The Thundering Silence Of Muslims: Important Correction to Response to a Friend.

A good friend of mine who is not a Muslim has been living in an all-Muslim country for several years.

He responded briefly by private email to my oped: “Levelling with Muslims” . He says pretty much the following:

The highly educated rational and internationally oriented Muslims I know simply refuse to go around affirming to the world that they are not (violent) jihadists. Besides, they think it’s useless,that they have already been adjudicated guilty by the court of western public opinion.

I hope I am translating my friend correctly. If I don’t, I hope he will correct me and do so promptly.

But I don’t know of any public clamor that request of ordinary Muslims to prove that they are innocent. My own oped does not require this at all. Perhaps, I was not clear. I have to give myself another try.

It is also simply not the case, even after hundreds of acts of jihadist terrorism world-wide since 9/11 that westerners assume all Muslims are more or less fanatics. This may be surprising but I think most Americans who are other than Muslim tend to give everyone ample benefit of doubt. However. Muslim silence, at home and abroad erodes this tendency. This erosion is not conducive to peace.

I would like to know that my friend’s Muslim friends are talking about moral responsibility. I would like to know that they are talking to one another and to those less well situated educationally. I would like to be told that many are disgusted by the criminal barbarity of murdering envoys in Libya. I would also like them to take a position on this kind of question: Is it a greater sin (or crime) for Muslims to bomb from the air apartment houses occupied by Muslim families with small, children in Aleppo or for non-Muslims to mock the Prophet Mohamed? To what extent does Islam require that the faithful get killed and kill policemen to protest blasphemy against a man of faith who took care to insist that he was only a man, with no shred of sacredness attached to his person?

The only way I will know whether this sort of conversation is taking place among Muslims is if Muslims or those who live among them, such as my friends, say it loud and clear.

I would like many Muslim voices to say loudly and clearly about acts of terrorism by those who call themselves Muslims: This is not done in my name. This is contrary to my religion.

What their governments tell me for their own reasons, I discount heavily. I want to hear Muslim civil society if and where there is one

I hear barely a whisper.

Muslims are telling us in practice: Leave us alone. Our everyday life is difficult enough. We merely want what you want. We want a chance to build our lives and to raise our children without interference. Those Salafists, those violent jihadists, we have nothing to do with them. They are your terrorists as much as ours.

Sorry, they are not. If Lutherans started bombing other people’s churches because they did not like their beliefs, if Baptists blew up car bombs in front of hotels to protest child baptism, if Catholics cut caricaturists’ throats because of cartoons of Jesus Christ, you can be sure that loud Lutherans, Baptists, Catholic voices would be raised in clear denunciation.

I repeat what I advanced in the previous essay: Peaceful Muslims are not clear in their hearts about right and wrong. That’s why we don’t hear them, even under the cover of anonymity. My oped “Levelling with Muslims” has had dozens of hits from predominantly Muslim countries and from countries such as India where here are many Muslims. Not a peep! Please, tell me I am wrong.

Of course, anyone can answer me and perhaps prove me wrong by posting a pertinent link at as Comment on this blog.

Update one day later: My friend says I did not render his statements properly. I think I did. I invited him to post corrections here in any form he wishes, in English or in French.

Update and correction on 9/21/12

My friend eventually  sent me links to four French newspapers  each of which led to op-eds by writers with Muslim names that indicated a clear attachment to freedom of expression while they disparaged the violent mob actions in several Muslim countries and the murder of the American personnel in Benghazi. My friend said it took him little time to find those items.

Then, I asked him if conversations about the importance of freedom of expression vs blasphemy were also taking place in the Arabic language press. In response, he sent me a link to what he said was an op-ed in Arabic dealing exactly with the topic of my question. He invited me to use one of the on-line translation tools. I was not able to open this last item. The fault lies entirely with me, I am sure, with my bad computer equipment and with my shamefully bad skills. I read nothing into it, of course.

So, at this point, I stand partially corrected. Contrary to my allegations, people with Muslim names do condemn the alleged reaction to the alleged blasphemies of that Internet video. The evidence available to me however all seems to come from France. It makes sense when I think about it.

As a colonial power in Africa and in the Levant, France has  had a Muslim immigration for a long time ago. It seems to me that this makes it possible to have Muslims and descendants of Muslims who have lived in the French context long enough to be appreciative of freedom of speech and of other allied freedoms.

Nevertheless, a leader of a French Muslim organization asked the French government recently on television to do the needful to ensure that Islam enjoys the respect that Muslims have a “right” – “le droit” to expect. A little wobbly, still! The French constitution does not accord a right to respect anymore than does the US Constitution. The French cabinet minister who answered pointed out that courts of law -rather than the executive  branch- where the proper venue to pursue such matters. Lately, the French have shown us how not to be weak-kneed. What do you know!

By contrast with the French case, the immigration of significant numbers of Muslims into the US is relatively recent. American Muslims and Muslims who live in America have had less time to become acculturated to the freedoms associated with democracy. Or, it’s possible that American institutions don’t do as a good a job as do French institutions in this respect. Subjectively, that would not surprise me, by the way.

At any rate, I still don’t hear or read of Muslims, or especially, of Muslims that seek to represent other Muslims condemning the assassinations and the riot. Fouad Ajami had a good piece in today’s Wall Street Journal. You can always count on him to be the voice of reason and lucidity on Middle-Eastern affairs. Somehow, I don’t think he speaks for many Muslims. I could be wrong. I hope I am.

At this point also,  I have no evidence that the defense of freedom of speech against religious fanaticism is currently taking place in any Arab country or, indeed, in any Muslim country. (And, again, it’s not because my friend did not try.)

Incidentally, I wonder how many predominantly Muslim countries even bother to guarantee freedom of speech in their constitutions or in their other basic laws. It goes without saying that I will immediately publish here any response that contradicts my suspicion in this respect.

In conclusion: The impression that started this oped, here on this blog, has been partly falsified. An important fraction of my initial impression has been successfully  contradicted because someone took the trouble to respond. I stand corrected.The Internet world is enormously better than anything preceding it. Nowadays, no one is condemned either to drag around the same old fallacies for a lifetime or to become an expert in whatever is ailing him. Others are able to come to the rescue credibility and the world is little bit better for it, maybe. I only regret that  none of the fair number of readers who look at this blog from Muslim countries has commented. I understand that in many cases, they have good reasons to fear intervening. I wish them well all the same.

But, I ask again: Is it a greater sin (or crime) for Muslims to bomb from the air apartment houses occupied by Muslim families with small, children in Aleppo or for non-Muslims to mock the Prophet Mohamed?

I would like the response of a religiously well-educated Muslim.

Levelling with Muslims – Updated 10/11/12

The Obama administration, as did  to an extent the Bush administration before it, and now even Rep. candidate Romney, all persist in not levelling with the Muslims of the world. I have some readers in Muslims countries so I will do it myself. I hope they will pass the word.

1 Our government pretty much operates withing the bounds of a short constitution written and adopted a long time ago. It’s not just a fiction as the world’s mental adolescents tend to believe. It’s a reality. The main word here is “bounds” imposed on government action.

2 Our constitution unambiguously protects blasphemy and blasphemers.

What separates our moral tradition in that area from Muslims  is not a little ditch as American governments and the pussy-footed State Department bureaucrats would sometimes have you believe. It’s a Grand Canyon.

It’s not that we don’t understand the  pleasures and merits of prohibiting and punishing blasphemy. We tried it. For several centuries, our ancestors burned people alive for small deviations in belief. They did it with an enthusiasm never seen in Islam. Then, we decided that any restrictions to freedom of expression destroyed both human happiness and human progress. Shortly afterwards Christian and formerly Christian societies began forging ahead of all primarily Muslim societies. No exception.

We don’t imprison or otherwise punish artists who blaspheme the mainstream religion of our country, Christianity, when they place a crucifix in a bucket of piss or use elephant shit as material for a religious object pertaining to the Virgin Mary. Our governments are equally impotent to condemn a movie leader you happen to find insulting. How deeply or strongly your feelings in this respect are  is completely irrelevant.  And if you try to punish those who so offend you, you are breaking our laws and you become liable to our punishment.

More on the movie leader below.

The early  apology the US Embassy in Cairo apparently issued unfortunately suggests that our diplomatic personnel is not that clear about our constitution. It’s a good emanation of the Obama administration in this respect. Let me re-affirm it: The US Constitution does not protect the right of Muslims anywhere not to be offended. It protects every American’s right to offend anyone, including Muslims.

The President is not a jihadist and he is not a Muslim as some conservatives persist in affirming. He just does not know what to do or what to say in the current crisis, as he does not know what to say or do in connection with the economic crisis. I told you this before he was even elected: He never had a job in his life; his grades are in hiding. Why wouldn’t he be out of his depth? The best he said, he said it about candidate Romney and it would wonderfully apply to himself: He shoots before he aims.

One fear lurks in my heart though: If President Obama manages to kill any violent jihadist leader he can present as somehow responsible for the attack on our consulate in Benghazi and for the murder of the US ambassador, I think he will be re-elected as a brave war leader( and my indignation will strangle me).

As usual, our liberal elite demonstrates a deeply anchored ignorance of anything foreign. Secretary Clinton, soon echoed by Senator Feinstein ( one of the few Democratic politicians I like), wonders how the violent jihadists could do it to us, in the very country and the very city, Benghazi, we helped save from bloody destruction.

Ms. Secretary, Ms Senator: That’s why they did it.  First, the Salafists, extreme jihadists, played a minor part in the liberation of Libya from dictatorship. They were upstaged by the same  infidels who recently dispatched their figurehead in Pakistan.  Their collective credibility was at stake.

Second, Ms Secretary, Ms Senator, there is no reason to believe that  the violent jihadists respond to our own behavior in any way except the way I describe above. They don’t kill us because of what we do, they kill us because of who we are. They also kill Middle-Eastern Christians, Jews, and Shiite Muslims because of who they are. Their ideology comprises no reason to stop waging war until they have conquered the whole world for a reborn Islamic Caliphate. Some are willing to die in the service of this grand cinematographic endeavor. But, incidentally, if you think about it, the number really willing to die is quite small in relation to one billion Muslims (take or leave one hundred million).

On the absence of a relationship between what we, America, do and what violent jihadists try to do to us, you might read a long oped by Husain Haqqani in the Wall Street Journal of 9/14/12. He is a former Pakistani ambassador to the US and currently a professor of international relations at Boston University. His  name suggests he is not a Lutheran.

More silly waste of time among our hapless pundits: Was the attack in Benghazi planned? You bet! Even in Libya, people don’t go to a peaceful demonstration of protest carrying automatic rifles and grenade launchers. The day was 9/11, the right time to strike the imagination of the undecided, perhaps the right time in their reading of us to strike fear in Americans again. The indignation about the blasphemous movie trailer provided excellent cover. The terrorists got lucky this time. (They have not had much luck in the past nine years, let’s face it.)

All the same, the question can’t help arise about the origin and the function of the said blasphemous bit of a bad movie, a sure object of provocation for the wider Muslim world. The 9/13/12  Wall Street Journal has a piece tracing it to Coptic Christians (Egyptians Christians ) living in the US who falsely attributed its production to a non-existent Israeli also living in the US.( Le Figaro echoes this thesis the next day.) The seemingly silly cover could be in fact a smart cover.

First, I have trouble imagining Copts doing something like this under their own power, with millions of their relatives serving as hostages in an excited Muslim Egypt governed by Islamists.

Second, I can’t help but notice that if I wanted to cast the Arab Muslim world in a bad light, I could hardly think of anything better than the said film. By insulting the Prophet Mohammed, you can always make Muslim Arabs riot on command. It never fails. It’s like pressing a button. If I wanted to renew and improve American public opinion support for a strike anywhere in the Middle-East, I would fill American television screens with  screaming, murderous Muslim mobs setting fire to American embassies. It never fails: Insult the Prophet – Riots – Cause Americans to dislike Muslim Arabs. I don’t believe much in conspiracies but I am willing to consider the possibility, especially when they don’t require large numbers to keep a secret.

Finally, I want to examine briefly a continuing mystery. All media, including Fox News, love pictures of Embassies going up in flames. But, in fact, when I listen carefully, I find that all the reports I receive in English or in French refer to “hundreds” of rioters in any given country except possibly Egypt. Rioters reportedly set fire to the German Embassy in Sudan. (Sudanese rioters may simply not know any more geography than your average American high-school student. Don’t cast stones from inside your glasss-house!) Rioters in Lebanon burned a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise while under the impression that Colonel Sander is a great Christian prophet, I assume: tit-for-tat, no more Mister Nice Guy! The international display of rage would all be rather pathetic were it not for the assassinations of four Americans. That’s the only thing giving the display a measure of gravitas.

The mystery is the deafening silence of Muslims who are not violent jihadists themselves and of the institutions that present themselves as representing them. Our television capture Muslim Arab masses acting like savages and they say nothing. I am tirelessly stating that I have know Muslim Arabs all my life. On the average, they were kinder, gentler, easier to get along with than the Christians and the Jews in my life. (But the free-thinkers and atheist were the nicest of all.) People who would not raise a hand to swat a mosquito seem to contemplate with equanimity highly public disgusting behavior that is certain to increase the Western prejudice against them. Why ?

I am not a theologian but I suspect that the  bulk of the answer lies  in the Muslim doctrine of takfirism. To simplify, I am sure terribly but, I am equally sure, usefully, the doctrine says this:  When a Muslim (singular) sees something wrong being done, it’s his right and his duty to intervene to stop the wrong. No consultation with others, just with one’s conscience; no worries about “taking the law into one’s own hands,” that’s what the doctrine tells  you to do; not much room for  consideration and re-consideration.

I think few Muslims are literally takfirists. However, the same Muslims who find it difficult to  swat a mosquito find it even more difficult to condemn takfirism. That’s because the doctrine of takfirism is tightly bound with what is most admirable in Islam, the religion. I mean its extreme moral individualism: No excuses, no hiding behind a “church,” no Talmudic discussion of fine points verging on recommendations for inaction, no lace-adorned Pope in Rome interceding on your behalf, no  sacred singing to distract, no forgiving congregation, no pastor assuring you every Sunday that God has got your back.

We, Americans, however, are mostly not takfirists at all. I don’t know how many American Muslims are. I don’t know how many Muslims who live in American are. I don’t really care.  Terrorist guided y takfirism will equally murder,  and with a light heart, the children of Muslims and of Christians and of Jews and of non-believers. We must destroy those who destroy us and even those who say they want to destroy us, and those who help them. That’s irrespective of why they want to kill us, that’s irrespective of  some stupid, badly made Internet movie; that’s irrespective of whether someone in this country committed blasphemy or not. Again, blasphemy is unambiguously protected under our constitution. Bad taste is our birthright. It’s worth fighting for.

If you are a Muslim or a non-Muslim resident of a mostly Muslim country, and if you can do so safely, please leave a comment. You can be completely sure your comment will not be censored. (I have no procedure by which I can filter comments on this blog. ) Feel free to use a pseudonym.

UPDATE 10/11/12 Testimony before a Congressional Committee on October 10th demonstrated that the murderous attack on the US consulate in Benghazi was not preceded by nor associated with a spontaneous riot. There was no link between this event and the video insulting to the Prophet Mohammed. It was simply a terrorist act to celebrate the 9/11 terrorist attack in New York. My instincts were right. I am not bragging; I am wondering why the media’s understanding is so befuddled. Could it be political bias that blinds them?

Ron Paul’s 20 Billion On Military A.C. – N. S.!

In an attempt to achieve holy humility, I am dealing with objections against the several times I accused Ron Paul of being insouciant about facts. The first time I questioned on his blog Ron Paul’s veracity with respect to the alleged facts he throws out freely, I expressed disbelief at his assertion that the US spent 20 billion (B) a year on air conditioning in Iraq and Afghanistan (“ Ron Paul Won’t Get My Vote” posted December 3st 2011.) I declared, of course, that I did not believe that number for a minute. I also speculated in that posting on the possible sources of such silliness.

In reaction, frequent critic of this blog and fervent Paulista Crackpot sent me a flurry of links to press items supposedly supporting Paul’s statement. The 20 billion figure was so absurd on its face that I did not, at the time, make enough of an effort to activate the links. He sent me again recently, in a more user-friendly form, linkages to three press items purporting to prove to me that this country really spent 20 billion dollars annually on air conditioning warring in Afghanistan and in Iraq (Obviously, for Iraq, the figure has to be applied retrospectively. Not a problem.)

The first item, from the British Telegraph, usually a good source, does not endorse the claim but clearly attributes it. It turns out that the claim was made by a retired general named Steve Anderson. I think no one at all seconded him. It turns out from the Telegraph piece and, more clearly, from the third source, NPR (of all things) that the retired general had an ax to grind. He had been struggling in vain to make the higher brass accept the idea of insulating military tents with foam. It appears from the NPR report that the general had “green”concerns among other concerns of a more directly military nature. (This is not statement on whether the general was right about the foam.)

The Telegraph story gives figures that put the total annual cost of the wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq in past years at 171 billion,or possibly at 180 billion. ( I am correcting a little upward for a given Iraq estimate based on 2011, a low year). Thus according to the same report in the Telegraph, air conditioning would account for something like 1/9^th of American military expenditures for the two theaters of war together. Assuming a run-of-the mill underestimate of the total costs of war, air-conditioning would still eat up around 1/10^th (ten per cent) of the whole.

That’s ridiculous, of course, but it may make sense sense if you keep in mind that the general was trying to prove a point. His accounting involves imputing to air conditioning some unknown fraction of the very high expenses naturally incurred when moving large amounts of freight over physically difficult, undeveloped terrain and under the constant threat of military attack.

Again, it’s no clear what formula you would use to attribute a fraction of the total transport expenditure to air conditioning. I note with interest though that if there were zero air conditioning in both countries, the transportation costs of everything else (ammunition, aviation fuel, trucks, parts, food) would probably amount to pretty much the same total. This is all a little fishy.

Yet, the idea of distributing the cost of an infrastructure across all users makes sense; it’s even quite intelligent, in fact. Perhaps, it’s a practice that should be adopted whenever market forces are lacking to tell us the true price of things. But at this point, it’s a highly unusual way of presenting information. It leads to false comparisons. (See above.) And, think of an apple grown in Washington state and transported to New York City to be sold there. If there were no market to tell me the true price of this apple, I am pretty sure that, with General Anderson’s accounting method, I could probably present the New York cost of that single apple as a cool $10 or more.

Note again that no one with credentials equal to those of General Anderson seems to have confirmed his A.C estimate. The Pentagon gave some alternative figures that NPR (of all sources) faithfully reproduces. There is every reason to believe that the Pentagon, a government agency, has to rely on conventional accounting methods. The Pentagon made these two relevant statements:

1     It spends annually for energy $15 billion for all its military operations around the world. “Energy” involves much more than air conditioning, obviously. The whole wold is a lot more than Iraq and Afghanistan.

2   It gives recent figures for fuel costs for Afghanistan alone equivalent to about $2.4 billion annually. It’s difficult to imagine that fuel for air conditioning specifically constitutes more than a fraction of all the fuel used in that theater of war including for trucks, cars, and especially, for airplanes. It seems reasonable to think that the air conditioning expense for Afghanistan is a small fraction of 1/10^th of the amount advanced by General Anderson.

Now, if you think the Pentagon is lying here although it is one of most watched organizations in the world, you must either admit that there is no way to obtain this kind of information or, alternatively, you have better sources. If you do, please share them, don’t hog them, please!

I think that what happened with the bombastic allegation by Congressman Ron Paul is that the information came from some people on his overenthusiastic staff. As is often the case with enthusiasts, they didn’t take the time to study the very documents they use to shore up their pre-conceived notions. I persist in thinking that Mr Paul himself does not crack the whip on helpers with respects to such peccadilloes as saying “10” for “much less than 1.” Congressman Paul and his staff are, at minimum, unusually credulous. I am not sure I would not prefer that they lied like many other politicians and their organizations.

If you insist in spite of everything on believing the absurd 20 billion figure, you might at least console yourself with the thought that the estimated cost of the recent US military intervention in Libya was only 1/20^th as much as the cost of air conditioning the war in Afghanistan and Iraq in a hot year, with full personnel. The liberation of Libya was a steal, I would say!

(This last info is from The Week, the third source Crackpot provided in a futile attempt to overcome implausibility.)

I am not sure whether you will be able to activate the links below that Crackpot sent me. If you can’t, perhaps Crackpot will oblige again.

The UK’s Telegraph on $20 billion a year for air conditioning (which we’ve already gone over a number of times):http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8601975/US-spends-12.5-billion-a-year-on-air-con-in-Iraq-and-Afghanistan.html

The Week on $20 billion a year:http://theweek.com/article/index/216786/the-militarys-20-billion-air-conditioning-bill-by-the-numbers

And, last but not least, NPR drops the $20 billion bomb:http://www.npr.org/2011/06/25/137414737/among-the-costs-of-war-20b-in-air-conditioning

Obama’s War

President Obama did the right thing, in the nick of time and under pressure from America’s traditional allies, and under pressure from the Arab League, (Go figure!) At least he did. Attacking Ghadafi is one of those cases where our national interest and common decency converge. Can’t let them go to waste! We couldn’t very well let the Libyan rebels get massacred. We couldn’t very well let me Ghadafi put his threat into action of going house to house to murder his opponents. Yes, I know that we don’t know which of the rebels are seekers of liberty and which are Jihadists. Again, I have to refer to the dog that did not bark. The Islamists seem remarkably absent from rebel-held areas. After all, the western press had free rein there to look for them, to find them, and to interview them live on television. That’s for common decency, for humanity, for morality.

As I keep saying, I wish there were another sheriff in town but the fact is that there isn’t. My position here may sound exotic because I come from a different ethical tradition. Under French law, there is actually a crime called: “non-assistance to a person in danger.” The underlying doctrine is that if you can help while running only a reasonable risk, you are obligated to help. That’s pretty much where we are with respect to Ghadafi’s decrepit air force and his obsolete air-defense system.

Now for our national interest in the anti-Ghadafi operation. It comes in two forms. First, we owe Ghadafi for years and years of terrorism. Almost certainly, we owe him for the deliberate assassination of 300 over Lockerbie . If we were not sure, it would be easy enough, it’s still easy enough to execute an international arrest warrant against him and to try him in the Netherlands. We can always apologize if he comes out innocent. If he does not comply with the warrant then, of course, we can kill him while attempting to arrest him.

The second package for our national interest is the spectacle of irresoluteness America gives under Obama’s guidance. With respect to any tyrant, you can say nothing or if you say something, it cannot be just an opinion as long as you are, like it or not, a superpower. Obama declared almost a month ago that Ghadafi had to go then, he sat on this hands. If the French had not pressed the issue, it’s not clear he would have done anything at all. It’s not a matter of swaggering like 20-year old on Red Bull. It’s just that others who are actually dangerous to us are watching. That would include the insane leadership of North Korea and of Iran. That would include also the thoroughly corrupt, unprincipled, ever-opportunistic Chinese Communist Party of China. I don’t even put it past the Kremlin gangsters to try something a little daring against us if they sense that we are weak.

And then, there is Arab opinion, the “Arab street” that was high on the list of liberals’ concerns when President Bush initiated the liberation of Iraq. Either you care about the street or you don’t. I think it’s reasonable not to care although it’s cynical. If you profess to care – by making a big speech in Cairo, for example – then, you cannot reject an opportunity to show friendship. And you cannot allow a situation where Arab opinion, the segment of Arab opinion you care about, democrats, says thing such as, “The French are the real friends of the Arabs; the Americans only pretend to like us, sometimes, for our oil.” Incidentally, the revolutionaries and the Ghadafi partisans alike seem to credit French air strikes for stopping the imminent offensive against Benghazi. It’s not surprising given our dithering and the Brits’ silence. And maybe, the French did it all by themselves, I mean that raid that destroyed tanks on the edge of the city. They had an aircraft carrier in the vicinity.

Speaking about oil: A reminder to liberals and progressives who have not yet apologized for screaming that Bush went into Iraq to steal the oil (“No blood for oil!”): There is still little oil coming from Iraq. The first two licenses for exploration and for exploitation to be approved by the democratically elected Iraqi government went to a Chinese company and to a French company, respectively. American oil companies are notably absent. I am not suggesting the Iraqi government discriminates against them. Whatever the reason, their absence surely undermines the Left’s simplistic slogans of 2003.

President Obama’s piousness about not exceeding the UN mandate appears sillier by the day. Someone bombed one of the places where he might have been in Tripoli, twice, I think, as I write. In fact, everyone believes that his whole fascist regime will dissolve when he dies or flees. Then, the parties will sit together and cobble something approximating a representative transitional national union government. The final truth is that, like a rabid dog, Ghadafi is too dangerous to be allowed to live. It’s not just my opinion, it’s a description based on his past. Would he blow up civilian planes over the busy Mediterranean skies if he had a chance? Well, he did it for a much smaller threat to his power. Here is an intriguing thing about the man I don’t hear discussed: When he took power in 1969, he was 27 and quite handsome. He is almost exactly my age. I am well aware of the ravages of age on a handsome guy’s face. I know I would not win that many beauty prizes today. But look at Gadhafi: He has become spectacularly ugly. Simple aging might not explain the transformation. I keep wondering what medication he is on that causes the repulsive swelling of his face. Medication might help explain his madness.

The president did the right thing in my opinion, which is surprising, even if he hesitated a lot. It’s surprising because he has spent so much of his adult life paling around with American terrorists and with his black racist pastor Wright. From them, he learned that American is the greatest source of evil in the world and possibly, at least indirectly, the only source of evil. Thus, there was nothing in his simple-minded leftist playbook from 1968 about what to do against a self-evidently greater evil than America, and you have the power to stop it, and probably, no one else will. Well, as I said, at least he did. And though I am skeptical, I am not against letting the Europeans take the lead in determining what goes on on their back doorstep.

I see one big danger in the way President Obama handled this affair and it’s not a major escalation. I am pretty sue it’s not going to happen. There will be no American occupation, and no direct attempt at state-building. The Europeans will be forced to hold the bag if this does not end quickly. The big danger is of a political and ideological nature. By insisting on waiting for a Security Council approval, Obama has taken a significant step toward having the UN appear like a world government. I believe this is completely unacceptable, of course. I don’t want to live in a world where policy is made and/or implemented by dozens of banana dictators and where China and Russia have equal influence with the US and the United Kingdom.

It’s hard enough living in a country whose laws and policies emanate partially from the likes of Chicago and New Orleans.

And, by insisting also on approval from the buffoon Arab League, the president lent more legitimacy to it than he received. And, predictably, the Arab League began whining within twenty-four hours that the coalition was going too far anyway. As I write, only one member of the Arab League out of 20 member states, most armed to the teeth, Qatar, has promised four planes to help the coalition. No other member state has offered a tank, or two, or even a mobile kitchen, or a single ambulance. The Arab League is the organization that gave the dictator of Sudan its official blessing in the middle of the Darfur on-going massacre. President Obama made them look more real and purposeful serious than they are, another gross step against the progress of democracy in the world.

With all this, we have almost forgotten Israel. For years, I gave the PLO that runs the West Bank the benefit of doubt. Two weeks ago, one of its affiliates cut the throats of four Israelis settlers. One “settler” was two months old. There is no doubt left for me unless the assassin is caught and executed by the PLO. Nevertheless, I am optimistic about that corner of the Middle East. For one thing, the insane hatred of Israel among Arabs can’t get much worse. For another thing, democratization never fails to bring a circulation of ideas and of facts. It’s like airing a room. More Arabs will come to realize their madness in this matter. More Arabs will be slightly more willing to admit that they don’t hate Israel day and night, that they have a life too. I have yet another hypothesis. For the past thirty, forty years, many Arabs felt deeply ashamed about their abject subjection, about their cowardice. To avoid hating themselves they threw all their frustration at the scapegoat Israel that was continuously being offered by the same tyrants responsible for their subjection. With tyrants gone and preferably hung, some Arabs, at least, are liable to begin acting like free men.

Pres. Obama is a Wimp

The Brits and the Germans sent warships to evacuate their citizens from Libya. Later, they violated Libyan airspace by sending warplanes to pick up  oil workers  stranded in the desert. The French used military transport planes to evacuate their citizens. Our American evacuees were stuck in Tripoli harbor for two-and-a half days on a ferry too rickety to brave bad weather in the Mediterranean over the same distance as New York to Boston. America m cannot use anything even remotely military. Under our enlightened and chronically anti-American leaders, Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton, we have become pathetic. That’s because Barak Obama is a wimp, always has been.

President Obama is missing a chance that does not even come to an American president once in a century. If he had any vision at all, he would  have sent several days ago a small party of Special Forces raiders to snatch Moammar Gadhafi and to throw him hogtied on the floor of the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands. (I know that the US is not a member. It does not prevent us from acting as a marshal. Let the Court itself decide not to prosecute Gadhafi. ) I know the president wants to be a legalist, I know but the legal excuse for acting in a forceful manner is there: Several high-ranking Libyan defectors have gone public with the assertion that Gadhafi personally ordered the Lockerbee massacre. That’s the equivalent of a Grand Jury, as far as I am concerned. Note that the idea is not to execute him summarily but to try him. That’s what courts are for: to establish the guilt of the accused or to release them. “No harm done. Sorry to have bothered you Mr Supreme Leader, and no hard feelings, we hope. Enjoy yourself in your retirement villa on the Italian Riviera.”

If the President acted in this forceful manner force once,  just for once, for once, America would be on the side of justice and on the side of humanity in the Middle East. And for once, millions of Arabs would applaud and would feel grateful to the US. The famous “Arab street,” the thought of which used to get liberals all weak in the knees up when Pres. Bush liberated Iraq, obviously does not appreciate any more than you and I would the street massacres of ordinary citizens in defense of a failed and probably drugged-up tyrant. Even if the snatching attempt failed, it would shorten the blood-letting in Libya by causing even more military to switch sides. Gadhafi is a lot like Saddam Hussein: Not that many of his soldiers are eager to die for him. That’s why he has to import mercenaries from very poor black African countries.

As usual, I make a note of what is not happening: We don’t hear much about Venezuela’ s military dictator, Hugo Chavez, or anything at all from El Lider Máximo in Cuba, these days. I guess, they are considering.

The liberal American media continue to look silly, ignorant, unprepared, incompetent. “Who could have predicted this upheaval?” they seem to be pleading. Well, someone did. Here is is:

“Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe – because, in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty.”

That was George W. Bush in 2003.

Note: I cribbed the citation from a good piece by Elliot Abrams in 2/25/11 WSJ.