Here’s a link to a video of three men being beheaded.

The Northeast Intelligence Network explain why they provided it:

Amid much controversy, the Northeast Intelligence Network was the first “legitimate” Western web site that provided the West the ability to view al Qaeda “beheading” videos. We did so at that time as we believed that Americans and the people of the West were being deceived by Islamic apologists and others who depicted the Islamic method of execution as relatively quick and painless. The beheadings were referenced in media in an almost cavalier manner, failing to reflect the truly vicious nature of the act and the Islamists who performed the act. The truth is that the beheadings performed in accordance with Islamic (Sharia) law are anything but – they are absolutely horrific and gruesome – and represent unspeakable evil. …

The execution … of three “spies” by the Taliban in Pakistan was filmed and uploaded so it could be shared – as an Islamic rallying cry – with other Islamists who want to see the implementation of Worldwide Sharia.

The following video is extremely graphic and should NOT be viewed by anyone under 18, or those who are hypersensitive to the most horrific of murder scenes.

We are posting the following video so that every American who continues to believe that Sharia law is not a threat to the West, and that the adherents to fundamentalist Islam are peaceful. The following video evidence will illustrate otherwise.

Video (GRAPHIC)

None of us is a cartoonist, so to support Everybody Draw Muhammad Day – May 20, 2010 – we show all 12 of the original cartoons that were published by the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten 0n 30 September, 2005.

This is the best of them, by Kurt Westergaard.

In deliberately stirred-up rage over these drawings, Muslims killed at least 139 people in various countries, most of them during riotous protest rallies.

The right response to Muslim protest would have been for all the editors of all the newspapers in all the countries that claim to to be free, to re-published the cartoons by agreement on the same day.

Like all ideologies, Islam needs to be examined critically, challenged by reasoned argument, and subjected to jokes of all sorts, including cartoons.

“Irreverence is the champion of liberty and its only sure defense.”                        – Mark Twain

Footnote: See a selection of today’s drawings of Muhammad here.

Bush was right to go to war against the Taliban after 9/11.

The enemy was defeated quickly. Then Bush went wrong. American forces should have been withdrawn immediately, the Afghans left with a warning that if the slightest attempt was made by any group on their territory to attack America again – or Americans anywhere in the world – all hell would be unloosed on them, each time harder than the last.

The idea of democratizing Afghanistan is foolish. “Winning hearts and minds” is ingenuous idealism, or to put it more bluntly, sentimental tosh. And no, it has not been achieved in Iraq. The Iraqis do not love Americans, and their “democracy” is a sliver-thin veneer.

Forcing soldiers to be social workers is an insult and an abuse.

And now they are to be used even worse.

The job of a soldier, throughout history, has been to kill the enemy. But the politically correct ladies – of either sex – in charge of the Afghan engagement don’t approve of killing.

They think it would be nicer if a soldier refrained from killing or hurting. He should not shoot even when he’s being shot at, if there’s the least danger that a civilian might be caught in the fire.

How do you recognize a civilian? He or she is not in military uniform. But no terrorists wear uniforms, and they deliberately and habitually shoot from among families and even hospital patients, in order to use the higher morality of our side against ourselves.

What then should an American soldier do when he’s fired at from among civilians?

The ladies say that for not shooting, not killing, and not hurting the enemy, he should get a medal.

Here’s part of an Investors’ Business Daily editorial:

Some would reward timidity and cowardice with a medal for “courageous restraint” under fire.

A nonsensical proposal circulating in the Kabul headquarters of the International Security Forces in Afghanistan would give a medal to soldiers in battle who show restraint in the use of deadly force in situations where civilian casualties might result.

This will not protect civilians as much as it will endanger the lives of our troops.

Our soldiers are already disciplined and trained not to wantonly kill civilians. In Iraq and Afghanistan, they’ve placed themselves repeatedly at risk in an environment in which the enemy wears civilian clothes and uses civilians as human shields. Such an award would embolden the Taliban to continue, knowing that our soldiers will have an extra incentive to hesitate.

Giving a medal for not shooting after having been shot at was proposed by British Major Gen. Nick Carter, ISAF’s regional commander, during a recent visit to Sgt. Maj. Mike Hall of the Kandahar Army Command and the top U.S. enlisted member in Afghanistan. That it was not laughed right out of the tent is as disturbing as the idea itself.

“In some situations our forces face in Afghanistan,” explained Air Force Lt. Col. Todd Sholtis, a command spokesman, such restraint “is an act of discipline and courage not much different than those combat actions that merit awards for valor.”

We beg to differ. The persecution of the Haditha Marines and the Navy SEALs has already added an element of fear to doing what our soldiers are trained to do: win battles and kill the enemy. Rewarding them for showing hesitation under fire gives the enemy an added battlefield advantage and places our soldiers and those they are fighting for at added risk.

In Haditha, Iraq, on Nov. 19, 2005, a Marine convoy was ambushed by insurgents after a roadside bomb destroyed a Humvee, killing one Marine. The Marines returned fire coming from insurgents hiding in civilian homes. In the ensuing house-by-house, room-by-room battle, eight insurgents and several civilians used as human shields were killed.

For their bravery and doing what they were trained to do — use deadly force to subdue an enemy — the Haditha Marines were rewarded with courts-martial and the threat of prison. [They have all been found not guilty – JB.] Is it seriously being suggested that if they had run away, they’d have been given medals?

“The enemy already hides among noncombatants, and targets them too,” says Joe Davis, a spokesman for the 2.2-million-member Veterans of Foreign Wars. “The creation of such an award will only embolden their actions and put more American and noncombatant lives in jeopardy.” …

This medal is a slap in the face because it implies that discipline and concern for civilians is rare … This is war by political correctness, and it will get our soldiers killed.

Of course the commander-in-chief is a model of heroic inaction. He was honored and rewarded in advance, by the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, presumably for not winning the war in Afghanistan, not making war on Iran, not discouraging the Palestinians from attacking Israel, not recognizing that Islam is waging war on the rest of the world, and not keeping America militarily strong.

Who or what now holds the office of President of the United States of America?

The answer to the question is itself a question mark.

David Solway asks the question and his answers are questions. Here is part of what he writes:

Who is this guy? And what does so enigmatic a figure augur for the United States and, indeed, for the future of us all? No matter what hypothesis or conviction one espouses concerning his definitive DNA, it seems fair to say that a shadow of the clandestine — or if one prefers, the inscrutable — envelops this president.

Even Obama’s most avid supporters, if they are honest, must allow that, compared to his POTUS predecessors, unambiguously little is known about his antecedents or, for example, the salient facts of his academic career — many of his records are still under seal, his college and university transcripts have not been released and, broadly speaking, his significant documentation is rather flimsy. There is not much of a paper trail here; for that matter, there is scarcely a Hansel-and-Gretel bread crumb trail. How such a man could be elected to the presidency … remains a riddle for the sphinx. …

In any event, there can be no doubt that the dossier is scanty and that this is a truly amazing deficiency. We simply do not have a clear portrait or a crisply factual biography of the president. But what we do know about his close affiliates — America-and-Jew bashing Reverend Jeremiah Wright, former PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi, hysterical and racially divisive Cornel West, unrepentant Weatherman terrorist Bill Ayers, unscrupulous entrepreneur Tony Rezko — is profoundly unsettling. … [T]he asymmetric relation between what we know and what we don’t know must distress any rational person curious about so influential an actor on the current political scene.

That Louis Farrakhan, like millions of others, feels that Obama was “selected” for our times should give us further pause. On the contrary, it may not be out of place to suggest that we are now afflicted with the worst possible president at the worst possible time, with Iran darting toward the nuclear finish line, the Palestinians as intransigent as ever, the Russians moving back into the Caucasus region, negotiating with Venezuela and solidifying ties with Iran, Syria and Turkey, terrorism … on the rise and U.S. citizens increasingly at the mercy of the jihadists, China holding massive quantities of American Treasury notes, Obama considering ruinous cap-and-trade legislation at a time when the AGW consensus is collapsing, the American debt estimated to hit 100% of GDP in 2011 and its unfunded entitlement liabilities totaling over $US 100 trillion, leading to the prospect of monetary collapse. None of these critical issues have been substantially addressed by the president, except insofar as his actions in some cases, lack of action in others, have only exacerbated them. The collateral fact that we really have no valid and comprehensive notion of who exactly is leading us at this crucial historical juncture boggles the mind.

Yes, this riddle of a man, this living quandary named Barack Hussein Obama is so unlikely a president of the United States, it’s as if he has gate-crashed into history.

It has been a pretense all along that the Obama administration wants sanctions against Iran to stop it (as if they could!) becoming a nuclear power. This does not surprise us. We have said before that we believe Obama actually wants Iran  to become nuclear armed – and America to lose its nuclear dominance.

Today DebkaFile, referring to a “surprising report and the confusing signals from Washington of the last week”, observes:

Rather than going all out to curb Iran’s nuclear weapons program, Washington and London are intent on blocking the road to sanctions.

As to Obama’s determination to weaken America, read Peter Brookes of the Heritage Foundation discussing the new START agreement with Russia in this New York Post article, from which we quote:

Obama says he wants the Senate to pass the treaty before the November elections — most likely for fear that a shift in political power to the right might scuttle an already leaky arms-control proposal.

Yet, from the looks of it, sinking it in the name of our national security might be the best thing to happen to the Son of START.

The key flaws:

* To meet the new START-mandated warhead limits of 1,500, the United States must eliminate nearly 80 more warheads than Russia does.

* Worse yet, America needs to get rid of as many as 150 delivery platforms (subs, bombers or silos) to reach the 700 limit; Russia can oddly add more than 130 vehicles.

That’s right: Moscow can actually raise the number of its launch/delivery platforms under new START. In other words, the “reduction” in START applies mostly to us . . .

* US conventional warheads on ICBMs are counted toward the treaty’s nuclear-warhead limit. This would strangle Prompt Global Strike — a new ICBM armed with a non-nuclear payload that could be used globally on short notice. …

Then there’s missile defense: The White House insists the treaty doesn’t affect it, but the Kremlin’s official take is very different: “[START] can operate and be viable if the United States of America refrains from developing its missile-defense capabilities quantitatively or qualitatively.”

Not good news, considering Iran will have an ICBM as soon as 2015 — and we don’t have a comprehensive defense against it.

Plus, while treaty limitations may match this administration’s (misguided) missile-defense vision, the question is whether START will hamstring future administrations dealing with yet-to-be-determined threats.

A sea of experts is also expressing concern that, in a world that is arming, not disarming, these major reductions in the US nuclear-force structure may create (or feed) an image of American weakness and decline.

They worry about whether a US drawdown would undermine American deterrence, a bedrock of our defense policy, encouraging other potential rivals to bolster their current or planned arsenals.

But Obama sees it differently, believing US leadership on disarmament (even unilateral) gives us greater moral standing in battling proliferation. …

That’s what he says. But can we believe him? Is it a reason or just an excuse for the disarming of America?

In addition to terrorist war against non-Muslim countries, Islam also pursues a campaign of infiltration, gradually Islamizing the institutions.

We call this “soft jihad” or “stealth jihad“, because although the method is different the aim is the same: conquest, and the imposition of sharia law.

An example of how “stealth jihad” is carried out step by step, comes from Sound Vision Islamic Products and Information, via Atlas Shrugs: detailed instructions for Muslim parents on how to introduce Islamic practices into whatever public school their child attends in America.

This is a shortened version. Read the whole disturbing thing here.

ISLAM: HOW TO GET RELIGIOUS ACCOMMODATION IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM: A SIX-STEP GUIDE

… Whatever Islamic obligation you want accommodated at your child’s school, it must be done in a methodical, clear and proper manner.

Shabbir Mansuri is founding director of the Council on Islamic Education in Fountain Valley, California.

He provides tips and advice on how to get religious accommodation for your child.

Step #1: know the laws about religious freedom

Knowing what laws and regulations govern the issue of religious accommodation is crucial before attempting to reach the right authorities…

In the United States, one of the strongest arguments in favor of seeking religious accommodation for your child is former President Bill Clinton’s 1995 statement of principles addressing the extent to which religious expression and activity are permitted in public school. This was given to every school district in the US. …

Step #2: get the support of a teacher …

Set up a meeting with the principal of the school along with one of [the] teachers at the school who will be very supportive, requesting that [the] son or daughter should be either permitted to [for example] go out to perform Juma prayer at a local Masjid and/or be allowed to perform Juma prayer along with other Muslim students on the school campus …

If the principal refuses to grant the accommodation, step three will be necessary.

Step #3: leave a paper trail …

If you find the meeting is not going anywhere then leave a paper trail, meaning, write letters. …

This  process …  [should not create an impression of] us versus them, but simply the notion of my exercising my constitutional rights in the most respected [respectful] way, with compassionate manners …

Mansuri even suggests inviting the teacher and principal over for dinner as a gesture of goodwill.

Step #4: writing to the supportive teacher

“My first letter would be to my kid’s favorite teacher to ask the person’s advice,” advises Mansuri. “The letter will be to request to meet with teacher, and it will indicate I want to discuss with you my child’s religious needs and I would like to share with you what our president has instructed the teachers and schools to accommodate them.” … teacher)

Following the meeting, a thank you letter to the teacher should be sent. It will also indicate you would like to set up [a] second meeting with the school’s principal, and ask the teacher if s/he would be kind enough to go with you to discuss the topics the two of you talked about in your first meeting …

Step #5: meeting a second time with the principal

Before attending this second meeting with the principal and teacher, “I would also arm myself with the district’s education code along with the state educational code as it relates to the topics that I’m going to discuss,” says Mansuri. …

“While meeting with the teacher and/or principal, I’m not trying to win an argument by telling them how much I know but rather giving them a very clear understanding that while I understand my rights as a parent, I’m simply there to help them accommodate my child’s needs that they are supposed to do anyway,” explains Mansuri.

“Make it a win-win situation, not an us versus them situation, and that in itself is the message of Islam.“ …

Step #6: if necessary, repeat these steps with the school district’s superintendent …

Since the president’s instructions were issued to districts, it is possible superintendents may be more familiar with them. This should mean your son or daughter will get religious accommodation with no further problems.

The  Obama administration has cut the money New York gets for defending the city against terrorist attacks.

Obama refuses to admit that Islam is waging war against America, so it’s unlikely that the recent attempt by a Muslim terrorist to explode a massive car bomb in Times Square will get the lost funds restored.

But the jihad will not only continue, it will intensify.

On the meaning of “jihad”, here’s an extract from an article by Cliff May in the National Review Online:

Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss-born academic — he holds the His Highness Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani Chair in Contemporary Islamic Studies at Oxford (no kidding) — last week told the Washington Post that jihad “has nothing to do with holy war. . . . Where you are trying to resist bad temptations and reform yourself with good aspirations that you have, this is a jihad of the self.”

What makes this lie so brazen — though the Post did not think to question it — is that Ramadan is the grandson of Hassan al-Banna, who in 1928 founded the Muslim Brotherhood. Al-Banna himself stated clearly that the Qur’an and other Islamic doctrines “summon people . . . to jihad, to warfare, to the armed forces, and all means of land and sea fighting.”

In addition: The Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood is Hamas. Among Hamas’s founders was Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, who also was Osama bin Laden’s mentor. As Andy McCarthy relates in Willful Blindness, Azzam “galvanized Muslims worldwide with his call to jihad — traditional, unreservedly violent jihad.” In a speech in Oklahoma City in 1988, Azzam instructed fellow Muslims: “The jihad, the fighting, is obligatory on you whenever you can perform it. And just as when you are in America you must fast . . . so, too, must you wage jihad. The word jihad means fighting only, fighting with the sword.”

And fighting with car bombs, and plastic explosives in one’s underwear, and FN Five-seven semi-automatic pistols and .357 magnums (used to slaughter American soldiers at Fort Hood), and hijacked passenger planes, and maybe, before long, with nuclear weapons as well.

None of this should be surprising. What is: the obstinate naïveté, the determined ignorance, the continuing willful blindness of so many of our political and media leaders in the face of the 21st century’s most daunting challenge and most deadly threat.

Or could it possibly be that some of “our political and media leaders”, including the President, are in sympathy with the aims of the jihad?

We think it’s not only possible but probable.

But of course it’s unthinkable that they – or he – could be in sympathy with the method of terrorism that is being used to attain those aims.

Isn’t it?

It is scandalous that a mosque is being built in New York where the 9/11 mass murders were perpetrated by Muslims in the name of their religion.

The scandal is deepened by the way building permission was obtained. There was a damaged five-story building on the site. Complaints about “illegal construction” were half-heartedly investigated, and then suddenly all difficulties were said to be “resolved”.

Was it a deal stitched up between Muslims flush with funds of mysterious provenance and a Muslim in the mayor’s office?

This is from WorldNetDaily:

The five-story building at Park Place … was the site of a Burlington Coat Factory. But a plane’s landing-gear assembly crashed through the roof on the day 19 Muslim terrorists hijacked the airliners and flew them into the Twin Towers in 2001.

Now Muslim worshippers currently occupy the building, and they plan to turn it into a major Islamic cultural center. …

“Only in New York City is this possible,” [said] Daisy Khan, executive director of the American Society for Muslim Advancement, or ASMA … Khan is the wife of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, founder of ASMA.

Rauf will be the imam of the new mosque. What more is known about him? The report tells us that he –

… conducts sensitivity training sessions for the FBI, [and] has reportedly blamed Christians for starting mass attacks on civilians.

There’s sensitivity for you!

The report goes on:

They [Rauf and his associates] have leased the new prayer space as an overflow building for another mosque, Masjid al-Farah, at 245 West Broadway in TriBeCa, where Rauf is the spiritual leader.

The building – vacant since that fateful day when time stood still as millions of Americans grieved the loss of loved ones, friends, family members, co-workers and strangers – was purchased in July by real-estate company Soho Properties, a business run by Muslims. Rauf was an investor in that transaction. …

Rauf has announced his plans to turn the building into a complete Islamic cultural center, with a mosque, a museum, “merchandising options,” and room for seminars to reconcile religions, “to counteract the backlash against Muslims in general” …

Now what backlash would that be?  We hadn’t heard of it.

The move [to build the mosque and community center] is supported by the city. The mayor’s director of the Office of Immigrant Affairs, Fatima Shama, told the Times, “We as New York Muslims have as much of a commitment to rebuilding New York as anybody.”

The city’s Department of Buildings records show the building has been the focus of complaints for illegal construction and blocked exits in the last year. Recent entries from Sept. 28 and 29, 2009, indicate inspectors have been unable to access the building. One complaint states, “Inspector unable to gain access – 1st attempt – No access to 5 sty building. Front locked. No responsible party present.” The second, just a day later, states, “Inspector unable to gain access – 2nd attempt – no access to building. No activity or responsible party. Building remains inaccessible at Park Place.”

Agency spokeswoman Carly Sullivan told the Times the complaints were listed as “resolved” under city procedures since the inspectors were unable to gain access.

That’s “city procedure”? Inspectors just give up if they can’t get easy access?

And then there’s the question of where the money for the project is coming from.

Here’s a quotation from Atlas Shrugs:

The 61-year-old Imam said he paid $4.85 million [for the old building] — in cash, records show. With 50,000 square feet of air rights and enough financing, he plans an ambitious project of $150 million, he said …

The origins of such monies are unexplained; neither are the countries or entity advancing such huge donations. Most US mosques, including many in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx are funded directly or indirectly by Saudi Arabia the country to which 15 of the 19 hijackers who bombed the World TradeCenter belonged. The UAE, Qatar and Iran are other major sponsors across the USA.

The money trail is an important question that must be answered by the Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg with more than a bland comment by one of his spokesmen, Andrew Brent, who quipped to the Times, “If it’s legal, the building owners have a right to do what they want.”

At the moment, the location is not designated a mosque, but rather an overflow prayer space for another mosque, Al Farah … where Imam Feisal is the spiritual leader. Call this creeping annexation. …

One of the investors for future oncoming funds is listed as the Cordoba Initiative, defined as an ‘’interfaith group’’ – and founded by Imam Feisal [Rauf]. Cordoba is the name militant Muslims often invoke when they recall the glory of Muslim empire in the centuries they occupied Spain. …

The source of money matters as a significant part of the hundreds of mosques being built and already erected in this country double up as cultural Islamic centers for distributing literature – Islamist propaganda in fact … They house Imams of unknown origin and education, many of whom do not speak a word of English but preach in Arabic and Urdu — radical messages, it often turns out. …

It is an established fact that a significant percentage of the mosques built in the USA in the past two decades are receiving a disproportionate amount of their funds not only from the Saudis, but also the UAE, Qatar and Iran — all problematic Islamist activist nations. …

A mosque and Muslim community center is to be built at the site of the 9/11 massacre in New York.

Islam brought down the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, and where they once stood there will now stand a mosque. It will constitute a permanent declaration that in its war against America, Islam won a victory in New York.

It cannot but be a monument to the killers, and a rallying place for Muslims to celebrate a triumph of their jihad.

It is a monument to evil.

How can New York allow it?  How can America?

A reminder:

In total 3,497 people died (not counting the 19 mass murderers) in the attacks on 11 September 2001.

2,735 civilians in the World Trade Center.

87 passengers and crew members aboard American Airlines Flight 11 that hit the North Tower.

60 passengers and crew aboard United Flight 175 that hit the South Tower.

343 New York City firefighters and rescue workers and 23 New York City law enforcement officers, 47 Port Authority workers and 37 Port Authority Police Officers.

64 passengers and crew aboard American Airlines Flight 77 that crashed into the Pentagon, killing them and 125 people in the building.

36 passengers and crew aboard United Flight 93, who gave their lives stopping four hijackers over Pennsylvania.

The death toll of the attack on the World Trade Center rose in the days, months and years that followed. By Spring 2009 it was 2,998. More than 3,000 children lost parents.

It’s not even as if the war were over. It’s still going on, and this mosque will very likely recruit more terrorists.

Iran is intent on gaining control of the vital shipping lanes that run through the Persian Gulf and the Straits of Hormuz and beyond. To achieve this, it will need to drive out the American fleets. It has been rehearsing the conflict.

In Phases Two and Three of Iran’s biggest sea exercise ever (May 6-7) …  its Navy and Revolutionary Guards acted out a scenario for driving US naval forces out of the Persian Gulf after defeating them – as well as responding to potential retaliatory American WMD strikes. …

The eight-day war game, dubbed “The Last Prophet” or “Judgment Day,” spans a 250,000-kilometer area from the strategic Hormuz Strait to the Gulf of Aden, with the accent for the first time on the Indian Ocean.

Iran has mobilized the best part of its naval, air, commando and elite forces for a drill whose codenames signal its goals: Simulating Iran’s perception of its final battle with America and its ending with US forces beaten and put to flight from the regions covered by the exercise. Thereupon, a victorious Islamic Republic of Iran is seen as assuming the role of regional superpower.

Iranian officials told observers from neighboring countries that Persian Gulf security can be achieved without a “foreign military presence” in the strategic waters. The Iranian Navy, they said, had demonstrated its fitness for sole responsibility over the security of the Persian Gulf, the Sea of Oman and the Strait of Hormuz, through which 40 percent of the world’s crude is channeled to market.

The war game’s spokesman, Rear Admiral Qasem Rostamabadi, disclosed: “Passing ships were successfully checked by destroyers, frigates, special operations teams and naval commandos in line with the goal of establishing security and peace in transit routes bound for the Hormuz Strait and the Persian Gulf.”

This disclosure meant Iran had already begun grabbing control of the oil routes from the American and emirates’ fleets.

The Iranian naval officer went on to describe the second phase of the exercise as “involving the detection and subsequent destruction of marine and submarine targets as well as conducting rescue drills for chemical, biological and nuclear strikes.” …

Iran’s entire fighter-bomber fleet flew the full extent of its flight range as far as the Arabian Sea and northern Indian Ocean, appearing for the first time over the Somali coast. Iran thus flexed its aerial muscles in pursuit of a far-reaching ambition to displace American naval strength – not only in a broad perimeter around its shores but as far afield as the Horn of Africa, the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea approaches.

Meanwhile, back in Washington, D.C., Robert Gates, who is almost as silly and useless a Secretary of Defense as Janet Napolitano is a Secretary of Homeland Security, has a plan to reduce American naval power. The  enemy at sea that he (laughingly) recognizes are merely “teen-age pirates” – by which he presumably means Somalian terrorists harassing ships off the Horn of Africa.

Investor’s Business Daily, more concerned with the growing Iranian and Chinese naval power and reach, reports and comments:

Our defense secretary proposes doing what no other foreign adversary has done: sink the U.S. Navy. We don’t need those billion-dollar destroyers, he says. …

We find the recent remarks of Defense Secretary Robert Gates to the Navy League at the Sea-Air-Space expo … disturbing. He seems to think naval supremacy is a luxury we can’t afford and that, like every other aspect of our military, an already shrunken U.S. Navy needs to downsize.

“As we learned last year, you don’t necessarily need a billion-dollar guided missile destroyer to chase down and deal with a bunch of teenage pirates wielding AK-47s and RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades),” Gates quipped.

We are not laughing.

Pubescent pirates aren’t the only threat we face. Last month, a Chinese naval task force from the East Sea Fleet — including the imposing Sovremenny-class guided missile destroyers, frigates and submarines — passed through the Miyako Strait near Okinawa, a move that sent shock waves through Japan.

The exercise took place just days after warships from the North Sea Fleet returned from what China’s army-navy called “confrontation exercises” in the South China Sea.

“Do we really need 11 carrier strike groups for another 30 years when no other country has more than one?” Gates asked. The answer is yes. Our national interests are global, in every ocean. Some will be in port, and others will be meeting commitments from the Persian Gulf to the Taiwan Strait.

It’s well to consider the “new challenges,” as Gates put it, in the form of anti-ship missiles in the hands of the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah or the threat posed by Iran’s arsenal of missiles, mines and speed boats near the Strait of Hormuz. But new challenges don’t make the old ones go away. We must be prepared to meet them all.

“At the end of the day, we have to ask whether this nation can really afford a Navy that relies on $3 billion to $6 billion destroyers, $7 billion submarines and $11 billion carriers,” Gates said.

The question is whether we can afford not to. Defense, unlike health care, is a constitutional imperative. …