This is interesting, but more than interesting, it is important.

It is interesting because it shows how an Obama administration’s think-tank works for it – with a rather naive and transparent cunning, which they must mistake for  brilliant deception.

It is important because it confirms that Obama wants to join hands not only with hostile Muslim states like Iran, but also with actively inimical Muslim terrorists like Hizballah.

Barry Rubin, director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, writes:

Can things get worse with the Obama Administration’s foreign – and especially Middle East – policy? Yes, it’s not inevitable but I have just seen personally a dangerous example of what could be happening next. In fact, I never expected that the administration would try to recruit me in this campaign, as you’ll see …

First, a little background. One of the main concerns with the Obama Administration is that it would go beyond just engaging Syria and Iran, turning a blind eye to radical anti-American activities throughout the region.

To cite some examples, it has not supported Iraq in its protests about Syrian-backed terror, even though the group involved is al-Qaida, with which the United States is supposedly at war. Nor has it launched serious efforts to counter Iran’s help to terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan or even Tehran’s direct cooperation with al-Qaida. …

Beyond this, though, there has been the possibility of the U.S. government engaging Hizballah. It is inadequate to describe Hizballah as only a terrorist movement. But it is accurate to describe it as: a Lebanese Shia revolutionary Islamist movement that seeks to gain control over Lebanon, is deeply anti-American, is a loyal client of Iran and Syria, uses large amounts of terrorism, and is committed to Israel’s destruction. Hizballah engages in Lebanese politics, including elections, as one tactic in trying to fulfill these goals.

We have seen steps by the current British government toward engaging Hizballah. And the rationale for doing so is based partly on the fact that Hizballah is now part of the Lebanese governing coalition. Of course, in playing a role in that coalition, Hizballah tries to ensure Syria-Iranian hegemony, threatens the lives of American personnel, and other activities designed to destroy any U.S. influence in the region.

And let’s remember that Hizballah may well have been involved in the murder of courageous politicians and journalists in Lebanon who opposed Syria-Iran-Hizballah control over their country. True, direct involvement hasn’t been proven but they are accessories since they have done everything possible to kill the international investigation into the matter. And the trail certainly leads back to their Syrian patrons.

Here’s where I come in. I have received a letter asking me personally to help with a research project. … The letter says that this is a project for the Center for American Progress and that the results “will be presented to senior U.S. policymakers in the administration.”

I am asked to participate by giving my opinions on how the United States can deal with Hizballah “short of engagement” and “would Israeli leaders see benefit in the U.S. talking with Hizballah about issues which are of crucial importance to Israel?”

Answer to first question: Oppose it in every way possible.

Answer to second question: What the [insert obscene words I don’t use] do you think they would say!

The letter continues:

“As you’ve noted, some like John Brennan [advisor to the president on terrorism] is already thinking about a more flexible policy towards Hizballah and it would be extremely useful to get your views on this to ensure anything decided is done properly.”

I read this letter … as saying that the Center for American Progress is going to issue a report calling for U.S. engagement with Hizballah, and that it has been encouraged to do so by important officials in the Obama Administration.

The phrase “to ensure anything decided is done properly,” I take as a give-away to the fact that they are going to push for direct dealing with Hizballah but want to be able to say that they had listened to alternative views. They merely, I am told by those who know about this project, intend to talk to some who disagree for appearances’ sake and throw in a sentence or two to give the report the slightest tinge of balance.

The person heading this project has already endangered the lives of brave Lebanese. For example, he claimed without foundation that Christians were planning to launch a war on Hizballah, providing a splendid rationale for Hizballah to murder opponents on the excuse of doing so in self-defense. Accepting Hizballah rule is defined as the Christians recognizing they are a minority and trying to get along with their Muslim neighbors.

In other words, those opposing Hizballah are presented as aggressors while Hizballah is just the reasonable party that wants to get along. Moreover all this leaves out the community, about the same size as the Christians and Shia Muslims, that has been leading the resistance to Syria, Iran, and Hizballah: the Sunni Muslims.

In short, the person directing the project talks like a virtual agent of Hizballah and its allies, basically repeating what they tell him.

Aside from the fact that Hizballah is not and will not be moderate there are two other problems that these silly people don’t comprehend.

The first is the signal that such statements send to Arabs and especially Lebanese. Concluding that the United States is selling them out and jumping onto the side of the Islamist revolutionaries (an idea that sounds implausible in Washington but very easily accepted as true in Riyadh, Beirut, Amman, and Cairo), Arab moderates will be demoralized, rush to become appeasers, and seek to cut their own deals with what they perceive as the winning side.

The second is the signal that such statements send to the radicals themselves. Concluding that the United States fears them and acknowledges their moral superiority and strategic success, they will be more arrogant and aggressive. …

The last time I was in this situation, it involved a government-funded report about Islamist movements. What I didn’t know is that the word had been passed to the project director from the government agency that he was supposed to urge engagement with Islamists. The intention was to keep out anything critical of the idea. At first, then, I was told to my surprise that my paper would be responded to by another paper written by a supporter of engaging Islamists.

When my paper was submitted, however, it was apparently too strong, it was quickly rejected in an insulting way, and I wasn’t paid for my work. The fix was in and those involved were richly rewarded for saying what was wanted, though the actual implementation of such a policy would be disastrous for U.S. interests, as well as for millions of Arabs as well as Israelis.

Friends of mine have had similar experiences recently regarding papers arguing, for example, that engaging Syria is a great idea and that Damascus can be made moderate and split away from Iran. This is all nonsense, but honors and money are to be gained by saying such things.

So I’m not going to help provide a fig leaf for something masquerading as a serious study but set up to advocate a dreadful policy. It would be the equivalent of participating in a mid-1930s’ project designed to show that Germany had no more ambitions in Europe, a mid-1940s’ project that the USSR wanted to be friends, or a late 1970s’ project that Ayatollah Khomeini was a moderate and that an Islamist Iran would pose no threats.

It’s bad enough to live through an era of dangerous and terrible policy decisions, it’s much worse to be complicit in them.

One has to admire the skill with which Obama and Hillary Clinton are handling relations with Iran, China, North Korea, Israel, Britain, Russia, Canada, India, Honduras, Brazil, Czech Republic, Poland, and France. They’re managing to strengthen America’s enemies, weaken its friends, and anger all with great dispatch and – this is the really impressive part – to no discernible end. It’s not as if America’s interests are being served. Nothing selfish like that.

Oh yes – and Afghanistan. There, with thrilling arrogance, and the daring misuse of armed forces, they are demonstrating, through victory after victory, the ultimate impotence of American power.

And are the Afghans grateful? Like hell they are.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

President Hamid Karzai lashed out at his Western backers for the second time in three days, accusing the U.S. of interfering in Afghan affairs and saying the Taliban insurgency would become a legitimate resistance movement if the meddling doesn’t stop.

Mr. Karzai, whose government is propped up by billions of dollars in Western aid and nearly 100,000 American troops fighting a deadly war against the Taliban, made the comments during a private meeting with about 60 or 70 Afghan lawmakers Saturday.

At one point, Mr. Karzai suggested that he himself would be compelled to join the other side —that is, the Taliban—if the parliament didn’t back his controversial attempt to take control of the country’s electoral watchdog from the United Nations …

The Afghan leader seems as mistrustful of the West as ever—and increasingly willing to tap the resentment many ordinary Afghans feel toward the U.S. and its allies. Many here view the coalition as enabling the Afghan government’s widespread corruption, and blame U.S.-led forces for killing too many civilians.

At the same time, Mr. Karzai is working to improve relations with American rivals, such as Iran and China. The result is further strain on an already-tense partnership. …

Associates of Mr. Karzai say the events around last year’s vote left the president feeling betrayed by the West. Those feelings were clear in a speech Mr. Karzai gave Thursday, accusing “foreign embassies,” the U.N. and the European Union of being behind the electoral fraud and of trying to force him into a coalition government with his opponents.

On Saturday, Mr. Karzai went a step further, saying foreign interference in Afghan affairs fueled the insurgency, according to five lawmakers who attended the meeting.

“He said that the only reason that the Taliban and other insurgent groups are fighting the Afghan government is that they see foreigners having the final say in everything,” said one of the lawmakers.

All five lawmakers said Mr. Karzai told those who gathered at the palace that the Taliban’s “revolt will change to resistance” if the U.S. and its allies kept dictating how his government should run. The word “resistance” is a term often used to convey a legitimate struggle against unjust rulers, such as the Mujahedeen’s fight against the Soviet Union’s occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Mr. Karzai’s remarks were the latest sign of the growing rift between the Afghan leader and the U.S., which is pouring troops into the country in a bid to reverse the Taliban’s momentum and win the support of ordinary Afghans.

Key to the surge strategy is restoring the battered domestic reputation of the Karzai administration. President Barack Obama, during a brief visit to Kabul Monday, pressed Mr. Karzai to clean up the pervasive corruption in his government.

If anything, Mr. Obama’s visit appears to have backfired. A businessman with close ties to Mr. Karzai said the Afghan leader was insulted by Mr. Obama’s comments and left with even greater doubts about the American commitment to Afghanistan.

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have an ungrateful puppet!

(Please someone, remind us what the US is in Afghanistan for, what the ultimate aim is, what Afghanistan will look like when that aim is achieved?)

Obama is doing nothing effective to stop Iran becoming a nuclear armed power.

At the same time as he is allowing Iran to develop a nuclear arsenal, he is weakening America’s nuclear capability with the expressed aim of ultimately abandoning it completely.

Does he understand what can happen as a result of these policies?

If so, he is intentionally bringing about Armageddon.

James Carafano writes at the Washington Examiner:

Recent research suggests that nuclear weapons are much more destructive than previously thought because of the effect of mass fire. At the moment of detonation, the heart of an atomic fireball is four to five times hotter than the sun. It generates a firestorm of hurricane-force winds. Air temperature soars above the boiling point.

Both Washington and Tehran have much to learn from this. The people of Iran should realize the terrible price they may pay due to their president’s relentless pursuit of nuclear weapons. For Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, nukes are more than a status symbol. He views them as a useful tool. He publicly yearns to bring about the “death of Israel” and live in “a world without America.”

Nukes are the way to reach these goals. Give this delusional dreamer a nuclear weapon and a missile to deliver it, and he’ll be only too eager to threaten his enemies with nuclear holocaust.

That, of course, would only invite atomic retaliation … the type that would obliterate Iran…

The lesson for Washington is that the United States, a long-established nuclear power, must act like a responsible one. President Obama has started a mad dash down the “road to zero” — with the announced goal of eliminating our nuclear arsenal. It’s a path more likely to end in a nuclear firestorm than in peace.

Why? The danger starts with the administration’s refusal to fully modernize our nuclear weapons. Our aging inventory is increasingly less usable and reliable. The continuing erosion of a credible deterrent force will only invite aggression.

Moreover, slashing U.S. arsenals may well spur a new arms race. It may encourage emerging atomic enemies such as Iran and North Korea to “pick up the pace” to become our nuclear equals. That in turn could spark other nations wary of these rogue regimes to fast-track their own nuclear programs. Instead of easing tensions, our nuclear drawdown could ratchet up worldwide instability.

The administration has compounded its nuclear error by hobbling our missile defense program. War gaming exercises consistently show missile defenses not only deter attacks, they deter others from even building up their arsenals. Why build missiles when they’ll just be shot down?

A world on fire is an horrific vision of the future. The Iranian administration views it as glorious, while our administration steadfastly averts its gaze…

Why do African-Americans and Jews vote in such large numbers for the Democratic Party, which has a history of being the enemy of both? (For why it’s surprising that Democrats attract black voters, see our post Democrats for slavery, secession, segregation, socialism, December 7, 2009). They are like lambs voting for the butcher.

In our post A state condemned, March 21, 2010, we wrote about President Obama’s prejudices, plots, and policies as constituting an existential threat to the State of Israel.

The always interesting columnist David Solway sees what is happening between the Obama administration and the Israeli government much as we do. And he is as puzzled and irritated by the Jews who voted for Obama and habitually vote for the Democrats as we are (see for example our post Stupid Jews in Canada, January 11, 2009).

In an article that rewards reading in full, he writes at Front Page:

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Obama deliberately provoked a crisis to weaken Israel’s bargaining position and bring it into even greater disrepute among the wider public… Obama’s malice toward Israel is quite frankly undeniable.

Anyone who says that this president is a friend to Israel is lying to himself or is living in some alternate universe. Anyone who cannot see what National Post columnist George Jonas calls the “anti-Semitism, and Arabist agenda that emanates from the Obama administration” should be treated for cataracts. As peremptory and unnuanced as this may sound, any Jew who approves of Obama or continues to invest his fealty in the Democratic Party works insidiously against the well-being and even the survival of the Jewish state as we know it. According to recent polls, 96% of Jewish Israelis have recognized this indubitable fact, yet Canadian and American Jews foolishly persist in massively endorsing the very political parties that, whether subtly or overtly, would diminish Israel’s ability to defend itself against its sworn aggressors.

Of course, Jews have a long history of turning against their own, from Korah, Dathan and Abiram who revolted against Moses to those who helped further the Medieval blood libels to the Yevsektsiya (the Jewish section of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union) to the despicable Richard Goldstone today—and the uncountable numbers in between. This is not—repeat, not—to suggest that the ordinary run of American and Canadian Jews are quislings and delators of the same perfidious stamp; nevertheless, there is something almost inexplicable in their political loyalties that calls their collective acuity into question.

It has happened. The CHANGE has been made.

Mark Steyn sums up just what has happened and what it will mean for America and beyond:

Happy Dependence Day!

Well, it seems to be in the bag now. I try to be a sunny the-glass-is-one-sixteenth-full kinda guy, but it’s hard to overestimate the magnitude of what the Democrats have accomplished. Whatever is in the bill is an intermediate stage … The governmentalization of health care will accelerate, private insurers will no longer be free to be “insurers” in any meaningful sense of that term (ie, evaluators of risk), and once that’s clear we’ll be on the fast track to Obama’s desired destination of single payer as a fait accomplis.

If Barack Obama does nothing else in his term in office, this will make him one of the most consequential presidents in history. It’s a huge transformative event in Americans’ view of themselves and of the role of government. You can say, oh, well, the polls show most people opposed to it, but, if that mattered, the Dems wouldn’t be doing what they’re doing. Their bet is that it can’t be undone, and that over time, as I’ve been saying for years now, governmentalized health care not only changes the relationship of the citizen to the state but the very character of the people…

More prosaically, it’s also unaffordable. That’s why one of the first things that middle-rank powers abandon once they go down this road is a global military capability. If you take the view that the U.S. is an imperialist aggressor, congratulations: You can cease worrying. But, if you think that America has been the ultimate guarantor of the post-war global order, it’s less cheery. Five years from now, just as in Canada and Europe two generations ago, we’ll be getting used to announcements of defense cuts to prop up the unsustainable costs of big government at home. And, as the superpower retrenches, America’s enemies will be quick to scent opportunity.

Longer wait times, fewer doctors, more bureaucracy, massive IRS expansion, explosive debt, the end of the Pax Americana, and global Armageddon. Must try to look on the bright side . . .

The bureaucracy will be busy. It will come poking into our private lives, because the government now owns us. It now “has a right” to order us to live like this and not like that. What we eat, how much we eat, how warm or cool we may keep our homes, what sort of transport we may use …. it’s hard to think of a daily activity that won’t be regulated, because the government will be paying – with our tax dollars, of course – for our medical treatment, and may provide it if we’ve been “good”, or withhold it if we’ve been “bad”.

“You will obey” is the new true motto of once-free America.

Good-bye, freedom!

“Condemn” is a very strong word in diplomat-speak. It’s the word most American presidents would apply only to the activities and policies of hostile and extremely delinquent states.

Obama is applying it to Israel.

What has Israel done that is very wrong? Let’s see.

Not long ago it reluctantly agreed under American pressure to suspend building new houses for Jewish occupants on the West Bank, but expressly excluded Jerusalem from the agreement, and the exclusion was accepted by Obama’s State Department.

So when it announced recently that planning permission has been given for some additional apartments in an area to the north of Israel’s capital city, Israel did not expect an objection to be suddenly raised. The development, begun a dozen years ago, does not and will not encroach on any Arab neighborhood. Nobody has objected to it before. The ground had not previously been in use for housing or anything else. Some 18,000 Jews live there now with families growing up. There are normal needs for expansion of accomodation.

But because the piece of wasteland was taken in a war waged against Israel in 1948, and held until 1967 by the British-created state of Jordan, Obama wants it to be rid of its Jewish residents and kept in reserve to be “returned” to Arab possession when there is a state of Palestine.

So the routine announcement that long-planned building in that part of Jerusalem will go ahead has been taken by Obama to be such an insult “to America” that Israel must be condemned for it. The result is a crisis of relations between the two countries.

We contend that the announcement was a handy excuse; that the crisis was engineered; that any pretext would have done.

But what is it Obama needs a pretext for?

Caroline Glick’s answer is this:

Why has President Barak Obama decided to foment a crisis in US relations with Israel? …

Obama’s new demands follow the months of American pressure that eventually coerced Netanyahu into announcing both his support for a Palestinian state and a 10-month ban on Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria. No previous Israeli government had ever been asked to make the latter concession.

Netanyahu was led to believe that in return for these concessions Obama would begin behaving like the credible mediator his predecessors were. But instead of acting like his predecessors, Obama has behaved like the Palestinians. Rather than reward Netanyahu for taking a risk for peace, Obama has, in the model of Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, pocketed Netanyahu’s concessions and escalated his demands. This is not the behavior of a mediator. This is the behavior of an adversary. …

Obama’s assault on Israel is likely related to the failure of his Iran policy. Over the past week, senior administration officials including Gen. David Petraeus have made viciously defamatory attacks on Israel, insinuating that the construction of homes for Jews in Jerusalem is a primary cause for bad behavior on the part of Iran and its proxies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Syria and Gaza. By this line of thinking, if Israel simply returned to the indefensible 1949 armistice lines, Iran’s centrifuges would stop spinning, and Syria, al-Qaida, the Taliban, Hizbullah, Hamas and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards would all beat their swords into plowshares. …

Even more important than its usefulness as a tool to divert the public’s attention away from the failure of his Iran policy, Obama’s assault against Israel may well be aimed at maintaining that failed policy. Specifically, he may be attacking Israel in a bid to coerce Netanyahu into agreeing to give Obama veto power over any Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear installations. That is, the anti-Israel campaign may be a means to force Israel to stand by as Obama allows Iran to build a nuclear arsenal. …

Obama … seeks to realign US foreign policy away from Israel. Obama’s constant attempts to cultivate relations with Iran’s unelected president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Ahmadinejad’s Arab lackey Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, and Turkey’s Islamist Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan make clear that he views developing US relations with these anti-American regimes as a primary foreign policy goal. …

[And] he  is using his manufactured crisis to justify adopting an overtly anti-Israel position vis-à-vis the Palestinians. …

Likewise, the crisis Obama has manufactured with Israel could pave the way for him to recognize a Palestinian state if the Palestinians follow through on their threat to unilaterally declare statehood next year regardless of the status of negotiations with Israel. Such a US move could in turn lead to the deployment of US forces in Judea and Samaria to “protect” the unilaterally declared Palestinian state from Israel.

General Petraeus has even suggested putting the “Palestinian territories” under his central command.

We don’t believe the Palestinians’ threat. If they declare a state they’ll need to declare its boundaries, and if the boundaries do not embrace the entire state of Israel plus Gaza plus Judaea and Samaria, they’ll  be acknowledging the right of Israel to exist. Borders have two sides. “This side  the State of Palestine; that side the State of Israel”. The pretence of their now being willing to settle for a “two-state solution”  – when they’ve been rejecting such a thing for more than six decades – would instantly be exposed as the lie it is.

But Obama wants there to be a Palestinian state. And if it cannot, because it will not, be a second state in the region, will he then insist that it should be the only state?

We see no reason why there should be a 22nd Arab state.

We see no reason why the 21 existing Arab states shouldn’t assimilate the refugees of the Palestine region just as Israel assimilated the Jews who were expelled by the Arab states in 1948.

We see no reason why Jews shouldn’t live in Arab/Muslim countries just as Arabs/Muslims live in Israel, with full voting and property-owning rights, paying the same taxes, protected by the same laws equally.

We would be happy to see only one state in the region – the State of Israel, not Palestine.

But Obama, and the huge bloc of Islamic countries, and Europe, and Russia, have a vision of a 22-state Arab judenrein Middle East.

If America withdraws diplomatic support, as it is likely to do now; if Iran, bent on destroying Israel, is soon to be nuclear armed with Obama’s consent; and if, in addition, American forces are to be sent to the West Bank to aid Palestinian forces against their Israeli enemy as has been proposed, how good is Israel’s chance of surviving?

Palestinian violence against civilians in Israel is little reported in Europe or America.

Today a man was killed in Israel by one of the many rockets fired from Gaza, but his death and the manner of it has received scant attention by the media.

We would like to record his name, but for some reason it’s being kept secret according to a report from Bangkok:

A Thai farm worker was killed when Palestinian militants fired a rocket at Israel from the Gaza Strip, Israeli medics say. …

Magen David Adom, of Israel’s emergency services, and deputy Thai Foreign Ministry spokesman Thani Thongpakdi yesterday said the man was aged about 30 years and was working in an agricultural community in Napiv Ha Ahara, just north of Gaza, when he was killed.

The man had worked in Israel since 2006, Mr Thani said. He declined to disclose his name. …

A small Islamist faction calling itself Ansar al-Sunna claimed responsibility for the attack.

President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton don’t seem to think that the lethal firing of rockets into Israel insults their efforts to promote what they call “the peace process”, even though it’s such a precarious thing that it was easily knocked off course by the announcement of a housing project in Jerusalem for Jewish occupants.

Jonathan Tobin writes at Commentary’s Contentions:

While most of the world rattles on about how Israel’s impudent decision to build apartments for Jews in an existing Jewish neighborhood of Jerusalem will harm the peace process, the real obstacles to peace staged yet another demonstration of Middle East realities. In the last two days, Palestinian terrorists fired three rockets into southern Israel. Two landed near the town of Sderot in Southern Israel on Wednesday. One adult and a child suffered from shock from that blast. Then today, a rocket hit nearby Moshav Netiv Ha’asara, killing a worker from Thailand. Thirty such rockets have landed in southern Israel since the beginning of 2010.

Apologists for the Hamas terrorists, who run Gaza as a private fiefdom, were quick to blame the attacks on splinter groups beyond the control of the supposedly responsible thugs of Hamas. Two such groups claimed responsibility. One is an al-Qaeda offshoot, and the other is none other than the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, the terrorist wing of the supposedly moderate and peace-loving Fatah Party that controls the West Bank.

The rockets were an appropriate welcome to the Dame Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s top foreign-policy official, who was in Gaza for a visit. Though Ashton won’t meet with Hamas officials, her trip to Gaza is seen as helping the ongoing campaign to lift the limited blockade of the terrorist-run enclave even though Israel allows food and medical supplies into the Strip, so there is no humanitarian crisis. Those who would like to see this Hamasistan freed from all constraints say that the “humanitarian” issues should take precedence over “politics.” But their humanitarianism takes no notice of Israelis who still live under the constant threat of terrorist missile attacks. Nor do they think Hamas should be forced to free kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in exchange for an end to the blockade.

Such “humanitarianism” is also blind to why Israelis are leery of any further territorial concessions to the Palestinians – because they rightly fear that the ordeal of Sderot could easily be repeated in any part of Central Israel, as well as in Jerusalem, once Israel’s forces are forced to completely withdraw from the West Bank. Gaza is not just a symbol of the failures of Palestinian nationalism, as the welfare of over a million Arabs has been ignored as Hamas pursues its pathologically violent agenda of hostility to Israel. It is also a symbol of the failure of Ariel Sharon’s unilateral withdrawal policy, which Americans once hoped would allow the area to become a zone of peace and prosperity.

For all of the recent emphasis on Israel’s behavior, Gaza stands as both a lesson and a warning to those who heedlessly urge further concessions on Israel on behalf of a peace process in which the Palestinians have no real interest.

No name. And no agreement on which terrorist groups claim to have killed him. It is, however, generally agreed that he was the victim of deliberate Palestinian violence.

But never mind – it’s not as if he mattered like Rachel Corrie. She died when she put herself in the path of an Israeli bulldozer to save Palestinian property. She is celebrated as a martyr. A street in Ramallah, on the West Bank, is named after her.

We were lucky to have Fox News to tell us what the left-slanted mainstream media concealed, and to bring us opinion from both the right and the left. Fox News was “fair, balanced, and unafraid” as they claimed and continue to claim.

But is the claim still justified?

Not if we are to judge by their treatment of the Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who is on trial in Holland for expressing an opinion, well supported by facts, on the horrific ideology of Islam.

Here are three articles which together, in sequence, tell the sorry story:

The first is by David Swindle at Front Page:

Fox News’ Special Report with Bret Baier featured a segment tonight [March 8, 2010] on Dutch politician Geert Wilders’s blasphemy trial in the Netherlands.

The segment featured these descriptors of Wilders:

“A man who inspires fierce emotions.”

“Anger on the streets of London. The object of the demonstration was a recent visit by Far-Right Dutch politician Geert Wilders.”

“His Anti-Muslim rhetoric makes him a target of critics.”

“Wilders says Muslim head scarves should be banned, he’s branded the Muslim prophet Muhammed a pedophile and likened the Muslim Koran to Mein Kampf.”

“Far-Right”?

The “Far-Right” label is meant to smear Wilders by trying to associate him with racist European political parties like the BNP [British National Party] that actually warrant the label.

“Anti-Muslim”? Try Anti-Islam. Wilders’ film Fitna exposes how Islam’s first victims are always Muslims. [A link is provided to the film.]

Finally, the report cites three examples of Wilders’ allegedly extreme, “Far-Right” views. While whether head scarves should be banned is a matter of opinion, the last two points — Muhammad’s pedophilia and the Koran’s racist and genocidal injunctions are points of fact.

Later on Special Report they featured a panel in response to the story in which host Jim Angle questioned Charles Krauthammer [whom we greatly respect and admire, and usually, but not this time, agree with – JB], Bill Kristol [whom we respect, and often, but not this time, agree with], and A.B. Stoddard. Krauthammer said that Wilders was wrong about Islam — that the Dutch politician did not see a difference between Islam and Islamism.  So those who follow “Islam” ignore passages of the Koran and those who follow “Islamism” actually do what the book tells them to do? Is that right, Charles? Just want to make sure I’m up to speed on the preferred Orwellianisms on the Politically Correct Right.

Stoddard’s comments — she said that Wilders saw no difference between terrorist Muslims and non-violent Muslims — indicate that it’s likely that her first exposure to Wilders was the segment. And Kristol? He dismissed Wilders as a “demagogue.”

This is supposed to be the “conservative” network here and they are unable to present a single panelists who will support Wilders.

The next is by John L. Work, also at Front Page:

Following the gang hatchet job on Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders by two separate FOX News crews a few nights ago, FOX pulled down all the video footage from the internet – like it never happened. Well, it did happen. Jim Angle, Glenn Beck [who we think is doing a great job exposing the Obama administration and is a splendid entertainer] Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer and A.B Stoddard all did the dirty work during two different shows. …

First, let’s look at Beck’s six minute interview with Wilders from February of 2009. Beck warmly welcomed Wilders and gave him plenty of air-time. Wilders presented his case for the noble cause of resistance to the growing Islamic repression of free speech in The Netherlands. Beck treated Wilders like the hero he is.

A year later it is impossible to reconcile Beck’s posture and position in 2009 with his attack on Wilders this week – unless one allows for the possibility that Beck is now being influenced by powers above him at FOX News. [A link is provided to Beck’s 2009 interview with Wilders.]

Now for this week’s piece, in which Beck labeled Wilders a fascist [Another link is provided.]:

Let’s analyze the evidence:

Wilders, himself, has not changed since the first Beck interview – not his speech, not his positions, and not his beliefs. What has changed immensely is his stature in The Netherlands. He is much more powerful now than he was when he first appeared on Beck’s show in 2009. In fact, it is entirely within the realm of possibility that Wilders could become Prime Minister.

Now, FOX News is astonishingly trying to destroy Wilders. Ignoramus, demagogue and fascist are pretty nasty labels to lay on anyone. Beck was not recognizable this week from his demeanor and position with Wilders in 2009.

Other than Muslims throughout the world, who would be unhappy with Wilders’ rise to power and prominence in The Netherlands? Who stands to gain from stopping the most prominent and eloquent defender of Western Civilization in Europe? Who stands to gain from having Wilders’ reputation hacked to pieces by a major American news outlet? You can figure this out. [Another link is provided.]

A whole lot has changed at FOX News, folks.

This last link leads to our third source, an article by Diana West:

It was pile-on time at Fox News tonight as Glenn Beck, Charles Krauthammer, a gal whose name I missed [update — A.B. Stoddard] and Bill Kristol all branded Geert Wilders beyond the pale tonight.

Beck classified Geert as a fascist.

Krauthammer said Geert didn’t know the difference between Islam and Islamism — never mind that according to Krauthammer’s idea of Islamic scholarship, neither did Mohammed.

[Stoddard] said she agreed with Imam Krauthammer and added that if people like this (Geert) are elected to lead Holland it will suffer the consequences.

Kristol called Geert a demagogue.

In other words, a stomach-turning display.

Fact is, this anti-Geert pundit solidarity will only delight Newscorp [owners of Fox] stakeholder Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. That’s because it is Wilders in the Netherlands who stands as the unexpectedly strong spearhead of resistance to the Islamization of Europe and the wider West. As a scion of the most powerful sharia dictatorship in the world, Prince Talal doesn’t like that. How fortunate for him that Fox News doesn’t like it, either.

Adam Gedahn, the American traitor, has been arrested in Pakistan.

The American-born spokesman for al-Qaida has been arrested by Pakistani intelligence officers in the southern city of Karachi, two officers and a government official said Sunday, the same day Adam Gadahn appeared in a video … praising the U.S. Army major charged with killing 13 people in Fort Hood, Texas, as a role model for other Muslims.

Gadahn has appeared in more than half a dozen al-Qaida videos, taunting and threatening the West and calling for its destruction.

A U.S. court charged Gadahn with treason in 2006, making him the first American to face such a charge in more than 50 years. …

The treason charge carries the death penalty if he is convicted. He was also charged with two counts of providing material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization.

And here are extracts from an impressive article by Andrew McCarthy in which he discusses the moral issues raised by lawyers who volunteer their free services to defend enemy prisoners and expect us to consider them noble for doing so.

A number of them (reportedly nine) worked for the law firm Covington and Burling, in which Eric Holder, now Attorney General, was a partner, and are now on the payroll of his Justice Department.

The legal profession’s depiction of these lawyers as heroic servants not of the enemy but of the Constitution is unmitigated nonsense: You can’t be performing a vital constitutional function when the function is not required by the Constitution. They can repeat the lie a million times, but that won’t make it a fact.These lawyers made a conscious decision to contribute their services, usually gratis, to enemy combatants with whom the American people are at war. …

There is something wrong with a legal profession that insists we not only let American lawyers take up the enemy’s cause but that we admire them for doing so.

Most Americans — at least those who are not graduates of American law schools — would say that, when we go to war, our compelling national interest is victory. If something is legally required of us (e.g., compliance with the Geneva Conventions when the enemy is entitled to its protections), we agree that we must comply. But our agreement is appropriately grudging. We’re at war with savages. They should not get one iota beyond what is minimally required. And if you, non-lawyer, decided to help the enemy, give advice to the enemy, contribute money to the enemy, or conduct trade with the enemy, you would find yourself indicted. You would become the object of your countrymen’s scorn. …

As the law is currently understood, it is legal for a lawyer to volunteer his services to America’s enemies. It is absurd, however, to suggest that we have to applaud that decision. And it is equally ludicrous to suggest that we are forbidden from drawing the obvious conclusion that a lawyer who makes such a decision is predisposed to condemn the United States and to sympathize with America’s enemies …

Here’s the landscape: The Obama Justice Department is staffed with many lawyers who volunteered their services to America’s enemies. Since those lawyers have been running the department, there has been a detectable shift in favor of due-process rights for terrorists, a bias in favor of civilian trials in which terrorists are vested with all the rights of American citizens, a bias against military tribunals, the extension of Miranda protections to enemy combatants, a concerted effort to publish previously classified information detailing interrogation methods and depicting the alleged abuse of detainees, efforts to subject lawyers who authorized aggressive counterterrorism policies to professional sanction, the reopening of investigations against CIA interrogators even though those cases were previously closed by apolitical law-enforcement professionals, and the continued accusation that officials responsible for designing and carrying out the Bush administration’s counterterrorism policies committed war crimes.

European leaders are feeling how sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless US president.

According to this Washington Times report, Europe is rapidly losing its enthusiasm for Obama.

To Europe’s dismay, Mr. Obama can’t find the time to attend this year’s annual U.S.-European Union Summit – something Mr. Bush always managed to do. Mr. Obama’s decision to skip the summit offended Europeans, who saw it as a deliberate snub of the European Union – their favorite project to centralize government and internationalize the governance of human affairs great and small. Given Mr. Obama’s embrace of such ideas domestically, Europeans were understandably puzzled that he would not rush to link arms with them in the summit.

Further souring relations was Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates’s blast at much of Europe for dithering on defense. At last month’s meeting of NATO officials, Mr. Gates said the “pacification of Europe” (meaning Europe’s turning away from war and defense spending as necessary policies to keep the peace) was making it difficult for the allies to “operate and fight together.”

“The demilitarization of Europe,” he argued, “where large swaths of the general public and political class are averse to military force and the risks that go with it, has gone from a blessing in the 20th century to an impediment to achieving real security and lasting peace in the 21st.”

Europe (with the exception of Britain) has contributed little to its own defense ever since the end of World War II. It has depended heavily on the US to “keep the peace”. (The funds that European states might have needed to spend on defending themselves have been lavished on welfare.) This is perhaps the first time strong objection to that state of affairs has come from an American administration:

Mr. Gates is absolutely right … The in-your-face nature of his words is striking. No Bush administration official … ever publicly criticized Europe’s lack of military spending and support for NATO so bluntly. … Now we have a secretary of defense arguing that European fecklessness threatens world peace.

Yet it’s surely ironic that Obama’s Secretary of Defense should be saying this, since Obama himself favors disarmament, has taken active steps to weaken America’s military superiority, and has expressed an ideological ambition to rid America of its nuclear arsenal.

European interests are plainly of little concern to Obama, and his foreign policies are increasingly rousing Europe’s irritation, most recently Britain’s, the staunch ally of America in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars:

It is one thing to start a quarrel with France or even the EU, but Mr. Obama has managed even to offend the British. Many commentators in the UK now accuse Mr. Obama of harboring anti-British sentiments. The State Department’s recent announcement that we would remain neutral in the Falklands Islands dispute between the UK and Argentina has only fueled that perception. …

In general, Europe’s unwarranted expectations of Obama have been disappointed, its adoration scorned, its proffered gifts of wisdom spurned:

With regard to the Obama presidency, illusions are shattering across Europe. There, as here, the left’s exaggerated hatred of Mr. Bush was matched only by their naive embrace of Mr. Obama. They now increasingly realize that although Mr. Obama may admire Europe’s domestic polices on health care and energy, he has little practical use for the European Union’s pretensions to world influence and leadership.

But he does seem willing to give them precisely what they’ve requested for years: A diminished U.S. role in the world. Mr. Obama is pulling back on the projection of American power. Leaving the Europeans to their own devices (and ignoring their summits) is merely part of that program.

Their confusion is understandable. They expected that waning American power would mean less criticism from Washington and more European influence over U.S. policy. It didn’t work out that way….

Europe may never get over its disdain for Mr. Bush. But they may someday come to realize that things were not as bad under Mr. Bush as they thought. At least he showed up to their meetings.