Helping the Arabian Peninsula Help Itself

As Steve works over-time on the gubernatorial campaign of Minnesota's most classical liberal, State Senator David Hann, and Rob leads a Marine infantry rifle platoon in Afghanistan, Founders' Porch has been quiet in 2010. To start our comeback, here are two extended articles on how the US should defend Persian Gulf states against an imperial Islamic Republic, and how Yemen may be in over its head trying to "rehabilitate" terrorists.

The first, The Gulf States in the Shadow of Iran, appears in The Middle East Quarterly's Winter 2010 edition. It is a call for moral clarity in the U.S.'s noble efforts to secure the Persian Gulf from the Islamic Republic's encroachments. The Gulf states, with their human rights abuses and authoritarian instincts, are not to be bowed to. Indeed, they deserved no pity when the US invasion of Baathist Iraq proved unsettling to them. But now moral clarity requires standing with the Gulf states against a sworn-enemy: Iran. The US cannot afford to miss this opportunity by attempting short-sighted deal-making with Iran. It should stick to its principles by reaching out to the Gulf states. Here is an excerpt:

U.S. policy in the Persian Gulf should recognize that outreach to Iran since the "unclench your fist" inaugural address has failed. Iran has ignored Obama's diplomatic plea for the Islamic Republic to join "the community of nations."[69] Meanwhile, Tehran has capitalized on the June 30, 2009 U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq: On July 16, an Iranian-backed militia killed three U.S. soldiers in Basra with an Iranian-made rocket.[70] Even though the Obama administration chose not to intervene on behalf of human rights protesters after the June presidential elections, on August 23, 2009, Iran's parliament voted to approve $20 million for exposing human rights abuses in the United States.[71] Iran has interpreted U.S. engagement attempts as desperation: Ahmadinejad's short-lived first vice president and current chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Masha'i, said in August that due to Ahmadinejad's "historic" world popularity, "the international community has no choice but to cooperate" with the regime.[72] Finally, as Washington cashes in a peace dividend, Iranian-made missiles and machine guns are landing in the hands of Yemen's Shi'i rebels. In a reference to Tehran, Yemeni information minister Hasan Ahmad al-Lawzi recently said, "There are religious authorities that are trying to interfere in the affairs of our country."[73]

Which leads to the other article, by Founders' Porch resident Yemeni terror scholar Chris Harnisch, whose reporting I cited in that last sentence. The US, he writes in his article at Critical Threats, may want to think twice before handing over Guantanano detainees to Yemen's summer-fun-camp rehabilitation program:

"[M]any Saudi terrorists from Guantanamo have been released into the Saudi rehabilitation program, which reportedly applies a de-radicalization curriculum revolving around sports, art therapy and other leisure activities,[3] only to return to the battlefield – sometimes in key leadership positions. The proposed Yemeni terrorist rehabilitation program will apparently be modeled on the Saudi program. "

Whether regarding Iranian meddling in the Persian Gulf or AQAP terrorism in Yemen, the US has a long road ahead in securing the Arabian Peninsula.

Yemen: HQ for rich man's jihad

The “poverty is the cause of terrorism” faction was up against it in 2009. Shirwa Ahmed left Minnesota to join the ranks of Somalia’s medieval al-Shabab, whose finances are better than those of the peasant infidels they burn alive. Earlier this year the FBI announced that Ahmed found his grim calling when he lived near the banks of the Mississipi River in a country where one hour sitting at a drive-thru window earns you seven double cheeseburgers. Then there was Major Nidal Hasan, who made good money – better than what any of the soldiers he killed made, anyway. And now there is Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Western-educated young man hailing from one of the Nigerian capital’s ritziest neighborhoods, who tries to kill himself and a couple hundred others on a plane headed to the land of opportunity.

My friend Chris Harnisch is perhaps the leading expert on Yemeni terrorism. He has written a piece on the increasing role of Yemen-based Islamists in global terrorism. Their influence has reached Ahmed, Hasan, Abdulmutallab, and many others, thanks to the power of ideology above all else. Here is an excerpt and link to his piece on al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

The Christmas Day attempt is proof of AQAP’s desire and ability to strike America and American interests. The recent U.S. and Yemeni strikes on AQAP strongholds and leadership may have weakened the group, but its recent statements suggest that it is still operational and under strong leadership. AQAP reiterated its desire to strike the U.S. in its statement claiming responsibility for Abdulmutallab’s attempt: “From here, we say to the American people: since you support your leaders and you stand behind them in killing our women and our children, rejoice for what will do you harm. We have come to you with slaughter and we have prepared for you men who love death as you love life. With permission from Allah, we will come to you from where you do not expect. As you kill, you will be killed. Tomorrow is near.”[40] AQAP has made its intentions very clear: it is no longer satisfied with attacking Saudi and Yemeni targets; it has every intention to kill Americans.

A hard, job-friendly rain

I might have been more careful when I wished, almost two years ago, that the yawner “green” movement would end its addiction to renewable clichés, and pump some poetic depth into the enviro-jihad. I suggested tweaking Bob Dylan’s “It’s a Hard Rain’s a Gonna Fall.” Last week I got what was coming to me: At Copenhagen’s “climate summit”– where guests required 1,200 limos, 140 private planes, and as much carbon as Kansas City, KS over 11 days – Al Gore smashed the meaningless “eco-friendly” rhetoric with a poem:

…Neptune’s bones dissolve
Snow glides from the mountain
Ice fathers floods for a season
A hard rain comes quickly…

Apparently the enviro-jihad’s poetry czars got my memo, almost verbatim:

Acid rain’s a-gonna fall, my blue-eyed son,

Rain’s a-gonna fall in winter instead of snow, my darling young one.

So now the “hard rain” crisis group has it all: a tragic premonition, a sympathetic international community, a promise of a “green jobs” recovery, and – at last – a poet.

One way to appreciate the disingenuous defense of this “slam dunk” case for government actions like “cap-and-trade” is to compare it to the “slam dunk” case for invading Iraq. Back in 2003, the premonition was vague: even President Bush didn’t say Saddam Hussein caused 9/11 (and there was no “science” to cling to, only a gray case for striking a WMD-craving chokepoint of the backward Arab world). The international community was profiting too much off of Iraqis’ misery to sympathize with an invasion. And while there was initial talk of oil revenues paying for the war, it soon became impossible to deny the American deaths and economic miscalculation.

But Iraq always had its poets. Whatever horrors Iraqis faced once the US invasion turned Iraq from a prison into a wilderness, few could help thinking of national poet Badir Shakir al-Sayyab’s promise of deliverance:

…I can almost hear Iraq gathering thunder

And storing up lightning in mountains and plains.

Ever since we were young, the sky was

Clouded in the winter,

And rain poured,

Yet every year when the earth bloomed we hungered.

Not a single year passed but Iraq had hunger…

The hard rain keeps falling on Iraq, and no one can refer to anything about the war as a “win-win.” Its defenders have not had the luxury of reciting poems at global lectures in Copenhagen where they can laugh and eat caviar. Everyone can see the price of their policies. Jon Stewart, therefore, criticized Douglas Feith (a DOD top-dog) a few years ago for underselling the dangers: “The fact that you seemed to know all the risks takes this from manslaughter to homicide.” Stewart is right: the administration should never have said “mission accomplished” and should have warned that it would be hard and long and deadly. But only a year into the war, “Is the sacrifice worth it?” was a question every supporter had to take seriously.

The Copenhageners, however, will never have to take that question seriously. The earth’s cycles will be too complex to allow us to diffinitively know whether cap-and-trade or a butterfly's flutter saved the polar bears. So too with the economy: President Obama can spend four years attributing our economic crisis to eight years of President Bush, and no one will be able to diffinitivly prove the green agenda's complicity. Thus, no need to admit that “going green” requires sacrifice.

The UN, for example, says climate change is the world’s top threat. But, they say, it’s “as much an opportunity as it is a threat, offering a chance to usher in a new age of green economics.”

Energy Secretary Steven Chu says, “Virtually everyone that I know has gotten more alarmed in the last half a dozen years.” But how alarming can it be if it is the pretext for his $39 billion “clean energy projects” save-the-economy stimulus? Just last week Chu was in Wisconsin lecturing on the win-win green jobs revolution.

President Obama, too, makes the solution seem fun: “The nation that leads in the creation of a clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the 21st century global economy.” Cap-and-trade, he says, is “a jobs bill.”

The Islamic Republic’s Ayatollah Khomeini once told an economy critic, “we did not make the revolution to lower the price of watermelons.” The “green” debate would benefit from such candidness. Freakonomics author Steven Levitt, for example, asks why we are preparing to spend trillions for benefits 50 years out. He concludes that spraying light-reflecting sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere through a 25 click hose would be wiser than cap-and-trade (which will cost $822 billion, according to the CBO). And that is to assume a problem even exists: at Copenhagen, Gore’s “slam dunk” case for the probability of the north polar ice caps completely melting in 5 years was refuted by the very scientist he based his claim off of (the ice caps have expanded since 2006). Meanwhile, no one has been able to explain the current decade of cooling, nor the reason that in five of the past six ice ages, carbon levels were actually higher than they are now.

If global warming is worth taking seriously, solving it will be hard. When Gore talks about “a hard rain” in his bizarre poem, he’s saying it can be avoided. Yet Badir Shakir ended his poem at peace with irony: “Iraq will bloom with rain.” Unfortunately, he was right.

"They heard music in their villages for the first time"

Here is the latest on Rob and his platoon in the Taliban-infested Buji Bhast Pass.

3/4 Marines Face Two-front Engagement During Operation North Star
Story and photo by Cpl. Zachary Nola

FARAH PROVINCE, Afghanistan – At first glance, the area known as the Buji Bhast Pass in southern Afghanistan looks much like the rest of Farah province. Mountain peaks tower over vast desert valleys spotted with small adobe villages, herds of grazing animals and local farmers tilling their fields.

Whereas other areas in the region are proving relatively receptive to coalition forces, the pass and surrounding towns remain a haven for Taliban fighters.

Threats and kidnappings, made by armed enemy fighters in the dead of the night, have sent a wave of fear and compliance over local villagers. This forced obedience, coupled with a high number of Taliban fighters lurking in nearby mountains, has produced an area hazard to both coalition forces and local Afghans alike.

The danger was apparent when Marines and sailors from India Company, 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, visited surrounding towns of the Buji Bhast Pass area as part of Operation North Star, Nov. 15-17.

The key to securing the pass, which serves as a line of communication between the populated areas of Delaram and Golestan, lies in securing the trust and assistance of the local villagers.

Before laying the foundation for a more permanent and healthier relationship with the villagers,
coalition forces must first earn the respect and influence of the towns' elders.

"The elders are key to holding any kind of relationship with the local populace," said 1st Lt. Scott Riley, 25, the executive officer for India Co. "They want to help the coalition forces. They want us there, and they make it well known, and the fact that the Taliban are still [in the area] really worries them."

The operation initiated such a plan on the first day by visiting the town of Gund, which lies on the pass' southern door step, but the town quickly proved to be unlike other provincial areas.

On past patrols, India Co. has often been greeted by the curious, but sociable farmer, or local children in search of gifts. Upon its arrival to Gund, the company was welcomed by Taliban gunfire from fighting positions in the surrounding mountains.

Undeterred by an enemy incapable of matching the Marines' firepower, the patrol continued with its mission, and attended a shura with the town's elders the following day.

The Taliban's fear of elders' power and influencing could encourage local Afghans to support the provisional government was evident shortly after the meeting had concluded.

Taliban small-arms fire from the surrounding hills again targeted the Marines in a futile attempt to harass and disrupt any progressive discourse between the Marines and their Afghan hosts.

"[The Taliban] responding to the shura in that matter. [By] shooting at us, they're just trying to reinforce their presence there to the locals. They wanted to let [the locals] know, 'Hey, we're still here, we see you talking to the coalition forces, and we don't like it,'" said Riley, a native of Wake Forest, N.C.

Taliban fighters increased their efforts to reinforce their influence over the region later in the day. This third attempt by insurgents targeted the Marines, using an improvised explosive device.

"We turned around to look at how beautiful the valley was up there with all the mountains, when we saw a huge plume of smoke and dirt shoot up. Then we waited and eventually heard the explosion," said 2nd Lt. Robert Fafinski, a platoon commander with India Co. "We were pretty sure somebody had died, and eventually we were able to learn from the locals that it was the IED emplacers."

The failed emplacement only strengthened the Marines' message that uninhibited Taliban movement and violence poses the same threat to local villagers as it does to coalition forces. As the operation moved to the nearby village of She Gosa Janobi, India Co. used the incident as an example of the Taliban's disregard for the safety of those Afghans living in the Buji Bhast area, and to promote coalition support of Afghan national security forces.

Another shura was held with the elders of She Gosa Janobi, while dismounted patrols through the town allowed the Marines to speak with villagers directly.

The Marines listened to local concerns about security, shared food with those in need, briefed local farmers and businessmen about new Afghan laws pertaining to agricultural fertilizer use, and dispersed hand-cranked radios.

"We were able to pass out a good number of [radios]," said Fafinski, from Chaska, Minn. "It was very rewarding for the Marines to see the joy on the Afghan faces, when they heard music in their villages for probably the first time ever."

In addition to playing music and the call for prayer, the radios will also help keep Afghans in the Buji Bhast area better informed about their role in safeguarding the local area.

No better friend

More and more Amercians - both liberals and conservatives - favor withdrawing military forces from Afghanistan. If we do withdraw them, we will also be withdrawing the most effective humanitarian force: the US Marine Corps. Here is an article on 2nd Lt Fafinski's platoon in Helmand. (Photos of his platoon by U.S. Marine Corps).

Marines save lives, assist Afghan National Army
11/5/2009 By Staff Sgt. Luis R. Agostini, Regimental Combat Team 7

FARAH PROVINCE, Afghanistan — As Seaman Jared D. Wilson, a corpsman with Company I, 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, stepped into his humvee on the morning of Nov. 2, he knew he very well could find himself in the position of saving lives.

He didn’t expect it to be Afghan lives.

On the evening of Nov. 1, the Marines of Company I, 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment were tasked with the security of a re-supply convoy the following morning for the Afghan National Army.

The Marines have been down this road before. Part of the route the Marines have taken from their forward operating base to their final destination has been identified as a Taliban hotspot.

“The last time we went down that route, we found three, 100-pound IEDs. It was kind of nerve-racking,” said Petty Officer 3rd Class Joshua J. Azarte, also a corpsman with Co. I, 3/4.

“That’s a bad place. We’re finding IEDs all of the time over there, and last time, we took indirect fire that came really close to our trucks,” said 2nd Lt. Robert R. Fafinski III, the commander of 1st Platoon, Co. I, 3/4.

After a two-hour delay waiting on the Afghan National Army right outside of the FOB, the convoy made its way to the Afghan Uniformed Police checkpoint, with Ford pick-up trucks of Afghan National Police and Afghan National Army soldiers integrated.

The Marines have learned to exercise patience and develop their mentoring skills with the Afghan forces. From departure times to picking up trash, the Marines are trying to lead by example when it comes to military discipline.

“We’re going to continue working with them. It looks like their heads are in the right place, they just need more mentoring,” said Lance Cpl. Jacob Fournier, a section leader with Co. I, 3/4.
Although labeled as a security mission, the Marines were looking to “get some.” Because of the previous attacks on the Marines in the same location, the Marines were hoping to draw fire from any enemy forces in the area and do what Marine “grunts” are known for: seek, close with and destroy the enemy.

About an hour into the convoy, a domino effect of red brake lights brought the convoy to a complete stop. An Afghan truck driver waved down the lead vehicle of the convoy, and through a Pashtu translator embedded with 1st platoon, informed the Marines of a nearby car accident.The Marines didn’t take any chances, keeping a strong sense of vigilance while investigating the scene.

“Myself and a bunch of the Marines approached the scene thinking it was an ambush. Within 30 seconds, we switched gears from expecting enemy contact to a lifesaving mission,” said Fafinski.
Wilson approached the scene, and immediately noticed signs of a potentially fatal car accident. A rear bumper, glass, windshield and a shoe was strewn throughout the road.

As the Marines and Afghan forces made their way off of the right side of the road, they immediately knew the accident was no ambush. An Afghan family of nine fell victim to an off-road accident. The injured Afghans lay near a totaled, white, hatchback vehicle. Two Afghans were pronounced dead on the scene. Although ruled a car accident, Fafinski believes the family may have been swerving, trying to avoid a possible IED. He believes this for good reason.

About two weeks ago, an Afghan family struck a Taliban-emplaced roadside bomb, killing one and wounding several others.

“They’re hitting their own people. Not only does it disgust me, it makes me want to get them a lot more,” Fafinski said. Wilson and Azarte immediately went to work, prioritizing their new patients for triage.

The “docs,” as the Marines refer to them, have completed extensive training and participated in numerous field exercises, including Mojave Viper. Mojave Viper is a 40-day field exercise at Marine Corps Air-Ground Combat Center, Twentynine Palms, Calif., required for all Marine infantry battalions deploying to Iraq or Afghanistan. Part of the training includes mass casualty exercises, which Marines and corpsmen learn to work as a team to treat a multitude of simulated casualties.

But this time, it was for real.

Three of the injured passengers looked to just suffer cuts, bruises and shock. As they were identified, the corpsmen moved on to the more serious injuries.

The Afghan family was driving from Lashkar Gah to Afghanistan’s Nimroz province, to treat the grandmother for hypertension. She was now being treated for a severe foot injury, which at first glance, may have required amputation. The Marines, corpsmen and Afghan forces began working together in a concerted effort. The platoon sergeant, Staff Sgt. Paul V. Cooke, began coordinating a casualty evacuation for the injured Afghans requiring urgent care, while the rest of the Marines cordoned off the area.

The Afghan soldiers offered what help they could, from communicating with the family members able to speak, to providing security on the main road.
The corpsmen tended to the wounded, which included the grandmother, two boys and a young girl. While dealing with the wounded, the corpsmen kept the Afghan and Islamic code of conduct in mind.

“I asked the interpreter to ask permission from the son to treat the injured women,” said Wilson, a 21-year-old from San Dimas, Calif. “The son didn’t hesitate to allow us to treat them.”

Within 30 minutes, two UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters landed within the vicinity of where Sgt. Randolph J. Chatfield, a section leader with 1st platoon, popped yellow smoke.

The coalition of Marines, sailors and Afghans again worked in unison, loading the patients onto stretchers and transporting them from the accident site to the helicopters.

“They responded very well,” said Azarte, a 21-year-old from Tucson, Ariz.

“If we didn’t have the interpreter and the ANA, it would’ve been a lot harder to treat those people,” Wilson said.

“They showed genuine care. They were willing to do what they could, but comfortable enough to know that we had it in control,” said Cooke, a 31-year-old from Grant’s Pass, Ore.

The injured were taken to FOB Delaram, where they received treatment from the Army’s 67th Forward Surgical Team. From there, they were flown to an Afghan hospital in Kandahar, where they will receive CAT-scans for head trauma and any possible neck and spinal injuries.

As the helicopters departed with the Afghans, the Marines and Afghan forces pushed forward to complete their original mission, but not before being delayed again by several hours, due to a possible roadside bomb.

“I’d rather spend six hours finding out it’s not an IED, than .3 seconds finding out that it is,” Cooke said. The Marines completed the re-supply under the cover of darkness and with the use of night-vision goggles. After returning to the FOB, the Marines cleared their weapons, cleaned out the vehicles, and waited for the platoon leadership to give their intelligence debrief, which included praise heaped on the corpsmen.

“The corpsmen handled themselves well and took care of it pretty good,” said Chatfield, a 23-year-old from Kona, Hawaii.

“It’s Doc Wilson’s first deployment, but it looked like it was his fifth. That was his show,” said Fournier, a 21-year-old from Lanesboro, Minn.

“The corpsmen kept their cool really well. They had tactical patience, and dealt with a lot more than expected,” said Cooke.

“If this was a football game and we were giving out a game ball, I’d give it to the corpsmen and the platoon sergeant,” said Fafinski, a 24-year-old from Chaska, Minn. Fafinski mentioned Cooke due to his performance in coordinating the casualty evacuation.

“After it happened and we got back in the trucks, I had a deep feeling of confidence in our corpsmen. One of my lance corporals, Lance Cpl. Joel Fadden, looked at me and said, “it’s sure nice to know that the corpsmen know what they are doing.’ If he thinks like that, I’m sure all of the Marines are thinking it too.”

The best of all possible motives

In the ten days since Major Nidal Hasan yelled “Allah is great” and shot bullets into 43 people, Allah’s will has continued working in mysterious ways. Egyptian Muslims poured acid on and stabbed a Christian for entering a Muslim brothel. Forty Ugandan Muslims entered a Christian church and began beating parishioners with metal clubs. Two Pakistani Muslims exploded themselves to kill 18 kafirs. A New York Muslim tried to run over non-Muslims and told police “Muslims will fix this country.” Saudi Islamic law prescribed sixty lashes for a female TV anchor whose segment mentioned sex. A California Muslim at a mall yelled “Allah is power” and tore a crucifix from a fellow-shopper’s neck. And Filipino police found the sliced head of a local teacher who jihadists had kidnapped in October. Without the four FBI foils of Islamist terror attacks earlier this fall, the list might go on.

Walking back the cat, however, Allah’s will itself (i.e. everything that happens, according to Muslims) appears to submit occasionally to reason. In October, the United Nations focused not on fighting religious extremism but on criminalizing negative stereotypes of religions, such as, say, “religions are extreme.” Meanwhile, a Minnesota judge ruled that airport officers who took precautionary action against suspicious Muslims on a Minneapolis flight had to pay the Muslims for their mistake. They would not make that mistake again, and neither would the Army, with its UN-esque anti-stereotyping “equal opportunity” standards. No absurdity, then, that Hasan and his open Islamist sympathies would evade profiling and defamation.

Canadian writer Mark Steyn accuses multiculturalism and its requisite “warm and fluffy” feelings toward all things diverse of warping the West’s sense of proportion. But look deeper and you’ll find its frozen core. There is a cold detachment, for example, in The Nation columnist John Nichols’ question, “Was Major Hasan a cold, calculating Islamic extremist or a deeply troubled man who was about to be dispatched to a warzone…?” Who are we to insert our emotions and judge, he seems to ask? Nichols is like the critic in Voltaire’s satire Candide: “you were in the wrong to shed tears...The author does not understand a single word of Arabic, and yet the scene lies in Arabia.” The anti-Muslim idealogues do not understand a single word of the Quran, and yet they accuse Hasan of terrorism, goes the Nichols line.

Nichols warns us not to jump to conclusions: “There was clearly something wrong with this imperfect follower of Islam. But that does not mean that there is something wrong with Islam.” He jumps to the conclusion that “the incident inspired an all-too-predictable explosion of Islamophobia." But by his own multicultural logic, who is he to judge what constitutes an “imperfect follower”? What is moderate Islam? Can there be a moderate way to believe, as all Muslims do, that Muhammad is the infallible messenger of Allah? Can there be a moderate way to accept, as all Muslims do, the Quran’s opening line: “This Book is not to be doubted,” even while “this book” promotes misogyny, bigotry, and mutiliation? Can there be a moderate way to believe, as all Muslims do, that all happens according to Allah’s will?

Voltaire’s Candide asks similar questions when he realizes that the horrors of the real world differ from the theories and euphemisms of religious philosophers. After his friend is hung, his wife raped, and his life rotting away in slavery, he asks, “If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the rest?” And so if Islam is a religion of peace and moderation, what then are the religions of war? If Major Hasan is not a terrorist, who is? And if the majority of Muslims are moderate, what are the majority of Puritans and Evangelicals?

In the face of such cynical questions and aboard a ship fleeing persecution, Candide’s teacher lectures about his theoretical “best of all worlds.” “While he was proving this, a priori, the vessel foundered and all perished…” And so it is in America. While we prove that religion is inherently good and moderate, a US Army major in Texas kills Americans in the name of his religion. Was he simply “an unmarried loner,” columnist Errol Louis asks? Surely, but by no coincidence: it takes an extraordinary woman to wish to spend the rest of her life praying five times a day in Islamic uniform with a suicide-bombing enthusiast. Once again, in a religion in which finding a good, Allah-fearing woman is a jihad in itself, sexually frustrated violence is no abnormality.

The Council on American Islamic Relations was quicker to condemn the Islamophobes than future Major Hasans: “No religious or political ideology could ever justify or excuse such wanton and indiscriminate violence.” Can you be forced to praise Allah while your older brother is beheaded by the Somali al-shabab, and be content with CAIR’s detached judgment? Can you watch your mother be stoned before a Taliban tribunal, and be content with CAIR’s certainties? Can you be in the line of fire of a man yelling “Allah Ahkbar” and jump to this conclusion? The Islamophobes are right: the Quran is disturbing, and much of Islam is scary. If Islam is peace, then praise be to Allah: we’ll never see a religion of war.

Rob Deploys

Rob left the US yesterday to lead a Marine infantry rifle platoon into combat against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan. His instructors deemed him ready for a coveted early deployment slot. A couple of weeks ago, some of his Marine buddies from the Marine Corps’ Infantry Officer Course met The Great One With Talent On Loan From God, Rush Limbaugh, at a Washington Redskins football game. They had Rush call Rob in 29 Palms, California. Rush recounted the encounter on his radio show:

RUSH: “I was at the Redskins game yesterday. I ran into four of the most handsome, young, clean cut Marines who were just ready to get their orders, and they're heading to Afghanistan, some are heading to Camp Lejeune and these people all volunteered to defend and protect their country and this constitution. These, they're some of the greatest young men. They're 23 to 24 years old and they were up there as guests of Coach Zorn in his suite for the Rams Redskins game the other day. They had me, they got me on the phone with one of their buddies who was in 29 Palms, California who is being sent to Afghan-, to that, to southern Af, to a hell hole in southern Afghanistan…”

Then on the next day’s show:

RUSH: “I told you yesterday I was in Coach Zorn's suite at the Redskins-Rams on Sunday, and he had as his guests, he and his wife, Joy, four handsome, young Marines who were being deployed soon. They put a fifth buddy of theirs on the phone with me in 29 Palms, California. Some of them are going to the hellhole areas of Afghanistan; some of them are going to Camp Lejeune. These people volunteered. They're out there defending and protecting the US Constitution and this government and the people of this country. They're fighting for freedom.”

Most “policy analysts” these days will dare you to look them in the eye and say you honestly think we are “fighting for freedom” or “protecting the US Constitution” in Afghanistan, let alone Iraq. Christopher Hitchens recently took the dare in a speech on Islamist terror and free expression:

HITCHENS: “It is not an unfortunate thing, but rather a wonderful thing, that in our time too, we might be called upon to take a little risk to defend what is so absolutely and non-negotiably precious to us. Consider yourself lucky to be matched with this hour. Resolve, please, highly resolve, that you too will do your part to defend that Constitution and the values that it enshrines.”

Good for Rob for fighting for what many Americans blush to articulate. And good luck.