William Kristol has an op-ed piece in Sunday’s New York Times commenting on the war in Gaza.  He points out that the negative opinions say the war is a threat to peace in the Middle East and explains why that assessment is backwards.  He points out that Israel might succeed in Gaza due to the fact that Gaza does not have allies to resupply it with arms from its borders–it borders the Mediterranean Sea, Israel, and Egypt.  It is very easy for Israel to cut off the resupply of Hamas.

William Kristol makes these points in the article:

“But a defeat of Hamas in Gaza — following on the heels of our success in Iraq — would be a real setback for Iran. It would make it easier to assemble regional and international coalitions to pressure Iran. It might positively affect the Iranian elections in June. It might make the Iranian regime more amenable to dealing.

With respect to Iran, Obama may well face — as the Israeli government did with Hamas — a moment when the use of force seems to be the only responsible option. But Israel’s willingness to fight makes it more possible that the United States may not have to.”

If the world community succeeds in intervening in this war and stopping it with a truce, it will not be a lasting truce.  Hamas had made it clear that it would like to exterminate Israel and the Jewish people, and as long as they have a base to work from they will continue in that effort.  The only way to peace in through an Israeli victory in Gaza that destroys Hamas’ influence.  This will also push back at Iran, which will also increase the chances for peace.  Again the thing to keep in mind–Israel has nukes (and has had them for some time) and Hamas in Gaza was allowed to exist as long as they were peaceful–if Hamas had nukes, how long would Israel be allowed to exist?

The thing to note in this war is that even though the Arab street is doing the expected protest, it is a very muted protest.  Many of the Middle Eastern countries see Iran as a bigger threat to their security than Israel is, and because they realize Iran is funding Hamas, they would not be all that unhappy to see Hamas lose.  The Iranians are Shiite Muslims,and they are Persians–not Arabs.  The Sunni countries in the Middle East are aware of Iran’s funding and instigating terrorism in the region and would not be unhappy to see Iran stopped. 
 

According to MyWay.com the recount in the Minnesota election has been certified by the Minnesota Canvassing Board.  This allows Norm Coleman seven days to challenge the results legally.  Secretary of State Mark Ritchie pointed out that the board was simply certifying the results of the recount–not certifying the election.

According to Power Line Blog, there are few problems with this recount.  According the their post:

“Franken’s campaign was aggressive about getting lists of voters whose ballots were excluded, checking those lists against the DFL database, and interviewing voters who they thought were sympathetic. My impression is that the Coleman campaign was nowhere near as aggressive in trying to identify rejected ballots that favor their candidate. It may be, therefore, that Franken’s campaign consistently agreed to include ballots that they knew were for their candidate while objecting (regardless of the merits) to ballots that they believed were for Coleman. If that’s the case, the remaining ballots (i.e., those on which the campaigns did not agree) may tend to favor Coleman. That’s speculation, of course, but at the moment some such scenario will have to be true for Coleman to have a chance.”

There is no way everyone is going to be satisfied with either result of this election.  My message to the people of Minnesota is, “Enough of you voted for Al Franker to trigger the recount, if you find yourself represented by Al Franken and you are not happy, learn from the experience.”

There has been a bit of a ‘dust up’ lately about a book entitled “Angel at the Fence.”  The book is supposedly a true story of a man in a concentration camp who was given an apple a day by a local girl during his time in the camp.  The story has proved to be false for many reasons, but there is an interesting article on the ins and outs of the whole thing at the American Thinker.  The holcaust was not a sweet story of local people helping people in the camps–it was an ugly story of many people closing their eyes to what was happening to their fellow human beings.  There are exceptions to that rule–the people who hid Jewish people or smuggled them out of Nazi territory–but unfortunately, they were exceptions.

There are many people in the world who would like to spin the holocaust as ‘not really that bad’ because they don’t want to deal with the fact that anti-semitism is still a huge world-wide problem.  Look at the way the current war in Gaza is being reported.  I don’t remember seeing any protests reported when Hamas was lauching rockets into Israel every day.  Unless Israel completes its mission to end the reign of Hamas in Gaza, those rockets will not stop.  If the international community (including the UN) wants peace in the Middle East, they would do well to let Israel complete its mission without interference.

The good news of the propaganda war between Israel and Hamas is that the Czech President of the EU has gone on record, as reported at Haaretz.com, saying that the ground war Israel is launching in Gaza is defensive–not offensive.  Contrast this statement with the recent reporting of the Gaza invasion by Christiane Amanpour referenced in Commentary Magazine.  Ms. Amanpour stated in her report that in the past year only two Israelis were killed by Hamas rocket fire–insinuating that Israel is overreacting to something that is basically harmless.  Now wait a minute–she left out a few facts mentioned in the above linked article:

“Hamas’ attacks in 2008 more than doubled — to 3,278 — from the 2007 number. And this figures in the six-month “lull” period, during which “only” around 100 rockets were fired. She also did not mention that the range and deadliness of Hamas’ rockets increased as well, putting around 15 percent of the Israeli population under Hamas’ missile umbrella. (The “disproportionality” fetishists also never get around to noting that Israel has conducted less than a thousand air strikes in response to over 7,000 Hamas rocket attacks since 2005.)”

Just for the record eight Israelis were killed by Hamas in 2008.  Somehow I think that if Mexico or Canada were lobbing rockets into the US at the rate Hamas has been lobbing them into Israel, we might respond the way Israel has responded (only sooner and stronger)!

The new President of the EU understands freedom and he understands tyranny.  Unless the world begins to understand the difference between the two, we will find ourselves living under the latter. 

Charles Krauthammer has an article at the American Thinker about the war between Israel and Hamas.  He sums up the situation beautifully:

“The grievance? It cannot be occupation, military control or settlers. They were all removed in September 2005. There’s only one grievance and Hamas is open about it. Israel’s very existence.

Nor does Hamas conceal its strategy. Provoke conflict. Wait for the inevitable civilian casualties. Bring down the world’s opprobrium on Israel. Force it into an untenable cease-fire — exactly as happened in Lebanon. Then, as in Lebanon, rearm, rebuild and mobilize for the next round. Perpetual war. Since its raison d’etre is the eradication of Israel, there are only two possible outcomes: the defeat of Hamas or the extinction of Israel.”

 

Please read the whole article–it’s worth reading.  Objectivity and honesty in Middle East reporting are hard to find.  This is a propaganda war as well as a ground war, and the American media has ofter bought into the propaganda.

Mosab Hassan Yousef is the son of one of the leaders of Hamas.  He has denounced Hamas and the Muslim religion and has converted to Christianity.  He is speaking out against Hamas and their tactics and talking about the things that he saw that drove him from the movement.  There is a video of Mosab Yousef being interviewed at You Tube and a longer article on his life at Fox News.  The courage of this young man in speaking out is amazing.  I hope the world will listen to what he has to say.

According to Yahoo News President Bush has given Israel free rein in its handling of the situation in Gaza.  Little Green Footballs has a chart released by the Intelligence and Information Center showing the number of rocket and mortar attacks on Israel since Hamas took over Gaza.  I can’t think of any country in the world that would have put up with eight years of having rockets and mortars fired at their civilian population without retaliation.  The only way to bring peace in the Middle East is to put an end to those people who want to destroy Israel.  Otherwise there will always be war because Israel will have to fight for its existence.  I’m not sure exactly what Israel needs to do, but I think American needs to let Israel make its own decision on how to handle this.  Remember, when Israel controlled the territories they have given up since the Oslo Accord, those territories had infrastructure and people had ways of making a living.  One of the things the Palestinians have done is to destroy the infrastructure and destroy the greenhouses that provided jobs and income for the people living there.  Hamas knows how to do terror–they do not know how to run a peaceful society–that is not one of their aims.

I believe America is about to lose its place of power on the world scene.  While some Americans (even politicians) think that is a good thing, I do not.  We have been a force for good for a long time–without American, Hitler would be in control in Europe and a cruel Japanese dictator would be ruling Asia.  Be that as it may, as we come into the new year, our power will drastically decrease.  The good news is, however, that I believe the influence of radical Muslims will also be decreasing.  As moderate Muslims begin to see more of what radical Islam is doing, they tend to move away from it.  Unfortunately, there will still be places where hate is taught in school, but I believe their effect will begin to decrease rather than increase.  Where has our power gone?

According to The Hill, Senator John Cornyn has threatened to filibuster any attempt to seat Al Franken as the Senator from Minnesota.  He has based this threat on the fact that Al Franken will not have a certificate of election as long as the election results are being challenged in the courts.  According to the article, Senator Cornyn stated, “I think it is very clear that the people of Minnesota and the courts in Minnesota should make the decision about who won the Minnesota Senate election, and not political leaders in Washington, D.C. That process is ongoing and will not be resolved, in all likelihood, for weeks and maybe longer.”

The past year was a geniunely strange year for politics, and I have a feeling that 2009 might be equally strange.

Michael Barone has an article in U S News and World Report on the Senate Democrat’s statement that they will not seat Roland Burris.  He points out in the article that there is no indication that Roland Burris is guilty of anything (other than accepting this appointment, which might indicate poor judgment).  The negotiations that went into the appointment we are totally unaware of, but again, suspicion does not confirm guilt.  Until there is a conviction or at least a public hearing on the charges against Rod Blagojevich, there is no reason not to seat Roland Burris.  The whole situation is interesting–it’s like watching a slow-motion chess game.  The appointment of Roland Burris was accompanied by an immediate playing of the race card to make it more difficult for the Democrats in the Senate to refuse to seat him.  It is politically easy to take a stand against seating this man in the Senate, but in doing that are we assuming guilt instead of innocence on the part of the accused.

Yahoo News is reporting that a Greek cruise ship fended off an attack by pirates in the Gulf of Aden with water hoses and the help of some EU aircraft scrambled from a nearby group of EU ships.  Pirates in three speedboats armed with guns and rocket-propelled grenades twice tried to board the Greek-flagged Kriti Episkopi.  I guess the thing that bothers me about this is that the pirates sailed off into the sunset.  In another case, a French warship on Thursday captured a boat with eight Somali pirates as they were preparing to board a Panamanian ship.  This was revealed in a statement released late Thursday by the office of French President Nicolas Sarkozy.  The crew of the “PM L’Her” dispatch boat seized weapons and munitions on board. The French navy will hand over the men to Somali authorities. 

I’m really not sure handing the pirates over to the Somali authorities is the answer.  I think that the way to end piracy in this area is to make it unprofitable and dangerous for the pirates, rather than for ships in the area.  I really don’t like to idea of arming cruise ships with rocket propelled grenades, but at least we need to give them armed escorts in dangerous areas.  I don’t think water hoses would have worked for very long without the arrival of air and sea support.

Happy 2009

According to today’s New York Post Israel destroyed a mosque in Gaza that had been used to store weapons and as a terrorist hiding place.  When the worldwide protest happens, you might want to remember this fact taken directly from the article:

“The military said terrorist cells had been firing rockets from the mosque grounds as early as yesterday morning. The airstrike touched off explosions from stockpiled munitions inside the mosque.”

The above fact will probably not be mentioned in a lot of the reporting of the incident.  Meanwhile, Hamas is launching rockets at schools and kindergartens in Israel that are not being used for military purposes.  This is a very uneven war in terms of which side wants civilian casualties and which side is trying to prevent them.

Jonah Goldberg has a very interesting article in National Review Online about where we are in the war on terrorism.  Sometimes change happens so slowly that we don’t see it until after it is over.  I believe his article points that out.  The name of the article is “The Squeegee Men of the New World Order”. 

In case you don’t remember, the ‘squeegee men’ were the street people in New York City who used to come up to your car when you were stopped at a traffic light, wipe your windshield with a dirty rag, and expect a tip.  Basically, it was a form of intimidation that people accepted and ignored.  When Rudy Giuliani become mayor of New York City he got rid of the squeegee men, fixed broken windows, ending immodest acts on the streets, and generally dealt with the ‘small crimes’ first.  After that, he went after some of the more obvious things and eventually made a real difference in the City.  One of my daughters was in college in and later lived in New York City during that time, and the change in the city was amazing–particularly if you randomly visited.  It’s like a young grandchild you see only three or four times a year–his or her parents may not realize how much the child has changed in a short time because they see it gradually–but you are amazed!

Anyway, as we enter the new year, we need to examine how we think about the war on terror.  Is it ok for terrorists to randomly shoot rockets at civilians in Israel?  Is it ok for terrorists to torture and murder a man and his wife in Mumbai simply because they are Jews?  The Jews are the canary in the coal mine, if we allow inhumane treatment of them, it will eventually come to us.  Remember, the terrorists have stated the goal of bringing the entire world into a great caliphate.  The fact that they have not begun with American does not mean that America is exempt.  I believe that America is a very special country, but I don’t believe that we are immune from the future the terrorists are planning.  Unless something changes, the demographics of Europe will cause it to become a Muslim continent within thirty years, and the Muslims who will be running it are not moderate–they are the ones rioting in Paris and the Netherlands.