NUTSHELL REQUESTS
Well, I asked for it. I'm the guy who chided the Chinese last week for ignoring the proverb about being careful what you wish for - then promptly proceeded to ask what you wanted the next TTP Nutshell History to be. You folks gave me enough assignments to keep me busy until there's peace in the Middle East. It's exciting, frankly, for it shows just how interested in the world TTPers are. Yet where do I begin? Here's a compendium of your requests, in no particular order:
THE BRAVEST WOMAN IN THE WORLD
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is arguably the bravest and most remarkable woman of our times. To understand why this 37-year-old woman is extraordinary, she must be assessed in the context of the forces pitted against her in her twin struggles: To force the Western world to take note of Islam's divinely ordained enslavement of women, And to force the Islamic world to account for it. A series of incidents this week placed the forces she battles in stark relief.
A BETTER CIA BOOK THAN GEORGE “SLAM DUNK” TENET’S
It had been a while since I'd roused my old friend James Jesus Angleton, the late chief of CIA counterintelligence, and it was clearly time to do that, what with two recent books out about the CIA. The one by George Tenet is all over the media, but the one by Tennent "Pete" Bagley, one of Angleton's colleagues, has been hardly mentioned. Bagley's book, Spy Wars, contains lots of new information - much of it based on conversations with former (?) KGB officers and some stuff from Soviet archives - and a very important reflection on how CIA judgments are reached. Who better to navigate these still-churning waters than JJA himself? So I revved up my old ouija board, and after several failed efforts I got him loud and clear.
MOSLEMS NEED AN ISLAMIC VACCINE
The arrest of six young Moslem men for planning to murder soldiers at Fort Dix, New Jersey made me think of Salman Rushdie. In 1988, Mr. Rushdie published a novel which received, arguably, the most negative review in history. The Ayatollah Khomeini, then ruling Iran, issued a fatwa condemning Mr. Rushdie to death. Khomeini's beef was more with its title, The Satanic Verses, than with its contents. The title refers to three short verses in Sura (chapter) 53 of the Koran - and they are the thread which could unravel radical Islam, which is why Islamists want them dropped down the memory hole. What's this got to do with the Fort Dix Six? Maybe plenty.
AIKIDO AND THE GLOWARMER FLEA
We're going for a wild ride here, starting on a log floating down a river, then go on a fling through the galaxy. On the way, we'll examine the extinction of the dinosaurs. We'll end up applying aikido to astrophysics as a way to de-subsidize the glowarmers. Glowarmers - those who believe in the religion of Man-Made ("Anthropogenic") Global warming - are so willfully ignorant of basic science that it cannot be attributed to stupidity. Indeed, a great many glowarmers are highly intelligent. It must be attributed to an ego-trip of absolutely monumental magnitude, of genuinely pathological proportions. This egomania is about to be demolished by two guys from Kansas - real scientists who have figured out what causes such massive climate change that it results in mass extinctions wiping out most life on earth on a regular basis.
SARKO AT YORKTOWN
How do you say "Ronald Reagan" in French? Many in Europe's establishment fear it might be "Nicolas Sarkozy." Mr. Sarkozy was elected president of France last Sunday (5/6) by a comfortable margin (53-47 percent) over the Socialist candidate, Ségolène Royale. Voter turnout was an eye-popping 85 percent. "Sarko" is not your typical French politician. He had a picture taken of himself shaking hands with President Bush, something some of the GOP candidates for president are leery of doing. It's a welcome change from recent, and not so recent, history. There would have been no United States of America were it not for the French. When Lord Cornwallis marched his troops out of Yorktown on Oct. 19, 1781 to surrender to General Washington, he did so because a French fleet prevented the evacuation of the British. The army to which Cornwallis surrendered had nearly as many French soldiers in it as Americans. Things have gone downhill since then.
THE TEMPER TANTRUM THAT COULD KILL AMERICA
From his years of psychological counseling, Dr. Joel Wade can tell you all about what horrific consequences a temper tantrum can have. A temper tantrum can cause the loss of friends, a career, a marriage, even a life. Nations can have temper tantrums too, and the consequences can be equally disastrous. Last November, American voters had a collective temper tantrum. They lost their temper at Republicans and voted against them. They didn't vote for any positive reasons, they went strictly negative. The voters lost their temper at George Bush, at the war in Iraq, at bridges to nowhere in Alaska and no fences along our southern border, at... it was a long, long list of complaints. What voters did not do last November is vote for surrender and defeat in Iraq, higher taxes, more government spending, and national security imperiled. Yet that's what they got with the Democrats. And our country is in grave risk because of it. The risk is growing by the day.
THE NEXT NUTSHELL?
I am so appreciative of the warm response to Sarkozy and History. These "nutshell histories," as TTPers have dubbed them, are such a hit that I have a request. I'd really like to hear from you as to what country or period of history should be the next nutshell. TTPer "Leebailey," for example, in our User Forum recently made an astute observation on the consequences of the fall of the Ottoman Empire on the entire Middle East. Given that the Ottoman remnant of Turkey is so prominent in the news right now - a predominantly Moslem country engaged in a huge tug-of-war between secularists and Islamists - wouldn't that be a good candidate? But the world is so large, so much of import is going on within it, and history so long, that there is a plethora of such good candidates. So I'd like to know what you guys n' gals consider your favorites. There's a lot to choose from. I am really intrigued by what your choices might be. Let me know. Thanks...
ACHIEVING A TRULY PRO-AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY
[This is an address I am delivering at the Conservative Leadership Summit conference here in Washington tomorrow, Saturday May 5.] I am not going to begin this discussion with a litany of examples of how we don't have a pro-American foreign policy, but rather an anti-American foreign policy, examples that would go back for so many decades. We're not going to waste our time demonstrating the obvious and focus on the past. We'll focus on the future instead and how we can affect it for the betterment of our country. But I will tell you just one story.
IS PBS ON THE SIDE OF RADICAL ISLAM?
Since September 11, 2001, many of us have wondered: Where are the moderate Moslems? If they are out there, why are we not hearing more, and getting more help, from them in the fight against our common foe -- the totalitarian Islamists? My effort to answer this question took the form of a 52-minute documentary I helped produce for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's "America at a Crossroads" series. The film, entitled Islam vs. Islamists, features compelling stories of anti-Islamist Moslems who have had the courage to stand up to co-religionists who are using faith to accomplish political ends. Yet PBS has decided to refuse to air the film. It's a frighening possibility that our taxpayer funded television network is on the side of Radical Islam.