Infidel

[WARNING: "PLOT" SPOILERS FOLLOW]

The face of reason confronts Dark Age primitiveness. That summarizes Infidel, the autobiography of Ayaan Hirsi Ali. The face of reason is hers, the beautiful, intransigent face that appears on the cover of her book.

Ms. Ali was born in Somalia. She grew up in that country, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Kenya. Her father fought for a better government in Somalia but he, along with all of the people close to her, were Muslims. Primitivism meant female genital circumcision, which she endured without anesthesia at age 6. Primitivism meant Muslim Brotherhood imams preaching fundamentalism. Primitivism meant women wearing restrictive hidjabs. Primitivism meant having to endure forced marriages and beatings from your husband, if he so chose. Primitivism meant an oppressive clan network that reached all the way into European countries.

Rejecting the primitiveness of her background, Infidel is the story of Ms. Ali’s personal unfolding, and her discovery of the Western values of free speech, the right to one’s own life, and religious freedom. By the end of the book, Ms. Ali declares herself an infidel, since she rejects the Islamic faith that she grew up with. She rejects all religious faith. Step by step over the course of her life, Infidel shows her make the conclusions that brought reason into her life.

For that, for the ideas she publicly stated as a member of Parliament in Holland, for a movie she made, and ultimately for this book, Ayaan Hirsi Ali has had a death sentence placed on her. Like Salman Rushdie, a fatwa is on her life. The director of her movie, Theo Van Gogh, was already murdered in cold blood on the streets of Amsterdam.

Today, Ms. Ali lives in the freest country on earth, the United States. Her book is a warning to us of the nature of the Muslim enemy we fight. Islam is not a religion of peace; it is a religion of unspeakable evil.

UPDATE OCTOBER 2007: Ms. Ali has left the United States after the Dutch government, which had been paying for her protection, stopped doing so. Apparently because Ms. Ali is a Dutch citizen, the U.S. did not take up the slack and offer her protection. By returning to Holland, Ms. Ali can presumably once again be protected by her country.

Question: Has the U.S. government ever spent taxpayer money to provide security protection to this foreign citizen? You can see him on the right side of the picture holding hands with our President. That man is Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. If a double-standard does exist, could it be that the U.S. government is unwilling to protect someone like Ms. Ali, who is an "infidel" and denounces Islam, while offering protection to our "ally" who financially and morally sponsors terrorism against us? Ms. Ali is our ally and the man walking with the President is not. Until we learn that, and it becomes the basis of official government policy, we are gravely at risk. Islam's persecution of Ms. Ali and her flight from this country is a metaphor for what we all face until we gain the wisdom and courage to defend our values.

America's Moral Cowardice Empowers Its Enemies

America's global enemies are pathetically weak. North Korea cannot feed itself. It's people live on the edge of starvation. North Korea is one bad harvest away from collapse.

The Muslim terrorists, who have been at war with the United States for decades, are a couple of oil shipments away from returning to barbarism. Their economies produce nothing, except oil. Without it, primitive nomads would criss-cross the Arabian desert again.

Contrast the power of our North Korean and Muslim enemies with the strength of the enemies we faced at the outset of World War II. Germany was a leading industrial superpower. Their scientists pioneered the rocket, understood advanced nuclear science, and could have developed the nuclear bomb. On the eve of World War II, German industry was producing warplanes at a faster rate than the combined U.S. and British air forces.

Japan had one of the world's largest naval fleets, and had already conquered much of one country, China, that was far bigger than itself.

From the day Great Britain declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939, until the day Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945 (Germany had surrendered four months earlier), it took barely six years to defeat the great German and Japanese empires. From America's entry in the war on December 7, 1941 until Japan's surrender, it took less than four years of fighting to reduce Berlin to rubble and central Hiroshima and Nagasaki to nuclear vapor.

The Palestine Liberation Organization, the world's first Islamic terrorist group, first began attacking Westerners in the 1960s. Iran, the leading state sponsor of terrorism today, invaded our embassy and took U.S. hostages in 1979. In less than four years, America defeated the combined German and Japanese armed forces. In contrast, America has been attacked for more than four decades by Muslims, and the terrorists remain as strong as ever.

Since the most recent and most heinous Muslim attack, the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York, the attack on the Pentagon, and the attempted attack on the U.S. Capitol or White House on September 11, 2001, five years have gone by, and America has accomplished little.

Instead of defeating the primary state sponsor of terrorism, Iran, America wrings its hands over the status of Palestinians. Instead of forcefully stopping the Saudi financing of terrorists, America's president holds the Saudi leader's hand and kisses him on both cheeks.

America has evaded the nature of our enemy. America has appeased our enemy. Yasser Arafat, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, was the most frequent visitor to the White House in the 1990s (I wonder, did he sleep in Lincoln's bedroom?). Yasser Arafat received the Nobel Peace Prize, with the blessing of the United States.

Now, it turns out, there is "smoking gun" documentation that the U.S. State Department knew of Yasser Arafat's direct involvement in one of the earliest PLO terrorist acts, the 1973 murder of two U.S. ambassadors in Khartoum, Sudan.

Why did the U.S. publicly obfuscate Arafat's direct involvement in this terrorist act? Why does the U.S. today minimize and downplay the direct role of Iran in ordering terrorist attacks by Hamas and Hezbollah? Why does the U.S. today minimize and downplay the river of Saudi money that finances madrassah schools that ideologically equip the terrorist vanguard?

What does America gain by building up and adding airs of respectability to thugs, simple thugs motivated by a barbaric religion who take pleasure in the humiliation of the West (recall the jubilant Muslim throngs [links here, here and here] that appeared across the globe on September 11, 2001)?

America's enemies are weak. I do not need to make the case here that a small projection of our military power could quickly and readily defeat any state that sponsors terrorism, with minimal loss of American life. (See my essays entitled, "The Nuclear Bomb: Why We Should be Willing to Use It" and "Hezbollah: The Party of God".)

Instead of defeating the enemy, America turns the other cheek. Instead of fighting the enemy, America sends treasure ships to them (e.g.: money and weapons training to the Palestinians, fuel and grain and nuclear reactors to the North Koreans). Instead of naming our enemy, America evades their nature, and then helps our enemy in their ruse to the world that they are civilized.

Our enemies are weak. Their philosophy of life impoverishes them. Their only strength comes from the material and moral sustenance we provide them.

It is time we withdraw it.

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Acknowledgement and thanks:

Thank you, John Lewis, for the inspiration and data you provided for my article in yours, entitled, "America's Sanction of Its Enemies."

The Nuclear Bomb: Why We Should Be Willing To Use It

Is using a nuclear bomb justified in fighting the Muslim terrorists? Here are the reasons why I support using a nuclear bomb, if it is called for militarily. In considering whether we should use a nuclear bomb, we must examine the facts. Below I separate fact from fiction about "nukes" and why it is justifiable to use them:

**JUST A BIG BOMB. A nuclear bomb is just a big bomb, not some sort of doomsday device that will wipe out mankind. Nearly all deaths from a nuclear bomb are from its blast. Very few die from radiation. This proved true at Hiroshima and Nagasaki where the vast majority of deaths were due to the direct blast and secondary blast effects, such as fire. Relatively few deaths were due to radiation or radioactive fallout. Furthermore, the nuclear bombs used in World War II were not even the most deadly bombings that occurred during the war. More people died in one night of conventional carpet and firebombing in Tokyo and at Dresden than died in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki put together. The only unique thing about a nuclear bomb is how the blast is caused. Its cause is a fusion or fission nuclear chain reaction, instead of combustion, like a typical bomb. In its effects, a nuclear bomb is not that different than a very large conventional bomb. Using it will not pose excessive risks to anyone other than those targeted.

**SAVES AMERICAN LIVES AND WINS THE WAR. Using the nuclear bomb in World War II saved at least a million American soldiers’ lives. The best military experts of the day estimated that at least one million American soldiers would die if Japan had to be invaded and conquered by land. By defeating Japan without ever having to send a single American ashore, those soldiers’ lives were saved. Incidentally, given the likely level of resistance of the Japanese population (grandmothers and children were being trained to turn themselves into human bombs – sound familiar??), the same military authorities estimated that at least three million Japanese would have died in a land invasion by American forces. Not that it is a concern of ours in war, but those lives were saved as well.

In the current situation, using nuclear bombs would save American lives, just as it did in World War II. In simple terms, using just one or two bombs would scare the hell out of the Iranians, just like it scared the hell out of the Japanese. If that wasn’t enough, it would only take a handful of bombs to detroy whatever government, military or even civilian centers were necessary to cause Iran’s or any other country’s defeat. It is immoral to unnecessarily risk American soldiers’ lives through sporadic low-level engagements stretching over decades, which we are doing now.

**NON-PROLIFERATION. The argument that using a nuclear bomb causes its proliferation doesn’t hold water. No nuclear bombs have been used by anyone since the end of World War II, yet since then nuclear weapon technology has spread from only one country having it (the United States) to nearly a dozen countries having it, including many hostile to the United States such as Russia, China and North Korea. Ironically, by using a nuclear bomb in our defense, we would be telling the leaders of countries hostile to America not to threaten us with a nuclear bomb, or face the same fate. In all likelihood, fewer countries would develop a nuclear bomb, and those that did would be friendly to the U.S.

The bottom line is that the use of a nuclear bomb is not only morally permissible, but necessary. If such force is called for, to use anything less needlessly risks American lives, much as it would have in World War II if we had to do a land invasion of Japan. If using nuclear bombs would win the war against the Muslim terrorists (as I think it would), we should do it. Any president who pre-emptively renounces their use has failed in his responsibility as commander-in-chief.

Hezbollah: "The Party of God"
The only way to end terrorism is to destroy the root of it: the states that sponsor it. The No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism is Iran. The United States and Israel should together destroy Iran's ability to support terrorism. One estimate is that that country gives $250 to $500 million per year to support Hezbollah in Lebanon. Iran ships explosives into Iraq that kill our troops. Iran is trying to develop the nuclear bomb, and is close to succeeding.

These are only the current threats to civilization from that country. Nearly 30 years ago, Iran declared war on the United States by invading our embassy and taking American citizens hostage. The U.S. response was nothing. Iran aggravated that action through the years by organizing numerous terrorist actions, such as the killing of over 200 U.S. marines in Lebanon.

Today, thugs organized by the Iranian regime regularly shout, "Death to America" and "Death to Israel". The "prime minister" of Iran calls for Israel to be "wiped off the map". The government of Iran makes common cause with sundry dictatorships around the globe, such as that of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.

America must decide that it will defend itself from this rogue state. Nothing less than "regime change" in Iran, accomplished by whatever military means necessary (up to and including the use of the nuclear bomb), is called for in defense of our country. We have common cause with Israel, not because we agree with all details of that government's actions, but because Israel is the only civilized state in the region, and is an even greater victim of Iran's depredations than we are.

Cutting the twigs of terrorism, such as arresting its leaders, or pursuing peripheral actions in Iraq and elsewhere, will not win the war. Only by going to the root will we win the war. As goes Iran, so go the lesser sympathizers and supporters of terrorism: Syria, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan. If we root out the mother source of terrorism in Iran, it will probably not be necessary to confront these lesser, albeit deadly, enemies of the United States. They will have gotten the message.

When will we act?