A response to the article: A WINNING WEEK FOR TERROR

Below is an article from the New York Post, by Ralph Peters, with my comments inserted, bracketed and in bold, italic red color.


A WINNING WEEK FOR TERROR
WEST'S HUGS FAIL TO STOP THUGS

By RALPH PETERS

Last updated: 3:51 am
August 25, 2009
Posted: 2:59 am
August 25, 2009

LAST week, we learned the answer to the hoary question "What does a Scots man wear under his kilt?" When it comes to terrorism, the answer's "a white flag."

But Scotland's craven release, "on humanitarian grounds," of Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the mastermind of the bombing that killed 270 passengers aboard a Pan Am flight two decades ago, was merely the noisiest terrorist triumph during a week of shame.

And noisy it was: Libya's Moammar Khadafy staged a huge homecoming party for the terrorist. (Think that would've happened while W was president?) The gleeful Khadafy rubbed the West's snout in our feckless taste for appeasement.

Appeasement was also the watchword back in the United States, where Yale University Press delighted Islamist extremists by removing all illustrations from a scholarly work about the Danish cartoon debacle -- not just the caricatures of Mohammed.

Elsewhere, the casualty count went beyond book illustrations. In Iraq, Islamist terrorists staged massive suicide bombings in Baghdad. Over a hundred Iraqis died, with more than a thousand wounded. The foreign and finance ministries lie in rubble. The government's reeling.

Our president went to the beach.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban crippled the national elections so severely that the eventual "winner" won't have much of a mandate. Despite madcap ballot-box stuffing, the final tally will probably show that less than half of the eligible population voted -- fewer than one in five in the crucial south.

Afghans put more faith in Taliban threats than in government promises. US and Western officials are struggling to paint a smile on the face of the corpse, but the vote was divisive, not unifying. On Sunday, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, admitted that the Afghan situation is "serious and deteriorating."

That's what happens when, instead of killing our enemies, we try hugs.

[Hugs? By "hugs" does Peters mean talks and negotiations? If so, then why not call it what it is, instead of trying to be cute about it?]

Iran? We all know that its nuclear program is purely for peaceful purposes. That's why, just last week, President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad chose a Revolutionary Guard commander, Ahmad Vahidi, as his new defense minister.

Interpolwants Vahidi for running the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires -- 85 dead, 300 wounded. Soon, he may have his trigger finger on nuclear weapons. But no need for Israel to worry: The Obama administration will negotiate with Tehran.

[Ah, so Peters does indeed mean negotiations by the term "hugs"!]

Returning to America, the establishment media continued to portray imprisoned terrorists as victims, while further chastising the bygone Bush administration for rudeness to mass murderers.

[Rudeness? Does Peters view torture as a form of rudeness? Maybe he's just trying to be cute again. If a captured American soldier were being tortured by terrorists, wouldn't we portray that American soldier as a victim of terrorist torture? By the same token, if we are torturing imprisoned "terrorists", are they not victims of our torture as well? Since we tortured them, the question is answered in the affirmative.]

(Any self-righteous journalist care to spend a night in a cell with one of the butchers whose "rights" have been infringed?) [Is not guilt or innocence determined by trial? We have tortured detainees on the assumption of their guilt before any trial would prove their guilt or innocence. If we, Americans, are far superior culturally and judicially than these people, why then do we stoop below our own level? Peters then assumes that a journalist would be afraid to spend the night in a cell with the detainees. Why be afraid? What would the detainees do to the journalist--eat the flesh off his bones in the middle of the night?]

Then the White House took all major interrogations away from the CIA, further restricting the techniques allowed to stop terrorists. [Torture has not been proven to extract truth from detainees. Often, the truth a detainee reveals is not sufficient in light of what the torturer thinks the truth is, and he dismisses it, then continues the torture. What has been proven is that a torture victim will say anything he believes his torturers want to hear in order to stop the suffering, even lies. Misinformation does not help find and stop other terrorists.]

And now the administration's hard-left Justice Department -- perhaps the most extreme in our country's history -- is on another witch hunt to prosecute CIA patriots who did all they could to keep our citizens safe. [A patriot is one who loves his country and does what is necessary to defend it from harm. Over decades, the CIA has spread terrorism worldwide, and the backlash from it--a term the CIA itself has coined "blowback"--has resulted in the massacre against American citizens on September 11, 2001. How does the CIA's behavior, detrimental to America, apply to the definition of "patriot", which is behavior beneficial to America? It's not hard to see the falsity of this statement.]

Last but not least, a minor legal case bears enormous implications: A 17-year-old female Muslim immigrant to the US, Fathima Rifqa Bary, begged our justice system not to return her to her family.

She fears she'll be the victim of an honor killing.

Smooching with the boys? Naw. Much worse: She converted to Christianity -- still an offense for which, many Muslims believe, Islam (that "religion of peace") prescribes death. Fleeing from her Ohio home to Florida, she's in protective custody, awaiting a judge's verdict on Sept. 3.

Not all of the details are clear, but the big picture is: A legal resident of our country, where religious freedom is constitutionally guaranteed, fears death at the hands of her relatives and her community because she changed her faith.

If she's sent "home" and murdered, will the crime be written off as freedom of religion?

[In a land where the Constitution protects life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness as well as freedom of religion, life trumps liberty as liberty trumps the pursuit of happiness. If a religion's customs include the harming of a citizen's life by another, then life trumps this religion's freedom.]

Coddled by Washington Democrats and Republicans, extremist mullahs here in the United States -- often funded by our "friends" the Saudis -- invoke religious freedom at the drop of a prayer rug. And our elected officials cower.

[Our elected officials are proven nitwits.]

Well, it's high time for Muslim clerics across this country to issue a public statement explicitly denouncing all violence against Muslims who switch faiths. This is America, folks. If a Methodist turns Muslim, fine. But if a Muslim becomes an Evangelical, that, too, must be tolerated. The Koran is not a license to kill in this country.

(And that dating thing? Murder over that's a no-no, too.)

One year ago, terrorists were on the defensive around the world. Then a new US administration condemned our country while "reaching out" to our enemies.

And here we are.

[What is needed is a radical change to our foreign policy, which produces misery around the globe and creates the resentment and anger against us, which is the catalyst for terrorism against America. We need to heed the words of our Founding Fathers--Jefferson, Franklin, etc.--which Ron Paul has repeated over and over again: good neighborliness and free trade with all, yet entangling alliances with none.]