THE JIHAD DECADE COMETH

Seems as if the gloves are off as we barrel toward Campaign 2010. From the American Thinker:

AS WE LOOK BACK on the past ten years, it is clear that we are now entering a post-American decade. How did it all go so wrong so quickly?

The year 2000 kicked off with the Democrat ruse of a "stolen election"—this from the racketeering party of ACORN—but thankfully, it was not stolen after all. George W. Bush took the reins, but soon thereafter came the culmination of all the Islamic attacks on the U.S. during the Clinton years. Islam's fatwa on the West during the Clinton administration came home to New York and Washington on September 11th.

And while the Bush Doctrine (you are either with us or against us) was the right approach, the well dressed jihadists that Islamists like Grover Norquist ushered into the White House after 9/11 managed to sabotage the best strategy to fight Islamic jihad. The cowboy swagger set against the whole fantasy about the hijacking of Islam and the "religion of peace" nonsense was irreconcilable. It confused people. And it led to the marginalization and even dismissals of brave men and women who evaluated and exposed the jihadist ideology in our government agencies.

Who can forget the case of counter-jihad expert Steve Coughlin, the Pentagon's most knowledgeable specialist on Islamic Law and jihad terrorism? The Pentagon ended the career of its most effective analyst at the behest of a Muslim aide, Hesham Islam, within the office of Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England. Islam scholar Andrew Bostom observed that Couglin's firing was symptomatic "of the intellectual and moral rot plaguing our efforts to combat global jihadism."

In February 2009, former Bush administration official Douglas Feith told me that that kind of rot is systemic. He recalled that an Office of Strategic Influence was created within his Pentagon office to fight the ideological war—but then "somebody leaked—well, leaked, no. No, somebody lied to the New York Times and gave a report saying that this Office of Strategic Influence was intending to lie to foreign journalists. And the New York Times ran a front-page story saying that. It caused a big imbroglio that resulted in the shutting down of this office. I don't think the U.S. government has recovered to this day from that fiasco, because every time anyone suggested creating an office to really deal with jihadist ideology in a systematic or strategic way at the Pentagon, people would say, oh, no, we are not going to have another Office of Strategic Influence problem."

And so the drip, drip, drip of jihad continued through the last decade. We became more paralyzed, impotent, and deceived. Meanwhile, the Leftist/Islamic alliance, a deadly marriage between the Democratic Party and their propaganda handmaidens in the mainstream media, engaged in daily beatings of Bush and his administration.

Removing Saddam Hussein was good. There is no way around that powerful truth. But why stop there? Removing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as well would have been even better. But Bush lost his mojo in 2006. The relentless pounding by the Left, Israel's halfhearted performance in the war with Hezb'allah in the summer of 2006, and the loss of the House and the Senate in November 2006 all contributed to the rout.

But what really led to the downfall of Bush's leadership was the falsity of his premise. He wanted to believe, like Condi and Powell and the soft diplomacy crowd, that Islam would negotiate with the West. Islam cannot negotiate. Yet still the West continues its pursuit of the impossible, despite great risk. This is a function of the Western mind. These people think it inconceivable that talk can't solve anything and everything, that war is an indelible part of the human condition. But it is. War is as much in the makeup of man as sex, food, art, love, all of it.

And wars must be fought. They will not disappear, but we will.

Of course, we know this. But the Left, our in-house enemy, demonizes any war that America chooses to fight. The egregious, horrible crimes of Mao, Stalin, bin Laden, Che, Lenin, Pol Pot, Ahmadinejad, et al, which are so heinous and so enormous, are in their terrible minds a historical footnote. They become cultural icons for the "radical chic." Cold-blooded monsters have co-opted our country.

And so successful was the Left at infiltrating our government, schools, and institutions that eight years after the most heinous attack on American soil, we elected an icon of our mortal enemy. A Kenyan, Indonesian, third-worldish boulevardier with as much understanding of the American experience as any foreign national. Don't call me a racist for calling him what he is—I am not interested in the color of his skin, but in the content of his character. His lack of experience in all relevant areas to the office of the president is breathtaking. And his bowing to Islam and our enemies worldwide is disastrous.

Bush's premise was false, but Bush was a patriot. Bush loved America, and he protected America, even if he refused to see the enemy for who and what it was. It was no accident that America was safe for eight years post-9/11. Eight years of safety is cracking apart now under a weak and pro-Islamic president. The jihadi attacks on America in 2009 were staggering. And it has only just begun. Dismantling the Bush protections against jihad and launching attacks on Americans, bloggers, tea partiers, town hallers, patriots, and vets is incomprehensible—and if I hadn't lived through it, I wouldn't believe it possible.

I pray that America examines the Left decade and takes stock. It was the appeasement of the Left that destroyed the foundations of this country. We must rebuild them. The advancement of Islam would never have been possible—could never have happened—without our surrender to the Left. The real war is against the Leftist/Islamic alliance.

This is a fighting year.

Pamela Geller is the editor and publisher of the Atlas Shrugs website and is former associate publisher of the New York Observer. She is the author (with Robert Spencer) of the forthcoming book The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration's War on America (Simon and Schuster).

I BEG YOUR PARDON

WHAT THE HELL IN A HANDBASKET is the George Bush White House inhaling during these final days of his busted nut? Still spinning like a puppet in the wind.

John Allen Aregood was convicted of conspiring to transport and harbor illegal aliens. President Bush pardoned him just days ago. But what about former Border Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean who, according to Congressman Tom Tancredo and many others, were sent to prison for "doing their jobs?" Just doing their jobs, Hoss. But we hear nothing, even though the Terminal Right has been a strong advocate for a pardon in this case from the very beginning. Not a word!

In total, President Bush—just weeks after issuing 14 pardons—bestowed his good graces on YET ANOTHER 20 individuals. Here's a partial list of the 19 pardons (courtesy of the Associated Press):

William Alvis III of Flushing, Ohio. Possession of an unregistered firearm and cocaine distribution.

Eric Charles Blanke of Parker, Colo. Counterfeiting.

Steve Doyle Cavender of The Villages, Fla. Conspiring to import, possess, distribute and dispense marijuana.

Marie Elena Eppens of Lynden, Wash. Conspiracy to distribute and to possess with intent to distribute marijuana.

Eduviges Duvi Gonzalez-Matsumura of Clovis, Calif. Aiding and abetting embezzlement of bank funds.

Minor. Major. All debatable. But still nothing for Campos and Compean? President Bush also commuted the prison sentence of Reed Raymond Prior who was convicted of possession of methamphetamine with intent to distribute and sentenced in 1996 to life in prison. So what do we have here?

a trafficker of illegal aliens

drug pushers

embezzlers

Were these people more deserving of a pardon than two American heroes who put their lives on the line every single day to protect our border? Is this what happened to  "compassionate conservatism?"

With days to go before he leaves office, time is running out for President Bush to do the right thing, answer those questions and release these brave American heroes from prison! Soembody in that damned house needs to wake up and listen to us.

Tell them that the railroading of Ramos and Compean is a gross miscarriage of justice and perhaps one of the most cynical misuses of power in our nation's recent history. Tell them that their continued imprisonment demeans the American people and our government.

Tell them that these brave American heroes are owed apologies for the injustice they have suffered and that this horrible wrong can be righted only if the President pardons these men or commutes their sentences.

It is highly doubtful that Barack Obama will champion the cause of these wrongfully and vindictively prosecuted American heroes. That means that if President Bush fails to act soon, these brave men are destined to spend a DECADE behind bars... NO TIME OFF FOR GOOD BEHAVIOR... NO CHANCE OF PAROLE. The grim and brutal aspect of this atrocity has been distilled to these possibilities:

Some say that Compean and Ramos were prosecuted to appease a foreign government.

Others even say they were offered as sacrificial lambs to advance a political agenda and a schizoidphrenic administration.

Still others say that it was just a horrible miscarriage of justice.

Assuming that any one (or any combination) of these opinions is true:

The foreign government, that some would say their prosecution was intended to appease, has long since forgotten about them.

The political agenda that some would say their imprisonment was meant to advance—namely amnesty—was defeated!

And the freakish miscarriage of justice has simply gone on too long.

No matter which option one chooses, the only reason NOW not to pardon the brave Border Agents or at least commute their sentences is hard-hearted vindictiveness.

THERE IS NO ACCEPTABLE REASON ON GOD'S CURSED EARTH NOT TO RELEASE COMPEAN AND RAMOS!

BUSH THE MARXIST

The following somewhat apt characterization of our current "decider" is from the keyboard of the inimitable Hugh Fitzgerald, a major contributor to the Jihad Watch website.

George Walker Bush is a hallucinator. He talks, he likes the sound his words make, he thinks they must conform to some higher reality, and he has convinced himself they must be true. He's messianic, and also a Marxist, because he believes that economic well-being, or lack of it, explains the behavior of people, and that by improving the lot of Muslims, or "ordinary moms and dads" in the Middle East [and apparently Mexico, insertion mine], we will do away with the "root causes" of all the distempers, and all the craziness, and all the hatred directed at Infidels.

He's still unclear about Islam, about the simplest things about Islam. He asked the Arab students whom he saw in Israel if they attended dances with Jews. The American ambassador, Jones (himself someone with deplorable views on Israel, and also exhibiting a failure to grasp the Islamic roots of the war against Israel—because if he grasped those roots, he could not possibly be such a promoter of further surrenders of territory or territorial control by Israel), explained to Bush that such mixed dances were not exactly possible, and indeed, the very idea of such dances, among Arab boys and girls, also impossible. That Bush did not know this, that he has no real idea of what Islamic societies are like, shines from his every innocent word.

We don't want innocents running us. We want people who may not be nice, may not have such touching faith in "democracy" or any other ideal, for that matter, except the ideal of keeping us, the Infidels, from succumbing to the many-pronged assault of Islam. We can't afford the naive and sentimental lovers of something they think is swell, something they—a bit too enthusiastically and too unthinkingly and too inaccurately—call "democracy."

As I have pointed out many times before, this whole affair of stealthily moving towards the New World Order, a project thrusting us toward a one world government via North American Free Trade Agreement on this side of the Atlantic and the EU with its Eurabian Pact on the other, is Marxist in tone, although the card-carrying Marxists now hate it because, as one of my disgruntled Marxist acquaintances put it blithely in an email to me just yesterday, "it's all a scam set up to keep white people fully able to exploit brown and black people." Actually she was referring to the US Congress. But I think you know from whence I speak.

I am old enough to remember that the push for world domination was not only okay, but a solemn duty of all citizens of the world to recreate the Duma, when the Soviets were pushing for it, or the Red Chinese. But in American hands, empire is ruthlessly evil, oppressive to its core, exploitative, and murderous, every inch a monster, in the mind and mouths of these same apologists for Old Uncle Joe and crotchety Chairman Mao, all the while complaining that we Americans don't do enough to help the Third World.

Oh yes, I even recall those days of yore when tampering with primitive societies was considered off-limits. But in time, the World Bank intercedes, tries to set up real systems that work only to have them fail mainly because of corrupt local policies. Enormous defaulted loans then are forgiven, time after time in location after location, but once again, the Left is soon crawling the streets screaming bloody murder.

What a difficult inheritance we Americans are preparing for our split personality-riddled children! Blind chaos is now the soup of champions guaranteed to cede submission to the murderous hordes that have already declared their intentions that will make cumulative American policy sins melt away faster than a single snowflake dropped suddenly into the cauldron of hell.

ANOTHER CUTE LITTLE FILM BY HAMAS

While the incorrigible Muslim world is busy exerting itself with real threats of boycotts, recalling diplomats, apologies, and an avalanche of fatwahs against Geert Wilders and his film "Fitna" which features nothing but Muslims being Muslims, we are also treated to the following propaganda from Hamas teaching Arab children to grow up to be thugs just like themselves. Here is an excerpt from a puppet show, which aired on Al-Aqsa TV on March 30, 2008. And the United States does nothing, but whine about it in blogs like this one. Nobody, and I mean NOBODY at the top seems to be listening. One thing is certain. The puppetmasters certainly have this weak president's number. More jizya, and lots of it, in human assets and treasure, is his only response to one Islamic outrage after another. We must STOP this appeasement madness!

Bush: Who are you? What brings you to my home? How did they let you in, boy? My guards! My soldiers! Get this boy out of here.

Child: Nobody will take me out of here.

Bush: Who are you to come here and threaten me?! You are on my own turf, you little child, you! Get out. My dear, bring your father, your grandfather, or your mother, so I can talk to them. Get somebody older and smarter than you. What, you came here on your own?

Child: You killed daddy in the Iraq war. It's true, you killed him in the Iraq war. As for my mom—you and the criminal Zionists killed her in Lebanon. You and the criminal Zionists also killed my younger and older brothers in the Gaza holocaust. I'm an orphan, you criminal!

Bush: What are you talking about? Where did you come from? Don't I have enough troubles already? Where did you come from?

Child: I have come to take revenge with this sword – revenge for my mother and my sisters. You are a criminal, Bush! You are despicable. You made me an orphan! You took everything from me, Bush! I must take revenge on you, with this sword of Islam, the Prophet's Al-Battar sword.

Bush: No... No, my dear. I give you my word that this is it. I repent, just don't kill me. Where are my guards? Where are my people? Help! Help! He wants to kill me. Help!

Child: There are no guards, and your people have surrendered, Bush. I have not come alone, Bush. I have brought thousands of thousands of children from Palestine, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Afghanistan. You have denied all these children their fathers and mothers. That's why I have come to take revenge on you and on all the criminal traitors who collaborated with you.

Bush: Okay, fine, that's enough. I will give you whatever you want from me.

Child: What can you give me? All I want is one thing. Bring back my father and mother. I don't want anything from you. I don't want anything from you, just bring back my father and mother. I place my trust in Allah. I need to kill you.

Bush: No, my dear. Enough. I will give you anything you want. I also... Enough with that. Come with all your friends to the White House. I will give you food and toys. We will sit in the White House and talk. You will get whatever you need.

Child: You are impure, Bush, so you are not allowed inside the White House.

Bush: What are you saying?! Why am I not allowed into the White House?

Child: Because it has been turned into a great mosque for the nation of Islam. I will kill you just like Mu'az killed Abu Lahab. I will kill you, Bush, because that is your fate.

Child stabs Bush repeatedly

Child: Ahhh, I killed him.

WAR MACHINE AIMS TO CURTAIL FREE SPEECH

No silly. I'm not referencing the Bush administration. All bellicose references to Nazi-like affectations directed at Bush and company, despite its monumental failures of judgement, are ridiculous cacricatures at best, filthy projections of a distorted and mismanaged mind, in numbers too strained to recant, in their worst form. Thanks, but no thanks. Rather, on this fine March day, I am referring once again to the war machinery of soiled thugs husting over hill and dale at the IOC.

Jihad Watch is vigilant, as Robert Spencer reports:

SENATOR THRASHES MEXICAN TRUCK POLICY

Have you been following this outrage? A combative Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters was accused in a Senate hearing yesterday of defying a congressional vote to halt the Bush administration's controversial project allowing Mexican trucks to operate freely on U.S. roads.

"I regret supporting your nomination to be secretary of transportation," Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., told Peters. "Your legal counsel is giving you bad advice that unfortunately you have willingly accepted."

Dorgan charged the Department of Transportation was "hell-bent on proceeding with this pilot program" regardless of safety concerns the agency's inspector general continues to document. "You believe you have found a loophole, but you are making a very big mistake," Dorgan warned Peters, adding, "This is a slap in the face of Congress," he declared, "and your arrogance will have consequences."

Dorgan joined with Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and Reps. Jim Oberstar, D-Minn, and Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., in a bipartisan, bicameral request for the General Accountability Office to investigate the DOT's decision to continue the cross-border Mexican truck demonstration project. The lawmakers charged DOT has violated the Antideficiency Act, which specifies both civil and criminal penalties when federal government officials spend money not appropriated by Congress.

Still, Peters indicated the Department of Transportation was determined to persist with the Mexican project even if a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals should order DOT to stop in response to a suit brought by the Teamsters. "We will appeal any adverse court decision to the Supreme Court," Peters told the committee, "but we have no plan right now to stop the current cross-border Mexican truck demonstration project."

As reported, the Senate voted 74 to 24 in September to prohibit the DOT from using any funds in its fiscal year 2008 budget for the truck project, a measure signed into law by President Bush Dec. 26 as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act. The Bush administration, however, has decided to proceed with the program, contending the congressional language prohibited only the creation of future pilot programs, not the current one.

"This is sheer nonsense," Dorgan told Peters, opening what turned out to be a very tense hearing. "I have a letter from the Senate legislative counsel, who drafted this provision. The letter states very clearly that the amendment passed by Congress 'intended to preclude the carrying out of any demonstration program, including the pilot program put into effect in September 2007."

DOT general counsel D.J. Gribbin, accompanying Peters at the hearing, asserted the exact legislative language prohibited the department only from spending 2008 funds "to establish" any new programs. Gribbin further argued that by not specifying "establish or implement," Congress did not prohibit DOT from implementing a project that already had been established when the Dorgan amendment passed, regardless of what Congress may have intended.

In the following exchange, Dorgan expressed outrage, charging that Peters and the Bush administration were engaging in an exercise to parse words, when the legislative intent of Congress was clear. "You know better than that," Dorgan chided Gribbin. "I find it a creative way to read the statute, but everybody disagrees with you."

Dorgan produced a chart quoting Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., on the floor of the Senate the evening the Dorgan amendment passed, saying, "Unfortunately, the Senate has voted 74 to 24 to prevent the pilot from going forward."

"Everybody understood what we were voting for," Dorgan countered. "The vote was an overwhelming expression of the Senate to block the cross-border Mexican truck demonstration project, and everybody knew it."

Also appearing with Peters was Calvin L. Scovel III, the DOT inspector general. Scovel's office issued an interim report Monday on the demonstration project which concluded that not every Mexican truck entering the U.S. was undergoing the safety checks Peters initially had promised Congress.

"The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has yet failed to implement key quality control elements that the Department of Transportation assured Congress would now be in place," Scovel was forced to admit.

"We simply don't know if every Mexican truck has been inspected every time it enters the United States," he conceded under intense questioning from Dorgan.

In a statement issued Monday, Dorgan said the Transportation Department "is not above the law."

"When Congress passes a law that says no funds can be used for this program, we mean no funds can be used for this program," he said. "The Department of Transportation cannot simply pick and choose which laws they want to follow and which laws they want to break."

BONO WARNS ISLAMIC THREAT REAL

Bono with wife Ali
Not that this news is sweeping through the mainstream media wind tunnels, but Bono, lead singer for the Irish rock band, U2, has issued a warning in a recent Rolling Stone interview that bears repeating. A noted liberal celebrity bucking his own usual party line to engage the results of honest unbias observations is indeed real news. Because let's face it, the press loves to headline celebrities who speak out against President Bush, the war against Islamic fundamentalism and anything else that strikes paydirt in the darling media's end zone. This celebrity, however, has gone off-script.

Bono's efforts for Africa, unlike many other celebrities, appear to be sincere and he has shown himself to be unconcerned with who helps him, as shown by his collaborations with President Bush—a strange bedfellow scenario that would be anathema to most of his fellow celebrities. Now comes evidence that Bono also understands the threat posed by Islamic fundamentalists such as al-Qaeda, and his courage to call evil by it's name. In the interview with the ultra liberal magazine, Bono said of the Islamic nemesis:

"I want to be very, very clear, however: I understand and agree with the analysis of the problem. There is an imminent threat. It manifested itself on 9/11. It's real and grave. It is as serious a threat as Stalinism and National Socialism were. Let's not pretend it isn't."

Bono goes on to show that he discourages those steeped in the Bush Derangement Syndrome approach to world politics. In response to the reporter's statement that "But this Administration destroyed that." when they discussed the outpouring of support for the United States immediately following the attacks of September 11, Bono says of President Bush"

There was a plan there, you know. I think the president genuinely felt that if we could prove a model of democracy and broad prosperity in the Middle East, it might defuse the situation.

Despite his sometimes petulent ideology, this particular celebrity—in my opinion—is someone worthy of respect, because he understands that the threat is a real one and it is not one that can be defused simply by talking. In this, as in his statement that I try to stick to my pitch, and it's an abuse of my access for me to switch subjects, he earns that respect.

The rocker turned activist and philanthropist is keenly focussed on his efforts for Africa, knowing that this focus is what gets him access and he did not want to abuse it. Bravo, Bono. I for one, have never been much of a fan, but with these recent developments, while his music may still fall on deaf ears, I have gained a strong measure of respect for Bono the man.