Gatestone brings a report and commentary by Guy Millière. It is titled Paris’s Kristallnacht. 

Whenever Israel is attacked by terrorist movements and needs to defend itself, “leftist” and Islamist organizations organize anti-Israel protests in Paris. One of the latest took place on July 13.

We see no reason why the word leftist should be in quotation marks, but we quote from this important article with careful accuracy. Its value lies in its being objective, lacking sensationalism, as it reports an historic return in Europe to the growth of an evil movement  – the same evil that was crushed in 1945 after the soil of the continent had yet again been soaked with blood in a terrible war.      

The event brought together between 10,000 and 30,000 people – not surprising in a country where “leftist” and Islamist organizations are strong.

The demonstrators shouted hateful and violent slogans against Israel and held Israeli flags on which swastikas replaced the Star of David – also not surprising. Events organized by “leftists” and by Islamists usually carry such gear.

The demonstrators also shouted purely anti-Semitic slogans; the call for “Death to Jews” was picked up by the crowd. This was the first time since the end of World War II that explicitly anti-Semitic chants were shouted by a large crowd in Paris (During a demonstration in January, protesters shouted, “Jews, France does not belong to you”).

We would call that an anti-Semitic slogan, but the fact that the author doesn’t perhaps demonstrates his determined objectivity.

Demonstrators shouted, “Hamas will win,” in support of the jihadist terrorist organization. This was also the first time that slogans openly favoring a jihadist terrorist organization were shouted by a large crowd in Paris. (During earlier demonstrations, protesters shouted “Palestine will win,” but did not point to Hamas).

Demonstrators also shouted slogans in favor of a man who had murdered Jewish children: “We are all Mohamed Merah.” Merah shot and killed a rabbi and three Jewish children at close range in a schoolyard in Toulouse in 2012; it was the one of the most serious anti-Semitic acts committed in France since the Vichy regime. This was the first time in France that a large crowd proudly identified with a murderer of Jewish children.

The demonstration started in the 18th Arrondissement of Paris (metro station Barbès Rochechouart), close to where Islamic preachers organized street prayers a few months ago; it ended near Place de la Bastille. Dozens of windows of Jewish shops and restaurants along the route were broken and covered with yellow labels saying, “boycott Israel”. This was the first time that so many Jewish shops and restaurants were attacked during a demonstration in Paris.

Which fully justifies his title Paris’s Kristallnacht.

In addition, several hundred protesters armed with iron bars, machetes, axes and firebombs, arriving Place de la Bastille, marched to the nearby Don Isaac Abravanel Synagogue on rue de la Roquette. They shouted, “Let’s slay the Jews,” “Hitler was right,” and “Allahu Akbar”.

Only six police officers were on hand, who were quickly overwhelmed. Members of Jewish defense organizations protected the 200 Jews present inside the synagogue. Even after police reinforcements arrived, the synagogue was besieged for nearly two hours. The Jews, prisoners of a potentially lethal horde, were locked inside.

At another nearby synagogue on rue des Tournelles, rioters threw Molotov cocktails and looted the place. When the vandals continued their looting to rue des Rosiers, the heart of the Jewish quarter of Paris, the police struggled to stop them.

This was the first time since World War II that an anti-Semitic pogrom took place in France.

What did the government do about it – apart from allowing six policemen to put in an appearance, and reinforcements to be sent late and do nothing?

In an attempt to address the distress of the Jewish community, the French Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, denounced anti-Semitism in general terms. He said he would strengthen the protection of “places of worship,” synagogues and mosques – although no mosque was attacked.

Although the government banned the next demonstration, scheduled for July 19, it took place anyway, and soon turned into a riot.

The forces of law and order tried to do a little better the next time, July 19. But the rioting was worse.

When thousands of protesters gathered again at the Barbès Rochechouart metro station, the presence of significant police forces prevented protesters from crossing Paris. Organized groups then attacked the police by throwing stones, Molotov cocktails and by using iron bars. Shops were looted. Garbage cans were burned. Bus stations, dozens of them, and billboards were destroyed. Protesters came with pickaxes and ripped the pavement on several streets to throw chunks of asphalt.

Demonstrators tried to burn down the largest textile store in Paris, near Barbès Rochechouart, because it carries a Jewish name, Dreyfus-Marché Saint Pierre. Clashes with police near this store were particularly violent.

Witnesses spoke of the atmosphere of a civil war, and photographers spoke of a “French intifada”.

The slogans shouted by the rioters were the same as the previous week: “Death to Jews” mingled with “Death to Israel” and “Long live Hamas.” Many who threw stones and Molotov cocktails shouted, “Allahu Akbar,” just as the attackers of the synagogue on July 13 had done. …

The again on July 20 –

Rioters started to ransack the suburb with the largest Jewish population on the outskirts of Paris: Sarcelles. All the Jewish stores and many cars were wrecked or set on fire. A group shouting “Allahu Akbar” again tried to burn the town’s synagogue. Again, most rioters were Muslim. Again, most shouted, “Death to the Jews.”

All French politicians are ready to condemn anti-Semitism in general terms (except members of the National Front); none are ready to call the anti-Semitism that is exploding in France today by its name: Islamic anti-Semitism. …

Almost all French politicians adopt an attitude of appeasement toward the enemies of Israel and Jews. They never define Hamas as an Islamic terrorist organization. They close their eyes to the anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish hate speech disseminated by the enemies of Israel in the Middle East, and to the irony that France finances that speech. They act as if they did not see that the hate speech France finances in the Middle East is now spreading throughout France.

The major French media have not said a word about the anti-Semitism and jihadism that permeated the protest of July 13 and the riots of July 19 and 20. All major French television reports of these events presented the protesters and rioters as people who had just wanted to support the “liberation of the Palestinian people”. All reports major French television reports on Israel’s war against Hamas are made ​​from the point of view of Hamas or the Palestinian Authority. No report speaks of Hamas’s genocidal Jew hatred or of the use of Arab women and children as human shields. Journalists from major French media outlets act as if they did not know that by adopting a watered-down vision of the protesters and rioters in France, and by describing the war from the point of view of Hamas or the Palestinian Authority, they are playing a dangerous game that could lead to more pogroms and even civil war.

The attitude of French politicians reflects the sorry state of French society. All the riots that erupted in France during the last decade were the result of minor incidents, but showed that France is on the verge of a large-scale explosion. French politicians want to avoid a large-scale explosion. They are scared and paralyzed.

French politicians also know that France’s Muslim population now amounts to 15% of its total population and that radical Islamist organizations are particularly well established. The Union of Islamic Organizations of France (UOIF), the French branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, is the main French Muslim organization; it attracts tens of thousands of people in each of its annual meetings and openly lends political support to Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. French politicians do not want a confrontation with the UOIF.

French politicians also know that more than 750 neighborhoods in France are considered “no go zones” by the police, and that the authorities have lost control of them.

They also know that 70% of all inmates in the French prison system are Muslim, and that self-proclaimed imams and gang leaders have taken over many prisons. They know that these prisons have been transformed into recruiting centers for jihadists, and that regaining control of these prisons is an almost impossible task. Mohamed Merah and Mehdi Nemmouche, the Brussels Jewish Museum killer, became jihadists while in French prisons.

French politicians know, as well, that more than 800 French Muslims are being trained in the Islamic State, in Iraq and Syria.

They know that Muslims vote. Eight million Muslims clearly have greater political weight than do four hundred thousand Jews.

The major French media are also scared and paralyzed.  Criticizing radical Islam on French television is now almost impossible. …  Members of the Israeli government are never interviewed on French television. Representatives of Palestinian and “pro-Palestinian” organizations are regularly invited and can lie without ever being contradicted.

Reports on right-wing anti-Semitism are abundant. Reports on Islamic Jew-hatred are non-existent. …

The prevalent sentiment among French Jews is that a page has been turned. The French Jewish philosopher Shmuel Trigano wrote on July 16th that what is happening is a sign that Jews must leave France, fast. “Recent events are likely to play the role that such events have played in the past for the Jews in many countries: a strong symbolic event gives the signal that the Jews have no future in the country that was theirs”. …

Most recently, on July 23, an anti-Israeli protest was organized in Paris. This time, the protest was not banned. It brought together 10,000-20,000 people. 15,000 police officers were present. Thirty socialist MPs were present among the protesters. The media said it was a “peaceful protest.” People shouted, “Hamas, Jihad, Resistance.” Nazi-era anti-Semitic cartoons appeared on large panels. Again, groups of protesters finished their day at the rue des Rosiers and attacked Jewish shops. Some “peaceful protest”.

The Jews of France are in quite as much mortal danger as the children of Honduras. So will some tens of thousands of them be welcomed as refugees into the United States by the Obama administration, like the children of Honduras?

We all know the answer to that.

… and kills his hero-worshippers.

“Allahu Akbar!” the bewildered survivors cry as they run up and down amidst the strewn body-parts.

To watch this MUST SEE video – which we cannot move to this site – go here.

Please. Do yourself a favor.

“This whole conflict,” the foreign journalist said over coffee, “is a prime time show; the Palestinians provide us with the more romantic story.”

We quote from an article by documentary film-maker Pierre Rehov at Gatestone:

Terrorism is a show; it needs a producer and a distributor.

Without a certain complicity from the international media, terrorism would not be so effective and might even disappear altogether.

While Hamas is raining rockets and missiles on the Israeli civilian population, and in return is suffering a high level of destruction and hundreds of casualties as a result of collateral damage, one might ask: “What is the purpose?” The same question is also true of suicide terrorism. The genuine aim seems to be to gather sympathy while terrorizing the enemy, with an audience on an unlimited number of channels. …

If a rocket succeeds in going through Israel’s anti-missile defense and causing damage to Israel, Hamas is “showing its strength,” by hitting the Jewish state. If a retaliation by Israel sadly results in the death of Arab civilians, Hamas is “showing how inhuman Israel is,” and therefore how much Israel deserves the world’s opprobrium. For Hamas and similar terror groups, therefore, the “show” is always a win-win. …

The media are the real leaders of the free world. …

And to a large extent they are abusing that power.

There should never be a moral equivalence painted between the deliberate killing of civilians, and a retaliation that tragically leads to casualties among civilians. Yet, in the eye of the camera, there is. A dead child covered with blood is the strong moment of the show. [So] Hamas is asking [ordering] the population of Gaza to stay in their homes, while Israel is asking the civilians in Gaza to run away from places it might bomb. I imagine the leaders of Hamas, who are running the show, hiding in the basement of schools, mosques, hospitals, and tunnels, making comments on the latest developments: “More blood. We need more blood.”

The media who are pro-Palestinian, when they do not find enough horrific images from inside Gaza, recycle old pictures, Photoshop them, or use footage from other conflicts, mostly from Iraq and Syria. In the current conflict, they are already doing just that.

Even though YouTube, Facebook and other social media are useful in building a larger audience for the show, reporters and journalists play their role. Sadly, they do not have a choice.

We think this article is good, but just there we have to disagree. They do have a choice: “Report what Hamas wants  you to, or lose your accreditation with us and so possibly your job”. (Almost all of them make the wrong choice.)

– As Rehov goes on to demonstrate:

As the journalist went on to explain, “Palestinians have written the scenario of this prime-time piece. As the editors say, ‘If it bleeds, it leads’.” 

On the field, they are urged to send back a “juicy” story that might even make the front page. 

A reporter is a professional, making a living by writing up what he sees and hears … Reporters risk theirs lives.

In the West Bank, they are taken in hand by Palestinian “translators,” fixers trained to escort journalists the same way that in the Soviet era, sputniks, or “minders,” were trained to promote communism, and to make sure that the tourists and journalists saw only what the government wanted them to see, and, even more, that thy did not see what the government did not want them to see. … In the Middle East, reporters are threatened, except in Israel.

Their choice becomes a simple one: promote the Palestinian point of view (or whichever), or stop working in the West Bank (or wherever).

Rehov himself was offered a lucrative opportunity by a Palestinian to get world attention by filming a dead child whom he would have to say was “killed by an Israeli soldier”.

When making one of my documentaries, the Palestinian who was leading my crew offered me a scoop. As I was French, he trusted me to be on the Palestinians’ side. “You know,” he said, “what pays well? When an Israeli soldier kills a child. Are you interested?” he continued. “We can arrange that. For $10,000, I can organize everything.” Was he talking of a staging, or the real killing of a child? I did not dare to ask. I still nurture hope, despite the facts, that people would not willingly sacrifice children just to promote a show.

Our guess? Had it been some other Western film-maker and the offer had been accepted, a child would have been killed in front of the camera by “an Israeli soldier”; the “Israeli soldier” would have been fake, but the killing of the child would have been real.

Too far-fetched? Beyond any human being’s capacity for evil? Not at all. Hamas is having hundreds of real children killed by real Israeli soldiers right now in order to have them photographed and shown in newspapers and on television and computer screens all over the world. For that and that only they are forcing their children to suffer and die.

Could anything be more immoral, more absolutely evil, than this: to insist, despite advance warnings, that civilians, including as many children as possible, stay in or on the building – a house, a school, a hospital – from which rockets are being launched, so that they will be killed and maimed and dismembered when the rocket base is struck, simply in order to exploit the moral sentiment of the Western world by showing it the wounded and the dead with help from complicit media? Children as theater props, bleeding and dead.

As Rehov says:

Everything in Palestinian society is designed to promote martyrdom.

In fact the Palestinians were created as a separate nation by the Arab states in order to be martyrs. That is their function in Arab and Islamic politics and international relations. That is why rich and powerful Arabs don’t help them. That is why their sympathizers in the UN and wherever else keep them dependent on aid.

The Palestinians have embraced that role. And they will go on martyring themselves as long as the West allows them to. And no longer.

These pictures and the text are from The Muslim Issue.

We have written the captions, basing them on the author’s and adding some information.  Further comment would be superfluous.

The author of the text is an anonymous Ethiopian. He writes:

There are more than 100,000 known black Sudanese slaves under the Arabized Islamic Sudanese government, and the government encourages this by arming the Arab militias to ride on black villages. To the extent that these villages defend themselves, the government sends airplanes to bomb them. Thousands have died at the hands of the army of Sudan, and this is not good enough to cause demonstrations for the black community. Shame shame!!!!

The black Darfur people of Sudan had traditionally been Animist until the late 1800s, but since then have been under heavy pressure from the Islamic sword to convert, and they have complied. This is not enough for the barbarians, and to this day the Arab tribes have been riding them like cattle for slaves, and the Islamic government of Sudan has committed crimes against humanity. There are more than 2 million people displaced and half a million dead as a result of these barbaric acts. Up to this minute, many are dying at the hands of the government and its Arab militias, yet where are the demonstrations to protest against these barbaric acts? Shame shame!!!

Human trafficking in Sinai Egypt/Sudan:

Since 2009 up to this minute, the barbaric Arabs have kidnapped thousands of Eritreans and Ethiopians from the borders between Eritrea and Sudan and Ethiopia and Sudan. These barbaric Arabs from Sudan and Egypt, and their latest customers, the smugglers of weapons for Hamas in the Sinai, have tortured Eritreans and Ethiopians for ransom in the Sinai Peninsula, subjecting them to rape, burning, and mutilation. …

Thousands have died, and thousand are still in captive. Where are Human Rights Watch, the UN, the black empowering institutions, the black Muslims, and the moderate Arab Muslims protesting these barbaric acts? There is no such protest. It is in their holy book: a non-Muslim deserves nothing …

These are pictures of a massacre: the aftermath of an air bombardment of civilians by the Sudanese Islamic government in May 2014

And these are pictures of human trafficking victims taken after they were dropped over the Sinai  border into Israel. One has been ripped open for the removal of organs, and then roughly stitched up again.

Terrorists have got hold of nuclear materials that could be used to make weapons of mass destruction, according to Reuters.

Why were nuclear materials in Iraq at all? Once there, why were they not well guarded?

Where did Iraq obtain them? From Iran?

This is from Yahoo News:

Insurgents in Iraq have seized nuclear materials used for scientific research at a university in the country’s north, Iraq told the United Nations in a letter appealing for help to “stave off the threat of their use by terrorists in Iraq or abroad”.

Nearly 40 kilograms (88 pounds) of uranium compounds were kept at Mosul University, Iraq’s U.N. Ambassador Mohamed Ali Alhakim told U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in the July 8 letter obtained by Reuters on Wednesday.

“Terrorist groups have seized control of nuclear material at the sites that came out of the control of the state,” Alhakim wrote, adding that such materials “can be used in manufacturing weapons of mass destruction.”

“These nuclear materials, despite the limited amounts mentioned, can enable terrorist groups, with the availability of the required expertise, to use it separate or in combination with other materials in its terrorist acts,” said Alhakim.

He warned that they could also be smuggled out of Iraq.

A US  government source familiar with the matter said the materials were not believed to be enriched uranium and therefore would be difficult to use to manufacture into a weapon. Another US official familiar with security matters said he was unaware of this development raising any alarm among US authorities.

Not very reassuring statements, those.

How difficult?

Might there not be alarm among US authorities that is being kept secret?

The terrorist organization that has captured the stuff is of course ISIS, now “the Islamic State”. 

“The Republic of Iraq is notifying the international community of these dangerous developments and asking for help and the needed support to stave off the threat of their use by terrorists in Iraq or abroad,” Alhakim wrote.

Iraq acceded to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material on Monday, said the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The convention requires states to protect nuclear facilities and material in peaceful domestic use, storage and transport.

“It also provides for expanded cooperation between and among states regarding rapid measures to locate and recover stolen or smuggled nuclear material, mitigate any radiological consequences of sabotage, and prevent and combat related offences,” according to the IAEA.

And just what are the theoretically co-operating states going to do about it?

From time to time visitors to this website or our Facebook page query the idea – even the possibility – of there being such a thing as atheist conservatism. They are – almost always, as far as we can make out – Americans whose understanding is that the word “conservative” denotes Christian conservatism. To them, therefore, to speak of  “atheist conservatism” is to commit a contradiction in terms. Some have called it an oxymoron.

In Europe too, conservatism has a Christian coloration. Conservative political parties usually declare themselves to be Christian –  for example, the Christian Democratic Party (CDU) of Germany. But their support does not come only from Christians. And in Britain the established Church of England has been called “the Conservative Party at prayer”, but the party does not exclude members of other Christian denominations or other religions, or the non-religious.

Yet it is an American conservatism that we embrace. It is faithfulness to the Constitution, to the essential idea that the United States was intended to embody as a nation: the idea of individual liberty protected by the rule of law.

The shortest answer we give to those who accuse us of being self-contradictory is to tell them what our prime principles are:

• individual freedom
• a free market economy
• small government
• low taxes
• strong defense

And we point out that those are core principles of American conservatism. The Constitution – southern state critics please be reminded – does not require citizens to be Christian, or religious at all.

Just as often, perhaps even more often, we are told that we cannot be both conservative and libertarian: that the two traditions are separate and even inimical to each other, to the point of being mutually exclusive. Even if that were  true (and we don’t think it is), we consider it unnecessary to take tradition into account. The issue needs to be looked at philosophically, not historically. Our conservatism, holding the firmly conservative principles we have listed, is manifestly a conservatism of liberty.

And we think it is now, more than ever before, that the libertarian view should direct the political agenda of conservatism. A heavy counterweight is needed to bring America back from its tipping over into collectivism by the Left. Individual freedom urgently needs to be saved.

What is stopping conservatives from accepting libertarianism as its future? The libertarians themselves. Frequently, their public statements reveal them to be inexcusably ignorant of world affairs. They often advocate naive isolationism. They seem to lack a sense of what matters. The legalization of drugs could be wise and necessary, but it is not worth making a hullabaloo about  when jihad is being waged against us. A person should arguably be able to marry any other person or persons – or things – that they choose, but it is much more important that America should remain the world’s sole superpower.

John Hinderaker also thinks that this should be “the libertarian moment”. And he too reproaches libertarians with an underdeveloped sense of what matters to the existence, liberty, safety, and prosperity of the nation. 

He writes at PowerLine:

Every major strand of American conservatism includes a strong libertarian streak, because the value of liberty is fundamental to just about all conservative thought. But today, especially, is said to be the libertarians’ moment. What once was a fringe movement, politically speaking, has moved front and center in our political life.

And yet, in my view, libertarians of both the capital L and small l varieties punch below their weight. They have not contributed as much as they should to the conservative movement. This is partly because libertarians tend to founder on foreign policy, where many are merely modern-day isolationists. But it is also because they have tended to focus on secondary, or tertiary, issues of domestic policy.

A couple of years ago I was invited to a gathering on behalf of Gary Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico who then was a libertarian candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. I was well disposed toward him, but when he started talking, his first subject was legalization of drugs. Now he is the CEO of a marijuana company. Rand Paul is probably the leading libertarian at the moment; he purports to take seriously the threat that someone drinking coffee in an American cafe will be struck by a drone-fired missile.

American liberty is indeed under attack, and a libertarian movement is needed more than ever. But the threat to freedom is not drug laws or drone attacks.

The principal threat is the administrative state, which increasingly hems in everything we do and depends hardly at all on the will of voters. …

Calvin Coolidge, who knew the Progressives well and understood how antithetical their vision of government is to America’s founding principles [said]:

It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning cannot be applied to this great charter [the Constitution]. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.

Today we labor under an administrative state that has metastasized far beyond anything Coolidge could have imagined. It constrains our freedoms, it lays waste to our economy, it has largely rendered Congress irrelevant, and it threatens to make just about anyone a criminal, since no one can possibly keep track of all of the myriad regulations with which we are encumbered. And let’s not forget that the administrative state is run by liberals, for liberals.

Despite the fact that it is antithetical to the Constitution and to American traditions, there is little opposition to the administrative state as such. Conventional politicians suggest that regulations can be made less irrational and less burdensome – a good idea, certainly – but hardly anyone questions the fundamental concept of Congress delegating its powers to unelected and mostly unaccountable agencies that are charged with managing just about every aspect of our lives. Nearly everyone considers the administrative state, as such, to be inevitable. …

Why don’t libertarians stake out a “radical” position on domestic policy? Why not argue, not just for a moderation in the inevitable drift toward a more and more powerful administrative state, but for a return to the Constitution’s central principle – the very first words of Article I – that “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States…”, a Congress that is accountable to the people.

A battle is being fought for the liberties of the American people and, frankly, it isn’t going well. The fight has little or nothing to do with drugs and drones. If libertarians are serious about preserving and expanding liberty, they should join the fight that matters. A libertarian movement that focuses on a rollback of the administrative state would be “radical,” but it also would put libertarians in the vanguard, not on the fringe, of American conservatism.

This month, Hamas captured and murdered three young men on the West Bank (see the post immediately below).

Hamas is the government of Gaza. They butcher their own people at will. They are kept in power by endowments, billions of dollars (abut $500 million per annum) paid to the “unity government” of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas by the Obama administration. In other words, US taxpayers are supporting this evil organization.

Here is a video made by an Arab to show: that Hamas kill their own people out of sheer savagery; how they danced for joy over 9/11; how they teach their infant children to kill …

The bodies of the three teenagers, two Israeli and one American, who were captured by Hamas on June 12, have been found murdered.

Their names were Naftali Fraenkel, 16, (the US citizen), Gil-ad Shaar, 16, and Eyal Yifrach, 19.

The US continues to fund Hamas.

So does the EU.

Yes. It would be greatly good if the savage fight now underway between two Muslim armies in Iraq, Sunni and Shia, could end in the destruction of both.

We quote from an article at American Thinker, by Mike Konrad, who argues the desirability of leaving the two sides to fight it out:

I know, I know, the recent ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Levant) gains have everyone scared. No doubt, the Islamophilic administration will want to step in, and save Islam from itself once again.  Let me advocate a course of action that will make sense to all sides in America; the left and right; from militarists to pacifists: Let the Muslims kill each other. …

ISIS is presently a large group of thugs with guns. They have no navy, no air force, except for a few captured helicopters, which they will soon break.  The only ones they can threaten are their fellow Muslims. If they take over Iraq, who cares? They will soon reduce the Levant to the seventh century.

And this is a problem to us? OK, oil prices may spike for a while, but they are going to need to sell their oil because they’ve got nothing else to produce for export and can’t produce any of the fruits of modern industry. Meanwhile, the high prices will encourage domestic drilling and production of our nearly boundless reserves held in shale deposits, to the point where we will become a major oil exporter ourselves.

These mujahadeen are incapable of maintaining the weapons they already have. Weapons need upkeep. Weapons have to be oiled, cleaned, and upgraded.  Upkeep interferes with raping, pillaging, and chopping off heads. Within two years, they will be slaughtering each other with scimitars and rusty AK-47s.

Iraq’s president, Maliki has asked for US assistance. Oh really?

Iraq insisted on setting up its country with an Islamic constitution; against our advice, and now he wants American help. For what? So Iraq’s Shia can continue to run arms to Syria and Hezb’allah in Lebanon?

We’d rather President Maliki wasn’t helped at all, but we like the idea of putting these conditions on any help he gets from the US:

If our State Department had men and women with intelligence instead of a love of the Qur’an, they would tell Maliki that our help would be predicated on four conditions:

1) Get rid of the Islamic constitution, and set up a secular state

2) Recognize Israel

3) Naturalize the Palestinians in your state

4) Break off ties with Iran

If Maliki says no, we say “Fine, have your Islamic state. We are not going to decide which flavor.”

Whether Maliki agrees or not, he loses:

He has no choice. No matter what he decides, the West wins. Should ISIS take over, Iran will be cut off from land routes to Syria’s Assad, and Lebanon’s Hezb’allah. How does this hurt the West?

Sure! Iraq may go down. The Sunni officers in the Iraqi army will not fight for a Shia majority Iraqi state. In fact, many Sunni officers are already joining ISIS. The Shia, who are mere foot soldiers, are not prepared to fight the better trained Sunni. So what?

When thieves fall out, honest men prosper. When Muslims fall out, civilization prospers. …

Now, Iran is scared. …

Iran sent two battalions of Iranian Revolutionary Guards to help the Iraqi government in its battle against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS). Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is hugely important, if not totally surprising given Iran’s intervention in Syria. Iran has the power to crush ISIS in open combat. But Iranian intervention could also make the conflict inside Iraq much worse …

Iran is hurting. Iran may have to decide between arming Hezb’allah or the Shia in Iraq. And this hurts the West how?

Other sources are reporting that Iran has called for international assistance to crush ISIS. Iran needs our help!  The nation which has thumbed its nose at the West for 35 years, now wants our help?

Iran officials call for international response to ISIS violence …

Let them ask for Russian help, or Chinese assistance. I am sure the Russians and Chinese will be more than happy to make their nations targets for Islamic revenge. Nothing makes Muslim group A angrier than knowing that you have helped Muslim group B. And if the Russians or Chinese do intervene, good for them. Maybe international terrorism will re-direct their wrath eastward. Tell them it will be like the Chechnyans on steroids.

If Iran is really desperate to save its supply lines across Shia Iraq to save Assad, we could strike a deal.

You want our help. We want the Israelis to inspect your nuclear power plants; or you can go fight your fellow Muslims yourselves. Tell them, “Remember the first Iraq-Iran war.” Make the offer public. No help until the first Israeli technician comes out of the Isfahan plant and says, “All clean.”

Tell them up front they have to stop aiding Hezb’allah. Tell them that we are enjoying this.

At the same time, we should encourage all Euro-Muslim males to join the fight, and when they are gone, revoke their right of return to the West. Tell them, Allah Wants You; and send them off with halal meat and enough weapons to keep the Mideast in turmoil for another hundred years.

Why is this a problem? Even if ISIS wins the Caliphate, it will revert to seventh century technology soon enough.

Jordan is scared, now. She might be overrun. Supposedly, she is a Western-oriented state, which has the rudimentary forms of a democracy. Of course, honor killing and wife beating are still not prohibited; and Jordan refuses to take in more Palestinians.

If they want our help:

1) Saudis and Jordanians have to start naturalizing Palestinians

2) Set up truly secular states

3) protect their women

Be upfront about it. Of course, they won’t agree. So let them shoot it out. When the Mideast is a flaming wreck, the administration should encourage Putin or China to intervene.  Nothing sinks empires faster than trying to tame the Muslims. We will get out, and avoid our own collapse.

If our administration intervenes in any way, it would be foolish. Over the past two years our administration has made blunder after blunder in the Mideast, regarding Libya, Morsi, Sisi, Arab Spring, etc.

This time it is so easy.

All the administration has to do is …  NOTHING!

It is that simple. … If it does intervene, it will be clearly seen as an attempt to prop up Islam, once again.

Let the Shia and Sunni kill each other.  In the words of the late Mayor Ed Koch, “root for whoever is losing.”

We like Mike Konrad’s suggestions. (And we understand that he is not being wholly serious.) But more needs to be considered.

There is the strong possibility, astonishing though it may seem at first, that fanatically Shia Iran has been giving aid to the Sunni insurrectionists – as well as the Shia government – in Iraq. Why ? In order to bring about upheaval and chaos, so the mullahs will be called upon to restore order.

Another surprise: it is the Obama administration itself which has made this information public – that Iran has assisted the Sunni insurrectionists.

Paul Mirengoff writes at PowerLine:

A mere six weeks ago, the State Department’s annual Country Reports on Terrorism concluded that Iran is actively working to undermine Iraqi stability through terror groups. Significantly, for present purposes, the report assessed that Iran was facilitating both Shiite and Sunni terror activities.

With respect to Sunni terrorism, the State Department said this:

Iran allowed al Qaeda (AQ) facilitators Muhsin al-Fadhli and Adel Radi Saqr al-Wahabi al-Harbi to operate a core facilitation pipeline through Iran, enabling AQ to move funds and fighters to South Asia and also to Syria. Al-Fadhli is a veteran AQ operative who has been active for years. Al-Fadhli began working with the Iran-based AQ facilitation network in 2009 and was later arrested by Iranian authorities. He was released in 2011 and assumed leadership of the Iran-based AQ facilitation network.

In addition, of course, Iran has “trained, funded, and provided guidance to Iraqi Shia militant groups” both inside and outside of Iraq. The training has included instruction in “the construction and use of sophisticated improvised explosive device technology and other advanced weaponry.”

The terrorist activities of the Iran-supported Shia militants have undermined stability in Iraq and undermined support for the government among Sunnis. But, again, Iran is destabilizing Iraq from both ends by also facilitating Sunni terrorism.

If anything, Obama should be punishing the Iranians by continuing, and indeed escalating, a sanctions regime. Instead, he seems determined to cozy up to the mullahs. In all likelihood, this means granting them additional concessions when it comes to negotiations over Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Why else would Iran help the U.S?

The mullahs have always understood that an unstable Iraq not only can’t threaten or complete with Iran, but may well be forced to become a virtual client, as might now happen. But the mullahs could only have dreamed that an unstable Iraq would cause an American president to come before them as a supplicant.

Yet this too may now be about to happen.

And still another surprise. Amazingly, for once we find points to agree with in an opinion from the Left:

Among many assertions in the same column which we do not agree with, Richard Cohen, columnist for the Washington Post, writes some that we find ourselves nodding at:

Whose fault is the current debacle in Iraq?

It could be Nouri al-Maliki’s since he is the country’s strongman and has alienated the minority Sunnis.

It could be George W. Bush’s because he started the whole thing off …

The one person who is not at fault, we are told over and over again, is the current president of the United States. …

But with that he does not agree. He takes Obama to task for his failure to do anything effective against the gassing of Syrians by Bashar Assad:

Foreign policy [is] the area where a president’s power is substantially unchecked. … Other than avoiding war, it’s hard to know what Obama wants. I know what he says, but actions always speak louder than words.

For instance, he wanted Bashar Assad to cease using chemical weapons. His language was strong, nearly warlike.

“Assad’s government gassed to death over a thousand people, including hundreds of children. The images from this massacre are sickening: Men, women, children lying in rows, killed by poison gas. Others foaming at the mouth, gasping for breath. A father clutching his dead children, imploring them to get up and walk.”

What happened next? Virtually nothing.

All those poisoned kids were soon forgotten and so, too, were all those people killed in the war, perhaps as many as 200,000. Those of us who advocated more forceful action were denigrated as war lovers who wanted to send in the infantry. (Better boots on the ground than head in the clouds — but I prefer neither.)

He disagrees with Mike Konrad’s idea that nothing at all should be done about the war in Iraq:

Airstrikes and such might not have worked, but doing nothing never does.

This is a serious, depressing discussion. Countless lives have been lost. A civil war that might have been stopped in its tracks was allowed to fester. The Syrian dictatorship survived and the war has spilled into Iraq. It has the potential to engage the whole Middle East — Jordan, for sure, and then that tiny nation west of the Jordan River: Israel. The madmen of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria don’t only kill Muslims; they would gladly drop a bomb on Tel Aviv.

Right. But he doesn’t say that the bomb could be nuclear. And that two, or twenty, could be dropped on Israel.

Or that there could be targets in Europe, or even in America, since the mullahs have long-range missiles.

He rightly finds the idea of the US and Iran being in alliance “preposterous”:

The U.S. may now find itself on the side of Iran — a majority Shiite nation much like Iraq. What could be more preposterous? What could be more ironic?

Worse, we could find ourselves engaged in a religious war — Sunni vs. Shiite. …

He fears non-intervention more than involvement:

Or maybe we should just wash our hands of the whole thing and turn over a hunk of the Middle East with its oil to a terrorist organization — one that boasts of committing massacres. …

You thought you can’t get more evil than al-Qaida? Look at who’s pillaging Iraq, a terrorist group that even al-Qaida can’t stomach. …

The one thing we do know is that things can get worse. They did in the Middle East, where Obama settled for a victory jog around the political infield after getting Assad to give up most of his chemical weapons. He now must deal with a region that is so much worse than anyone imagined.

Where does the fault lie? Where it always has — where the buck stops.

By which presumably he means Obama. He means that the fault lies with Obama!

How many members of Obama’s enormous media fan club, or of the Democratic Party, find him at fault over the carnage in Syria and Iraq, we wonder.

And will their disapproval induce Obama to act?

If so, how? Richard Cohen expresses his disgust, or frustration, or irritation – but he doesn’t say what Obama should do.

We say Iran should be stopped by all possible means, late though it is to take action, from becoming a nuclear power. And that is obviously not what Obama intends or wishes to do.

These terrorists are proud of their brutality. The most graphic examples of it start at about the 44 minute mark.