An Excellent Article on Afghanistan...

... in The Nation, of all places!

It taught me stuff I didn't know, for example. I knew a fair amount about the mainline Taliban, and about Hekmatyar who was the favored boy of the Pakistani ISI during the 1980s war against the Soviet occupation, but I didn't know about this gent:

Erstwhile CIA hand Jalaluddin Haqqani heads yet a third insurgent network, this one based in the eastern border regions. During the anti-Soviet war, the United States gave Haqqani, now considered by many to be Washington's most redoubtable foe, millions of dollars, antiaircraft missiles and even tanks. Washington was so enamored of him that former Congressman Charlie Wilson once called him "goodness personified."

Haqqani was an early advocate of the "Afghan Arabs," who in the 1980s flocked to Pakistan to join the jihad against the Soviet Union. He ran training camps for them and later developed close ties to Al Qaeda, which developed out of the Afghan Arab networks toward the end of the anti-Soviet war. After 9/11 the United States tried desperately to bring him over to its side, but Haqqani said he couldn't countenance a foreign presence on Afghan soil and once again took up arms, aided by his longtime benefactors in ISI. He is said to have introduced suicide bombing to Afghanistan, a tactic unheard of here before 2001. Western intelligence officials pin the blame for most of the spectacular attacks in recent memory--a massive car bomb that ripped apart the Indian embassy in July, for example--on the Haqqani network, not the Taliban.

The Haqqanis command the lion's share of foreign fighters operating in the country and tend to be even more extreme than their Taliban counterparts. Unlike most of the Taliban and Hizb-i-Islami, elements of the Haqqani network cooperate closely with Al Qaeda. Moreover, foreigners associated with the "Pakistani Taliban"--a completely separate organization that is at war with the Pakistani government--and various Pakistani guerrilla groups that were once active in Kashmir also filter across the border into Afghanistan, adding to a mix that has produced what one Western intelligence official calls a "rainbow coalition" that fights US troops. The foreign connection comes naturally, as the leadership of the three main wings of the insurgency is believed to be based across the border in Pakistan, and all insurgent groups are flush with funds from wealthy Arab donors and benefit from ISI training.

It all comes back to this -- if we're going to win in Afghanistan, we're going to need to neutralize Pakistan. And that's not going to happen if we continue the same old strategy of playing nice with a Pakistani military and ISI that is as often working against our goals as they are with us.

So, if Obama is really serious about stablizing Pakistan, the shipping of arms and of foreign aid to Pakistan, which ends up strengthening the military and the corrupt politicians, respectively, is not a winning strategy, to put it mildly.

My thinking is that we need a different approach, one we've not tried to this point: a full-on free-trade accord with Pakistan, wherein we reduce all our ridiculously high tariffs on their main export, which is textiles. This will have the benefit of strengthening the most free market elements of Pakistani society, instead of the feudal politicians like Zardari (Bhutto's widower), who is well-known as "Mr. Ten Percent" for the amount he skims off the top.

This would involve some pain on the part of textile laborers here in the United States, but it would be well worth it if the long-term result is a more stable Pakistan, with reduced influence for its fanatics.

Lastly, this might work well in confluence with a free trade accord with India and Afghanistan, so no one in that region feels left out.

We're not going to have a lot of money for big aid packages anyway in the current environment, so trying a different tack is well worth it!

Let's Laugh at Terrorists

I've always felt that terrorists like Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, or Christian Identity freaks like Tim McVeigh would be laughable if they weren't such effective mass murderers.

Still, for all their undeniable dangerousness, it's a good thing to laugh at them as the pathetic losers they are.

Into this market niche steps Jeff Dunham, ventriloquist extraordinaire, and his puppet Achmed, the Dead Terrorist:

Cindy Sheehan Hearts the Muslim Brotherhood

As if embracing Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez was not enough, "peace mom" Cindy Sheehan has now taken up the mantle of waging peace on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Here's part of her letter to the First Lady of Egypt, Suzanne Mubarak, on the Muslim Brotherhood's own English language website:

Through my work on this issue I have become an
advocate for human rights violations all over the
world. I am sad to say that my first visit to your
beautiful country of Egypt brings me here under this
guise to appeal for fair and just treatment for the
forty members of the Muslim Brotherhood, all civilian,
who are being tried through a military tribunal. As I
understand it this process is illegal both under
Egyptian law and International law and since the
defendants have all been found innocent on four
different occasions in civilian courts, I can only
conclude that the Egyptian government is trying them
in a military tribunal as a last resort to guarantee a
guilty verdict.

Now, I have no doubt that the Mubarak government is not exactly a champion of due process in all instances, not just those where the accused are members of the Muslim Brotherhood. But I have not (yet) seen Ms. Sheehan championing secular Egyptians who have run afoul of the Egyptian government.

Ms. Sheehan is of course allowed to espouse any views she likes, but her alliance with thugs like the Castro brothers, Hugo Chavez and now the Muslim Brotherhood makes her self-professed pro-democracy stance ring entirely hollow.

Update: Wikipedia's entry on the Muslim Brotherhood helpfully has the following:

In the group's belief, the Quran and Sunna constitute a perfect way of life and social and political organization that God has set out for man. Islamic governments must be based on this system and eventually unified in a Caliphate. The MB goal, as stated by Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna was to reclaim Islam’s manifest destiny, an empire, stretched from Spain to Indonesia.[22] It preaches that Islam enjoins man to strive for social justice, the eradication of poverty and corruption, and political freedom to the extent allowed by the laws of Islam. The Brotherhood strongly opposes Western colonialism, and helped overthrow the pro-western monarchies in Egypt and other Muslim nations during the early 20th century.

On the issue of women and gender the Muslim Brotherhood interprets Islam quite strictly. Its founder called for "a campaign against ostentation in dress and loose behavior," "segregation of male and female students," a separate curriculum for girls, and "the prohibition of dancing and other such pastimes..."[23]

"... political freedom to the extent allowed by the laws of Islam." What a wonderful cause Cindy Sheehan has found for herself now!

Obama and the Surge in Iraq

Prior to the Surge, in a speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs on November 20, 2006, Obama said the following:



Then, Obama told us "the Surge has not worked" on July 20, 2007, and at many other campaign stops. The next month, there were 80 U.S. service deaths overall in Iraq, 69 of them by my count from combat or IEDs.

Fast-forward to this year, when the evidence has been mounting that not only has the Surge in troops and the accompanying change in strategy has reduced U.S. military casualties but also reduced Iraqi civilian casualties, and Obama tells Katie Couric in Amman, Jordan on July 22, 2008 that he still would have opposed the Surge:



Given how laughable this stance became by August 2008, Obama and the Democrats had to resort to their new rallying cry: there's not enough political reconciliation in Iraq! We should still leave!

Somehow, they missed the news that Iraq's largest Sunni political party rejoined the Iraqi government in July 2008, after a year's boycott.

Or, they missed the following news in September 2008:

Now that Iraq's parliament passed a provincial elections law Wednesday, overcoming months of political gridlock, many politicians and Iraqis are looking ahead to what the elections early next year will mean for Iraq

Oh, and here's the death toll for that very month, September 2008, as compared to the year before:

The number of civilians killed in Iraq last month more than halved to 359 compared to a year ago, Iraqi government figures showed, and the number of U.S. troops killed in action also fell dramatically.

U.S. combat deaths fell to eight in September, down from 12 last month and vastly reduced from 43 in September last year, statistics from independent Web site www.icasualites.org showed.

Violence in Iraq has fallen to around four-year lows in recent months, but militants have still been capable of large-scale attacks.

A string of bombings last month targeted civilians shopping before their evening meal during the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, and in Iraq's north, where the U.S. military says al Qaeda is active, violent attacks are carried out almost daily.

But September's toll of 359 civilian deaths was still lower than August's 382. Some 884 Iraqi civilians were killed in September last year.

So, U.S. combat fatalities have fallen to 8 in September 2008 vs. 69 in September 2007. Iraqi civilian casualties have fallen to 359 as compared to 884 in September 2007. Political reconciliation is proceeding apace, now that Sunni and Shi'it politicians are not constantly worried that extremists will slaughter them if they make a compromise with the other camps in Iraq. And still the Democratic candidate for President says his course of opposing the Surge was the right one!

I will yield to none in my contempt for Bush's criminally incompetent management of the war from March 2003 through January 2007. But by finally jettisoning Rumsfeld and putting General Petraeus in charge of a Surge in troops and a change in strategy, Bush has managed to show he can, however belatedly, come to grips with reality.

That is more than the Democrats, or Senator Obama in particular, can say.

Updated 10/3/2008: Yahoo News:

Baghdad - Iraq's presidential council on Friday ratified a law that paves the way for the first provincial elections in four years, officials said.

U.S. officials hope the election will give greater representation to minority Sunni Arabs and disaffected members of the Shiite majority.

This exemplifies the difference between McCain's approach and Obama's -- Obama has pledged repeatedly over the last two years to "end the war" and leave, no matter what, even if genocide results.

McCain also proposed ending the war in Iraq, but only by defeating our extremist enemies first! McCain's preference is increasingly validated by the fact that, with violence declining, the critically necessary political reconciliation between Iraqi factions is happening.

Of course, since things are going well in Iraq these days, expect it to fall all the more rapidly off the front pages. That's a shame, because what we're seeing is nothing less than the dual defeat of Sunni (Al Qaeda) and Shi'ite (Mahdi Army) extremists, with huge repercussions for the entire region. The Ayatollahs of Iran and the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia might be distressed, but this development is to the great benefit of ordinary Iraqis.

An Overlooked Victory in the Tolerance War

I missed this when it happened, but it seems that Qatar, which shares with Saudi Arabia its intolerant Wahhabi ruling ideology, has built its first-ever government-approved Catholic Church:

The 2,700-seat church was built on land donated by Qatar's emir, Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani, and five other buildings are under construction nearby for other Christian denominations in this oil-rich state where over 70% of the population are expatriate workers.

"I convey very special greetings from the Holy Father to the Emir," said Cardinal Ivan Dias, the envoy of Pope Benedict XVI and the Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples.

"Without his precious gift of a land to the Catholic community, we would not be here today," Dias said.

Qatar follows the rigorous Wahabi teachings of Sunni Islam, and like neighboring Saudi Arabia had not previously authorized Christians to practice their faith openly.

A priest operated in Qatar since the 1960s without official approval, and the opening of the church Saturday appeared to be another sign of Qatar's efforts to open up to the West as it seeks a bid for the summer Olympic Games in 2016.

"It is a dream coming true," said Bishop Bernardo Gremoli, a former vicar of Arabia who initiated the church project more than 20 years ago.

Some 150,000 Christians of all denominations live in the emirate, over 90% of them Catholic expatriate workers from the Philippines, India and other Asian nations.

Since the CIA's 2008 estimate of Qatar's population is 824,789, only 247,437 native Qatari are actual citizens! Only since March have those Catholics in the far-larger expatriate majority been allowed to worship in Qatar without fear of official reprisal.

America has properly been welcoming as Muslim mosques and Hindu temples, among many other houses of worship, have been built to serve new immigrants to our shores. The same pattern has largely been replicated in the other countries of the West. It is a good sign, a very good sign, that this tolerance is at long last beginning to be reciprocated in the heart of the Arabian peninsula.

UPDATE: Worth noting, too, is that Qatar's desire to be judged worthy to hold the 2016 Summer Olympics was a driving force behind this decision. Globalization works its special magic again.

Albanian Muslims Saved Jews from the Holocaust

I heard about this on NPR the other day, and have been so busy with work and life I only got around to blogging about it now.

It seems that Albanians in general, Muslims and Orthodox and Catholic, have a code called Besa, which requires that one opens one's home to people in need. On the program I was listening to, one old Albanian Muslim said (and I'm paraphrasing) that he'd rather his son die than that he betray the Besa code.

During the Holocaust, then, Besa took the following form: Albanians of all religions, but mostly Muslim, took in Albanian and non-Albanian Jews and hid them from the Nazis who were demanding that they be handed over. They gave these Jews Albanian names, Albanian peasant clothing, and claimed when pressed by the Nazis that they were relatives. This despite the grave danger that the Nazis would realize the ruse, and simply exterminate the Albanians along with the Jews they were sheltering.

On the program, they had an interview with an elderly German Jewish woman who had been saved by Besa-observant Albanians. In her accent, so familiar to me because it sounded much like my grandparents on both my mother's and father's side, she simply and heartbreakingly put it this way (again, not an exact quote, I am paraphrasing from memory): "Here were the civilized Germans, with all their poets, and writers, and their composers, committing this crime. And then there were the Albanians, 80% of them illiterate, peasants really, saving us from the Nazis."

This hits me where I live. I am very German in my heritage, the hair is still blue, the eyes used to be blonde -- scratch that, reverse it. Given that my father's German-born parents were Lutheran, and my German-born mother was Catholic, my family never was on the receiving end of Hitler's hatred of Jews. So I have always been simultaneously proud of my heritage and chastened by it -- I take the Holocaust very personally, because it is my tribe (so to speak) that committed it, even if none of my ancestors were Nazis themselves.

So for Albanian peasants to save Jews -- even foreign Jews like the woman above who fled from Hamburg, Germany -- is an extraordinary act of moral courage, one that humbles me and literally reduces me to tears. God bless them.

This came at just the right time after 9/11's anniversary, because it was a useful reminder that the enemy is not of any one particular faith -- there are evil men, fanatics, of all religions, and of none at all. We should not forget that most Muslims are not remotely sympathetic to Al Qaeda, and that what I call the Tolerance War should only be fought against the vicious extremists, with our true allies being all tolerant folks regardless of faith.

I only wish those very Islamic extremists who deny the Holocaust would talk to the Besa-observant Muslims in Albania and open their eyes, but that's unlikely in the extreme, alas. Still, the rest of us know the truth, and that is enough.

For more, go to the Center for Islamic Pluralism

UPDATE: I found Norman Gershman's video documentary on Besa here.

9/11 Seven Years Later

I was living and working in Silicon Valley in Northern California on 9/11/2001, so I saw it all unfolding back home in the NY metro area from a strange, disconcerting distance.

The first news I got was from a roughly 6:00 AM Pacific time IM with a New Jersey friend, who informed me that a plane had hit the World Trade Center while he was commuting on the New Jersey Turnpike to work.

Of course, I thought it was a Cessna. How wrong I was.

Too many forget the horror and panic of those days in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 when the expectation was that another such attack was going to come any day now. I remember vividly my mother telling me my sister was seriously considering going to Germany (where we have many cousins and aunts and uncles) with my niece and nephew simply in an effort to get smallpox vaccines for them, because those were unavailable here in the United States.

My home county in New Jersey, Monmouth County, famously took the biggest hit in terms of lives lost. I was not there then, so I can only take the word of my family and friends that the smell from the fallen towers lasted for days after the attacks.

We have come a long way since then, but not so long that we should forget the enormity of the evil visited upon us by the gleeful fanatics of Al Qaeda. We are on the verge of decisively defeating them in Iraq, but much work remains to be done in Afghanistan and in their new safe havens of Pakistan's wild northwest territories.

Never forgive. Never forget.

Go Green! (and defeat Al Qaeda)

That's what Thomas Friedman says we can and must do, as part of an interview with Fareed Zakaria on the Amazon site.

First Friedman talks about the resentment rising countries feel about our holier-than-thou lectures, and how we should grab the window of opportunity this affords us, such as it is:

Every time I come to China, young Chinese say to me, "Mr. Friedman, your country grew dirty for 150 years. Now it's our turn." And I say to them, "Yes, you're absolutely right, it's your turn. Grow as dirty as you want. Take your time. Because I think we probably just need about five years to invent all the new clean power technologies you're going to need as you choke to death, and we're going to come and sell them to you. And we're going to clean your clock in the next great global industry. So please, take your time. If you want to give us a five-year lead in the next great global industry, I will take five. If you want to give us ten, that would be even better."

Friedman worries, however, that we in the U.S. are blowing the head start we've been given, and Zakaria offers up this following reason:

I think it's not about our economic system but our political system. The rhetoric we hear is that the market should produce new energy technologies. But the problem is, the use of current forms of energy has an existing infrastructure with very powerful interests that has ensured that the government tilt the playing field in their favor, with subsidies, tax breaks, infrastructure spending, etc. This is one area where the Europeans have actually been very far-sighted and have pushed their economies toward the future.

Friedman goes on to talk about how this affects our war against Al Qaeda, in a tactical sense:

They began with a marine general in Iraq, who basically cabled back one day and said, I need renewable power here. Things like solar energy. And the reaction of the Pentagon was, "Hey, general, you getting a little green out there? You're not going sissy on us are you? Too much sun?" And he basically said, "No, don't you guys get it? I have to provision outposts along the Syrian border. They are off the grid. They run on generators with diesel fuel. I have to truck diesel fuel from Kuwait to the Syrian border at $20 a gallon delivered cost. And that's if my trucks don't get blown up by insurgents along the way. If I had solar power, I wouldn't have to truck all this fuel. I could—this is my term, not his—‘outgreen' Al-Qaeda."

I argue in the chapter that "outgreening"--the ability to deploy, expand, innovate and grow renewable energy and clean power--is going to become one of the most important, if not the most important, sources of competitive advantage for a company, for a country, for a military. You're going to know the cost of your fuel, it's going to be so much more distributed, you will be so much more flexible, and--this is quite important, Fareed--you will also become so much more respected.

Oh, and Friedman makes this excellent point about the creative destruction that such a big change in energy technology will entail:

In the green revolution, everyone's a winner: BP's green, Exxon's green, GM's green. When everyone's a winner, that's not a revolution--actually, that's a party. We're having a green party. And it's very fun--you and I get invited to all the parties. But it has no connection whatsoever with a real revolution. You'll know it's a revolution when somebody gets hurt. And I don't mean physically hurt. But the IT revolution was a real revolution. In the IT revolution, companies either had to change or die. So you'll know the green revolution is happening when you see some bodies--corporate bodies--along the side of the road: companies that didn't change and therefore died. Right now we don't have that kind of market, that kind of change-or-die situation. Right now companies feel like they can just change their brand, not actually how they do business, and that will be enough to survive. That's why we're really having more of a green party than a green revolution.

On the first point, Friedman is absolutely right that we should make the most of every opportunity the rest of the world affords our country through their own unwillingness to face up to these challenges.

I part company with him when he endorses Obama's big-spending government subsidy approach over McCain's more free market approach. Still, McCain would be wise to emphasize more strongly that as President he won't let current low-cost subsidies for wind, solar and geothermal lapse, as all too many Republicans are currently willing to allow to happen.

It's interesting where Friedman concentrates on the purely tactical applications of green energy to the war against Al Qaeda. He's quite right that solar would be helpful powering our military outposts on the Syrian border, but at least in this interview he doesn't address the larger strategic considerations.

I'd love nothing more than to deprive the Ayatollahs, Putins, and Chavezes of their oil wealth when we transition to a new varied energy source that stems more from technical knowledge and innovation than from the luck of the geological draw. In any such contest, our open society model which puts a premium on talent regardless of country of origin will do very well indeed.

What I don't think anyone is addressing, however, is how such a green revolution might worsen the feeling of resentment against the West if the Muslim world is again left on the sidelines of this latest revolution. Given the widely-reported problems in education in the Arab world, combined with its dependency on oil as its leading export, this is a very-real possibility even in the event that the United States successfully leads such a technological transition.

This is not an argument against the environmental necessity of this transition, but I think it points up the fact that Thomas Barnett's grand strategy of "Shrinking the Gap" by more thoroughly integrating the Middle East into globalization's Core will be more relevant to the defeat of Al Qaeda than the green revolution alone will.

Hat Tip: Instapundit

Ex-Wahabbi takes on his former ideological soulmates

Ed Husain is a Brit of Pakistani heritage who, after a time as a Wahabbi extremist, turned his back on that dead-end path and now works to prevent others from doing so. He has an excellent piece today on how the Muslim Council of Britain is standing more with the extremists than the moderates on the issue of forced marriage for Muslim women in Britain:

When I met Amina she was still in love with this man but her father insisted she marry her cousin from Pakistan, who happened, rather conveniently, to be visiting England. Her father also had a heart condition and used his illness to emotionally blackmail her. Eventually Amina gave way. She sacrificed love to south Asian culture and married Mr Pakistan.

White, liberal eyes reading this article will be astounded to know these things happen in Britain. I am sorry, but they do. And it gets worse.

Amina was repeatedly raped by Mr Pakistan, but her mother told her that a Muslim man has such rights over his wife, and in Islam there is no such thing as marital rape.

I wanted to help Amina. I suggested she divorce her husband and marry her true love but she told me her husband would kill her if she even mentioned divorce. Eventually, she risked everything and escaped to a women's refuge. When she asked for a divorce her husband refused and was supported in this by the Islamic Shariah Council, a powerful all-male outfit controlling women's lives.

So, a new marriage contract is proposed, and the Muslim Council of Britain weighs in:

The new Muslim marriage contract sought to update and develop fiqh, or Muslim personal jurisprudence, by shifting the power balance in a marriage to empower women to trigger divorce, feel safe from rape or abuse, prevent husbands from taking second wives, and set up accommodation separated from a husband's parents.

All common sense, one would have thought. It went further. Witnesses at wedding ceremonies could be women and even non-Muslim, since the Qur'an is gender and faith neutral on this issue. And a Muslim woman does not need a wali, or male guardian (based on Hanafi school of Islamic law, to which the majority of Britain's Muslims adhere).

Had Amina and her husband signed this contract, she would have had every right to escape her miserable marriage, or even marry her first love. For those who need scriptural justification for every step of their life, the Muslim scholars behind this contract provided evidence and shariah-based arguments.

It was all too good to be true. Misogynist, Saudi-trained clerics don't simply stand by and watch their last grip over Muslim family life slip away so easily. First, as expected, came an Arab male cleric with extreme Wahhabi leanings, denouncing the contract as kufr, or non-belief. His rant can be watched on YouTube.

Last Friday, after initially endorsing the new contract, the MCB back-tracked and issued a statement to "clarify" is position. It spoke of "misinterpretation of shariah by those who the MCB had trusted to take the lead" and said: "The MCB rejects the misguided and incorrect assertions made by and ascribed to the Muslim Institute."

This all goes to show that the Tolerance War I've spoken of is internal to many religions, including Islam. Kudos to Ed Husain for fighting the good fight to help modernize and moderate his faith. Unfortunately, the MCB has chosen to stand in the way, showing once again it is not the moderate organization it claims to be. Shades of CAIR here in the United States, but that's a discussion for another time.

Hat Tip: Harry's Place

Free Trade Helps Win the Tolerance War?

You know how sometimes you have a really good idea and then you read about that idea in the newspaper? Me neither. Heh.

Actually, Edward Gresser and Mark Dunkelman at the Wall Street Journal borrow one of my better brain-waves about free trade helping fight terror.

The idea I had was this: since our massive military aid packages to Pakistan and Egypt, to name but two countries, have not exactly made us beloved, why not try free trade accords with those countries? We have already done so with Jordan, but I am not aware of any other such accords with Arab and/or Muslim countries.

Gresser and Dunkelman argue along the same lines:

Towels, for example, are Pakistan's top export. Each container full of towels exported to the U.S. brings in enough income to employ about 500 Pakistanis. But while Pakistani towels are subject to a 7.5% tariff, competing towels from the Dominican Republic or Costa Rica -- both of which benefit from the Central American Free Trade Agreement -- come in duty-free.

Likewise, luggage made in Indonesia is subject to a tariff that can rise to 22%, but competes with tariff-free suitcases manufactured in Mexico. Lebanon, which exports preserved fruits and vegetables, must compete with similar duty-free items exported from Peru.

Unlike Senator Obama, I am for free trade along with Senator McCain. We have already made great gains in securing economic and political stability in Central America and Peru with the CAFTA and Peru free trade accords, respectively, and we should do the same with the Muslim world.

So who do you think we should begin with, if you agree with the sentiments expressed here? I nominate: Afghanistan and Pakistan (together, as a package deal), Egypt, Iraq and Indonesia. Seems like a good beginning to me.

The Tolerance War

I have enough of an ego that I think I've come up with a new, better name to call this big ole War on Terror of ours. It's (drum roll, please) the Tolerance War.

Why? Well, maybe because that's what got me thinking about why I think so many of my fellow Democrats are wrong to be so derisive and dismissive of the importance of fighting Al Qaeda. I'm not talking about the loons who think it was all an evil conspiracy planned by Bush from the beginning, and that the Twin Towers had been quietly wired up with explosives day in and day out for the 30-odd months prior to 9/11/2001 without anyone ever noticing.

No, I'm talking about my fellow Democrats who call the Christian rightists in this country the "American Taliban," or the Midwest "Jesusland," while confidently asserting that being in Iraq has only created more terrorists and besides we all brought it on ourselves anyway. If we'd just stop annoying those Muslim extremists by, say, supporting the continued existence of Israel we'd all be better off.

To which I say, "you know, there are startlingly inexpensive and pain-free medical procedures available these days by which you can have your head removed from your posterior! No, really!"

Some points, in no particular order of importance:

* I have never seen American conservatives, religious or otherwise, drop brick walls on gays in the hopes of executing them thereby. Nor have I seen them stone people to death, ever. I HAVE seen Muslim extremists from the Sunni Taliban to the Shi'ite Iranian extremist government do so, just because the victim was alleged to be gay and/or sexually promiscuous heterosexually.

* Even though this is a majority Christian country, new immigrants from India and Pakistan and Saudi Arabia easily and freely are able to build their Hindu temples or Buddhist temples or Muslim mosques here, and then freely and generally without harassment worship as they please. This is NOT the case in Saudi Arabia where, with the exception of the western enclaves for oil workers, there is no religious freedom allowed. And the situation isn't much better in the rest of Osama's proposed Caliphate.

* Compare the foreign enemies list: for the U.S., it comes down to one thing: if you stop just talking about it and actually kill Americans, well then we will do our level best to kill you back, and then some. For Islamic extremists like Al Qaeda or Hezbollah or Hamas, the kill list is as follows:

1. Americans and/or Jooz! (if they're both, all the better)
2. Israeli Jooz
3. Homosexuals
4. The other side of the Hamas/Fatah divide
5. The other side of the Sunni/Shi'ite divide
6. Infidel Westernized Muslims who dig, oh, freedom of conscience, especially women!
7. Infidel Hindus
8. Infidel Buddhists
9. Infidel Chinese
10. Infidel Russians
11. and so on... ad infinitum, ad nauseum

So, I have a lot of crunchy granola and/or New Age and/or self-described pagan friends, and invariably they will get around to how oppressed they are in this country because they don't fit the dominant Christian worldview, and I have to laugh! They can live, work and play as they please, they just might get the occasional odd looks and that's more because they're tattooed and pierced as all get out. But oppressed? Come on! Try telling an Iranian Ba'hai you're oppressed, my friends. Then duck.

The U.S. is the most tolerant nation in a Western civilization of tolerant nations, and it is for that reason among many others why we're number one on the Islamic extremist to-be-killed list.

We're winning the Tolerance War over Al Qaeda and its admirers, and God/Allah/Buddha/Krishna/insert-Supreme-Being-here bless us all! The final surrender of our enemies in this war will not occur with a formal written surrender, but rather when churches are built in downtown Riyadh and gays and uppity women in the Muslim world no longer fear for their lives.

I'm looking forward to that day. In the meantime, I have no fear of right-wing Christian conservatives sawing off my head.