I support my friend at Bare Naked Islam! (boudicabpi.boudica.us)

Posted on April 3, 2011 by admin

 

In response to Muslim lunatic’s killing spree over Terry Jones burning the Koran, Qur’an or however they decide to spell it July fourth is set as worldwide burn a Qur’an day. It seems perfectly OK to these stone age throwbacks to burn bibles, churches and even Christians (don’t forget the American flag) but don’t touch their fictitious rag spawned by the wet dream of a madman. Islam’s prophet was “a narcissist, a misogynist, a rapist, a pedophile, a lecher, a torturer, a mass murderer, a cult leader, an assassin, a terrorist, a mad man and a looter.” It is not limited to Christians, any and all non Muslim are at risk. Dem. Reid and RINO Graham are considering making burning a Qur’an a hate crime, screw them both. That’s akin to making destroying Mein Kampf or denouncing the KKK a hate crime. Visit our friend Bare Naked Islam. Do not forget International Draw Mohammad Day on May 20. Maybe these diaper heads will work themselves into such a frenzy they will whirl around and self destruct.

Bob A.

Obama Condemns Koran Burning 'Bigotry' (Atlas Shrugs)

Sunday, April 03, 2011

Obama condemns Koran burning "bigotry." It seems President  "Constitutional Lawyer" needs lessons in America 101. Seriously. Who is he working for?

The President of the United States must protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, despite his Islamophilia or preference for the sharia. Privately he can think whatever he wants, but his job and what he was elected to do was protect our freedoms, despite his personal preferences.

I have not heard Obama speak out against "Piss Christ" or the thousands of desecrations of the Bible in Muslim lands, or the burning of thousands of churches by Muslims, or the desecration of Jewish burial sites by Muslims in Israel and Iran, or Islamic anti-semitism, for that matter. I have not heard him say anything on those matters. So what is his premise?

My sentiments on this subject are clear. This church's burning of the Qur'an does a grave disservice to the cause of spreading awareness about Islamic teachings and the threat that Sharia poses to our way of life.
Although I oppose this venture, this is another challenge to the U.S. to stand up for free speech and free expression. Popular speech needs no protection. As such, all Americans should support the right of the church to have done this, even if they dislike what they're doing.

Qur'an-burning is a stupid idea, of course, but is protected under the laws of free speech. The burning of books is wrong in principle: the antidote to bad speech is not censorship or book-burning, but more speech. Open discussion. Give-and-take. And the truth will out. There is no justification for burning books. If free men are to be free and not live under Islamic law (sharia), then this man can do this if he wants, and his freedom and rights should be protected. Islamic supremacists should not be allowed a victory for their violent intimidation -- if these people want to burn a book, they're free to do so.

If they had burned a Bible, no one would be threatening violence against them.

The Islamic warning that this will threaten American troops is just another terror tactic. This is based on the assumption that they are fighting us because we are doing things they don't like. Actually they are fighting us because of imperatives within the Islamic faith. They will never like us unless we convert to Islam or submit to Islamic rule. If we stop doing things they dislike, where will we draw the line? How far will Sharia advance in the U.S., with Americans afraid to stop its advance for fear of offending Muslims and stirring them up to violence? The Muslim Students Association is already pushing for halal cafeterias, segregated dorms, and  segregated gym facilities on campus. This is incompatible with American freedom. We have to draw the line.
I will tell you this: Islamic law (sharia) cannot, must not, and will not have its way over our free speech. We cannot be held hostage by threats of violence. Free speech is the foundation of this great constitutional republic. That is worth fighting for, worth dying for.

Obama condemns Koran burning "bigotry" AFP

Protests in Afghanistan over the burning of the Koran entered a third day Sunday. In demonstrations that now extend as far as the city of Jalalabad and the Parwan province, crowds called for U.S. troops to leave their country and in one case burned an effigy of President Obama. While not as deadly as the first two days of protests, the demonstrations show no signs of abating.

While condemning the actions of the protestors in Afghanistan and calling their actions "an affront to human decency and dignity," Obama also condemned the burning of the Koran. "The desecration of any holy text, including the Koran, is an act of extreme intolerance and bigotry," Obama said in a statement released last night.

Obama's condemnation of the violence in Afghanistan and burning of the Koran was echoed in a statement released today by General David Petraeus and Mark Sedwill, top NATO civilian representative in Afghanistan. "We condemn, in particular, the action of an individual in the United States who recently burned the Holy Quran."

While not named specifically, it is clear that the individual being referred to is Pastor Terry Jones, who remains unrepentant in the face of the condemnations. In an interview with The New York Times, Jones said that his burning of the Koran was intended to be provocative, but that he doesn't feel he deservedsblame for what is happening in Afghanistan. "People have tried to make us responsible for the people who are killed. It’s unfair and somewhat damaging," he said.

Obama condemns Koran burning 'bigotry' AFP

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama condemned a US pastor's burning of the Koran, after violent protests at what he called an act of "extreme intolerance and bigotry" left 17 dead in Afghanistan.
Obama also reiterated his condemnation of the "outrageous" attacks by protesters as "an affront to human decency and dignity."
"No religion tolerates the slaughter and beheading of innocent people, and there is no justification for such a dishonorable and deplorable act," he added.

Islam does, Mr. Prez.

Ten people died amid fresh protests that began in the center of the main southern city of Kandahar and spread as police clashed with crowds on Saturday, a day after seven UN staff were killed in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, the worst attack on the world body in the country since the 2001 invasion.
"The desecration of any holy text, including the Koran, is an act of extreme intolerance and bigotry," Obama said in a statement honoring those killed in the attacks.

It's free speech, maroon.

Kandahar is the spiritual heartland of the Taliban, who have fought an insurgency against President Hamid Karzai's government in Kabul and its Western allies since they were ousted by the US-led invasion.
"Death to America" and "Death to Karzai" chanted the demonstrators. "They have insulted our Koran," shouted one.
Police had fired into the air to try to deter thousands of protesters marching toward the UN offices and provincial administration headquarters.
Provincial authorities said the protesters had damaged government and private buildings and torched vehicles. Smoke rose from different parts of the city as protesters burned cars and tires.

Friday's attackers in Mazar-i-Sharif had broken away from a large demonstration in the city against the burning of a Koran, Islam's holy book, at an evangelical church in Florida. They overwhelmed guards at the UN compound before setting it ablaze.

The United Nations did not announce the nationalities of the three civilian staff killed. But Sweden named one as 33-year-old Swede, Joakim Dungel. Norway said Lieutenant Colonel Siri Skare, a 53-year-old female pilot, was killed. Diplomats said the third was a Romanian.

US military: Militants kill 2 US soldiers in Iraq (Fox News)

Published April 03, 2011

Associated Press

BAGHDAD –  Two American soldiers were killed in a rocket attack that struck their unit in southern Iraq, the U.S. military said Sunday.

Col. Barry Johnson, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Iraq, confirmed that rockets hit the troops' unit but declined to give their names or say where in southern Iraq, pending notification of next of kin.

About 47,000 U.S. troops remain in Iraq, down from 166,000 in October 2007 at the peak of the military surge that kept the country from dissolving into civil war.

But Shiite militias in Iraq's south that are linked to anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr have vowed to continue targeting U.S. troops until all have left.

Under a 2008 security agreement between Baghdad and Washington, all U.S. forces will withdraw from Iraq by the end of the year. In an Associated Press interview Saturday, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said he sees no need to change the agreement but said he would leave that decision to parliament if lawmakers vote to keep them.

Saturday's deaths raises to at least 4,443 the number of U.S. military personnel who have died in Iraq since the war began in March 2003. That's according to an Associated Press count.

The last attack to leave more than one U.S. service member dead was Jan. 15, when an Iraqi army solider opened fire on U.S. troops and killed two during a training exercise in Mosul, located 225 miles (360 kilometers) northwest of Baghdad.

Afghan demonstrations claim more lives

Taliban suicide bombers kill 42 at Pakistan shrine

Sunday, Apr 3, 2011 11:42 ET

42 dead, 100 more wounded in attack on one of country's most important Sufi Muslim shrine's Sunday

By KHALID TANVEER, Associated Press

 

A pair of Taliban suicide bombers struck one of Pakistan's most important Sufi Muslim shrines on Sunday, killing 42 people and wounding 100 who were celebrating the anniversary of its founder's death with music, meditation and other practices abhorred by Islamist militant groups.

Another bomber was wounded when his explosive vest partially detonated. He was arrested along with a fourth militant who was seized before attacking, police official Ahmad Mubarak said.

The attack on the Sakhi Sarwar shrine ended a months-long respite in a relentless militant campaign against the shrines founded by ancient adherents of Sufism, a mystical branch of Islam that sees dancing, chanting and visiting holy sites as expressions of devotion to God. Taliban spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan called The Associated Press to claim responsibility for the assault.

"It was a huge blast. People were running in panic," said Fida Bakhsh, 42, a vendor outside the shrine. "It was horrible. We were running over bodies and blood."

Nineteen men, 14 women and nine children were killed, emergency coordinator Natiq Hayat said. Twenty of the wounded were in critical condition, he said.

From one-room tombs in small villages to large complexes in major cities, Sufi shrines are visited by millions of Pakistanis. The sites are anathema to the Pakistani Taliban, al-Qaida and other militant followers of the austere brand of Wahabi Islam that originated in Saudi Arabia.

Followers of the Barelvi school of Islam, one of the two main branches of the religion in Pakistan, consider themselves the custodian of the shrines. They have been one of the main targets of Islamist militants since some of their leaders issued edict calling suicide bombings religiously illegitimate.

Several thousand people were marking the 942nd anniversary of the death of the saint Ahmad Sultan, better known as Sakhi Sarwar, at his shrine in the Dera Ghazi Khan district of Punjab province when the bombers struck crowds waiting outside, government administrator Iftikhar Saho said.

A stampede followed the bombings, but it was not immediately clear if that caused any casualties.
Local and foreign Islamist militants have carried out hundreds of attacks in Pakistan over the last three years, targeting government buildings and security forces, Western targets like embassies and hotels as well as religious minorities and Muslim sects they consider heretical.

An assault on the shrine of Hazrat Ali Hajveri, known as Data Sahib, killed 47 people in the city of Lahore in July. The attacks have angered many Pakistani Muslims, who see visiting saints' shrines as the best way to communicate to God.

The government and the army have tried to crack down on the militants, but have struggled to unite the nation against the threat and face persistent allegations they are protecting some extremists. Many Islamist politicians do not publicly criticize the militants, preferring to spread conspiracy theories that American or Indian agents are responsible. These views are widely aired, often uncritically, in some media.

Associated Press Writer Ishtiaq Mahsud in Dera Ismail Khan contributed to this report.

In Israel, Time for Peace Offer May Run Out from The Newyork Times

By ETHAN BRONNER

Published: April 2, 2011

 

JERUSALEM — With revolutionary fervor sweeping the Middle East, Israel is under mounting pressure to make a far-reaching offer to the Palestinians or face a United Nations vote welcoming the State of Palestine as a member whose territory includes all of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.

 

The Palestinian Authority has been steadily building support for such a resolution in September, a move that could place Israel into a diplomatic vise. Israel would be occupying land belonging to a fellow United Nations member, land it has controlled and settled for more than four decades and some of which it expects to keep in any two-state solution.

 

“We are facing a diplomatic-political tsunami that the majority of the public is unaware of and that will peak in September,” said Ehud Barak, Israel’s defense minister, at a conference in Tel Aviv last month. “It is a very dangerous situation, one that requires action.” He added, “Paralysis, rhetoric, inaction will deepen the isolation of Israel.”

 

With aides to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thrashing out proposals to the Palestinians, President Shimon Peres is due at the White House on Tuesday to meet with President Obama and explore ways out of the bind. The United States is still uncertain how to move the process forward, according to diplomats here.
Israel’s offer is expected to include transfer of some West Bank territory outside its settlements to Palestinian control and may suggest a regional component — an international conference to serve as a response to the Arab League peace initiatives.

But Palestinian leaders, emboldened by support for their statehood bid, dismiss the expected offer as insufficient and continue to demand an end to settlement building before talks can begin.
“We want to generate pressure on Israel to make it feel isolated and help it understand that there can be no talks without a stop to settlements,” said Nabil Shaath, who leads the foreign affairs department of Fatah, the main party of the Palestinian Authority. “Without that, our goal is membership in the United Nations General Assembly in September.”

Israeli, Palestinian and Western officials interviewed on the current impasse, most of them requesting anonymity, expressed an unusual degree of pessimism about a peaceful resolution. All agreed that the turmoil across the Middle East had prompted opposing responses from Israel and much of the world.
Israel, seeing the prospect of even more hostile governments as its neighbors, is insisting on caution and time before taking any significant steps. It also wants to build in extensive long-term security guarantees in any two-state solution, but those inevitably infringe the sovereignty of a Palestinian state.

The international community tends to draw the opposite conclusion. Foreign Secretary William Hague of Britain, for example, said last week that one of the most important lessons to be learned from the Arab Spring was that “legitimate aspirations cannot be ignored and must be addressed.” He added, referring to Israeli-Palestinian talks, “It cannot be in anyone’s interests if the new order of the region is determined at a time of minimum hope in the peace process.”

The Palestinian focus on September stems not only from the fact that the General Assembly holds its annual meeting then. It is also because Prime Minister Salam Fayyad announced in September 2009 that his government would be ready for independent statehood in two years and that Mr. Obama said last September that he expected the framework for an independent Palestinian state to be declared in a year.
Mr. Obama did not indicate what the borders of that state would be, assuming they would be determined through direct negotiations. But with Israeli-Palestinian talks broken off months ago and the Middle East in the process of profound change, many argue that outside pressure is needed.

Germany, France and Britain say negotiations should be based on the 1967 lines with equivalent land swaps, exactly what the Netanyahu government rejects because it says it predetermines the outcome.
“Does the world think it is going to force Israel to declare the 1967 lines and giving up Jerusalem as a basis for negotiation?” asked a top Israeli official who spoke on condition of anonymity. “That will never happen.”
While the Obama administration has referred in the past to the 1967 lines as a basis for talks, it has not decided whether to back the European Union, the United Nations and Russia — the other members of the so-called quartet — in declaring them the starting point, diplomats said. The quartet meets on April 15 in Berlin.

Israel, which has settled hundreds of thousands of Jews inside the West Bank and East Jerusalem, acknowledges that it will have to withdraw from much of the land it now occupies there. But it hopes to hold onto the largest settlement blocs and much of East Jerusalem as well as the border to the east with Jordan and does not want to enter into talks with the other side’s position as the starting point.
That was true even before its closest ally in the Arab world, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, was driven from power, helping fuel protest movements that now roil other countries, including Jordan, which has its own peace agreement with Israel.

“Whatever we put forward has to be grounded in security arrangements because of what is going on regionally,” said Zalman Shoval, one of a handful of Netanyahu aides drawing up the Israeli proposal that may be delivered as a speech to the United States Congress in May. “We are facing the rebirth of the eastern front as Iran grows strong. We have to secure the Jordan Valley. And no Israeli government is going to move tens of thousands of Israelis from their homes quickly.”
Those Israelis live in West Bank settlements, the source of much of the disagreement not only with the Palestinians but with the world. Not a single government supports Israel’s settlements. The Palestinians say the settlements are proof that the Israelis do not really want a Palestinian state to arise since they are built on land that should go to that state.

“All these years, the main obstacle to peace has been the settlements,” Nimer Hammad, a political adviser to President Abbas, said. “They always say, ‘but you never made it a condition of negotiations before.’ And we say, ‘that was a mistake.’ ”

The Israelis counter that the real problem is Palestinian refusal to accept openly a Jewish state here and ongoing anti-Israeli incitement and praise of violence on Palestinian airwaves.
Another central obstacle to the establishment of a State of Palestine has been the division between the West Bank and Gaza, the first run by the Palestinian Authority and the second by Hamas. Lately, President Abbas has sought to bridge the gap, asking to go to Gaza to seek reconciliation through an agreed interim government that would set up parliamentary and presidential elections.

But Hamas, worried it would lose such elections and hopeful that the regional turmoil could work in its favor — that Egypt, for example, might be taken over by its ally, the Muslim Brotherhood — has reacted coolly.
Efforts are still under way to restart peace talks but if, as expected, negotiations do not resume, come September the Palestinian Authority seems set to go ahead with plans to ask the General Assembly to accept it as a member. Diplomats involved in the issue say most countries — more than 100 — are expected to vote yes, meaning it will pass. (There are no vetoes in the General Assembly so the United States cannot save Israel as it often has in the Security Council.)

What happens then?

Some Palestinian leaders say relations with Israel would change.
“We will re-examine our commitments toward Israel, especially our security commitments,” suggested Hanna Amireh, who is on the 18-member ruling board of the Palestine Liberation Organization, referring to cooperation between Palestinian and Israeli troops. “The main sense about Israel is that we are fed up.”
Mr. Shaath said Israel would then be in daily violation of the rights of a fellow member state and diplomatic and legal consequences could follow, all of which would be painful for Israel.
In the Haaretz newspaper on Thursday, Ari Shavit, who is a political centrist, drew a comparison between 2011 and the biggest military setback Israel ever faced, the 1973 war.

He wrote that “2011 is going to be a diplomatic 1973,” because a Palestinian state will be recognized internationally. “Every military base in the West Bank will be contravening the sovereignty of an independent U.N. member state.” He added, “A diplomatic siege from without and a civil uprising from within will grip Israel in a stranglehold.”

A version of this article appeared in print on April 3, 2011, on page A1 of the New York edition.

"The Larger Game in the Middle East: Iran" from The New York Times

 By DAVID E. SANGER

Published: April 2, 2011

WASHINGTON  — On a Tuesday afternoon in mid-March in the White House Situation Room, as President Obama heard the arguments of his security advisers about the pros and cons of using military force in Libya, the conversation soon veered into the impact in a far more strategically vital place: Iran.

Enlarge This Image

Bryan Denton for The New York Times

Rebels under artillery fire in Libya.

The mullahs in Tehran, noted Thomas E. Donilon, the national security adviser, were watching Mr. Obama’s every move in the Arab world. They would interpret a failure to back up his declaration that Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi had “lost the legitimacy to lead” as a sign of weakness — and perhaps as a signal that Mr. Obama was equally unwilling to back up his vow never to allow Iran to gain the ability to build a nuclear weapon.

“It shouldn’t be overstated that this was the deciding factor, or even a principal factor” in the decision to intervene in Libya, Benjamin J. Rhodes, a senior aide who joined in the meeting, said last week. But, he added, the effect on Iran was always included in the discussion. In this case, he said, “the ability to apply this kind of force in the region this quickly — even as we deal with other military deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan — combined with the nature of this broad coalition sends a very strong message to Iran about our capabilities, militarily and diplomatically.”

That afternoon in the Situation Room vividly demonstrates a rarely stated fact about the administration’s responses to the uprisings sweeping the region: The Obama team holds no illusions about Colonel Qaddafi’s long-term importance. Libya is a sideshow. Containing Iran’s power remains their central goal in the Middle East. Every decision — from Libya to Yemen to Bahrain to Syria — is being examined under the prism of how it will affect what was, until mid-January, the dominating calculus in the Obama administration’s regional strategy: how to slow Iran’s nuclear progress, and speed the arrival of opportunities for a successful uprising there.

In fact, the Iran debate makes every such chess move in the region more complicated. At the end of this era of upheaval, which the White House considers as sweeping as the changes that transformed Europe after the Berlin Wall fell, success or failure may well be judged by the question of whether Iran realizes its ambitions to become the region’s most powerful force.

Last week, the decisions being made at the White House were about how firmly to back the protesters being shot in the streets in Syria and Yemen, or being beaten in Bahrain. For each of those, White House aides were performing a mostly silent calculation about whether the Iranians would benefit, or at least feel more breathing room.

Only two and a half months ago, things seemed very different. In January, American officials were fairly confident that they had cornered Iran: new sanctions were biting, the Russians were cutting off sophisticated weaponry that Iran wanted to ward off any Israeli or American attack, and a deviously complex computer worm, called Stuxnet, was wreaking havoc with the Iranian effort to enrich uranium.
But that changed with the arrival of the Arab Spring. Suddenly the Arab authoritarians
who had spent the last two years plotting with Washington to squeeze the Iranians — “Cut off the head of the snake,” King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia was famously quoted as advising in the WikiLeaks cables — became more worried about their own streets than the Iranian centrifuges spinning out nuclear fuel at Natanz. And American and European citizens became distracted, even as oil at $108 a barrel undercut many of the sanctions that the White House had hoped would convince Iranian citizens that the nuclear program was not worth its rising cost.

So when the White House sees the region through a Persian lens, what does it look like?

THE LIBYA LESSON

Mr. Obama argued, in his speech on Monday night, that Libya presented a special case — an urgent moral responsibility to protect Libyans being hunted down by the Qaddafi forces and a moment of opportunity to make a difference with what the president called “unique” American capabilities. (Translation: a multitude of technologies, like Tomahawk missiles, reconnaissance and electronic jamming.) Those are the same capabilities that would be critical in any attack on Iranian nuclear sites. The administration’s top officials knew that a demonstration of that ability would not be lost on Iran. But it is anyone’s guess how Iran would react.

“You could argue it either way,” said one official who was involved in the Libya debate and spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Maybe it would encourage them to do what they have failed to do for years: come to the negotiating table. But you could also argue that it would play to the hard-liners, who say the only real protection against America and Israel is getting a bomb, and getting it fast.”

But at least in public, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates told members of Congress not to expect that Iran’s nuclear program would accelerate much because of the attack on Libya — or that Iran’s security forces would crack down even more vigorously on the protest movements they have all but strangled. “My view is that, in terms of what they want to try and achieve in their nuclear program, they’re going about as fast as they can,” he said on Thursday. “And it’s hard for me to imagine that regime being much harder than it already is.”

THE ARAB ALLY CARD

The problem gets more complex when dealing with Arab allies who have little compunction about shooting protesters in the streets, even as they seek to undermine Iran. Saudi Arabia and Bahrain are the prime examples. The Saudis see Iran as the biggest threat to their own regional ambitions, and have cooperated in many American-led efforts to hem in Tehran. Yet relations between Washington and Riyadh have rarely been as strained: To King Abdullah, President Obama’s decision to abandon President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt was a sign of weakness, and a warning that he might throw the Saudi leadership under the bus if democracy demonstrations took root there.

Perhaps that explains why there was barely a peep from the White House when the Saudis rolled troops into neighboring Bahrain to help put down the Shiite-majority protests there. Much as Mr. Obama wants to see the aspirations of democracy protesters fulfilled, and urged steps toward reform in Bahrain, he has no desire to see the toppling of the government that hosts the Fifth Fleet, right across the Persian Gulf from Iran.

THE SYRIAN PUZZLE

For years the United States has tried in vain to peel Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, away from Iran and to reconcile with Israel. It fears that if his government collapses, chaos will reign, making Syria unpredictable as well as dangerous. It’s a reasonable fear. But in recent weeks the White House has concluded that it has much less to lose than the Iranians do if Mr. Assad is swept away. And, as some in Mr. Obama’s war council have noted, if protesters succeed in Syria, Iran could be next.
ISRAEL’S OPTIONS

All the Arab turmoil has left many Israelis convinced that America and its Arab allies are too distracted to credibly threaten that they will stop the Iranian nuclear ambitions at all costs, even though Mr. Donilon has pledged that “we will not take our eye off the ball.” Inside Israel, a debate has resumed about how long the Israelis can afford to put off dealing with the problem themselves, fed by fears that Iran’s reaction to the region’s turmoil might be a race for the bomb. That could lead to the worst outcome for Mr. Obama — a war between Iran and Israel — and that consideration alone makes the case for the administration to see little room for error in handling the main act.

"What's Missing From Their World View?" from Citizen Warrior

Posted: 02 Apr 2011 01:28 PM PDT MANY NON-MUSLIMS instinctively defend Islam because they see Muslims as weak. They see Islam as the underdog, and out of their kindness, they don't want to anybody to pick on a weak underdog. But is Islam weak? What do these people not know about Islam that leads them to think Islam is the 98-pound weakling and the West is the big, mean bully? What do they need to know to see the situation clearly? For example, they need to know that Islam is an ideology that consumes and subverts other cultures until eventually nothing is left of the previous culture. And they need to know that the process is underway in all Western democracies today. Islam is by nature and design a dominating, usurping, continually spreading ideology that now has the largest voting block in the UN. If these facts, and many more, were understood, more people would see Islam as worthy of criticism. A major barrier to the criticism (the automatic defense of 98-pound weaklings) would have been removed. So what's your answer? What do people not understand about Islam that makes them see Muslims as disadvantaged, vanquished, helpless victims bullied by omnipotent, intimidating, domineering non-Muslims? Please post your answers here. Or email them to us and we'll post them for you (anonymously, unless you say otherwise). We'll be posting the strongest answers in a future article, so give it your best shot!

"Mr. Obama's Libyan Adventure" from Sultan Knish

Posted: 02 Apr 2011 06:34 PM PDT It's a lot easier to start a war than it is to finish it, as Mr. Obama is learning on his Libyan adventure. That is why wars are generally entered into after some consideration of the situation on the ground. There is only one excuse for a rush to war-- and that is either an imminent threat or in response to an act of war. Such was the case after September 11, and yet even then the United States waited longer to begin bombing the Taliban-- than we did before bombing Gaddafi. Obama rushed in when bombing Libya was popular, and now when it hasn't he's rushing out again. The US is ending combat operations almost as soon as it began them to avoid being associated with the failure of the Libyan intervention. Or rather to avoid associating Obama with its failure. Obama was happy to take credit for the fall of Mubarak until the Muslim Brotherhood stepped up to succeed him. He was happy to take credit for toppling Gaddafi until he realized that it wasn't going to happen without a full bore invasion. The Arab Revolt was cool, but now it isn't anymore. And Obama doesn't want to be associated with it anymore. Suddenly it's last year's Keffiyah lying in the trash. Waiting is not a virtue in and of itself-- but planning is. That allows you to determine if the rebellion you are intervening to support only consists of a few hundred fighters-- some of whom are Al Qaeda. No general would have called for an assault before learning such simple facts and clarifying what the mission was to be. But the Summa Cum Anti-War grad of 2008, who has doubtless read Chris Hedges and Noam Chomsky, and built a grass roots network based entirely on his opposition to the war, had spent too much time studying why war is wrong and not nearly enough time studying how wars are won. A month ago the Arab League and European leaders were rushing to get on the right side of history. When the Libyan army, which had lost every war it ever fought, was pushed back by a few rebel attacks, the consensus was that Gaddafi was finished. Leading members of his own regime rushed to join the opposition. And the media triumphantly reported an inevitable rebel victory. There was just one problem. This time we were the ones getting our news about the war from 'Baghdad Bob'. The Libyan army is probably the worst army in the Middle East. It may be the worst army in the world. The last time it fought a war was 1987 and it lost badly, even though it had tanks, jet planes and the African warlords it was fighting had Toyota pickup trucks. Despite 3 to 1 numerical superiority, Gaddafi's forces somehow managed to lose 7 men for every 1 they killed. And also lost nearly a 1,000 tanks, armored vehicles and aircraft to enemies who were driving Toyota pickup trucks. When you come equipped with top of the line Soviet equipment and lose it all in something called The Toyota War, your enemies have good reason not take you seriously. With this in mind, it wasn't unreasonable to assume that the rebels could defeat Gaddafi. It was just unreasonable to assume that without knowing anything about the rebels. On the last day of the Six Day War, Soviet citizens woke baffled to the news that the Israelis who had been on the edge of defeat for five days straight were suddenly threatening Cairo and storming through Jerusalem. It was inexplicable. But there was a simple explanation. They had been getting fed false information by the losing side in a war. And then reality caught up with them. Similarly, King Hussein jumped into the war because he believed reports that Egypt and Syria were on the verge of victory. Actually they were on the verge of defeat. For weeks the media treated every Libyan rebel report as fact-based and every Gaddafi report as fiction. When the Libyan rebels began to lose, it was inexplicable. Our elites gaped like Baghdad Bob confronted with American troops. It wasn't supposed to happen, but it did. So the elites convinced themselves that it was just air power making the difference. If we could shut down Gaddafi's air force, then the rebels would win. And so we did that. The No Fly Zone is here. The Libyan air force is toast. So why are the rebels still losing? They're losing because the No Fly Zone was built on an illusion. The Libyan air force was never a major factor in anything. In the 1980's, it lost to African fighters in Toyotas brandishing Stinger missiles. And the entire Libyan army is mostly useless too. Arabs make terrible soldiers, but good skirmishers. The entire history of the Arab-Israeli wars should amply testify to that. An Arab country with a thousand tanks and jets is no threat to anyone. But a thousand fighters can cause serious havoc. Even win a war. This makes no sense to First Worlders who have grown on images of massive armies clashing on the battlefield. But this is not the modern world. The Libyan civil war is primitive even by Arab standards. It's a typical African civil war, complete with pickup trucks and swords. A battle is won when a dozen men die and the other side runs away. Once the Libyan army stopped pretending it was a modern military force, and whoever is in the field began ignoring whatever crazy orders were being issued by Gaddafi and his loyalists, and just started fighting this the old fashioned way-- the tide began to turn. A modern army is a complex instrument. If you don't use it properly, then it's worse than useless. But turn a couple of thousand fighters loose with machine guns and some artillery, and manpower becomes the crucial factor. And this time the African fighters are on Gaddafi's side, while the rebels are Arabs from different factions who don't trust each other. This is no longer a war between an army and guerrillas, but between militias, some of whom wear uniforms, most of whom don't. Gaddafi's men are handing out AK-47's to anyone willing to fight the rebels. We went in to protect civilians, but how do we do that when the civilians are massacring other civilians. Gaddafi is a butcher, the Arab rebels are violent racists. This is not a conflict between democracy and tyranny, but between tribes, clans and ethnicities. It is exactly the type of war we should have avoided like the plague because there is no up side to it. There is no right and wrong, just an explosion of tensions reined in by a tyrant, as every faction scrambles for power. This is the dumb war we stumbled into with our new administration's smart power. We're tossing cruise missiles into a war being fought with pickup trucks. And we don't even quite know why we're here. Our intervention will drag out the conflict, perhaps indefinitely if we choose it. NATO forces may be enlisted to guard a few rebel strongholds, dividing Libya between the rebels and Gaddafi. And with Al Qaeda fighters pouring in to take advantage of our air strikes, that will make for a pretty picture. Our unclear mission objectives mean that we've become a peacekeeping force with no goal or exit strategy. The Obama Administration is now warning Libyan rebels that if they kill civilians we will bomb them too. So not only are we at war with Gaddafi, we may now also be obligated to fight the rebels too. And how do we tell civilians from soldiers anyway. Once a weapon is picked up as loot, one body looks the same as any other. We could assume that all men are fighting men, but we went into Kosovo, because we treated Serbian executions of Muslim fighters as atrocities. Even though they were all men. If we apply the same rules to Libya, we'll have to start bombing everyone. Including ourselves. This is what happens when you start a war without thinking it through. Liberals have an ideological approach to war, as to all things. They are not concerned with whether a war can be won-- only whether it should be won. Either a war is right or it's not. If the war is not right, then it's also unwinnable. And if a war is right, then it is also winnable. Reality must comply with their ideology. That's how we came to have a 15 trillion dollar deficit to aid a 'recovery' in which families are struggling to put food on the table. And a democratic revolution in which the Islamists are set to take over. Reality meets ideology-- and their ideology crumbles every time. From the 1860's, Democrats have been a party ideologically averse to war, and yet the party most likely to get into a war without really knowing what they're doing. JFK and LBJ got into Vietnam with tens of thousands of advisers and before they knew it there was a war on. The enthusiastic college students who came out for JFK, did their best to denounce Nixon for the war, but it was their man who had done it. The Vietnam War was a disaster for the simple reason that we lacked clear goals and tactics from the start. It was not a war we chose, but a war we stumbled into. After World War II, liberal intellectuals fancied a new order in which military force would be used to enforce international law. Instead of wars, there would be police actions. And police actions are vague things. Euphemisms for war without its clarity. We know how to fight and win wars by applying force to achieve the destruction of enemy forces. But what is a police action. What are its goals? Implicitly it is to keep the peace. Not to win, but to stand as the Union Nation's towering beat cop on the block, waving our armed forces around like a billy club.  This is why we lost in Iraq and Afghanistan, because we defined the objective not as the defeat of the Axis of Evil, but as rebuilding the target countries into havens of peace and democracy. The vaguer the objectives, the harder it is to accomplish them. Obama treated Libya like an adventure, announcing a war from sunny Brazil, and ignoring congress and the public, until they forcefully made their objections clear. The war turned goalless, confused and contradictory-- with military leaders saying one thing and political leaders saying another. The coalition is confused and at odds with each other, packed full of frightened European and Arab leaders who are afraid that the world is changing, but have no idea what to do about it. Now Obama is running away from the war that he started. And Mr. Obama's Libyan Adventure is what happens when liberal leaders start wars with no idea how to see them through.