The Jihadis’ Primal Scream
Unless you depend on CNN for information - CNN totally and stunningly transformed the story, as Instapundit informed us yesterday - by now you have heard of the New York Times story about the discovery of a 17-page letter from Abu Musab al Zarqawi, written from Iraq in the middle of last month to the leaders of al Qaeda. It's an extremely explosive story. According to the Times - whose correspondent, Dexter Filkins, saw both the Arabic original and a military translation, and "wrote down large parts of the translation" - the letter is a sort of jihadist primal scream.
THE COMING PALESTINIAN CIVIL WAR
Ariel Sharon’s announcement on February 4, that the 7,500 Jews hunkered down amidst 1.5 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have to leave, is giving heartburn to Israel supporters like Mort Klein, head of Zionists of America. Mort thinks Arik (Sharon’s nickname) has lost his nerve and is selling out. The reality is that Mort only sees the settler’s trees and not a sovereign Israeli forest. Sharon is a strategic genius and just as Machiavellian as ever.What Sharon’s critics and all supporters of Israel need to understand is this: Sharon is building his Security Fence in order to precipitate a Palestinian Civil War.
The Seventh Level
Sorry to say, I haven't reread Dante's "Inferno" for some years, but I still remember his description of a very low and extremely unpleasant level of hell that houses traitors. Surely abject appeasers of evil qualify for the same treatment, and we must note grimly that three prime candidates have recently come forward to swell the ranks of that overheated realm: Senator Joe Biden of Delaware (D.), Senator Arlen Specter (R.), of Pennsylvania, and Congressman Bob Ney of Ohio (R.)
The Great Souled Man
Today is the 93rd birthday of the greatest American of the 20th century: Ronald Reagan. More than any other American of our day, he embodied the moral ideal personified by Aristotle as the man of Megalopsychia, the Great-Souled ManThe Great-Souled Man had a character of such integrity, inspiration, and achievement in the real world that his life expressed, for Aristotle, the Kalon, Moral Beauty. Five years ago, I wrote the following tribute to this extraordinary man. It will be published in To The Point on every February 6th from now on.
THE CURSE OF THE XERS
To go beyond all the outraged wailing and shocked gnashing of teeth over the MTV Super Bowl Half-Time Show, and understand what is really going on culturally, the place to begin is with William Strauss & Neil Howe’s 1991 book, Generations: The History of America’s Future-1584 to 2069.
You Don’t Have To Win To Win
If you were to describe in one word the Democrats fantasizing they can beat Bush in November, you would say Dean is a hothead, Clark an egomaniac, Sharpton a hustler, Edwards an ambulance-chaser, Kucinch a kook, Lieberman a moderate, and Kerry…?The word that Democrats want to apply to Kerry is “electable.” What does this mean? Exactly nothing, for that’s all he is -- that somehow he possesses some magical capacity to defeat GW.
ISLAM’S ANTI-OSAMA
It is often claimed, especially by those who maintain that the war between Civilization and Moslem Terrorism is at root a “War of Ideas,” that we -- America, the West, Civilization as a whole -- are not at war with Islam, but the Jihadist interpretation of Islam; that our enemies are not any and all Moslems, but those “radical” or “fundamentalist” Moslems who have bought the Wahhabi-Jihadist version of Islam. Such claims frequently come with the plea for an “Islamic Martin Luther” to lead an “Islamic Reformation” that would rescue Islam from medieval Jihadists. Yet there is no such Anti-Osama savior, and the pleas dissolve into hopeless and forlorn fantasy. But then -- maybe not. Maybe we don’t have to hope in vain for a leader of the Islamic Reformation to emerge someday in the distant future. Maybe the Anti-Osama is already here -- and he lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Ayatollah Fidel
The clerical dictatorship in Iran wants the defeat of President Bush because his commitment to political democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq, and his endorsement of freedom for the people of Iran, threatens a regime that knows it is deeply unpopular.Fidel Castro also wants to see Bush defeated because his determination to help democratic allies could threaten the emerging pro-Castro axis in Latin America. Both dictatorships have plans that could result in visible and sharp foreign policy setbacks that might cost President Bush the 2004 election.
“Jack, what about South America?
I’ve received a number of TTPer inquiries asking, in effect, “Jack, what about South America? There are 350 million people down there! How come you never talk about them?”
THE SOVIET SAUDI UNION
The critical insight about the Soviet Union that led to its downfall was -- as I explained in countless Reagan Doctrine briefings during the 1980s -- that the Soviet Union didnt simply possess an imperialist empire of colonies beyond its borders: it was itself a colonial empire within its borders.