There’s still a war on
Posted on Sunday, February 24, 2008
While our attention has been fixed upon Maryland, Virginia and Wisconsin, some interesting developments have been occurring on the terrorism front. In a fit of atypical courage, Dutch newspapers joined together to reprint the cartoons that provoked so much Muslim violence two years ago after the police recently foiled a plot to kill the cartoonist. Apparently, Europeans (or at least their Dutch wing ) haven’t completely lost their spines and might now be slowly recognizing that the best way to discourage Islamic fascism is to refuse to be intimidated by it. American newspapers should reprint the cartoons as well, as a much-needed transatlantic gesture on behalf of press freedom. Hell received one more guest in the form of the man who popularized suicide bombing, Hezbollah terrorist Imad Mugniyah. The Israelis have denied planting the bomb that blew him to pieces in Damascus, but let’s hope they’re lying. Torture has no place in the Western arsenal—until, that is, you think of how fitting it would have been for scum like Mugniyah to be on the receiving end of lots of it. The Wall Street Journal performed a useful public service by printing a piece by Debra Burlingame, reprinted in last Sunday’s Democrat-Gazette, on Bill Clinton’s pardon of 16 Puerto Rican terrorists against the fervent recommendations of all of our major law enforcement agencies. It would appear that the sole reason for the pardons was to help his wife woo New York Hispanics in her Senate bid. If so, nothing that the Bush administration has done or failed to do during our struggle against terrorism can compare to the sheer cravenness of that act. Impressive legal ignorance was revealed by critics of the Bush administration’s decision to try the man who allegedly planned 9 / 11, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, and five other conspirators in military tribunals. The ignorance flows from the failure to realize that the provisions of the U. S. Constitution they cite on Mohammed’s behalf do not apply because he is not a U. S. citizen. Nor would the established laws of warfare protect anyone who was not operating under the legal command authority of a nation-state government and whose planned attacks directly targeted civilians. As a purely legal matter, Mohammed has no protection whatsoever under either international or American law, leaving us free to deal with him and his mates as our moral conscience and political considerations dictate.
Mark Steyn has been proved to be prophetic by the case of Mark Steyn. For those not familiar with the wittiest writer in the English language, Steyn is the author of the best-selling book, “America Alone,” a central thesis of which is that Western societies that permit unfettered Muslim immigration will gradually experience a form of Islamification that moves their cultures in decidedly illiberal directions, including toward a curtailment of press and speech freedom. As if to prove him right at his own expense, a group called the Canadian Islamic Congress has now filed complaints against Steyn with several dubious “human rights commissions” in his native Canada. Thus, in exquisitely ironic obliviousness, Muslims are responding to Steyn’s claim that they seek to suppress speech critical of Islam by seeking to suppress the speech of Steyn. Sort of like Muslims committing acts of violence to protest cartoons linking Muslims and violence. Additional evidence of that about which Steyn has warned us comes from the silly archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and his suggestion that sharia (Islamic law ) be incorporated into British law to create a separate legal code for British Muslims. He left unexplained precisely how such practices as cutting off the hands of thieves, stoning homosexuals, and having 22 wives could be made compatible with the liberal British legal tradition. The Berkeley City Council sought to maintain the community’s status as the nuttiest city in America by passing a resolution telling a Marine recruiting office that it was “not welcome in the city.” The resolution also issued a special parking permit in front of the recruiting station to the radical anti-war group Code Pink to facilitate its demonstrations against it. In a case of fiscal prudence overcoming daffy political principle, the council rescinded its resolution after 40 Republican House members asked President Bush to rescind $ 2 million in federal spending earmarked for Berkeley. In an ideal world, Congress might pass a resolution telling Berkeley that it isn’t welcome in America. Or maybe it could simply secede and allow Code Pink to provide security in place of the jarheads.
—–––––•–––––—Free-lance columnist Bradley R. Gitz teaches politics at Lyon College at Batesville.
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