БОРИС ГУЛЬКО
От апатии к
неволе.
В рассказе
Михаила Зощенко многочисленные жильцы ленинградской коммуналки вели вполне себе
удовлетворительную жизнь, пока не провели электричество. Днём на работе, по
делам. Вечером вернулись, включили свет… Свинство непереносимое. Пришлось
электричество отключить.
Резня в
гейском клубе в Орландо, устроенная
Омаром Матином, стала таким моментальным включением света. И реакция на
неё американцев, их прессы и выбранных лидеров, была как в помянутом рассказе –
выключить свет!
Об Омаре
Матине известно: он был геем (его прошлая жена сообщила это, а нынешняя – трогательная
деталь, иногда подвозила Матина к гейскому клубу), зарегистрированным
демократом, мусульманином, резню устроил во имя торжества ИГ: «Я совершил это
для Исламского Государства. Я хочу, чтобы Америка прекратила бомбить мою
страну», заявил он, позвонив в полицию. Гейский клуб был избран им для теракта,
вероятно, поскольку он хорошо знал эту цель. Террорист в Сан-Бернандино тоже
убивал там, где до того работал. Имело значение, наверняка, и то, что
запрещённый исламом гомосексуализм стал неким символом либеральных свобод
Запада.
Анализ причин
резни геев в Орландо предложил нации Обама. Он обвинил в случившемся саму
Америку, призвав её к самоанализу. Американцы должны «найти силы и смелость
поменяться», – заявил он. При этом, заметила Хитер Вильхельм в статье для RCP, Обама не обещал поменять что-то в работе ФБР, которое дважды
допрашивало Матина, знало об опасности, им представляемой, и даже предупредило
Дисней Уорлд об этой опасности. «Этих одиноких игроков или небольшие ячейки
очень трудно обнаружить, и их атаки очень трудно предотвратить», пожаловался
Обама. Особенно, если не пытаться.
Конечно, корнем
зла Обама объявил доступность оружия и призывал запретить многие виды его, как
будто в Париже и в Брюсселе такие запреты предотвратили недавние атаки, и могли
предотвратить взрыв на бостонском марафоне. Очевидно, президент пытается
отвлечь нацию от реальной причины резни в Орландо – от агрессии против Запада
радикального ислама.
В реальной
жизни оружие в руках граждан является защитой против исламского терроризма.
Единственная провалившаяся атака исламистов на территории США – у здания, в
котором наша героиня Памела Геллер проводила конкурс карикатур на ислам, была
сорвана, когда некто застрелил двух террористов в бронежилетах и с карабинами.
По официальной версии, это был пожилой дорожный полицейский с табельным
пистолетом. Последняя волна «ножевого терроризма» захлебнулась в Израиле, когда
правительство призвало евреев, владеющих оружием, постоянно носить его с собой.
В религиозном поселении Долев в наделе Биньямина, в котором живёт моя сестра,
по постановлению раввинов мужчины носят с собой пистолеты даже в шаббат. И за
четверть века в поселении не случилось ни одного теракта.
Так что же,
Обама, борясь против оружия в руках граждан, печётся о безопасности исламистов больше,
чем об интересах прочих американцев, и прав Тодд Старнс, заявивший на FOXnews, что «Обама больше апологет ислама, чем президент»? Доводы
к такому заключению приводит Каролин Глик в статье для JP от 16 июня. В ней она напоминает, что в Египте
американский президент использовал всё дипломатическое и экономическое влияние
своей страны для установления там власти террористического «Мусульманского
Братства», а на нынешнего президента Сиси, свергнувшего исламистов и призвавшего
имамов реформировать ислам, а также налаживающего сотрудничество с Израилем, наложил
санкции и отказал в поставках оружия. Также Обама снял санкции с крупнейшего
спонсора исламского терроризма Ирана, и открыл тому дорогу к атомной бомбе.
Исламистам доверены важные посты в разных отделах администрации США включая
разведку. Глик могла бы припомнить также, что Обама освободил под надуманными
предлогами десятки террористов из тюрьмы в Гуантанамо, и многие из освобождённых
вернулись к своему кровавому джихаду. Поэтому убедительно звучит возражение
Глик журналу «Атлантик», утверждающему, будто «Обама стремится усилить
умеренных мусульман в их борьбе против радикалов». Вывод журналистки: «Обама
далёк от помощи умеренным
мусульманам. В реальной политике он помогает радикалам. С тех пор, как он
вступил в должность, Обама стремится и в США, и на Ближнем Востоке наделить
влиянием радикальных мусульман за счет умеренных».
Фаворит, если судить по последним опросам, в
борьбе за президентство США Хиллари Клинтон говорит примерно то же, что Обама. Она,
как и Обама, не произносит страшных слов «исламский терроризм», чтобы «не
демонизировать целую религию и объявлять ей войну». По ее словам, это «лишь
сыграло бы на руку ИГИЛ». Хиллари призвала
американцев налаживать диалог с живущими в США мусульманами, чтобы «вместе
справиться с этой угрозой». Она также поддерживает необходимость «основанных на
здравом смысле реформ» законов о владении оружием.
Хиллари столь
мягка к джихадистам не из идейных побуждений, как Обама (анти-антитеррорист,
назвал президента бывший прокурор Маккарти в статье для NRO). Её позиция объясняется, очевидно, тем, что, по
сообщению того же NRO, по меньшей
мере 20% фондов её президентской
кампании дарованы ей Саудовской Аравией. Её многолетняя ближайшая советница
Хума Абедин – из высокопоставленной семьи в Мусульманском Братстве.
Удивительна
реакция на резню в Орландо общественного мнения американцев. Благосклонность к
исламистам Обамы и Хиллари – одного – духовная, другой – меркантильная,
известна давно. Рейтинг Обамы, долго колебавшийся в районе 40%, поднялся после
теракта в Сан-Бернандино в декабре 2015 года к 52%. Не опустился он и после Орландо.
Хиллари до Орландо в опросах стояла примерно наравне с Доналдом Трампом. После
теракта её рейтинг немедленно скакнул вверх, и превысил рейтинг Трампа на 12%.
Трамп
занимает последовательную позицию относительно исламистской угрозы США. Он
предлагает прекратить допуск в страну мусульман, пока названная угроза не
исчезнет. И конечно, он против приёма Америкой сирийских беженцев, дополнительные
65 000 которых решил недавно впустить в США Обама. Почему американцев не
привлекло, особенно в свете чудовищных жертв в Орландо, такое предложение?
Чтобы понять
в целом состояние американского общества, мне представляется необходимым
привлечь теорию демократий замечательного шотландского мыслителя конца 18 века
лорда Александра Тайтлера. Тайтлер занимался историей античных Афин и сделал
вывод, что примерно за 200 лет своего существования демократическое государство
проходят восемь фаз от возникновения, развития и расцвета до угасания.
Последние три фазы, актуальные для сегодняшней Америки, по Тайтлеру: от
самодовольства до апатии; от апатии до зависимости; от зависимости назад в
неволю.
Перед
выборами 2012 года Митт Ромни определил, что 47% американцев получают разного
вида пособия и поэтому находятся в зависимости от государства и проголосуют за
демократа. В последние четыре года Обама заметно расширил круг зависимых, их
число уже наверняка превысило 50% от всего населения. Апатия, связанная с
чувством зависимости, тоже возросла. Хиллари, имеющая хорошие шансы на волне
окутывающей американцев апатии победить, обещает дальнейшее «перераспределение
доходов», то есть раздачу гражданам незаработанных ими денег. Исход ноябрьских
выборов обещают решить граждане, желающие больше таких незаработанных денег. По
теории Тайтлера, грядёт последняя стадия угасания – «от зависимости в неволю».
Однако
наступление исламистов таит в своих успехах противоречие, которое может эти
успехи перечеркнуть. После теракта в Орландо в NRO появилась статья, подписанная: «Аноним».
Автор,
гей-активист, пишет: «Я понял с жестокой ясностью, что в иерархии
прогрессивного движения мусульмане стоят выше геев. Каждый ученый и
политический деятель, включая президента Обаму и Хиллари, и половина «говорящих
голов» на ТВ, которые сегодня говорили: «Мы не знаем, что мотивировало стрелка»,
показали мне их истинные приоритеты: умиротворение мусульман им важнее, чем
защита жизни геев. Каждый либерал, пытающийся оградить исламских убийц,
становится соучастником убийств, и я больше не хочу быть частью их команды. Мне
просто надоело. Они – больные лицемеры, больные сводники... И вы знаете, что
делает меня еще злее? Тот факт, что я должен скрывать свою личность и остаться
анонимным в данном эссе. Если я выдам себя как сторонника Трампа, я подвергнусь
преследованиям всех, кого знаю. Я буду линчёван бандой, с которой вплоть до
вчерашнего дня водился».
А что будет
с либеральным альянсом, когда исламисты достаточно насолят и феминисткам?
Недавно Жанна Сундеева напечатала статью о состоянии американского общества под
названием: «Предчувствие гражданской войны…» Не вспыхнет ли такая война локально
внутри либерального лагеря? Это могло бы спасти страну.
Напоследок –
недоумение из области мистических. На 12 июня этого года выпал важнейший
праздник иудеев – Шавуот. Перед этим, начиная с Песаха, религиозные евреи тщательно отсчитывали 49 дней
«приношения омера». Шавуот – 50-й день отсчёта. Христиане называют свой
праздник, связанный с нашим – Пятидесятницей. И в этот день завершения отсчёта 49-ти
дней приношения омера мусульманин Омар убил 49 человек, сам став 50-й жертвой.
Существует мнение,
что случайных совпадений не бывает. Что может означать это?
I'm a Gay Activist, and After Orlando, I Have Switched
My Vote to Trump
BY ANONYMOUS JUNE 12, 2016
This is the saddest
day of my life. I can't even wrap my mind around the horror of what happened
last night in Orlando, where 50 joyful dancing queers were murdered by a
religious extremist. I'm sad -- devastated, in my soul -- about that; but I'm
also sad that the events of Orlando have shattered my political beliefs, as I
can no longer swear allegiance to a peace-love-and-unicorns progressive
philosophy that only helps to get my fellow queers killed.
Yes, there is a war
between religious fundamentalism and the spirit of love and tolerance. But we
progressives here in America still labor under the delusion that the religion
we need to combat is Christianity. But that's a strawman opponent, and has been
so for decades. Since the 1990s, Christian extremists have essentially lost all
their power, and are now toothless nonplayers in the "culture wars."
Meanwhile, Muslim extremists, with guns, murder us, and on the left our only
response is to bleat about "Islamophobia" and jump through hoops
trying to explain away the self-evident religious motivation for the killings.
SPONSORED
Oh sure, all year I've
been playing the "Bernie or Hillary?" game with all the other
default-Democrats in my social and professional circles. But this is no longer
some kind of game. Our lives are on the line. Although I voted for Hillary in
the primary, I now cringe inwardly with shame and embarrassment at having done
so, and in November I will vote for Trump.
Why? Yes, I know that
Trump is an a**hole, Trump is a clown, Trump is a motormouth buffoon. You don't
have to convince me of that. But he's also the only person saying anything
about putting the brakes on Islamic extremism, and in light of what happened
last night in Orlando, suddenly that is the only issue that really matters when
it comes to the health, well-being and safety of the queer community.
As an aside, Trump has
never said anything homophobic, and has always gotten along well with the gay
community in New York, so there's that in his favor as well.
I also now realize, with brutal
clarity, that in the progressive hierarchy of identity groups, Muslims are
above gays. Every
pundit and politician -- and that includes President Obama and Hillary Clinton
and half the talking heads on TV -- who today have said "We don't know
what the shooter's motivation could possibly be!" have revealed to me their true
priorities: appeasing Muslims is more important than defending the lives of gay
people. Every
progressive who runs interference for Islamic murderers is complicit in those
murders, and I can no longer be a part of that team.
I'm just sick of it.
Sick of the hypocrisy. Sick of the pandering. Sick of the deception.
And you know what
makes me angrier still? The fact that I have to hide my identity and remain
anonymous in writing this essay. If I outed myself as a Trump supporter, I would be harassed and doxxed
and shunned by everyone I know and by the Twitter lynch mobs which up until
yesterday I myself led.
I am ashamed. I am
angry. And I am sad. I don't want to vote for Trump, but I must. And if you
care about the safety of the gay community in America, so must you.
How Anti-Semitism Became Respectable Again
The world was anti-Semitic in 1944, when Ben
Hecht wrote A Guide for the Bedevilled. The majority of educated, civilized,
and rational people believed that the Jews in some fashion had brought their
own problems upon themselves. Hecht began fighting anti-Semitism after an
unsettling exchange with a New York hostess, who explained to him that Jews had
to acknowledge their own responsibility in the matter of their persecution.
This polite Gentile lady explained:
The Jews complain. They suffer dreadfully, and
they accuse. But they never stop to explain or to reason or to figure the thing
out and tell the world what they, and only they, know...They are--how shall I
put it--collaborative victims, a thing they refuse to see...The Germans are not
a race of killers, fiends, of a special and different sort of sub-humans.
Not that she approved of Nazi genocide,
to be sure; she may not have known the extent of the butchery, but
she knew that dreadful things were happening to Europe's Jews. But
she thought that the Germans must have had some kind of provocation to
hate the Jews so deeply. Why else would the Germans hate Jews so much?
When did the old anti-Semitism return? For
half a century the horror of a million Jewish children murdered by the Nazis
stopped the mouths of the anti-Semites, but that memory has worn off. What
Hecht's interlocutor believed in 1944, most liberals believe today, not to
mention the vast majority of Europeans. Yes, the Arabs hate Jews, and
express this hatred in a barbaric way, they will allow, but that is because
Israel has provoked the hatred.
SPONSORED
Tripwires that once seemed taboo are
being crossed every day. One was triggered in the new action film "Triple
9," which portrays a gang of ruthless Russian mafia killers operating under
the cover of a kosher meat business. There are some violent Jewish criminals,
but I have not been able to find a single example of an observant Jew
among them. The filmmakers have invented a stereotype that has no
instantiation in the real world.
Anti-Semitic caricatures used to be off
limits. When Dickens created the far less offensive character of Fagin
in Oliver Twist, he atoned by inventing the saintly Jewish figure of Rina
in Our Mutual Friend. One finds unflattering portrayal of Jews here and
there in English fiction (including some despicable poems by T.S. Eliot) but
nothing like this filth. It's become acceptable to hate Jews.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu touched another
tripwire this week by nominating mass-murderer Marwan Barghouti for the Nobel
Peace Prize, an act hailed by theArab press. "Barghouti is currently serving five
life sentences in an Israeli prison for his role in leading terrorist
activities during the first and second intifadas that included dozens of
suicide bombings against Israeli civilians. He is a former leader of the
Tanzim, a militant faction of the Fatah party currently headed by Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas, that took credit for many of the murders during the
bloody Second Initfada in the early 2000’s. In 2014, he called for the launch
of a third intifada," the Jewish Press reported.
It is one thing to excuse Arab terrorism
against Israeli civilians--the Left has done that throughout--and it is quite
another to propose to reward murderers with the world's most respected
humanitarian honor. The world of enlightened opinion has no tears for the half
million dead Syrian civilians, the tens of thousands of Kurds murdered by
Turkish security services, or the countless dead in the Iraqi civil war now
unfolding between ISIS and Iranian-backed Shi'ite militias. But it cries a
river for suicide bombers who murder Israelis, because the Israelis in some way
were asking for it.
On most university campuses the majority of
young brainwash victims take it for granted that Israeli nastiness is the source
of the endemic Jew-hatred in the Muslim world. That mindse prevails from
Berkeley to the Vatican Secretariat. A billion and half people cry from the
bottom of their hearts: For us to live, they must die, or at least be driven
from their homeland. The wretchedness and despair of this great mass of
humanity, a tiny fraction of which has turned up on Europe's doorstep, is too
great to ignore. Surely the Jews must in some way be responsible. It is enough
to turn some liberal Jews into functional anti-Semites.
This is not a new thought. Before and during
the Second World War it was the conventional wisdom. Authors whom I
abhor like Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot said it openly. An author whom I
love, J.R.R. Tolkien, said it allegorically: in The Hobbit, the Dwarves
(whom he explicitly identified with the Jews) bring the calamity of Smaug upon
themselves through their own obsession with gold in their miner's kingdom at
the Lonely Mountain. Tolkien was not an anti-Semite, not at least in the
canonical definition (someone who hates Jews more than is absolutely
necessary). On the contrary, he was something of a philo-Semite (he famously
rebuked a German publisher who asked him to prove his Aryan heritage with the
thought that he was sorry that he had no descent from "that talented
people," the Jews). But he wrote in a period when
everyone knew that the Jews were in some measure responsible for
their own troubles.
Tolkien, to be sure, compensated for his
earlier ambivalent portrayal of the Dwarves/Jews in The Hobbit by portraying
an Elven-Dwarvish friendship in The Fellowship of the
Ring, deservedly the most beloved English-language novel of the 20th
century. He was a man of his times who at length rose above his times.
Those who did not rise above their times included G.K. Chesterton, who
conjectured that there must be some truth to the medieval allegation that the
Jews made Passover matzoh from the blood of Christians, and Hilaire Belloc, who
wrote a book entitled "The Jews" calling for the "elimination"
or "segregation" of "the alien."
SPONSORED
Islam,
as Bernard Lewis wrote in his seminal essay "The Roots of Muslim
Rage," "has given dignity to drab
and impoverished lives." What is that dignity? It is the consoling belief
that despite the humiliation of the Muslims during the past two centuries, the
Umma still possesses God's revelation and divine favor. The Christian West, from the White House to
the Vatican to the Elysee Palace to the Kanzleramt, sustains this conviction by
its courtship of Muslim good will. There is one great cognitive dissonance in the mix, and that is the
transformation of the Jews from a despised, dependent and vulnerable minority
to a Middle Eastern superpower. The return of the Jews to Zion threatens the belief that
Islam is the seal of prophecy: how could God favor the Jews, who perverted the
original revelation that Mohammed restored? That is why the Temple Mount
remains a radioactive issue on the Muslim street. Merely by being there, Israel
offers an existential challenge to Muslim identity. Conservative Muslim
regimes, to be sure, may make a temporary accommodation with Israel when it is
in their interest to do so; apocalyptic
regimes like Iran's never will.
Muslim civilization is crumbling, as I warned
in my 2011 book "How Civilizations Die (and Why Islam is Dying, Too)." The human cost of this crumbling will
be horrific, ranking among
the worst humanitarian disasters in human history, and a disaster that we will
watch in real time in high-definition video. The West is sickened by the
spectacle and indifferent to its causes; if the Jews madden the Muslims,
enlightened opinion thinks, let them go away.
Ich, ich dulde dass du rasest, Du, Du duldest
dass ich atme, wrote Heinrich Heine of the relationship between Gentiles and
Jews in 19th century Europe: I
tolerate your rage, and you tolerate my breathing. Things have changed. The crime
of the Jews today is to breathe, and especially to breathe the air
of their own country. As the body count rises, enlightened opinion
once again will blame the Jews for breathing. Muslims will continue to
engineer humanitarian disasters (as in the last Gaza War) to solicit Western
sympathy, and European governments will attempt to placate their growing Muslim
populations by blaming Israel.
The difference between today and the 1930s, to
be sure, is that Jews are armed rather than defenseless. I am weary of
excusing myself for breathing. Let them hate us as long as they fear us.
«Предчувствие гражданской
войны…»
«Я не разделяю ваших убеждений,
но готов умереть за ваше право их высказывать», эти слова приписывают Вольтеру,
но принадлежат они английской писательнице Эвелин Холл, взяты из ее книги
«Друзья Вольтера» и являются парафразом
выражения Вольтера «Думайте и позволяйте другим думать тоже» из «Трактата о веротерпимости».
Начну кратко и с
главного: 1 июня американский гражданин Дональд Трамп приехал в рамках своей
избирательной кампании на пост президента США в американский город Сан-Хосе на
встречу с американскими же гражданами, своими избирателями.
Проблема в том, что люди, пришедшие поддержать его, подвергались атакам во
время и после митинга, когда расходились и разъезжались.
Несколько лет назад,
когда возникло движение Tea Party,
я как-то услышала, что его представителей назвали в прессе фашистами,
расистами, и подумала: надо сходить на их встречи и посмотреть своими глазами,
что же они из себя представляют. Потому
что лучше всего увидеть самой.
Пошла и посмотрела. Абсолютно нормальные люди, которые
принадлежат к разным партиям, кто-то работает на компании, кто-то владеет своим
бизнесом, разный возраст, пол. Люди, с которыми можно соглашаться или нет по
каким-то вопросам, но которые в массе способны услышать вас и привести свои
доводы. С ними возможен
нормальный разговор.
Когда в Сан-Франциско лет
5 назад приезжал Обама, как сейчас приехали Сандерс, Клинтон и Трамп, был
организован митинг против него.
Конечно, я туда пришла… Наша
группа стояла возле Fairmont Hotel с лозунгами, плакатами.
Напротив нас стояла
восторженная толпа поклонников Обамы. Как
вы думаете, был ли кто-то из них избит? Облили ли кого-то помоями, закидали ли
помидорами? Оскорбляли ли кого-то? Разбили ли кому-то машину?
Не открою большого
секрета, если скажу – нет, ничего этого не было. Люди, стоящие на нашей стороне, причем
люди из разных партий, понимали, что они могут не соглашаться с оппозицией, но
они не имеют права затыкать другим рот.
Они живут в стране, где
пока еще существует свобода слова.
А слышали ли вы,
уважаемые читатели, о том, что сторонники Круза или Трампа кого-то избили, сорвали выступление мадам
Клинтон или тов. Сандерса? Преследовали сторонников вышеназванных кандидатов
после выступления?
Я не слышала.
Трампу срывают
выступления постоянно. Я никогда не была его поклонницей, но, во-первых, мы выбираем из того, что имеем…А имеем,
помимо него – патологическую лгунью, взяточницу и убийцу Хиллари и
полубезумного, хотя и искреннего социалиста Сандерса, человека без профессии,
очередного уличного агитатора.
Во-вторых, я не люблю
такого свинства по отношению к людям. Не дать человеку сказать? Затыкать рот?!
Как это все более и более принято в последнее время в университетах, которые по
идее должны быть источниками свободных дискуссиий…
Один мой хороший знакомый, молодой американец с добрым сердцем попытался мне
«объяснить», почему, мол, именно Трампу не дают говорить, почему ему угрожают и
т.д. «Ну, ты же понимаешь, он такие вещи говорит – стену построить… он сам
провоцирует людей…»
Что интересно, не только
мой знакомый, человек молодой и вне политики,
сказал это, но и мэр Сан-Хосе демократ Sam Liccardo
усмотрел вину Трампа в том, что тому не дают проводить митинги.. В чем вина? Я
думаю, в том, что Трамп посмел ступить на калифорнийскую землю. Как тот ягненок, который виноват в том,
что волку хочется кушать.
Мэр третьего по величине
города Калифорнии, находящегося в сердце Силиконовой Долины, по сути одобряет
беспорядки, драки, угрозы в адрес своих политических оппонентов. Мэр винит
Трампа в том, что толпа бесчинствует на улицах и не дает поддерживающим Трампа
людям прийти на митинг или уйти с него неизбитыми!
Любопытно вот что:
фашист, расист, антисемит и исламист Луис Фаррахан вещает такое, что с
непривычки можно просто не понять, где мы – в США или в Саудовской Аравии или
нацистской Германии в 1933 г.. Вы слышали о том, что ему не дали говорить? Или
что его последователей били, когда они шли с митинга? Нет.
Второй момент: никакая
толпа не выходит на улицу сама…Людей выводят на улицу организованно те силы,
которым это нужно. Ради той цели, которую им
надо достичь. Потом эта толпа начинает жить своей
«жизнью», превращаясь почти всегда в то, что вы увидите на ролике ниже. В
быдло, которым уже трудно управлять. Убьют, покалечат и не заметят. Потом
сядут, и те, кто их на улицу вызвал, просто про них забудут… Но это будет
потом.
Так что не надо рассказывать о стихийных протестах возмущенных людей.
Это не отдельные люди со
своим мнением, соблюдающие Конституцию США, дающие право другим иметь свое,
отличное от них мнение. Это
не люди, способные думать и уж тем более давать думать другим.
Это погромщики, которые вышли избивать инакомыслящих, нарушать законы США.
Вот что рассказали люди,
кстати, демократы по партийной принадлежности, которые пришли просто послушать,
что же скажет Трамп.
«Я видела, как одна семья с двумя детьми-подростками побежала в гараж к
машине, а за ней группа молодых людей с угрозами… В гараже били машины… не
давали выехать…». «Один парень бежал от толпы, ему подставили подножку, он
упал, его ударили ногами, обступили и обзывали…» «В толпе погромщиков было
много молодых людей с характерными гангстерскими татуировками, у некоторых лица
были замотаны шарфами…» «Я
поражена: было много белых американцев среди толпы протестующих, и они
бесновались точно так же, как бандиты, точно так же…» «К тем, кто был в
кепи со словом Trump, подходили и сбивали кепи, потом сжигали, срывали
футболки с людей…» «Толпа окружала отдельных людей, их оскорбляли, в них кидали
яйца… Полиции почти не было. Было несколько человек с огромными мексиканскими
флагами…»
Будь на месте мэра или
шефа полиции реальный лидер, лидер, а не политическая тряпка, о которую ноги
противно вытереть, он бы нашел в себе силы это бесчинство остановить, а не идти
на поводу у манипуляторов и не винить в произошедшем людей, у которых другие
взгляды.
Потому что если идти по этой дорожке – так и всем тем, кто понимает, что Обама
и что левые либералы делают с этой страной, надо выйти на улицы и драться. А это – гражданская война, к которой нас
толкают левые. Это кризис, который, согласно учениям радикала Саула Алинского, не должен пройти
зря. А должен служить смене строя.
Для меня это простой
урок: с такими лидерами, каких мы сегодня имеем, у нас с вами нет защиты от толпы, от
погрома, у нас отбирают свободу слова, она предоставляется только тем, кто
клонится вместе с линией партии.
А там мы уже были.
Можно не любить Трампа и
его идеи. Можно не голосовать за него.
Но он имеет полное право
говорить то, что думает, там и тогда, где и когда считает нужным. А мы имеем право приходить на те митиги, на
которые мы хотим и имеем право уходить с них неизбитыми.
Посмотрите это видео. Это
свобода слова или погром?
И именно по этой причине
я буду голосовать за Трампа. И пусть мой голос в Калифорнии ничего не решает.
Пусть я не уверена в том, что он сделает то, о чем говорит, пусть я не
соглашаюсь с ним в каких-то вещах, но я из принципа буду голосовать за того,
кому самым бесстыдным образом затыкают рот.
А на самом деле – не только ему – нам всем. Нам всем плюнули в лицо в очередной
раз.
P.S. Когда статья уже была написана, всплыло
это объявление на сайте Craigslist “to whom it may concern: we will pay $15.00
an hour plus travel (including room and board), clothing, flags, signs, etc..
for individuals willing to disrupt Trump rallies throughout the US. If interested please leave your name and contact number”.
Это обращение ко всем желающим: «Мы заплатим всем, желающим прерывать встречи и
митинги Трампа по всей стране, $15 в час плюс расходы на дорогу, проживание,
питание, одежду, плакаты. Заинтересованы? Пришлите свой номер телефона».
Вот так. А вы пашете, да?
Рано встаете, налоги платите. Зачем работать, когда можно бандитствовать,
избивать людей, хамить, быть тем, кто ты есть на самом деле, – быдлом, и при
этом деньги получать, жрать и пить, ездить по стране?!
Кто платит? Я не знаю, но я вижу, что колоссальные средства вкладываются в то,
чтобы превратить США в либеральное, гангстерское государство, разрушить законы,
Конституцию и дать власть шариковым. Сорос, Клинтон, наши радикальные исламские
«друзья» или скорее всего они вместе – я не знаю. Но нам пора всем задуматься,
даже тем, кого не интересует политика, но интересуют 20 способов приготовления
котлет… Пора, потому что политика уже начала активно интересоваться вами. Вы не
были на «том» митинге, вас пока не избили… Но завтра вы пойдете на другой – в синагогу,
в церковь, на митинг в защиту ваших детей и вашего права их воспитывать – а
привычка избивать инакомыслящих у быдла останется. И уже не важна суть митинга.
Важно заставить нас не думать и мыслить, как приказано левыми. Вы либо думаете,
как вам сказано, либо будете избиты (в лучшем случае).
Сегодня это быдло на митингах в масках и тряпках на лицах, а завтра им сошьют
форму, назовут «народными отрядами» и покажут врага. Это мы. И вы, если
привыкли иметь свое мнение. «Толерантность» либералов, о которой они так громко
кричат, заключается в том, что мы должны делать и думать так, как они считают
правильным. Тогда нас погладят по головке, а может, дадут конфетку. Инакомыслие
уничтожается. Пока не так, как в СССР. Но долго ли ждать? И хотите ли вы ждать,
пока за вами придут?
On Tuesday, the New York Times released a stunning editorial blaming
Sunday’s horrific Orlando terror attack on…wait for it…Republicans.
No, I’m not pulling your leg. “While the precise motivation for the
rampage remains unclear”—more on that later—“it is evident that Mr.
Mateen was driven by hatred toward gays and lesbians. Hate crimes don’t happen
in a vacuum. They occur where bigotry is allowed to fester, where minorities
are vilified and where people are scapegoated for political gain. Tragically, this is the state
of American politics, driven too often by Republican politicians who see
prejudice as something to exploit, not extinguish.”
This is strange, given that Omar Mateen, the
now-infamous shooter at the Pulse nightclub, did not mention Republicans when
called 911 to pledge allegiance to ISIS and its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
According to the latest reports, he did not mention Paul Ryan or Mitch
McConnell when he called a local television station and declared the following:
“I did it for ISIS.
I did it for the Islamic State.” He did not rain down curses upon America’s
roiling bathroom wars or even the scourge of supply-side economics when,
terrified eyewitnesses reported, he said “he wanted America to stop bombing his country.”
Well, never mind all that. What do words even
mean these days, anyway? “The 49 people killed in Orlando were victims of a
terrorist attack,” the Times concludes, albeit reluctantly, given that 98
percent of its editorial blames Republicans instead, neglecting to mention that
Mateen was a registered
Democrat. “But they also need to be remembered as casualties of a
society where hate has deep roots.”
Those “deep roots,” at least according to our
friends at Salon, Rolling Stone, The New Republic, and a branch of
Planned Parenthood Action, also include a special something called “toxic
masculinity.” Mateen, at least according to this framework, was a catastrophic
crockpot of conflicting prejudices, bigotries, societal corruptions, and, most
importantly, a consistent
hatred of women. ISIS, you see, was just a convenient smoke screen for Mateen’s real motives; in
this view, no one could really believe any of that wild and crazy religious
stuff too.
Yet another culprit, in case you missed it,
has become a media darling of late: the AR-15, a rifle that many journalists pretend they know
everything about (pro tip: most don’t) and that also, inconveniently, was not
actually used in the Orlando attack. Mateen’s gun was a Sig Sauer MCX carbine,
but that didn’t stop Newsweek,
the Washington Post, and dozens of other media outlets from obsessively
lunging at the AR-15, declaring it a “weapon that shoots off 700 rounds in a
minute”—that would be Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson being wildly incorrect—and,
by extension, demonizing the millions of law-abiding Americans who safely own
this gun.
Eh, details, what do they matter? Meanwhile,
in the wake of the nation’s worst mass shooting in history, CNN’s Anderson
Cooper berated Florida’s attorney general for not tweeting about gay pride. On
Facebook, popular evangelical blogger Jen Hatmaker scolded her fellow
Christians for what she saw as hypocritical attempts to show post-Orlando love
and compassion: “Anti-LGBTQ-sentiment has paved a long runway to hate crimes.”
President
Obama, not to be outdone, subtly blamed America. We need to do some “soul
searching,” he told the nation,
sounding exhausted, adding that Americans need “the strength and courage to change.” The president
was not, alas, talking about changing the FBI, which, under his own
administration, was apparently quite aware of Mateen, interviewed him multiple
times, and was even warned by Disney World that he was likely casing out an
attack. No, no: “These
lone actors or small cells are very hard to detect,” Obama told America,
despite clear evidence otherwise, “and very hard to prevent.”
Donald Trump, for his part, predictably yelled
about immigration and his proposed Muslim ban, despite the fact that Mateen was
born in the United States. Trump, who has had his usual wild-eyed carnival of a
week, also called out Obama for his studied refusal to say “radical Islam.” The
president, clearly furious, lashed out: “What exactly would using this label accomplish? What
exactly would it change?”
Well, I can think of one thing that needs to
change: The frenzied and absurd finger-pointing among Americans, at each other,
in the wake of a horrific attack. If a turn of phrase can turn attention
outward to the clear challenge of ISIS—and inward to our failed and cumbersome
security apparatus, clearly unable to rise to this challenge—it would at least
be a start.
Heather Wilhelm is a writer based in
Austin,Texas. Her work can be found
By
DANIEL HENNINGER
June 15, 2016 6:32 p.m. ET
The day after Donald
Trump accused Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton of refusing to say “radical Islamic
terrorism,” President Obama called Mr. Trump’s charge a “distraction” from
fighting terrorism. Possibly so, but it wasn’t the only distraction.
Within hours
of Omar Mateen verbally
dedicating his slaughter of 49 people to Islamic State, terrorism got drowned
out by an outpouring of other subjects.
Here, for example, is the New York Times editorializing on the “many factors”
that caused the Orlando massacre: “a vicious and virulent homophobia; a failure
to identify and intercept those with histories of domestic abuse or threats of
violence; a radicalized strain of Islam . . . .” The Times editors then added
to this list “one other factor,” which of course is “easy access to guns.”
Hard as it may
be to focus, the subject this week is, once again, just terrorism. Back in February
after the New Hampshire presidential primaries, something in the exit polls
caught my eye. It was that of the four “most important” issues facing the
country, Democratic voters put terrorism fourth, at 10%. For Granite State
Republicans it was 23%.
At the time,
the 10% figure struck me mainly as an intriguing result from a small state
early in the primary season. Still, the terrorist attack in San Bernardino had
just occurred in December and the horrific Paris massacres a month before.
But that
pattern—Democrats ranking terrorism fourth at 10%—held throughout the 2016
primary season. Even in military-minded South Carolina, terrorism registered at
10% with Democrats. For South Carolina Republicans, terrorism was the top issue
at 32%.
In April, a
study by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations of the primaries’ exit polls
noticed the phenomenon: “Terrorism has been named as the top issue on average
by one in ten (Democratic) voters, far behind the economy/jobs, income
inequality, and health care.”
Does this mean
Republicans are from Mars and Democrats are from Venus? Yes it does, and the
Democrats know it.
A Wednesday
Washington Post article titled “A Fight Over Nation’s Values” said: “Both
Clinton and Obama were eager to shift the focus away from terrorism and the
battle against Islamic State, an area of relative weakness for Democrats.”
The article
itself was about an effort by Democrats to transfer the post-Orlando political
conversation to Donald Trump’s “values.”
Donald Trump
can certainly tweet for himself about his values. But Islamic State and its
horrors, which do include San Bernardino and Orlando, began and metastasized
while Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton presided over national security. Voters
may reasonably ask themselves in November: Can the post-Obama Democrats be
trusted to do what needs to be done to shut down you-know-who in their
homicidal havens across the Middle East? Put differently, why is fighting
terrorism recognized as “an area of relative weakness for Democrats”?
To the last man
and woman, Democrats would go ballistic, if one may use that word, at the
notion they are “soft” on terrorism, even if they’ve created a
microagression-free vocabulary for the subject.
A less
tendentious reading of the exit polls, they’d say, is that nearly all Democrats
think terrorism is a problem, but most believe domestic concerns, such as
income inequality, deserve more attention. They’d say the differences between
the two parties, or between conservatives and progressives, is a matter of
degree and not common concern.
I don’t think
that’s true. The differences of degree are large, big enough to create
significant margins of risk for the American public’s safety.
That
difference is reflected not just in attitudinal preferences, but in policy
results across a broad spectrum of real-world security matters, both domestic
and international.
After the
attacks of September 11, 2001, Congress passed the Patriot Act with virtual
unanimity, presumably in recognition that the nation’s security apparatus was
inadequate for the nature of this new threat.
The left argued that liberal Democrats voted for it
because of post-9/11 “panic.” Soon, Democrats were legislating or filing
lawsuits to pare back the Patriot Act’s provisions. The law’s title itself
became a shorthand derision of then-President George W. Bush.
The experience
with the Patriot Act, however, tracks with the divide on virtually every
security issue: the many lawsuits to constrain the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act, the battles over the National Security Agency, litigation to
end “stop-and-frisk” policing or the endless tensions over the Fourth Amendment
and police investigations.
There are
indeed serious constitutional issues raised by these disputes, but Democrats
always end up on the same side of any policy affecting domestic or national
security—conveying unmistakably that they find these functions morally
distasteful, rather than morally necessary.
Two weeks ago,
Mr. Obama told the Air Force Academy’s graduating cadets he had “put aside 50 years of failed
policies” by using “diplomacy, not war.” That Air Force commencement was
the 10% mind-set reflected in those exit polls. Now Hillary Clinton is wrapping
herself in the Obama foreign policy. For the security threats that lie ahead,
it still won’t be enough.
Why
Speaking the Truth About Islamic Terrorism Matters
I had planned to weigh in on the slaughter in Orlando right
after it happened, but a sense of nausea intervened.
There was plenty of nausea to go around. You might think that
the chief catalyst would be the scene of slaughter itself: the nearly fifty
revelers at a gay nightclub dead, and scores more wounded by a single jihadist.
In a normal world, the spectacle of that carnage would have been
the focus of revulsion. I confess, however, that the repetition of such acts of
theocratic barbarism these past few decades has left me somewhat anesthetized.
This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy
particular standards for completeness.
Indeed, and alas. Take a look at that list: one thing you will note
-- apart from the fact that the terrorist attacks are correctly denominated as
"Islamist" terrorist attacks -- is that most years include more attacks than the years
before.
There were some 35 in 2014. I stopped counting at 100 for 2015.
So my initial reaction to the news from Orlando was a mixture of
anger, outrage -- and weariness. "Here," I said to myself, "we
go again."
First came the casualty figures. Twenty dead. No, make that 30.
Wait, it's 40, no, 50 dead and scores wounded, many gravely. And the
murderer? The world held its breath and the media prayed: Please, please,
please make him a white Christian NRA member, or at least a crazed white
teenager.
No such luck. Omar Mateen was the 29-year-old scion of
Afghan immigrants. Nothing wrong with that, of course. Right off the bat his
father assured the world that he was "saddened" by the
massacre (wasn't that nice?) and that Omar was "a good son."
Religion, he said, had "nothing to do with" his
son's rampage. He was just "angry" at gay people. So he
suited up and headed down to the Pulse nightclub where he methodically shot
some 100 people. Oh, and Mateen père has supported the Taliban, and claims
to be running for the presidency of Afghanistan. (Cue the theme music
from The Twilight Zone?)
It did not take long before the media realized that none of its
preferred narratives was operative.
There was a flicker of hope that Mateen might at least be a
gay-hating nearly white male (shades of George Zimmerman, the "white Hispanic"). But,
no, although Mateen
himself might, according to his ex-wife and others, have been gay, he hadpledged himself to ISIS. He had
also, in fact, attracted the interest of the FBI. It hadinterviewed him twice but decided that there was nothing to see here, move along
please.
In most respects, this act of Islamic slaughter was a matter of déjà-vu all over again. There was
the wrinkle that the Pulse, unlike the nightclub in Bali or the concert hall in
Paris, was patronized mostly by gays. But homosexuals are only one of many
groups that Islamists wish to exterminate. (Hence the Arab slogan "First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people," which can be seen and heard through the Middle East. First we'll get rid of the Jews,
then the Christians.)
And this brings me to the chief source of my nausea in response
to the massacre in Orlando: the rancid, untruthful, politically correct nonsense emitted by the MSM
and their chief pet, Barack Obama.
[T]he killer took in extremist information and propaganda over
the Internet. ... He appears to have been an angry, disturbed, unstable young
man who became radicalized.
Remember when Obama dismissed ISIS (or, as he likes to say,
"ISIL") as a "jay-vee"
threat? That was right before those jihadists really got to work
beheading people, burning them alive, and fomenting murder and mayhem in the
West. Part of Obama's speech was devoted to listing all the Islamic murderers
his administration had killed or deprived of funds:
ISIL continues to lose ground in Iraq. ISIL continues to lose
ground in Syria as well. ISIL's ranks are shrinking as well. Their morale is
sinking.
Feeling better?
Obama also reserved a few swats for guns:
We have to make it harder for people who want to kill Americans
to get their hands on weapons of war that let them kill dozens of innocents.
But what if a few patrons of the Pulse had been packing heat and
had had the good sense to hone their skills as marksmen? The same thing that
would have happened at Virginia Tech, or Newtown, or the Paris concert, or the
offices of Charlie Hebdo. Some enterprising citizen might have taken the
madman, or madmen, out, thus materially diminishing or even eliminating the
body count.
But Obama's main concern focused on a linguistic matter, the
phrase "radical Islam":
[T]he main contribution of some of my friends on the other side
of the aisle have made in the fight against ISIL is to criticize this
administration and me for not using the phrase "radical Islam."
That's the key, they tell us. We can't beat ISIL unless we call them radical Islamists.
This is not true. No one has said that the word
"Islam" or its cognates is the key to anything. What they -- and I --
have repeatedly said is that you can never deal with a problem unless you are
willing to recognize it for what it really is. And part of that recognition
involves calling things by their real names:
Since before I was president, I've been clear about how
extremist groups have perverted Islam to justify terrorism. As president, I
have called on our Muslim friends and allies at home and around the world to
work with us to reject this twisted interpretation of one of the world's great
religions.
Two points: first, extremist groups have not so much perverted
Islam as they have enforced some of its central teachings.
Andy cites chapter and verse to show how the interdiction
against homosexuality is rooted in Sharia, i.e., in Islamic law. I'll just
quote one passage, from the "moderate"
Ayatollah al-Sistani. When asked “What is [Islam's] judgment on sodomy and
lesbianism?”, he replied:
Forbidden. Those involved in the act should be punished. In
fact, sodomites should be killed in the worst manner possible.
Got that?
Obama took time out to castigate "politicians who
tweet," i.e., Donald Trump. You may think, as I do, that some of Trump's
proposals about how to deal with the reality of Islamic terrorism (among other
things) are extravagant.
But at least he is able to call Islamic terrorism "Islamic
terrorism."
Obama angrily insisted:
Calling a threat by a different name does not make it go away.
This is a political distraction.
But this is no merely linguistic nicety. Barack Obama has
consistently failed to deal with the "Islamic" part of the reality of
Islamic terrorism. Indeed, his administration has prevented the military, law
enforcement, and intelligence services from engaging forthrightly with the
threat of Islamic terrorism. They have insisted, for example, that briefing
materials be purged of any reference
to the real source of the terrorist animus: the passion for jihad
fired by allegiance to the fundamental law of Islam, sharia.
In his almost eight years
in office, Obama has left this country, and indeed the world, poorer, more
chaotic, more vulnerable. Perhaps
it was all part of his promise to "fundamentally transform the United
States of America." It is worth remembering what an important role his mendacious refusal
to call things by their real names has played in this sorry, nauseating tale.
"What's in a name?" Juliet asked Romeo. She found to
her sorrow that the answer was "quite a lot." Obama, if he has the
wit to acknowledge it, will discover that as well.
June 17, 2016 | 2:52am
On
Thursday, when talking about the terrorist atrocity in Orlando in that city,
President Obama acknowledged that Omar Mateen’s spree and the San Bernardino
murders in December stemmed from the same root. But that root isn’t ISIS or
jihad. The root is “derangement.”
These
were “carried out, it appears, not by external plotters, not by vast networks
or sophisticated cells but deranged individuals warped by the hateful
propaganda that they’d seen over the Internet.”
The
president could have placed Sunday’s attack in a different context — the
context not only of San Bernardino but of the slaughter at the Bataclan club in
Paris in November, and the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013, and the Fort Hood
spree in 2009.
These
are all the true precursors of Omar Mateen’s evil morning of slaughter —
terrorist attacks in service of jihad, inspired by inciters and designers of
jihadist violence.
But
the president had a different villain in mind. His villain, the true object of
his anger, was the political stalemate over guns. That is why he more precisely
likened the Orlando atrocity to the killings at the elementary school in
Newtown, Conn., and at the movie theater in Aurora, Colo.
Both
of these mass shootings were the work of schizophrenic madmen, not determined
fifth columnists. Indeed, to make the comparison to Adam Lanza of Newtown and
James Holmes of Aurora all but explicit, Obama described Mateen not as a
jihadist but as a “single deranged person.”
The president
did so because he doesn’t want us to view Mateen as a volunteer in a war against
the United States in which he served as a combatant against a cleverly chosen
soft target. He wants us to view Mateen as another psychotic American with
improper access to dangerous weaponry.
And
one, moreover, whose reason for the attack was not to harm America as a whole
but to act out his hatred against the LGBT community because of dangerous
cultural messages he learned inside the United States.
This
flies in the face of the phone calls Mateen made during the spree to 911 and to
a local TV news producer, as well as the Facebook post he put up before he
acted, all of which make it unambiguously clear he was acting in service of
ISIS.
Indeed,
the president all but dismissed Mateen’s reasons for action at the very moment
he acknowledged the role of terror on Sunday morning. “Whatever the motivations
of the killer,” the president said, the things we have to guard against are the
06/16/2016 23:19
Column One: Obama and the moderate Muslims
In
the 15 years since September 11, first under Bush, and to a more extreme degree
under Obama, the US has refused to name the enemy that fights America with the
expressed aim of destroying it.
As far as the White House is concerned,
Jeffrey Goldberg, The
Atlantic’s top reporter, is President Barack Obama’s unofficial
mouthpiece.
This was one of the many things we learned from The New York Times in David Samuels’s profile of Deputy
National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes.
In the course of explaining how Rhodes was able to sell Obama’s nuclear deal
with Iran, despite the fact that it cleared Iran’s path to a nuclear arsenal
while giving the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism more than a hundred
billion dollars, Samuels reported that “handpicked Beltway insiders like
Jeffrey Goldberg of The
Atlantic... helped retail the administration’s narrative.”
Given his White House-assigned role, Goldberg’s explanation of Obama’s refusal
to discuss radical Islam is worthwhile reading. It reflects what Obama wants
the public to believe about his position.
On Wednesday Goldberg wrote that in Obama’s view, discussing radical Islam is
counterproductive because it harms the moderates who need to stand up to the
radicals.
“Obama,” he wrote, “believes that [a] clash is taking place [not between
Western and Muslim civilization but] within a single civilization, and that
Americans are sometimes collateral damage in this fight between Muslim
modernizers and Muslim fundamentalists.”
Pointing out that there are Muslim fundamentalists, Obama has
argued to Goldberg, will only strengthen them against the modernizers.
Over the past week, prominent conservative commentators have agreed with
Obama’s position.
Eli Lake from Bloomberg and Prof. John Yoo writing in National Review, among
others, criticized presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump for
speaking openly radical Islam. Like Goldberg, they argued that Trump’s
outspokenness alienates moderate Muslims.
But what moderate Muslims is Obama trying to help? Consider his treatment of
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
Sisi is without a doubt, the most outspoken and powerful advocate
of a moderate reformation of Islam, and of Islamic rejection of jihad, alive
today.
Sisi has staked his power and his life on his war to defeat the Muslim
Brotherhood, Islamic State and jihadist Islam in general.
Sisi speaks openly about the danger of jihadist Islam. In his historic speech
before the leading Sunni clerics at Cairo’s Al-Azhar University on January 1,
2015, Sisi challenged the clerics to reform Islam.
Among other things he said, “I address the religious clerics. We have to think
hard about what we are facing.... It is inconceivable that the thinking that we
hold most sacred should cause the entire Islamic nation to be a source of
anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world.
Impossible! “That thinking – I am not saying ‘religion,’ but ‘thinking’ – that
corpus of texts and ideas that we have held sacred over the years, to the point
that departing from them has become almost impossible, is antagonizing the
entire world!...
“Is it possible that 1.6 billion people [Muslims] should want to kill the rest
of the world’s inhabitants – that is 7 billion – so that they themselves may
live? Impossible! “I say and repeat again that we are in need of a religious
revolution. You imams are responsible before Allah. The entire world, I say it
again, the entire world is waiting for your next move...because this Islamic
nation is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost – and it is being
lost by our own hands.”
Certainly since September 11, 2001, no Muslim leader has issues a clearer call
for moderation in Islam than Sisi did in that speech. And he has continued to
speak in the manner ever since.
No other Muslim leader of note has put everything on the line as Sisi has to
defeat the forces of jihad both on the field and in the mosques.
Moreover, Sisi has put his anti-jihadist belief into action by expanding
security cooperation between Egypt and Israel and by bringing the Gulf states
into his undeclared alliance with the Jewish state.
He has also acted to end the demonization of Israel in the Egyptian media.
Obviously, supporting Sisi is a no-brainer for a leader who insists that his
goal is to empower moderate Muslims. And yet, far from being Sisi’s greatest
supporter, Obama opposes him.
Since Sisi led the Egyptian military in overthrowing the Obama-backed Muslim
Brotherhood regime as it was poised to transform Egypt into a jihadist
terrorist state, Obama has worked to undermine him.
Obama has denied Sisi weapons critical to his fight with ISIS in Sinai. He has
repeatedly and consistently chastised Sisi for human rights abuses against
radical Islamists who, if permitted to return to power, would trounce the very
notion of human rights while endangering the US’s key interests in Middle East.
Then there is Iran.
If Obama fears radical Islam, as Goldberg insists that he does, why did he turn
his back on the Green Revolution in 2009? Why did he betray the millions of
Iranians who rose up against their Islamist leaders in the hopes of installing
a democratic order in Iran where women’s rights, and minority rights are
respected? Why did he instead side with the radical, jihadist,
terrorism-supporting, nuclear weapons-developing and -proliferating ayatollahs?
And why has Obama striven to reach an accommodation with the Iranian regime
despite its continued dedication to the destruction of the US? Goldberg’s claim that Obama is
interested in empowering Muslim moderates in their fight against radicals
doesn’t pass the laugh test.
Obama’s actual schemes for relating to – as opposed to acknowledging, fighting
or defeating – the forces of jihad involve empowering those forces at the
expense of the moderates who oppose them.
Yes, there are exceptions to this rule – like Obama’s belated assistance to the
Kurds in Syria and Iraq. But that doesn’t mean that empowering Islamic
jihadists at the expense of moderate Muslims is not Obama’s overarching
strategy.
In the case of the Kurds, Obama only agreed to help them after spending years
training Syrian opposition forces aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood. It was
only after nearly all of those forces cut contact with their American trainers
and popped up in al-Qaida-aligned militias that Obama began actively supporting
the Kurds.
Then there is his behavior toward American jihadists.
Almost every major jihadist attack on US soil since Obama took office has been
carried out by US citizens. But Obama has not countered the threat they pose by
embracing American Muslims who reject jihad.
To the contrary, Obama has spent the past seven- and-a-half years empowering
radical Muslims and Islamic groups like the pro-Hamas terrorism apologists from
the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Muslim Public Affairs
Council (MPAC).
This week The Daily Caller reported that MPAC President Salam al-Marayati, is
serving as an adviser to the US Department of Homeland Security.
Marayati accused Israel of responsibility for the September 11 attacks on the
US, and has called on Muslims not to cooperate with federal counter-terrorism
probes. According to the report, Marayati has visited the White House 11 times
since 2009.
The Daily Caller also reported that a Syrian immigrant to the US was hired to
serve as a member of Obama’s task for on “violent extremism” last year.
Laila Alawa, who joined
the task force the day she received US citizenship, referred to the September
11 attacks as an event that “changed the world for good.”
According to the Daily Caller, her task force called for the administration to
avoid using the terms “jihad” and “Shari’a” in discussing terrorism – as if
Obama needed the tip.
So far from helping Muslim
moderates, Obama’s
actual policy is to help radical Muslims. In stark opposition to his
talking points to Goldberg, since
he entered office, Obama has worked to empower radical Muslims in the US and
throughout the Middle East at the expense of moderates. Indeed, it is
hard to think of an anti-jihad Muslim leader in the US or in the Middle East
whom Obama has supported.
The victims in Orlando, San Bernadino, Garland, Amarillo, Boston and beyond are
proof that Obama’s actual policies are not making America safer. The rise of
ISIS and Iran makes clear that his actual policies are making the world more
dangerous.
Maybe if his actual policies were what he claims they are, things might be
different today. Maybe White House support for anti-jihadist Muslims combined
with a purge of all mention of jihad and related terms from the federal lexicon
would be the winning policy. But on its face, it is hard to see how forbidding
federal employees from discussing jihadists in relevant terms makes sense.
How can enforcing ignorance of a problem help you to solve it? How does
refusing to call out the Islamic extremists that Islamic moderates like the
Green revolutionaries and Sisi risk their lives to fight weaken them? How does
empowering jihad apologists from CAIR and MPAC help moderate, anti-jihad
American Muslims who currently have no voice in Obama’s White House? Eli Lake
argued that it was by keeping mum on jihad that then-president George W. Bush
and Gen. David Petraeus convinced Sunni tribal leaders in Iraq to join the US
in fighting al-Qaida during the surge campaign in 2007-2008.
The same leaders now support ISIS.
A counter-argument to Lake’s is that Bush’s policy of playing down the jihadist
doctrine of the likes of al-Qaida had nothing to do with the Sunni chieftains’
decision to side with the US forces.
Rather, they worked with the Americans first because the Americans paid them a
lot of money to do so. And second, because they believed the Americans when
they said that they would stay the course in Iraq.
They now side with ISIS because they don’t trust America, and would rather live
under ISIS rule than under Iranian rule.
In other words, for them, the question wasn’t one of political niceties, but of
financial gain and power assessments. And that remains the question that
determines their actions today.
In the 15 years since September 11, first under Bush, and since 2009, to a more
extreme degree under Obama, the US has refused to name the enemy that fights
America with the expressed aim of destroying it.
Maybe, just maybe, this is one of the reasons that the Americans have also
failed to truly help anti-jihadist – or moderate – Muslims. Maybe you can’t
help one without calling out the other.
www.CarolineGlick.com
by ANDREW C. MCCARTHY June 18, 2016 4:00 AM
Read more at:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/436783/obama-muslim-brotherhood-terrorism-radical-islam-violent-extremism
Sharia supremacists are not
only shielded from scrutiny by U.S. intelligence but welcomed into the
national-security apparatus. Barack Obama has spent his presidency cultivating
Islamists, particularly from the international Muslim Brotherhood and its
affiliates in the United States. As we saw this week, he chafes at
the term “radical Islam” — as do his Islamist advisers. At their insistence, he
had instructional materials for training government agents purged of references
to Islamic terms that illuminate the nexus between Muslim doctrine and jihadist
terror. Obama’s vaunted national-security strategy, “Countering Violent
Extremism,” is Orwellian. The term CVE supplants identification of our jihadist
enemies with the wooly notion that “violence” can be caused by any form of
“extremism” — it has nothing to do with Islam. By transferring security
responsibilities from government intelligence agents to Muslim “community
leaders” (often, Islamist groups), CVE actually encourages violent extremism.
These steps have been reckless. They have made our nation more vulnerable to
the kind of jihadist atrocities we saw last weekend in Orlando. So obvious is this that many
Obama critics have gone from thinking the unthinkable to saying it aloud: The
president of the United States seems to be intentionally betraying our national
security; even if not squarely on the side of the terrorists, Obama is
such an apologist for their Islamist grievances that he might as well be. I
don’t buy this. Oh, I
believe Obama is betraying our national security, but I do not think he is
doing so intentionally. Instead, he has the good intentions, such as they are, of a left-wing
globalist. The president sees security as a matter of international
stability, not of a single nation’s safety — not even of that single nation
that has entrusted him with its security. To grasp Obama’s conception of
security, we must revisit a progressive fantasy oft-lamented in these columns,
“moderate Islamists.” This is where the Muslim Brotherhood comes in. Here in
the West, “moderate Islamist” is a contradiction in terms. An Islamist is a
Muslim who wants to impose sharia (Islam’s repressive law) on a society. In the
United States, that would mean replacing our Constitution with a totalitarian,
discriminatory system. That is an extremely radical goal, even if the Islamist
forswears violence and promises to proceed in Fabian fashion. Therefore, from
the perspective of our free society, Islamists are the very antithesis of
moderates. For a post-American transnational progressive like Obama, however,
the context that matters is not our society. It is the world. He is the first
president to see himself more as a citizen of the world who plays a critical
role in American affairs than as an American who plays a critical role in
international affairs. Viewed globally, the Brotherhood seems — in fact, it is
— more moderate than ISIS, al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, and other infamous terrorist
groups. I say “other” terrorist groups because the Brotherhood surely is one,
which is why it should be formally designated as such under U.S. law. As I
outlined in The Grand Jihad, the Brotherhood promotes terrorism. Its doctrine
prominently includes jihad, and it has a long history of violence that runs to
this very day. Indeed, Hamas — a terrorist organization that the Brotherhood
masquerades as a “political” “resistance” movement — is the Brotherhood’s
Palestinian branch. Nevertheless, four things separate this very sophisticated
organization from other jihadists: (1) The Brotherhood pretends to reject
violent jihad, especially when dealing with Western audiences. (2) The
Brotherhood opportunistically limits its overt support for jihad to situations
that the international Left feels comfortable excusing (e.g., violence against
“occupation” by Israel, or by American troops fighting Bush’s “unnecessary war
of aggression” in Iraq). (3) The Brotherhood purports to condemn terrorist acts
that it believes, judging from a cost-benefit analysis, are likelier to harm
than to advance the sharia agenda (particularly the Brotherhood’s lucrative
fundraising apparatus in the West). A good example is the 9/11 atrocities (but
note that even there, the Brotherhood, like the rest of the Left, always adds
that American foreign policy is jointly culpable). (4) The Brotherhood
aggressively pursues a menu of nonviolent advocacy and sharia proselytism,
known in Islamist ideology as dawah. As Brotherhood honcho and major Hamas
backer Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi puts it, “We will conquer Europe, we will
conquer America, not through the sword but through dawah.” The Brotherhood
aggressively pursues a menu of nonviolent advocacy and sharia proselytism,
known in Islamist ideology as dawah. For present purposes, the most salient of
these Brotherhood strategies is the fourth. The menu includes international
diplomacy, participation in various countries’ political processes,
exploitation of civil-rights laws in various countries’ court systems, strong
presence on college campuses (administration, faculty, and student societies),
vigorous fundraising under the guise of charity, and aggressive influence
peddling in the media and popular culture. Significantly, it is this menu of
nonviolent pressure points, not violent jihad, that is the Brotherhood’s public
face in the West. That is what enables the organization to pose as a
comparatively moderate political and ideological movement, not a jihadist
organization. That is what allows Brotherhood operatives to pass themselves off
as “civil-rights activists” and social-justice warriors, not sharia radicals.
This meticulously cultivated moderate pose is the Potemkin foundation on which
Obama and other transnational progressives, including a fair number of leading
Beltway Republicans, cooperate with the Brotherhood throughout the world. Obama
is anxious to work with the Brotherhood on the Left’s theory that dialogue and
cooperation always promote international stability — rather than convey that
America’s principles are negotiable. Obama embraces the Brotherhood for the
same reason that he negotiates with our enemies in Iran: the illusion that any
talk is good talk; that any deal is a boon, regardless of how one-sided. The
American wants peace through strength; the post-American globalist prefers
peace “processes” and their inevitable peace “prizes.” As a practical matter,
Obama cannot negotiate with ISIS or al-Qaeda. He would if he could, but they
won’t. They are interested only in conquest, not compromise. By comparison, the
Brotherhood does seem moderate — but only by comparison with these barbaric,
full-throttle terror networks. Unlike ISIS, the Brotherhood is amenable to
suspending the jihad while taking the concessions it can get through diplomacy
and political processes — then going right back to jihad promotion when these
alternatives have been exhausted. The Brotherhood is well regarded by many
Sunni Islamist regimes with which our government hopes to cooperate in
containing the regional aggression of Shiite Iran (aggression materially
supported by Obama’s obsessions with deals and dialogue). There has even been a
recent thaw between the Brotherhood and Saudi Arabia: Relations turned icy when
the Saudis backed the ouster of Egypt’s Brotherhood-led government; but with
Obama canoodling with Tehran, Riyadh has grown desperate for any allies it can
find. On the world stage, the stage they care about, transnational progressives
portray the Brotherhood as “moderate Islamists,” partnership with whom is vital
if we are to achieve the panacea of global stability. The con job actually gets
worse than that. The Brotherhood has figured out that “democracy” in
Muslim-majority countries is the quickest route to imposing sharia. So it has
taken on the mantle of “democracy” champions. By backing the Brotherhood,
Beltway progressives purport to promote a “democratic transformation” of the Muslim
Middle East. The fact that it would be a transformation to an anti-democratic,
discriminatory, liberty-crushing system is, for progressives, as irrelevant as
the fact that Obama’s empowering of the monstrous Tehran regime destroys the
democratic aspirations of pro-Western Iranians. The progressive conception of
stability — cooperation with rogues — is no friend of freedom. The Left clings
to the conviction that the “mere” advocacy of radical ideology is
constitutionally protected, even if what’s being advocated is the overthrow of
our constitutional system itself. The Brotherhood has devoted three generations
to building an infrastructure in the United States — an impressive network of
affiliated Islamist organizations. To partner with the Brotherhood internationally
therefore requires embracing the Brotherhood domestically. But how can Obama
and other transnational progressives pull that off? After all, as we’ve seen,
the Brothers may seem like “moderate Islamists” when they’re in the same
neighborhood as ISIS; but here on our own soil, an Islamist is plainly a
radical. Obama pulls it off by distorting law and history to sanitize the
Brotherhood’s American Islamists. Here, we must consider the progressive
version of the Cold War. The Left clings to the conviction that the “mere”
advocacy of radical ideology is constitutionally protected, even if what’s
being advocated is the overthrow of our constitutional system itself.
Symmetrically, the Left also holds that (a) anti-Communism was more dangerous
than Communism, and (b) the “living” Constitution can be “evolved” whenever
necessary to protect aggressive “dissent” by the Left’s constituencies. Put it
all together and you have Obama’s two core conceits: First, the Constitution
immunizes the Brotherhood’s ideology from government scrutiny. Our agencies
must deem anti-American sharia-supremacist advocacy as “constitutionally
protected activity,” no matter how virulently anti-American it is; no matter
that it supports Hamas (material support for which is actually a felony under
American law); and no matter how many Islamists make the seamless transition
from Brotherhood indoctrination to membership in other, more notorious
terrorist organizations. Second, anti-terrorism is more of a danger to “our
values” (i.e., Obama’s values) than is the regrettable but unavoidable fact
that squelching anti-terrorism will result in the occasional terrorist attack —
which Obama regards as more of a nuisance fit for law-enforcement procedures
than a national-security challenge. There you have it: Obama is not really pro-jihadist; he is
anti-anti-terrorist. As long as they don’t appear to be blowing up
buildings, sharia supremacists are not only shielded from scrutiny; our president welcomes the
Brotherhood into our national-security apparatus in order to reverse what
progressives see as the dangerous excesses of real counterterrorism.
That is how you end up with such lunacy as “Countering Violent Extremism.” That
is how the jihad shakes
off its post-9/11 shackles on the road to Orlando. So don’t say “radical
Islam,” much less obsess over the carnage at the Pulse nightclub. After all,
look how stable Obama’s globe has become. — Andrew C. McCarthy is as senior
policy fellow at the National Review Institute and a contributing editor of National
Review. rorism-radical-islam-violent-extremism
