“We are not there specifically to protect a pipeline across Afghanistan.”
The minister said it’s incidental to the role Canadians are already playing.
—-SNIP—-
“Our primary purpose there is to build that country to the point where they can walk on their own and then we’re coming home.”

Oh, really? What exactly needs to be built, pray tell? I thought Canadian soldiers were fighting terrorists. I thought they were preventing terrorism from coming to Canada. Now, it seems more evident that we have to be a little more flexible our goals and expectations. The soldiers may as well incidentally help secure a pipeline while they are at it, I suppose.

Unwittingly, Ray Henault, Canada’s top general at the time, probably said it best a few years ago:

“This investment is one that we think will be here for us and for allies,” Henault said.

“It’s a good investment in the long-term prospects that we have for Afghanistan. And ultimately we may find ourselves back here again if that’s what government decides to do.”

Sounds pretty eery, if you ask me.

As for the latter though, wouldn’t it be interesting if we, for one moment, got truly investigative and turned the tables on the all too comfortable Darwinians who have become yet another group to hijack our education system for their own self-preservation and motives? After all, in the noise of bitter reviews, intimidating threats and exhaustive and bewildered requests to anti-Darwinists to just shut up, I think the evolution debate has failed to examine a key component: whether the theory of Charles Darwin is truly something worth wasting time on in the science class to begin with. After all, a physicist who learns anything from F=MA to the hydrogen fusion reaction that is continually taking place at the centre of our sun to even string theory is able to take that knowledge and apply it to the benefit of mankind in a strictly physical sense. Even if the highly controversial string theory proves to be a dead end, what it would tell us about how elementary particles don’t interact would help us to zone in on other understandings and ultimately give us a better way to understand the very microscopic. In turn, that would allow us to apply our knowledge one day to advancements that might, for example, allow for microscopic computers that write data onto quarks, just as F=MA gave us the first building blocks we needed to put a man on the moon. Chemistry need only need mention of companies like DOW or Pfizer to prove its contribution to our modern society and even a late-comer to quantitative analysis, biology, will soon prove invaluable to an entire generation of baby-boomers who are in the midst of retiring from the workforce currently. In fact, the driving force behind science is not just getting to have a better understanding of the world around us, from the very small to the very large, but also being able to apply that knowledge in some fashion.

When it comes to the necessity to teach Darwinian evolution in a grade 7 classroom, or high school, or even university, what is the purpose? I mean, we can keep clubing each other over the head about how detrimental it is to society for the other side to get a voice in on the debate, but as I noted above, the debate always ends up in the realm of the meta-physical; things pertaining to the existence, or lack thereof, of God! Has evolution allowed us to come up with any great invention or advancement? Is it so essential to our understanding of biology or chemistry that twelve year-olds need to understand it if they are going to pass their high school biology or chemistry courses? Or are we all fooling ourselves here, using findings that more properly belong in the hit-or-miss fields of archeology and social science to indoctrinate young minds with what is practically nothing more than a contemporary, social statement?

The fact is that evolution is still very much stuck in in the past, and will continue to be until it can offer actual testifiable evidence of one species giving way to another over the course of two or more generations. It’s all about the findings in the dirt, the rock layers and the pretty pastel pictures that appear in text books. The funny thing about history is that as it becomes more remote, the possibilities of the imagination grow exponentially. It’s also the truth that if evolution was so essential for our children to learn, I should have never graduated from university, nor anyone else who currently walks to Earth and believes that evolution deserves a more skeptical analysis, since the understanding of that knowledge should have been essential in understanding everything from RNA-DNA reactions to the immune system. Evolution should have to be to biology what F=MA is to physics if the official story is to be believed, wherein a student that fails to acknowledge the very foundations cannot comprehend or excel while studying the more advanced topics.

So as Expelled comes out this weekend in a fraction of the theatres it did in the US back in April, you’ll probably see a few fireworks fly as the Darwinians campaign to remain the only kid on the block. What the movie will continue to do though is extend a debate that has lasted for over 150 years and certainly isn’t going away; a debate where a lot of questions could be and should be asked. Ultimately, the most dangerous of those question for Darwinians isn’t “Can you prove it?”, although they certainly hate that one. Rather, if they want to spend valuable class time teaching my son or daughter about their great theory about nothing, the worst thing they could hear back from my kid is “So what?” The runner up might sound something like “Why are you so concerned about us hearing from the competition?”

I see nothing wrong with letting them stay in Canada. These deserters claim to have been deceived about what they were expected to do. They may be right. If they were deceived, that should be grounds enough for them to break their side of the contract and there is no basis for saying they enlisted voluntarily.

Rae was angered by the generalization for which he says he sees no basis in fact.

-Toronto Star, Saturday May 10, 2008

That quote, and that link, refer to a story by Toronto Star reporter Tonda MacCharles today that suggests that Prime Minister Harper is wrongfully smearing the opposition with an anti-semitic brush. Rae’s charge is quite simply not true, which isn’t shocking to Ontarians who remember his expert opinions on the affairs of government nearly 20 years ago. However, Tonda MacCharles, a journalist, is not presenting a full picture of the situation in her write up and all it takes is a quick Google search to prove it. That’s right! Three MPs, including Bloc MP Giles Duceppe and Montreal Liberal Dennis Coderre marched alongside Hezbollah flags in downtown Montreal back in the summer of 2006 when the Israeli-Lebanon strike was going on those two years ago. The three MPs never publicly denounced their actions and as public representatives, ignored the due diligence that they are expected to practice as such office holders.

That is because Hezbollah is a radical and dangerous group that wants nothing more than they physical obliteration of Israel and all Jews in the world. That’s the sort of allies that the three MPs above-mentioned had on that summer day two years ago and that is why the Prime Minister is accurate in asserting

Canada, under this government, is never going to cater to that kind of opinion. You know, I am disturbed that there are some elements in our political system; there are even some members of Parliament – we saw during a confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah a couple of years back – some that were willing to cater to that kind of opinion.*

So in other words, the Montreal rally was exactly what the Prime Minister was referring to, lest the opposition now suggest that his “blanket statement” could imply other anti-semitic occasions that opposition members indulged in (a Freudian slip, if it comes?). It will come too though as the Montreal event was pretty cut and dry, something that even the most hardened partisan should see if they simply put the shoe on the other foot and tried to imagine Conservatives marching alongside someone holding a “God hates fags” sign…hey, even having an MP holding hands with somebody down the street would even be fair game I guess!

So are the Liberal and Bloc caucuses full of raving “drive ‘em into the sea” anti-semites? Hardly. Are their numbers, however, including those who give legitimacy to an organization that deserves to be destroyed and at the same time associating themselves with a toxic philosophy that the civilized world should not entertain? Absolutely!

*-emphasis added

“We are both federal states and when you live in glasshouse you don’t throw stones.“

Yes, Mr. Ambassador, but Canadians do not torch embassies nor do they poison their political opponents. Canada is a “federation” but Canadians are different from Russians and Serbs. [I wonder if the Russian ambassador considers a bayonnet and a butter knife as being the same too, hmm???]

If Canadians want to maintain any semblance of being part of a civilized nation, they will distance themselves from the bullying arrogant rhetoric of Russian statesmen.  Canadians will align themselves with other civilized people who did not hesitate to recognize the obvious: Kosovo independence.

President Bush has had a difficult time lately in Iraq. He lost the mid-term elections, fired his defence secretary, and is about to launch his presidency’s last stand — a “surge” of thousands of fresh troops in one more desperate attempt to take and hold Baghdad.

Norman Podhoretz speaks Jan 16, 2008 :

It took Lincoln three years to find Sherman and Grant. It took George Bush three years to find Petraeus.

Sydney’s Cardinal Pell heavily criticized an Australian medical journal for publishing a professor’s letter calling for a tax on children of $5000 per child and $800 yearly for each child after birth, as punishment for parents who have families larger than two children.

…

Dr. Barry Walters condemned Australia’s “baby bonus” program, writing that “showering financial booty on new mothers” encouraged “greenhouse-unfriendly behaviour” and that Australia should adopt population plans similar to those in India or China. Trees should be planted to negate the ecological effect of every child born, he said.

But Cardinal Pell said that anti-human environmental proposals from extremist minorities were the real cause for concern.

Sadly, extremist minorities, the likes of which we saw around here courtesy of Atheism’s American high priest, soon become oppressive majorities after they use their influence in the education system to brainwash enough young voters to militantly support the agenda in question.

Just for the record as well, it’s not like India (whose culture is known to mimic ancient Rome’s and prefer male babies while slaughtering its daughters — feminists? feminists?!) or China export there excess human capital to other nations like our grande immigration scheme in this country likes to imagine. The bodies pile up pretty fast.

This professor’s letter also begs the question of what would happen if expectant parents aren’t able to pay a sickening carbon tax on newborns. Does the state then empower itself to violate the mother physically and abort the child? (Feminists? Feminists?!) The only crime that I can see the armies of The Left truly convicting this professor of is demonstrating modern liberalism’s true agenda of pursuing a Utopian world (which won’t work under real-world circumstances) through means that would make Hitler, Stalin, et al blush in jealousy. At least the ancients, as primative as I’ve been told they were in comparison to our highly evolved brains and culture, were honest enough to admit when all they wanted was a good old genocide to appease their blood-thirsty gods!

The topic of the interview will be general military affairs and issues relating to Canada’s role as a peace-keeper. If you’re interested in submitting a question, read more at the Maple Leaf Web weblog.

There has been a great deal of commentary over the past two days though that suggest that Mrs. Bhutto’s death will produce more positives than negatives domestically. Internationally, I hope this would be the case too. The spotlight on the ex-Prime Minister’s life is revealing that she is just the best of a really, really bad bunch and that the problems of the Arab world are going to be long and difficult in solving. Maybe once we begin to understand this, and that there are no good guys among the political leaders of a place like Pakistan, only then will our society begin to defuse the threat that such nations pose to our peace and prosperity.

Now that we’ve all settled into winter here in Canada and the Bali Summit is complete, the focus is starting to turn to the mission in Afghanistan. It struck me yesterday in my travels during the Boxing Day trials that these two political theatres have an interesting correlation that everyone on the Left, the Right and in between should heed:

In the environment sphere, the Left tells us that despite the fact that the U.S., China, and India (the global leaders in CO2 emissions and real pollutants) have, to date, not signed onto any treaty that would limit their emissions Canada should step up to the plate and do more than our fair share in reducing these emissions so as to at least reduce the alleged damage that would occur due to CO2 build-up in the atmosphere.

In the global security sphere, the Right is telling us that despite the fact that Great Britain, Germany, and Italy (the other coalition partners that are part of the NATO mission in Afghanistan) aren’t contributing their fair share in the heavy-fighting reasons in southern Afghanistan that Canada should step up to the plate and finish the job no one else is willing to in Afghanistan so as to at least bring stability to the Afghan people.

It’s an interesting comparison especially when you factor in the rebukes to each respective argument. While I would argue that the Afghan mission has more success, both initiatives are only tentative and not guaranteed to bring on a better world and both are costing our economy money that opponents would be better spent.

The only consideration that I believe we should be factoring into these issues as we consider how to move forward on them is that in both cases the other countries of the world are either too lazy or too hypocritical to engage in the endevours themselves, so whether it is fighting the Taliban in the mountains of Asia or car emissions on the 400, we shouldn’t be looking to the international community for either guidance or support. Rather, our policies should be based on a clearly thought out vision that is prudent and ultimately promotes Canadian values and growth. Consider this when both issues come up in next year’s almost-certain election when all four party leaders pitch their vision (or lack thereof) of why we should hitch our coach to their particular wagon!

The US military says the number of civilian deaths has also fallen 60 per cent since the surge took effect, with a drop of 75 per cent in Baghdad. According to icasualties.org, the average monthly US death toll dropped from 96 for the first half of 2007 to 66 in the past four months. The average monthly death toll for Iraqi civilians and security forces has dropped from 2,157 to 1,223 in the same period.

You may not believe me, but I don’t even think it’s much of a stretch, certainly no grand fictional scheme à la Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America in which Lindbergh defeats Roosevelt in the election of 1940 and the U. S. opts out of World War II. The Clinton-Gore administration wasn’t the least bit afraid to use force. Erratic about it - maybe. Insecure about it - maybe. But pacifist? Ask Milosevic.

I haven’t seen it yet, but I reccommend it to you for two reasons: first, the movie “Hotel Rwanda” by the accounts of the Rwandans I have talked to, was largely fiction - kind of like “Saving Private Ryan” - it is set in a real-life war, but the events are fictional.  This movie is based on Dallaire’s memoirs, and had more support from Rwandans.  I know this because “Hotel Rwanda” wasn’t even filmed in Rwanda (the hotel in the picture is actually in South Africa - I know because I have been to Hotel des Mille Collines, and it looks nothing like the movie).

The second reason is because it was actually filmed in Rwanda and most of the extras are real Rwandans.  I was in Rwanda last year while it was filming.  A friend of mine that I made while there was an extra - he was there as a missionary but took a bit of time for fun to play the role of a Dutch soldier in the United Nations force.

I know some people don’t like downer movies, but my opinion is this - a movie like this is more important in terms of understanding reality and our times than the next “based on a true story” sexfest.  You don’t need to know how Hollywood thinks people boinked in history.  You do need to understand the true consequences of war, genocide, and international ambivalence.

Plus, while Dallaire sits as a Liberal senator, I still salute him for his admirable service in Rwanda.  You should too.

This guy, be he potentially the oldest man to become President of the United States, never gives up. And furthermore, he stands on principle no matter what; namely, Iraq is doable.

Here’s an interesting piece contemplating whether the McCain campaign is coming back to life after a tough summer. I sure hope it is!

As Stephen Hayes tells it:

Our first stop in New Hampshire became newsworthy for reasons having nothing to do with Iraq. Two students from Concord High School asked the kind of look-at-me questions that have more to do with impressing their peers than with grilling the candidate. (Reporters never do this.) One wanted to know whether McCain was worried that he was too old to be president and whether he thinks he might get Alzheimer’s in office. Snickers everywhere. McCain joked that his son thinks he’s old enough to hide his own Easter eggs, then punctuated his comments, with impeccable comic timing: “Thanks for the question, you little jerk!” The students loved it.

A second questioner sought McCain’s views on LGBT issues. McCain was confused by the acronym–short for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender–and after a clarification, the senator acknowledged differences of opinion with his interrogator. The student responded angrily. “I came here to see a leader,” he said. “I don’t.” McCain was unfazed. He told the student that such disagreements are “what America is all about,” smiled, and moved on.

Later that evening, I rode with McCain to the fire department in Bow, for a town hall meeting. A nondescript white van with two “McCain” stickers affixed to the back windows served as a poor man’s Straight Talk Express. The senator’s wife, his daughter Meghan, and a longtime family friend were waiting in the van with two staffers when McCain climbed in. After welcoming me to the van, he smiled broadly and gestured to those sharing the ride.

“I’m sorry you have to sit here surrounded by all of these jerks,” he said to great laughter.

I reminded him of the exchange at the school and said: “That’s the word of the day, isn’t it?”

“Oh yeah,” he said, as the memory of the morning registered. “Then there was that other question about the TB-GYN community,” McCain added, drawing laughter from the others in the van, most of whom knew the right acronym.

John McCain is having fun on the campaign trail–more fun than he did last spring when he was one of the frontrunners, and certainly more fun than during the summer of trouble. He is more carefree, more feisty, and more effective. Voters in New Hampshire seemed to notice.

Worth reading the rest. Incidentally, Hayes is also the author of Cheney: The Untold Story of the Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President in American History.

Harris, a self-described “gay man” who dedicates his recent book to his “partner of twenty years,” tells how the orgins of Islam, be it the origins of an inner-worldly political community, were and are, out of necessity, violent. He argues that the very generosity of liberal values, when confronted by those who do not share such values, works to undermine the very security of Western liberal society.

Near the end of the interview, Harris shares why he is an opponent of same-sex marriage. He makes a point that I have argued here many times: traditional marriage is the very definition of marriage. Any partnership between two-persons of the same-sex is not, by definition, marriage; there’s no substantive equivalency.

In agreement with anyone of a conservative temperament, Harris argues that intellectuals should be highly wary of tinkering with basic traditional conventions, conventions that give Western society a basic ordering structure, from whence reason emerges.

This is an excellent point!

Once you start ignoring basic common sense differences between men and women, and basic differences between heterosexual and homosexual human relationships, you are no longer as in touch with the ordering structure of reality as you once were. And when common sense reason starts to flag in one area, such unreason is demonstratably contagious and liable to spread. Case in point: once “sexual orientation” was read into the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and accepted as standard lingo in speaking of ALL persons, juridically and very narrowly, same-sex marriage became a more amenable, seemingly logical, permutation of Canadian jurisprudence.

Harris tells how he grew up a Southern Baptist and has a great deal of respect for many of “those people.” He says the very fact that he is tolerated as a gay man and allowed to live freely is a great accomplishment of civilization, especially when radical Islam would have him killed in the worst possible way. One can’t expect perfection from Western civilization, but rather be aware of how much better it is than the alternatives and WHY it is ABLE to be better than the alternatives.

Definitely an interview worth checking out!

Three decades later, there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam War and how we left. There’s no debate in my mind that the veterans from Vietnam deserve the high praise of the United States of America. (Applause.) Whatever your position is on that debate, one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America’s withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like “boat people,” “re-education camps,” and “killing fields.”

There was another price to our withdrawal from Vietnam, and we can hear it in the words of the enemy we face in today’s struggle — those who came to our soil and killed thousands of citizens on September the 11th, 2001. In an interview with a Pakistani newspaper after the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden declared that “the American people had risen against their government’s war in Vietnam. And they must do the same today.”

His number two man, Zawahiri, has also invoked Vietnam. In a letter to al Qaeda’s chief of operations in Iraq, Zawahiri pointed to “the aftermath of the collapse of the American power in Vietnam and how they ran and left their agents.”

Zawahiri later returned to this theme, declaring that the Americans “know better than others that there is no hope in victory. The Vietnam specter is closing every outlet.” Here at home, some can argue our withdrawal from Vietnam carried no price to American credibility — but the terrorists see it differently.

We must remember the words of the enemy. We must listen to what they say. Bin Laden has declared that “the war [in Iraq] is for you or us to win. If we win it, it means your disgrace and defeat forever.” Iraq is one of several fronts in the war on terror — but it’s the central front — it’s the central front for the enemy that attacked us and wants to attack us again. And it’s the central front for the United States and to withdraw without getting the job done would be devastating. (Applause.)

If we were to abandon the Iraqi people, the terrorists would be emboldened, and use their victory to gain new recruits. As we saw on September the 11th, a terrorist safe haven on the other side of the world can bring death and destruction to the streets of our own cities. Unlike in Vietnam, if we withdraw before the job is done, this enemy will follow us home. And that is why, for the security of the United States of America, we must defeat them overseas so we do not face them in the United States of America. (Applause.)

Recently, two men who were on the opposite sides of the debate over the Vietnam War came together to write an article. One was a member of President Nixon’s foreign policy team, and the other was a fierce critic of the Nixon administration’s policies. Together they wrote that the consequences of an American defeat in Iraq would be disastrous.

Here’s what they said: “Defeat would produce an explosion of euphoria among all the forces of Islamist extremism, throwing the entire Middle East into even greater upheaval. The likely human and strategic costs are appalling to contemplate. Perhaps that is why so much of the current debate seeks to ignore these consequences.” I believe these men are right.

In Iraq, our moral obligations and our strategic interests are one. So we pursue the extremists wherever we find them and we stand with the Iraqis at this difficult hour — because the shadow of terror will never be lifted from our world and the American people will never be safe until the people of the Middle East know the freedom that our Creator meant for all. (Applause.)

I recognize that history cannot predict the future with absolute certainty. I understand that. But history does remind us that there are lessons applicable to our time. And we can learn something from history. In Asia, we saw freedom triumph over violent ideologies after the sacrifice of tens of thousands of American lives — and that freedom has yielded peace for generations.

Peter Rodman explains why Bush’s history lesson correctly Assesses the consequences of defeat in Iraq for American global posturing.

So the president has his history right. The outcome in Indochina was not foreordained. Congress had the last word, however, between 1973 and 1975.

The strategic consequences of defeat in Indochina were also serious. Leonid Brezhnev crowed that the global “correlation of forces” had shifted in favor of “socialism,” and the Soviets went on a geopolitical offensive in the third world for a decade. Demoralized allied leaders in Europe as well as Asia feared the new Soviet aggressiveness and lamented the paralysis of American will. When Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990, he and his colleagues invoked Vietnam as evidence that U.S. warnings did not need to be taken seriously. That’s what it means to lose credibility. Once lost, it has to be re-earned the hard way.

No analogies are ever complete, but — given our global leadership and the number of allies and friends that rely on us for their security — the consequences of an American defeat can be counted on to be terrible. How can anyone seriously think otherwise?

Very cool show! Rather hawkish coming from the BBC, but very signficant if it can make military history more accessible to the general public, making people aware of the high stakes and strategem of war—not just the blood and gore. War is a reality of the world in which we live, despite the rantings of materialistic self-righteous peacenics.

Here’s an interview with Peter and Dan Snow on their father and son collaborative efforts. Check out the BBC and Military Channel links for podcasts and previews.

We’re there for the women and children everyone!

So lets face it, Harper should be talking as much as he can about the good Canadian soldiers are doing in Afghanistan; not only providing law and order, but bolstering aid and development. However, he should not, for one minute, play to the traditional pat-ourselves-on-the-back Canadian national pathology toward peace keeping. It’s in our national interest for that self-congratulatory and desultory nonsense to die! Even peace keeping missions need to serve our national interest; Canadians told this straight up.

When it comes to Afghanistan, Canadians need to be told what’s in it for us, how it serves our national interest to be in Afghanistan, and how the soldiers serving in Afghanistan know this full well. Those boys—and a few girls—are fighting and dying for Canada, not some hell-bent over-eager idealism!

The idea that Canadians are just do-good internationalists keeping the peace between warring parties—out of our own benevolence, with little expectation of casualties—is not only vain, it’s a well-worn foreign policy hat that Canadians should never wear again. It not only blinds Canadians to the very real threats, and root causes of those threats, to our national security and sovereignty, it reinforces a moralizing self-righteousness that far too readily excuses bad governance at home.

Thankfully, Canada’s new Conservative government has done an admirable job of ushering this country back into the real world, a world where national sovereignty and punching above one’s weight comes at a real cost, one that requires serious strategic thinking.

Fortunately, a comparison of headlines makes the same point:

CBC: Fallen soldier never gave up on frustrating mission: father.

CanWest: Fallen soldier dedicated to his men and Afghan mission, family says.

Globe and Mail: Fallen soldier wasn’t losing hope, father says.

CTV: Dawe was frustrated with ‘guerrilla war’ tactics.

1.) Political progress itself will not reduce the violence, especially when Iraqi government is too little established to provide stability. Coalition forces, and lots of them, are needed to provide the basis for political stability.

2.) Higher ratios of troops to civilians does provide easier won success in bringing stability, though it is not determinative, considering preparedness and troop reliability. More coalition soldiers, along with more well-trained and reliable Iraqi forces, the total of which is now 350,000 in Iraq, have improved troop/civilian ratios significantly.

3.) After an area has been cleared of insurgents, rapid reduction of coalition forces while turning control over to Iraqi forces should not occur prematurely. All previous operations were hindered because Iraqi forces were not sufficiently capable of maintain security. Coalition forces need to hold their positions and help keep the peace.

4.) Advance forces, moving ahead of major operations, need to be used to establish bases and establish contact with local civilians. Not only does this assist with better tactical planning of the numbers need to clear an area, it is a way of reaching out to local leaders who are potential allies.

5.) Casualities are always highest at the start of clearing operations, despite better troop/civilian ratios and solid preparation. These casualities need to be expected! This spike in casualties is the short term cost of flushing insurgents from their defensive positions, and this spike NEEDS to be explained so that the political will for operations is maintained.

As Kagan and Kagan sum up:

… there is every reason to believe at this stage that the current operation and its likely successor will dramatically reduce the level of violence in Baghdad, and do so in a way that will prove sustainable. That accomplishment in itself will be a major contribution to American security, in that it will entail a major defeat for al Qaeda and its allies, now surging in response to our stepped-up operations. And it will create an unprecedented situation in postwar Iraq: one in which Iraq’s elected government can meet and discuss policies in relative security in a capital returning to normal; in which Sunni and Shia can afford to compromise without fear of an imminent sectarian explosion; and in which Iraqi forces can become increasingly responsible for maintaining the security that they have helped to establish. The current strategy is on track to produce that outcome–which is why it deserves to be given every chance to succeed.

Abu Saif spoke with disdain of Blair’s appointment as a special envoy to the Middle East, issuing an apparent threat.

“Inshallah,” meaning “Allah willing,” he told the crowd, Blair will “go to the Middle East as an envoy, and he’ll come back in a box. Inshallah. What box that is, we leave that up to you.”

Humphries estimated nearly 3,000 Muslims were gathered in front of the mosque in north London June 22, after Friday prayers, to protest Queen Elizabeth’s knighting of Indian author Salman Rushdie, the target of a death-sentence fatwa for “insulting” Islam’s prophet Muhammad in his 1988 book “The Satanic Verses.”

For Humphries, the response of the Muslims at Islam’s largest house of worship in the UK was telling.

“Not one said, ‘You’re not speaking for me’ or ‘Not in my name.’ They stood there and watched and applauded,” he told WND.

Like the UK, Humphries said, the U.S. has three major vulnerabilities to patient, fundamentalist Muslims who believe their purpose for living in the West is to help fulfill Islamic prophecies: The loss of border control, the inability to say no and lack of assimilation.

Be sure to listen to all of the audio feeds, particularly the interview with Abu Saif. It’s truly fascinating stuff, especially with his home-grown British accent, inciting revolution and the destruction of Israel.

…. Fisk settles on a “shameful, unethical headline” over an “article by Mark Steyn” in Pearl’s own Wall Street Journal. It was about Fisk’s bloody beating by an Afghan mob in Pakistan last December, after which he said that, in their shoes, “I would have done just the same to Robert Fisk. Or any other Westerner I could find.” It’s not their fault, he insisted, their “brutality is entirely the product of others”. As Fisk sees it, the mob who attacked him were “truly innocent of any crime except being the victim of the world”. In The Wall Street Journal, I called this “Fiskal responsibility – it’s always the Great Satan’s fault.”

Insofar as there’s any connection between the mugging of this vain buffoon and the murder of Daniel Pearl, it’s this: History repeats itself, but, in this instance, the usual order – tragedy’s recapitulation as farce – has been reversed. Is it too much to hope that militant Islam’s apologists might finally put an end to their own “misconceptions”? Islam is not “the victim of the world”, but the victim of itself. Omar Sheikh is a British public schoolboy, a graduate of the London School of Economics, and, like Osama and Mohammed Atta, a monument to the peculiar burdens of a non-deprived childhood in the Muslim world. Give ’em an e-mail address and they use it for kidnap notes. Give ’em a camcorder and they make a snuff video.

Let’s assume that all the chips fell the jihadis’ way, that they recruited enough volunteers to be able to kidnap and decapitate every single Jew in Palestine. Then what? Muslims would still be, as Pakistan’s General Musharraf told a conference the other day, “the poorest, the most illiterate, the most backward, the most unhealthy, the most unenlightened, the most deprived, and the weakest of all the human race.” Who would “the victim of the world” blame next? The evidence of the Sudan, Nigeria, and other parts of Africa suggests that, when there are no Jews to hand, the Islamofascists happily make do with killing Christians. In Kashmir, it’s the Hindus’ fault. There’s always someone.

A lady libertarian wrote a lot of letters to the government, complaining
about the treatment of a captive insurgents (terrorists) being held in
Afghanistan National Correctional System facilities. She received back
the following reply:

National Defence Headquarters
MGen George R. Pearkes Bldg, 15 NT
101 Colonel By Drive
Ottawa, ON K1A 0K2 Canada

Dear Concerned Citizen,

Thank you for your recent letter expressing your profound concern of
treatment of the Taliban and Al Qaeda terrorists captured by Canadian
Forces who were subsequently transferred to the Afghanistan Government
and are currently being held by Afghan officials in Afghanistan
National Correctional System facilities.

Our administration takes these matters seriously and your opinions were
heard loud and clear here in Ottawa. You will be pleased to learn,
thanks to the concerns of citizens like yourself; we are creating a new
department here at the Department of National Defense, to be called
“Liberals Accept Responsibility for Killers” program, or L.A.R.K. for
short.

In accordance with the guidelines of this new program, we have decided
to divert one terrorist and place him in your personal care. Your
personal detainee has been selected and is scheduled for transportation
under heavily armed guard to your residence in Toronto next Monday. Ali
Mohammed Ahmed bin Mahmud (you can just call him Ahmed) is to be cared
for pursuant to the standards you personally demanded in your letter of complaint.
It will likely be necessary for you to hire some assistant caretakers. We
will conduct weekly inspections to ensure that your standards of care for
Ahmed are commensurate with those you so strongly recommend in your
letter.

Although Ahmed is a sociopath and extremely violent, we hope that your
sensitivity to what you described as his “attitudinal problem” will
help him overcome these character flaws. Perhaps you are correct in
describing these problems as mere cultural differences. We understand
that you plan to offer counseling and home schooling.

Your adopted terrorist is extremely proficient in hand-to-hand combat
and can extinguish human life with such simple items as a pencil or nail
clippers. We advise that you do not ask him to demonstrate these skills
at your next yoga group. He is also expert at making a wide variety of
explosive devices from common household products, so you may wish to
keep those items locked up, unless (in your opinion) this might offend
him.

Ahmed will not wish to interact with you or your daughters (except
sexually) since he views females as a subhuman form of property. This
is a particularly sensitive subject for him and he has been known to
show violent tendencies around women who fail to comply with the new dress
code that he will recommend as more appropriate attire. I’m sure you
will come to enjoy the anonymity offered by the burka over time. Just remember that
it is all part of “respecting his culture and religious beliefs” as
described in your letter.

Thanks again for your concern. We truly appreciate it when folks like
you keep us informed of the proper way to do our job and care for our
fellow man. You take good care of Ahmed and remember, we’ll be
watching.

Good luck and God bless you.
Cordially,

Gordon O’Connor
Minister of National Defense

The international row over Salman Rushdie’s knighthood escalated after Islamic extremists placed a £80,000 bounty on the writer’s head.

The British Government expressed its “deep concern” over reported comments by one of Pakistan’s ministers which suggested Rushdie’s knighthood could justify suicide attacks.

The announcement comes amid continuing protests in Pakistan over the awarding of the honour to the controversial author. …

Iranian conservatives attacked the Queen over Salman Rushdie’s knighthood, with a top MP saying the British monarch lived in a dreamworld and a newspaper labelling her an “old crone”.

“Salman Rushdie has turned into a hated corpse which cannot be resurrected by any action,” Mohammad Reza Bahonar, first deputy speaker of Iran’s parliament, said in an address to the house.

“The action by the British queen in knighting Salman Rushdie, the apostate, is an unwise one,” he said, to loud cheers from MPs.

“The British monarch lives under this illusion that Britain is still a 19th century superpower and that bestowing titles is something still deemed important.”

Hardline daily Jomhuri Eslami also launched a scathing attack on the queen, describing the monarch as an “old crone” whose action was a “grimace to the Islamic world”.

“The question is what the old British crone sought by knighting Rushdie, to help him? Well, her act only shortens Rushdie’s pathetic life,” it added.

The daily also linked the award of the knighthood - which marked the queen’s 81st birthday - to a controversial party at the British embassy on Thursday celebrating the same occasion.

Dozens of Islamist students protested against the party, hurling stones, eggs and paint filled bags outside the doors of the compound in southern Tehranand vented anger against Iranians who attended the event.

Tory MP Paul Goodman (Wycombe) accused ministers of failing to deal with incitements to terrorism in the UK and said Mr al-Haq’s remarks were such an incitement.

“Although he’s since sought partially to withdraw his remarks, no condemnation of them has been forthcoming to date from a higher level within the government of Pakistan,” said Mr Goodman.

In London, Lord Ahmed, Britain’s first Muslim peer, said he had been appalled by the award to a man he accused of having ‘blood on his hands’.

In Pakistan, where effigies of the Queen and 59-year-old Rushdie were burned, a minister appeared to justify suicide bombings as a response to the knighthood. …

Think what you will of Salman Rushdie, whether or not he deserves a knighthood, this is just another outrageous example of murderous and evil fanaticism on the part of the Muslim world. Once again, there are no moderate Muslims condemning the death threats and terror incitations.

Well that does it, Western leaders need to start talking openly and forcefully to the Muslim world, as European diplomats like to say, about “anger management.” What do you think?

Alberta could benefit from its own militia, the Alberta Defence Force.

The Falklands War was a great national struggle. The whole country knew it and felt it.

It was also mercifully short. But many of our boys - and girls as well, of course - are today stationed in war zones where the issues are more complex, where the outcome is more problematic, and where life is no less dangerous.

In these circumstances, they often need a different sort of courage, though the same commitment.

So, as we recall - and give thanks for - the liberation of our islands, let us also recall the many battle fronts where British forces are engaged today.

There are in a sense no final victories, for the struggle against evil in the world is never ending.

Tyranny and violence wear many masks. Yet from victory in the Falklands we can all today draw hope and strength.

Fortune does, in the end, favour the brave. …

In terms of real politik, apart from the just defence of the Falkland Islander’s self-determination, the UK has a real interest in keeping the islands. Not only are they militarily significant as a launch point into South America, the islands are rich in natural resource, be it tremendous fish stocks and potential oil reserves; even New Labour has this figured out. For those interested, here is a good travel log of the islands from The New Zealand Herald. And as to be expected, of itself anyway, here’s some of the BBC’s schizophrenic coverage of the anniversary: here outlining the military staging offered by the islands for the UK; here rapping the UK on behalf of “an Agentine historian’s perspective”—a dreamy-eyed disregard for the people who actually live on the islands and the long-standing British claim.

The world is a dangerous place where Western powers need to best grow their capacity to defend their national interest. For the UK, small outposts like the Falkland Islands, which it fortunately possesses all over the world, remain militarily vital, better than any aircraft carrier should a conflict arise.  And again, beyond national interest and as a moment in history, the Falkland’s War exemplifies the courage and fortitude necessary to defend liberal democracy from tyranny; the cost that comes from passively ignoring threats from abroad.

Yelena Tregubova is a former member of the Kremlin press corps. Her book, Tales of a Kremlin Digger, published in 2003, accused Vladimir Putin of stifling political and press freedoms in Russia. As a result, she lost her job and was blacklisted from the Russian media. In February 2004, a bomb exploded outside her apartment, moments before she opened the door. Tregubova, 34, has now applied for asylum in Britain.

She writes:

There has been no single example in history of a dictator who, sooner or later, did not become a danger to both his close and distant neighbours.

The goal is not the “revival of Russia” or the “revival of the national pride of the Russians”, as Putin and the Kremlin’s propaganda are trying to present it. It is a full-scale revenge by the secret services and the authoritarian regime with all their old methods and tricks.

Putin has shut all independent TV channels, introduced harsh censorship, blocked access to the press for the democratic opposition, accused Russian human rights activists and NGOs of being Western spies, and split up the country’s biggest oil company, Yukos, among his friends from the special services.

Encouraged by your non-resistance, Putin’s regime has become so strong and impudent that is now directly threatening its close neighbours, Poland and the Czech Republic, former colonies of the Soviet Union, trying to speak to them as if they were its vassals. In recent months, three ambassadors - Estonian, Swedish, and British - have been affected by the actions of extremist organisations controlled by the Kremlin.

And now events have taken a logical new turn: the Kremlin is threatening the West, by missile-rattling. The critical difference between this and the Soviet era lies in the fact that then you knew exactly which side of the barricades you stood on, when you provided moral support to the opponents of dictatorship. But nowadays due to the favourable situation in oil and gas markets, Putin has the resources to buy your indulgence and silence.

Say what you will about Prime Minister Harper not being as conservative as he should be, but at least foreign policy wise he has been courageous; be it no more buttering up to China; be it deploring terrorism against Israel. Now, hopefully, he will show courage and say what needs to be said to Russia. The non-appeasers of the world should take heart that Canada has Harper in charge; leadership with a conscience and a backbone. It used to be that some foreign despot could flash a few petro-dollars in front of Chretien (and dare I say, Maurice Strong’s padewan, Paul Martin Jr.) and he was more than obliging to stick to pleasantries.

The Queen’s Royal Lancers have been living out in the desert for about six months, like nomads moving from place to place, sleeping under the stars, getting much of their resupply of food and water by nighttime parachute drop as they patrol the Iran-Iraq border. They were living out there, as some officers had told me, in true Lawrence of Arabia style, wearing shamals, sometimes taking camel rides when Bedouins would wonder through their camps with great herds of camels. Some soldiers would go for weeks without bathing, while others would wash-down with a bottle or two of water. Water is strictly rationed.

LTC Nixon-Eckersall would say that their job was to melt away into the desert, providing the eyes and ears that monitor the border. They’d apparently done their job well. I had been on many patrols with American forces along the Iranian border, but had no idea that Brits were out on desert safari. Although there had been some fighting, the Queen’s Royal Lancers had not lost a single soldier to combat during this tour. ….

Just some days ago (I was in Baghdad and Anbar while writing this dispatch), while visiting a hospital with CSM Jeff Mellinger, I met a wounded American soldier who told us how he tried to pull his buddy from a burning Bradley after it had been hit by a car bomb. While trying to rescue his buddy, they came under heavy direct attack. The young soldier thought the enemy had used chlorine in the bomb. He was still not able breathe well, but he kept telling CSM Mellinger that they used all the fire extinguishers trying to put their buddy out, but he was caught in the wreckage and they couldn’t pull him out fast enough. [This is something I have personally witnessed: all the fire extinguishers are used up, but someone is still trapped.] The soldier asked several times what happened to his buddy—who burned to death—and then he kept saying to CSM Mellinger that “They didn’t win nothin’. They didn’t win nothin’.” His breathing was labored, “We got fire superiority on ’em. We got fire superiority on ’em.”

To follow up, Victor Davis Hanson explains just why reporting from the front is so scewed:

The globalized media is an American epiphenomenon, but the narrative of the war is still the IED, not the purple finger. We apparently have no way of convincing the world that the primordial enemy commits daily something far worse than the sexual humiliation of the entire Abu Ghraib fiasco. Somehow “thousands have been killed” is never qualified as those mostly butchered and blown up by insurgents — since the loose use of the passive voice lends a general sense that somehow Americans are directly involved in, or responsible for, the killing.

Our soldiers are fighting brilliantly, and history will record they are defeating the enemy while suffering historically low casualties. But if the sacrifice of American youth is not tied — daily, hourly — to larger strategic and humanitarian goals by eloquent statesmen who believe in the mission, then cynicism follows and, with it, despair. …

We can quibble and fight about tactics on the ground, manpower numbers, strategic postures toward Iran and Syria, the need to prod the Iraqis, but our problem is more existential. Either stabilizing Iraq now is felt critical to the United States and the West or it isn’t. If the Left is right that it isn’t, then we should flee; if they are wrong, and I think they are, then we must start using our vast cultural and media resources to explain what is at stake — in a strategic and humanitarian sense — and precisely what it is costing America and why it in the long run is worth it, and how we have adjusted to counter our enemies who in the last four years have not won in Iraq or anywhere else either.

What is at stake in the war on terror needs regular and robust explaination in popular culture. I agree.

But in the entertainment culture that absorbs so many of us with one escapist fancy or another, where there are few virtues worthy of human pursuit beyond “good” sex and lots of money, in a culture where religious faith is constantly hedged as “therapeutic” and “socially conscious” rather than morally instructive and demandingly self-forgetting, we need not only simply better explain the war on terror. While doing so we need to be ever critical of the dogmatic blinders that excuse people from living in the real world, a world of real consquences where understanding what it means to be human, to know one’s limits as a human being, becomes our salvation.

There is a PR war and it needs to be hard fought, but as Hanson so eloquently puts it, at the end of the day, the war is either existentially critical or it is not. And if it is taken as not, when it really is critical, the West losing big for years because of defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan, in the vacuum of Middle East chaos radical Islam will flourish by leaps compared to what we see now.

It’s time to challenge cynics on the very grounds of their cynicism, the deception and deformations of reality they are quick to get righteously indignant about.

The War on Terror is existentially critical. With brilliant soldiering and greater resource the West can win it. The real challenge is living in the real world, a world in which the West has a rich heritage to its current position of strength.

Monday, April 16th, 4 am, near the hamlet of Craigmyle, southwest of Hanna, Alberta. John Rew, age 50, was awakened to the sound of an Emergency Response Team (E.R.T.) “flash bang” shot through his bedroom window.

He was thrown face-down on the floor and handcuffed instantly afterward, as a second “flash bang” exploded through his TV stand in the living room, singeing the floor.

The Drumheller RCMP and Calgary E.R.T. had come for all his firearms, in particular his registered prohibits and restricteds. Yes! Registered!

Although their search warrant did not include any residences, John agreed to lead them across the farmyard to his 80 year-old mother’s house. Her basement contains John’s storage facility.

John’s mother, Betty, allowed them entry and was detained for her co-operative efforts. The masked, body armoured, assault rifle equipped law enforcement personnel got what they came for.

John was hauled away, still in handcuffs, John’s alleged crime: allowing his F.A.C/P.A.L to expire, his various criminal Charges all stem from that.

2:30 that afternoon John was released, promising to appear in Drumheller court 10am may 25th, 2007.

The police shut down his oilfield business for the day, turning his 20 employees away at the gate. His sister was not allowed entry to tend to Betty.

Ironically, the next day, April 17th, our government announced an extension of the long gun registry “amnesty” for another year.

Needless to say, Mr. Rew was somewhat upset.

However, rather than taking it laying down like a good POGG (Peace, order, good government)-loving Canadian, Rew did something that was very un-Canadian indeed:

Rew went down to the CRO’s office in the constituency of Drumheller- Stettler where he lives, and registered to be a candidate in a June 12 provincial by-election, which just happens to be taking place right now!

Speaking of being un-Canadian, Rew, the new Independent candidate in the Drumheller-Stettler provincial by-election, is running on a platform of Alberta Independence.

While his late entry and lack of profile makes it unlikely that Rew will challenge for first, he is bound to pick up some sympathy, and maybe a few votes, from those in east Central Alberta who are experiencing yet another bout of disillusionment with the provincial and federal government. Tired of being either written off or taken for granted by the provincial/ federal Conservatives, the voters of Drumheller-Stettler may send Ottawa/ Edmonton a message by backing an outsider who wishes to register the ultimate protest.

While it is hard to imagine a separatist winning in Alberta being good for Confederation, perhaps the opening of a fault in the provincial/ federal conservative bedrock of Alberta could be jolt that brings both parties back from their centrist slide.

With provincial and federal Conservatives drifting further to the left, and potentially towards oblivion, they may be wise to pay heed to the warning shot John Rew is about to fire from the prairies of east central Alberta.

…..

Link Byfield asks what happened to “Common Sense Policing” here.

In the conflict, Britain took more casualities than they have taken in both Iraq and Afghanistan to date. Winning the conflict took political courage on the part of an embattled Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, defending substantive British sovereignty though it be fought over a seemingly insignificant group of islands, with barely sufficient military hardware to do it.

Anniversaries such as this make us realize that defending one’s national interest and security is always at the chancy cost of high casualties and potential loss of face. War isn’t easy but an ever-present reality in human history; just wars being fought. Further to this point, Rich Lowry provides good commentary on why war history matters and what’s wrong with it in contemporary liberal education:

Battles are so important to history that their names alone — Vienna, Waterloo, Stalingrad — can evoke the beginning or end of epochs and empires. Violent conflict is one of the most persistent characteristics of human history, and warfare features the interplay of strategy, weaponry, chance, logistics, emotion, and leadership. It is an occasion for folly and brutality, and — as we remember on Memorial Day — heroism and sacrifice.

It is for all these reasons that books and TV programming on warfare are so popular; their subject is both fascinating and important, history at its most consequential and dramatic. Nonetheless, military history has been all but banished from college campuses. …

History departments are dominated by a post-Vietnam generation of professors for whom bottom-up “social history” is paramount, and the only areas of interest are race, sex, and class. History focusing on great events and the “great men” central to them is retrograde — let alone military history that ipso facto smacks of militarism. …

Edward Coffman, a former military historian at the University of Wisconsin, studied the 25 best history departments according to U.S. News & World Report rankings and found that a mere 21 professors out of more than 1,000 listed war as their specialty. A Notre Dame student complained recently: “We have more than 30 full-time history faculty members, but not one is a military historian. Even in their self-described interests, not a single professor lists ‘war’ of any era, although half list religious, gender and race relations.” …

The gatekeepers of the profession practically proscribe traditional military history. John A. Lynn recently looked back at the past 30 years of the prestigious academic journal The American Historical Review. He found no articles on the conduct of World War II, the American Revolution, or the Napoleonic Wars. There were articles that discussed atrocities in the English Civil War and in the American Civil War and an article on World War I — on women soldiers in the Russian army.

One frustrated teacher of military history jokes that military historians have become “exactly the types of marginalized people that the social historians are supposed to be championing.”

That military history has been chased from the academic field is especially perverse given that, when the classes are offered, they are popular with students. And military history, as a discipline, is as vital as ever. Writing on the American Heritage’s website, Sarah Lawrence College professor Frederic Smoler argues that “the past 30 years have seen a brilliant expansion in the intellectual and methodological breadth of military history,” beginning with the publication of John Keegan’s 1976 classic The Face of Battle.

None of this is enough to overcome the deep intellectual bias against military history. New Republic contributing editor David A. Bell locates that bias deep in the social sciences: “The origin of these sciences lie in liberal, Enlightenment-era thinking that dismissed war as primitive, irrational and alien to modern civilization.” This represents a fundamental misapprehension of human nature and thus the nature of history.

Brave men always will be necessary to defend freedom, and what they have done deserves to be remembered, and studied.

“He was a voice for moderation on a wide range of issues that he never got credit for because he did it the right way, behind the scenes,” said another former official who asked not to be named. “On many, many issues the administration h