897. Originally published in The Forum, Vol. 17 (1894).
Americanism. By Theodore Roosevelt. Speech to the Knights of Columbus, Carnegie Hall, New York, October 12, 1915. Immigration and Americanization: Selected Readings. Edited by Philip Davis and Bertha Schwartz. Boston: Ginn and Company, 1920.
Theodore Roosevelt’s Last Message. Constitutional Review, Vol. 6, No. 3 (July 1922). Also find it here.
Merry:
Around the turn of the last century, Theodore Roosevelt offered some blunt but friendly counsel to the large numbers of immigrants then making their way to America. “We have no room,” he declared in 1894, “for any people who do not act and vote simply as Americans, and as nothing else.” He noted that large numbers of immigrants had become “completely Americanized,” and they stood upon the same plane as “the descendants of any Puritan, Cavalier, or Knickerbocker among us.” But, he added, “where immigrants, or the sons of immigrants, do not heartily and in good faith throw in their lot with us, but cling to the speech, the customs, the ways of life, and the habits of thought of the Old World which they have left, they hereby harm both themselves and us.” Immigrants who remain “alien elements, unassimilated, and with interests separate from ours,” said Roosevelt, become “mere obstructions” to the current of American life. He summed up, “We freely extend the hand of welcome . . . to every man, no matter what his creed and birthplace, who comes honestly intent on becoming a good United States citizen . . . , but we have a right, and it is our duty, to demand that he shall indeed become so, and shall not confuse the issues with which we are struggling by introducing among us Old-World quarrels and prejudices.”
By today’s standards of political correctness, this TR manifesto, as it might be called, was an almost breathtaking demand for assimilation on the part of the country’s immigrants. It assumed a prevailing American culture to which newcomers would have to adapt if they wished to be successful in the New World. This view, prevalent and unremarkable in TR’s time, eventually was challenged by those who embraced what they called “cultural pluralism”—the idea that assimilation into a prevailing American culture was neither possible nor desirable and that America should encourage all to retain whatever cultural thoughts, impulses and sensibilities they brought from their lands of origin. That is the prevailing view today among intellectuals and policy experts.
These historical musings are prompted by the horrific human destruction wrought in Boston last week by Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, whose stealthy bomb assaults certainly seemed motivated at least in part by Old World impulses and sensibilities. Though many politicians and commentators seem intent on brushing aside the fundamental questions of immigration and assimilation posed by those pitiless acts, they really can’t be ignored. We must ask ourselves how we invited into our midst children from another land who would grow up to wreak such havoc upon innocent Americans going about their daily lives in their own country.
Journalistic coverage has focused, and no doubt will continue to focus, on every aspect of the lives of these two young men of Chechen origin—their family histories, their experiences on the edge of a horrendous ethnic and religious conflict, their difficulties making it in America, their parents’ separation, Tamerlan’s religious odyssey, his psychological dominance of his younger brother. All this is relevant and warrants attention. But none of it is likely to answer in any satisfying way the question on everyone’s mind: Why did they do it? As the old 1930s radio show used to ask, “Who knows what evil lurks in the minds of men?”
But if we step back and look at it in a larger context, the questions take on a broader scope—and perhaps a more ominous tone. These two brothers proved themselves incapable of heeding the Roosevelt manifesto, of leaving behind Old World quarrels and prejudices, of somehow fitting their intensifying Muslim faith into the everyday customs and mores of a welcoming American society. As Tamerlan told a campus-publication interviewer before his brutal assault on innocents, “I don’t have a single American friend. I don’t understand them.”
This raises a serious question about the level of success demonstrated by Muslims generally in assimilating into the Western societies that have received them over the past generation or so. The answer is that it is not a very high level of success at all. Of course hackles are inevitably raised among devotees of cultural pluralism whenever such broad generalizations are expressed. And these critics are correct in noting that the vast majority of Muslims blend into their adopted Western societies just fine. But large numbers of Islamic immigrants have had difficulty accepting the underlying precepts of their adopted Western nations, and currents of hostility run through the Muslim communities in those nations, including the United States.
“Muslims, particularly Arab Muslims,” wrote the late Samuel P. Huntington in his last book, Who Are We?, “seem slow to assimilate compared to other post-1965 groups”—post-1965 groups being the large numbers of non-Westerners who migrated to the United States after the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which ended the previous “national origins” formula that brought to U.S. shores primarily western and northern Europeans and replaced it with a preference based on skills and family relationships with U.S. citizens or residents. Huntington noted a Los Angeles poll showing that, as poll officials put it, “a significant number of Muslims, particularly immigrant Muslims, do not have close ties or loyalty to the United States.” The poll revealed that 57 percent of immigrant Muslims and 32 percent of those born in America said that, if given a choice of staying in the United States or migrating to an Islamic country, they would opt for an Islamic country. Fifty-two percent of the interviewees said it was “very important” to replace U.S. public schools with Islamic schools, while another 24 percent said it was “quite important” to do so.
Huntington draws a distinction between national security, concerned primarily with sovereignty, and societal security, concerned largely with national identity, the ability of a people to maintain their culture, institutions and way of life—in other words, the very things Theodore Roosevelt was concerned about in issuing his 1894 manifesto. “In the contemporary world,” writes Huntington, “the greatest threat to the societal security of nations comes from immigration.” And immigration without assimilation constitutes the greatest threat of all.
That’s because it often leads to internal immigrant communities that are isolated and insulated in varying degrees from the broader society. This has happened, of course, with North Africans in France, Turks in Germany and other immigrant groups in other European countries. And in nearly all instances there has been a backlash against immigration in general. Writes Huntington: “Immigration without assimilation thus generates countervailing pressures and usually cannot be sustained indefinitely.”
And yet there appears to be little recognition of this in the United States today, as reflected in the current congressional debate on immigration reform and in the journalistic reaction to the Tsarnaev bombings. In Congress, little focus has been devoted to the assimilation question posed by those bombings, and Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy of Vermont aggressively sought to intimidate his opponents in the immigration debate by alleging they were bent on using the Boston killings to “derail” the immigration bill. “A nation as strong as ours,” he said, “can welcome the oppressed and persecuted without making compromise in our security.” That sentence may be a bit hard to swallow by the families of those killed and maimed on Boylston Street.
And few journalists explored the story in the context of the assimilation question. Two exceptions bear notice. The Wall Street Journal, in its April 20-21 editorial, discussed the phenomenon of Muslim alienation turning into jihad in Western countries, citing particularly the London bombing of 2005, perpetrated by middle-class Pakistani immigrants from Birmingham, and the failed Times Square bomb attempt by Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Pakistan. “After the London bombings,” wrote the Journal, “many Americans took comfort in the belief that immigrants to the U.S. are better assimilated than they are in Europe. But that may be more conceit than fact, at least in regard to some young men.”
And Anne Applebaum, writing in the Washington Post, suggested also that the Tsarnaev brothers resemble “the second-generation European Muslims who staged bombings in Madrid, London and other European cities.” Educated and brought up in Europe, these young men nevertheless felt alienated there. Suggesting this phenomenon may be making its way to America, she writes, “We don’t expect to hear it from someone who grew up in Boston, a city that has taught generations of foreigners to become Americans in a country that likes to think of itself as a melting pot. But now it might be time to change our expectations. These terrorists are a lot less like the 9/11 attackers . . . and a lot more like the men known as the Tube bombers of London or the train bombers of Spain. Our response is going to have to be different—very different—as well.”
Whether a different response is in prospect remains highly speculative in a country that has abandoned the TR manifesto in favor of the cultural plurality advocated by people such as Senator Leahy—who, in warning his opponents about inserting the Boylston Street bombings into the immigration debate, issued a plea for “the dreams and futures of millions of hardworking people,” presumably future immigrants. It could be argued that Leahy and other national leaders have a higher responsibility to protecting the lives and limbs of current U.S. citizens enjoying the innocent experience of running or witnessing a marathon race in a great American city.
Allen West on Radical Islamic Terrorism the Boston Marathon Bombing.
Allen West: “We have domestic radical Islamic terror problem in America.” By Caroline May. The Daily Caller, April 19, 2013.
Allen West, Facebook, April 19, 2013 at 7:22 AM:
Let me be very clear, the terrorist attack in Boston and evolving events indicate we have a domestic radical Islamic terror problem in America. We must no longer allow the disciples of political correctness and the acolytes of the Muslim Brotherhood (CAIR, ISNA, MPAC, MAS) to preach to us some misconceived definition of tolerance and subservience. When tolerance becomes a one way street it leads to cultural suicide. Carlos Bledsoe in Little Rock, MAJ Hasan in Ft Hood, the Ft Dix Six, Faisal Shahazad in NYC Times Square – these are just the examples I can type now. When Rep Peter King attempted to have hearings on domestic terrorism he was attacked for being racist. No more excuses. No more apologies. We are in a war of ideological wills, and we shall prevail. Congratulations to all the law enforcement agencies.
April 23, 2013 at 6:34 AM:
I pray everyone enjoyed a nice weekend. However, we must all remain vigilant and resilient. America suffers from a high level of attention deficit disorder and we become distracted by the sound bite. Let me share with you a favorite axiom of the Taliban I learned in Afghanistan: “Americans may have watches but we have the time.”
One week ago today we were reminded of the savage, calculating barbarism of radical Islamists. And sadly enough we already have useful idiots seeking apologetic stances. I humbly request we all do as Sun Tzu stated in “The Art of War” and know your enemy. Do not fall back into complacency, nor become alarmists, but become educated on the nature of the 21st century battlefield. Furthermore, as we go forward, elect leaders, not just empty vessels of rhetoric.
April 23, 2013 at 12:37 PM:
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev will not be declared an enemy combatant, will be charged in federal court and read Miranda rights. This is just another example of how we need to have leaders that are flexible in their comprehension of this 21st Century battlefield and the application of the rule of law. This battlefield knows no borders or boundaries and we must develop new processes and procedures in dealing with American citizens, born and naturalized, who take up arms, not just overseas, but on American territory against fellow Americans. We have two previous cases, Carlos Bledsoe and MAJ Nidal Hasan, as examples where both attacked and killed Americans and soldiers, in the name of violent Islamic jihad. The rule of law and precedent is vital, however, these actions are treasonous and when they result in the death of Americans, the harshest penalty must be pursued. These people should be declared enemy combatants (for intelligence gathering purposes). They deserve the constitutional rights of a fair trial in the American court system . . . and then the hangman’s noose.
Allen West, Facebook, April 19, 2013 at 7:22 AM:
Let me be very clear, the terrorist attack in Boston and evolving events indicate we have a domestic radical Islamic terror problem in America. We must no longer allow the disciples of political correctness and the acolytes of the Muslim Brotherhood (CAIR, ISNA, MPAC, MAS) to preach to us some misconceived definition of tolerance and subservience. When tolerance becomes a one way street it leads to cultural suicide. Carlos Bledsoe in Little Rock, MAJ Hasan in Ft Hood, the Ft Dix Six, Faisal Shahazad in NYC Times Square – these are just the examples I can type now. When Rep Peter King attempted to have hearings on domestic terrorism he was attacked for being racist. No more excuses. No more apologies. We are in a war of ideological wills, and we shall prevail. Congratulations to all the law enforcement agencies.
April 23, 2013 at 6:34 AM:
I pray everyone enjoyed a nice weekend. However, we must all remain vigilant and resilient. America suffers from a high level of attention deficit disorder and we become distracted by the sound bite. Let me share with you a favorite axiom of the Taliban I learned in Afghanistan: “Americans may have watches but we have the time.”
One week ago today we were reminded of the savage, calculating barbarism of radical Islamists. And sadly enough we already have useful idiots seeking apologetic stances. I humbly request we all do as Sun Tzu stated in “The Art of War” and know your enemy. Do not fall back into complacency, nor become alarmists, but become educated on the nature of the 21st century battlefield. Furthermore, as we go forward, elect leaders, not just empty vessels of rhetoric.
April 23, 2013 at 12:37 PM:
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev will not be declared an enemy combatant, will be charged in federal court and read Miranda rights. This is just another example of how we need to have leaders that are flexible in their comprehension of this 21st Century battlefield and the application of the rule of law. This battlefield knows no borders or boundaries and we must develop new processes and procedures in dealing with American citizens, born and naturalized, who take up arms, not just overseas, but on American territory against fellow Americans. We have two previous cases, Carlos Bledsoe and MAJ Nidal Hasan, as examples where both attacked and killed Americans and soldiers, in the name of violent Islamic jihad. The rule of law and precedent is vital, however, these actions are treasonous and when they result in the death of Americans, the harshest penalty must be pursued. These people should be declared enemy combatants (for intelligence gathering purposes). They deserve the constitutional rights of a fair trial in the American court system . . . and then the hangman’s noose.
I Knew the Boston Marathon Bombing Suspects. By Alyssa Kilzer.
I knew the Boston Marathon bombing suspects. by Alyssa Kilzer. FoxNews.com, April 22, 2013.
The Secret War on Men? By Walter Russell Mead.
The Secret War on Men? By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, April 23, 2013.
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Tales From a Happy Life Without Kids. By Jen Kirkman.
It’s Very Condescending to Tell a Childless Woman She’d Be a Great Mom. By Jen Kirkman. The Atlantic, April 22, 2013.
Rise of the Lone Wolves: The New Faces of Jihad. By Ed Husain.
Rise of the lone wolves: the new faces of jihad. By Ed Husain. London Evening Standard, April 23, 2013.
The Terrorist Tipping Point: What Pushed the Tsarnaev Brothers to Violence? By Christopher Dickey. The Daily Beast, April 23, 2013.
The Terrorist’s Sojourn in a Most Dangerous Place. By Glen Howard. Wall Street Journal, April 23, 2013.
Jihad Is Now Truly Global. By Lydia Khalil. Real Clear World, April 22, 2013.
Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat. By Mitchell D. Silber and Arvin Bhatt. NYPD Intelligence Division, 2007.
The Terrorist Tipping Point: What Pushed the Tsarnaev Brothers to Violence? By Christopher Dickey. The Daily Beast, April 23, 2013.
The Terrorist’s Sojourn in a Most Dangerous Place. By Glen Howard. Wall Street Journal, April 23, 2013.
Jihad Is Now Truly Global. By Lydia Khalil. Real Clear World, April 22, 2013.
Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat. By Mitchell D. Silber and Arvin Bhatt. NYPD Intelligence Division, 2007.
Why Is There No Such Thing as an “English-American?” By Tim Stanley.
On St George’s Day, it’s time to ask: why is there no such thing as an “English-American?” By Tim Stanley. The Telegraph, April 23, 2013.
Why Russia Is Dying. By Peter Pomerantsev.
The Last Man in Russia: The Struggle to Save a Dying Nation. By Peter Pomerantsev. The Daily Beast, April 22, 2013.
Lessons of Boston: What the Fanatics Took Away. By Ralph Peters.
Lessons of Boston: What the fanatics took away. By Ralph Peters. New York Post, April 23, 2013.
Did the Brothers Tsarnaev Fail? By Pat Buchanan. Real Clear Politics, April 23, 2013.
Lessons from Boston and Chechnya. By Dennis Prager. Real Clear Politics, April 23, 2013.
The Real Boston Story. By Adam Garfinkle. The American Interest, April 23, 2013.
Did We Win or Lose the Battle of Boston? By George Rasley. ConservativeHQ, April 23, 2013.
Peters:
The superb work of our law-enforcement officials in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing ignited a blaze of self-congratulation that obscured the event’s implications.
Yeah, we killed one fanatic and nabbed the other. But our dysfunctional system couldn’t prevent this latest Boston Massacre.
That carnage was a dirt-cheap terrorist triumph. Fanatics will take its lessons to their shriveled jihadi hearts:
Lesson No. 1: Two amateur terrorists can paralyze a major American city for days. The Tsarnaev punks generated global headlines, ran up millions in government expenses, punished a major metro-area economy and disrupted society. And now we’ve got a costly civilian trial to come for the surviving brother — with more headlines to inspire copycats.
We’re relieved that the two young terrorists were “brought to justice” and delude ourselves that we “won.” Uh-uh. At the cost of two expendable young thugs, a few guns and a couple of homemade bombs, radical Islam generated a bloodbath that created genuine terror on our soil.
Al Qaeda and its ilk have long used suicide bombers and doomed assassins to rupture societies in the Middle East, killing tens of thousands of Muslims (a fact we fail to exploit in our lame “information campaigns”). Now the Islamists are in the export business. Expect more of these low-cost, high-return missions within our borders.
Lesson No. 2: The best weapons against targets in the US are disaffected legal immigrants or radicalized native-born converts to jihad. Political correctness — a pathetic fanaticism of our own — and legal paralysis make it virtually impossible to stop legal residents such as the Tsarnaev brothers before they commit a crime.
The FBI questioned Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the elder brother, after the Russians asked us to look into his radicalization. (Moscow’s murky role is another story.) It appears that the agents asked him, Are you a Muslim fanatic? To which he replied, No. End of investigation.
Get inside the red-white-and-blue tent legally, and you, the terrorist, have a license to kill.
Lesson No. 3: Our immigration system is one of terrorism’s best allies. Related to the last point, this is a case of just how idiotic a politically correct bureaucracy can be. The father of the Tsarnaev punks only had to declare himself an asylum-seeker afraid for his life in the Russian Federation and our consular officials fell all over themselves to get him to America.
Nobody cared that “fearful” Pops retained his Russian citizenship and passport, then voluntarily returned to Daghestan, a jihad-roiled Russian province, to live. Or that his elder son’s dream vacation appears to have been a terrorist training session.
If you’re a highly educated, ambitious West European who wants to become an American, your chances are near zero. If you’re a radical America-hater from a hostile region, all you have to do is shout that you’re a political refugee and we’ll give you residency and benefits.
There’s no reason that anyone from Chechnya should be granted a US visa. It’s a gangster mini-state (within the Russian Federation) at war with home-grown Islamists. There are no good guys. Chechnya’s sole export besides terror, Chechen mafiosi, make Mexican drug cartels look like Franciscans. And some of the cruelest jihadis our troops faced in Iraq and elsewhere were Chechens who joined al Qaeda.
Lesson No. 4: The more open a society, the more targets it presents. We all failed to see the obvious. Obsessing about attacks on the Super Bowl and other facilities-bound events, we missed the appeal of public displays, such as marathons, as targets: 26 miles of vulnerability, tens of thousands of (mixed sex, scantily clad!) runners and hundreds of thousands of spectators.
We’ve done a good job of protecting hard targets, from stadiums to government offices. But that only deflected the fanatics toward softer targets whose very randomness creates authentic terror. And don’t underestimate the appeal of butchering female athletes, who are almost as terrifying to Islamists as girls in bikinis.
You won’t hear that last point from our politically correct authorities or our “experts.” But Freud has more to tell us about Islamist terrorists than any think tank. My suggestion to the feds, if they want to understand why Tamerlan Tsarnaev turned to jihad? Check out this wife-beater’s love life. Scratch a terrorist, find a lonesome perv.
Last week, Islamist fanaticism scored a resounding victory on the cheap. The effectiveness of our manhunt didn’t change that.
Did the Brothers Tsarnaev Fail? By Pat Buchanan. Real Clear Politics, April 23, 2013.
Lessons from Boston and Chechnya. By Dennis Prager. Real Clear Politics, April 23, 2013.
The Real Boston Story. By Adam Garfinkle. The American Interest, April 23, 2013.
Did We Win or Lose the Battle of Boston? By George Rasley. ConservativeHQ, April 23, 2013.
Peters:
The superb work of our law-enforcement officials in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing ignited a blaze of self-congratulation that obscured the event’s implications.
Yeah, we killed one fanatic and nabbed the other. But our dysfunctional system couldn’t prevent this latest Boston Massacre.
That carnage was a dirt-cheap terrorist triumph. Fanatics will take its lessons to their shriveled jihadi hearts:
Lesson No. 1: Two amateur terrorists can paralyze a major American city for days. The Tsarnaev punks generated global headlines, ran up millions in government expenses, punished a major metro-area economy and disrupted society. And now we’ve got a costly civilian trial to come for the surviving brother — with more headlines to inspire copycats.
We’re relieved that the two young terrorists were “brought to justice” and delude ourselves that we “won.” Uh-uh. At the cost of two expendable young thugs, a few guns and a couple of homemade bombs, radical Islam generated a bloodbath that created genuine terror on our soil.
Al Qaeda and its ilk have long used suicide bombers and doomed assassins to rupture societies in the Middle East, killing tens of thousands of Muslims (a fact we fail to exploit in our lame “information campaigns”). Now the Islamists are in the export business. Expect more of these low-cost, high-return missions within our borders.
Lesson No. 2: The best weapons against targets in the US are disaffected legal immigrants or radicalized native-born converts to jihad. Political correctness — a pathetic fanaticism of our own — and legal paralysis make it virtually impossible to stop legal residents such as the Tsarnaev brothers before they commit a crime.
The FBI questioned Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the elder brother, after the Russians asked us to look into his radicalization. (Moscow’s murky role is another story.) It appears that the agents asked him, Are you a Muslim fanatic? To which he replied, No. End of investigation.
Get inside the red-white-and-blue tent legally, and you, the terrorist, have a license to kill.
Lesson No. 3: Our immigration system is one of terrorism’s best allies. Related to the last point, this is a case of just how idiotic a politically correct bureaucracy can be. The father of the Tsarnaev punks only had to declare himself an asylum-seeker afraid for his life in the Russian Federation and our consular officials fell all over themselves to get him to America.
Nobody cared that “fearful” Pops retained his Russian citizenship and passport, then voluntarily returned to Daghestan, a jihad-roiled Russian province, to live. Or that his elder son’s dream vacation appears to have been a terrorist training session.
If you’re a highly educated, ambitious West European who wants to become an American, your chances are near zero. If you’re a radical America-hater from a hostile region, all you have to do is shout that you’re a political refugee and we’ll give you residency and benefits.
There’s no reason that anyone from Chechnya should be granted a US visa. It’s a gangster mini-state (within the Russian Federation) at war with home-grown Islamists. There are no good guys. Chechnya’s sole export besides terror, Chechen mafiosi, make Mexican drug cartels look like Franciscans. And some of the cruelest jihadis our troops faced in Iraq and elsewhere were Chechens who joined al Qaeda.
Lesson No. 4: The more open a society, the more targets it presents. We all failed to see the obvious. Obsessing about attacks on the Super Bowl and other facilities-bound events, we missed the appeal of public displays, such as marathons, as targets: 26 miles of vulnerability, tens of thousands of (mixed sex, scantily clad!) runners and hundreds of thousands of spectators.
We’ve done a good job of protecting hard targets, from stadiums to government offices. But that only deflected the fanatics toward softer targets whose very randomness creates authentic terror. And don’t underestimate the appeal of butchering female athletes, who are almost as terrifying to Islamists as girls in bikinis.
You won’t hear that last point from our politically correct authorities or our “experts.” But Freud has more to tell us about Islamist terrorists than any think tank. My suggestion to the feds, if they want to understand why Tamerlan Tsarnaev turned to jihad? Check out this wife-beater’s love life. Scratch a terrorist, find a lonesome perv.
Last week, Islamist fanaticism scored a resounding victory on the cheap. The effectiveness of our manhunt didn’t change that.
Liberals Ignore the Islamist Elephant in the Room. By Rush Limbaugh.
Liberals Ignore the Elephant in the Room, Wring Their Hands Over Where and How These “Normal Kids” Were Radicalized. By Rush Limbaugh. RushLimbaugh.com, April 23, 2013. Audio, Daily Rushbo.
Dershowitz: “I Don’t Understand the Way Some People on the Left Glorify American Terrorists.” By Noel Sheppard. NewsBusters, April 22, 2013.
WashPost Suggests It’s Not the Tsarnaevs That Are Sick, But Islamophobic Americans. By Tim Graham. NewsBusters, April 23, 2013.
Boston Marathon bombing suspects elude labels. By Krissah Thompson and Michelle Boorstein. Washington Post, April 22, 2013.
David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker on Boston Marathon bombing investigation and capture of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Video. Charlie Rose, April 22, 2013.
Dershowitz: “I Don’t Understand the Way Some People on the Left Glorify American Terrorists.” By Noel Sheppard. NewsBusters, April 22, 2013.
WashPost Suggests It’s Not the Tsarnaevs That Are Sick, But Islamophobic Americans. By Tim Graham. NewsBusters, April 23, 2013.
Boston Marathon bombing suspects elude labels. By Krissah Thompson and Michelle Boorstein. Washington Post, April 22, 2013.
David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker on Boston Marathon bombing investigation and capture of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Video. Charlie Rose, April 22, 2013.
Tsarnaevs Learned How to Make Bombs from Inspire Magazine. By Pete Williams and Erin McClam.
Boston suspect: We learned how to make bombs from Inspire magazine. By Pete Williams and Erin McClam. NBC News, April 23, 2013.
Boston bombing suspects built explosives with help of online Al Qaeda magazine, official says. By Cristina Corbin and Mike Levine. FoxNews.com, April 23, 2013.
“My brother made me do it”: Boston “bomber” reveals in scrawled note that older sibling “wanted to defend Islam from attack”- and was motivated by US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. By Daniel Bates and James Nye. Daily Mail, April 22, 2013.
Boston bombing suspect cites U.S. wars as motivation, officials say. By Scott Wilson, Greg Miller, and Sari Horowitz. Washington Post, April 23, 2013.
Boston bombing suspects built explosives with help of online Al Qaeda magazine, official says. By Cristina Corbin and Mike Levine. FoxNews.com, April 23, 2013.
“My brother made me do it”: Boston “bomber” reveals in scrawled note that older sibling “wanted to defend Islam from attack”- and was motivated by US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. By Daniel Bates and James Nye. Daily Mail, April 22, 2013.
Boston bombing suspect cites U.S. wars as motivation, officials say. By Scott Wilson, Greg Miller, and Sari Horowitz. Washington Post, April 23, 2013.
Boston Marathon Bombing Lesson: Political Correctness Kills. By Jay Sekulow.
Boston Marathon bombing lesson –political correctness kills. By Jay Sekulow. FoxNews.com, April 23, 2013.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Boston Bombing Suspets’ Islamic Faith Is Irrelevant.
Harris-Perry On Boston Bombers’ Religion: “This Framed-Up Notion Of Islam Making Them Something That Is Non-Normal.” Real Clear Politics, April 21, 2013.
Harris-Perry: Bombers’ Muslim Faith As Relevant To Bombing As Ben Affleck Movies About Violence In Boston. By Noah Rothman. Mediaite, April 21, 2013.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Boston Bombing Suspets’ Islamic Faith is as Irrelevant as Ben Affleck Movies in Investigation. By Jason Howerton. The Blaze, April 22, 2013.
Fear of a different kind when it comes to the wake of terror. Video. Melissa Harris-Perry. MSNBC, April 21, 2013.
Harris-Perry: Bombers’ Muslim Faith As Relevant To Bombing As Ben Affleck Movies About Violence In Boston. By Noah Rothman. Mediaite, April 21, 2013.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Boston Bombing Suspets’ Islamic Faith is as Irrelevant as Ben Affleck Movies in Investigation. By Jason Howerton. The Blaze, April 22, 2013.
Fear of a different kind when it comes to the wake of terror. Video. Melissa Harris-Perry. MSNBC, April 21, 2013.
Psychologist Anne Speckhard Gets Inside the Minds of the Boston Terrorists.
Psychological Research Gets Inside the Minds of the Boston Terrorists. By Dr. Raj Persaud and Dr. Peter Bruggen. The Huffington Post United Kingdom, April 22, 2013.
Dr. Anne Speckhard website.
Education Does Not Equal Intelligence. By Rush Limbaugh. RushLimbaugh.com, April 23, 2013. Rush attacks Anne Speckhard.
Anne Speckhard, Ph.D. on FNC. Video. Sandy Frazier, April 23, 2013. YouTube.
Anne Speckhard, Ph.D. on MSNBC. Video. Sandy Frazier, April 22, 2013. YouTube.
Anne Speckhard: Talking to Terrorists. Video. New America Foundation, March 13, 2013. YouTube.
Dr. Anne Speckhard website.
Education Does Not Equal Intelligence. By Rush Limbaugh. RushLimbaugh.com, April 23, 2013. Rush attacks Anne Speckhard.
Anne Speckhard, Ph.D. on FNC. Video. Sandy Frazier, April 23, 2013. YouTube.
Anne Speckhard, Ph.D. on MSNBC. Video. Sandy Frazier, April 22, 2013. YouTube.
Anne Speckhard: Talking to Terrorists. Video. New America Foundation, March 13, 2013. YouTube.
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| Anne Speckhard |
Topless in the Country of Hijab? By Inna Shevchenko.
Topless in the Country of Hijab? By Inna Shevchenko. The Huffington Post United Kingdom, April 8, 2013.
U.N. Human Rights Official Richard Falk Says Boston Got What It Deserved. By Anne Bayefsky.
UN Human Rights Official Says Boston Got What It Deserved. By Anne Bayefsky. Breitbart, April 22, 2013. Fox News.
Antisemitism, anti-Americanism are UN Human Rights Council official’s job description. By Anne Bayefsky. FoxNews.com, April 23, 2013.
A Commentary on the Marathon Murders. By Richard Falk. Citizen Pilgrimage, April 21, 2013. Also at Foreign Policy Journal.
Clarifying Boston Marathon Post. By Richard Falk. Citizen Pilgrimage, April 25, 2013.
UN Official and Princeton Professor Says Boston Victims Were “Canaries.” Fox News Insider, April 24, 2013. Also find video here.
American Ingrates and Terror Apologists. By Michael Goodwin. New York Post, April 24, 2013.
UN official blames America for Boston Marathon terror attacks. By Hillel C. Neuer. UN Watch, April 22, 2013.
The Demonization of Richard Falk. By Jeremy R. Hammond. CounterPunch, April 25, 2013.
Richard Falk and Radical Islam. Ruthie Blum. Washington Times, April 26, 2013.
Divestment at UCSB. By Richard Falk. Citizen Pilgrimage, April 16, 2013.
Antisemitism, anti-Americanism are UN Human Rights Council official’s job description. By Anne Bayefsky. FoxNews.com, April 23, 2013.
A Commentary on the Marathon Murders. By Richard Falk. Citizen Pilgrimage, April 21, 2013. Also at Foreign Policy Journal.
Clarifying Boston Marathon Post. By Richard Falk. Citizen Pilgrimage, April 25, 2013.
UN Official and Princeton Professor Says Boston Victims Were “Canaries.” Fox News Insider, April 24, 2013. Also find video here.
American Ingrates and Terror Apologists. By Michael Goodwin. New York Post, April 24, 2013.
UN official blames America for Boston Marathon terror attacks. By Hillel C. Neuer. UN Watch, April 22, 2013.
The Demonization of Richard Falk. By Jeremy R. Hammond. CounterPunch, April 25, 2013.
Richard Falk and Radical Islam. Ruthie Blum. Washington Times, April 26, 2013.
Divestment at UCSB. By Richard Falk. Citizen Pilgrimage, April 16, 2013.
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