Members of a terrorist organization called the February 17 Martyrs Brigade were employed by the State Department to guard its legation in Libya.

Who are they ? What happened to make martyrs on some February 17?

Following Friday prayers on Feb. 17, 2006, thousands of Benghazians attacked the Italian Consulate to punish the temerity of an Italian minister, Roberto Calderoli, who several days earlier had publicly defended free speech in the West. The world was then experiencing another cycle of Islamic violence, this one orchestrated to punish a tiny Danish newspaper for publishing a sheet of Muhammad cartoons and, in turn, Denmark itself for refusing to punish the journalist-transgressors of Islamic law, which outlaws any critiques and all depictions of Muhammad.

Calderoli didn’t merely defend free speech. During his TV interview, he dramatically unbuttoned his shirt to reveal a T-shirt featuring a cartoon of Muhammad. Referring to Islamic rioters worldwide, he added: “When they recognize our rights, I’ll take off this shirt.”

He was forced to resign from his post the next day, a sacrifice on the altar of Shariah (Islamic law) by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. It wasn’t enough.

“We feared for our lives,” the wife of the Italian consul later told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, describing the attack in which the consulate was set on fire. All personnel were safely evacuated. Libyan police used tear gas to try to disperse the rioters, later opening fire and killing 11 attackers.

Those are the “martyrs” for whom the February 17 Martyrs Brigade named themselves. When Arab brigades name themselves in honor of dead terrorists, they are announcing that they are sworn to avenge their heroes. They are terrorist groups, every one of them.

So the State Department, under the inspired leadership of Hillary Clinton, employed vengeance-thirsty members of the February 17 Martyrs Brigade to guard its legation in Libya.  

We found that information in a column by Diana West at Townhall. (She also tells us in passing that Benghazi literally means “city of holy warriors“.)

Next we learn from Mark Steyn that the terrorists paid for by the State Department were acquired through the agency of a British company based in Wales:

The State Department outsourced security for the Benghazi consulate to Blue Mountain, a Welsh firm that hires ex-British and Commonwealth Special Forces, among the toughest hombres on the planet. …

That should be okay then: tough hombres defending US representatives in foreign lands.

But –

The one-year contract for consulate security was only $387,413 – or less than the cost of deploying a single U.S. soldier overseas. On that budget, you can’t really afford to fly in a lot of crack SAS killing machines, and have to make do with the neighborhood talent pool. So who’s available? Blue Mountain hired five members of the Benghazi branch of the February 17th Martyrs’ Brigade and equipped them with handcuffs and batons. A baton is very useful when someone is firing an RPG at you, at least if you play a little baseball. There were supposed to be four men heavily armed with handcuffs on duty that night, but, the date of Sept. 11 having no particular significance in the Muslim world, only two guards were actually on shift.

Let’s pause right there … Liberals are always going on about the evils of “outsourcing” and “offshoring” – selfish vulture capitalists like Mitt Romney shipping jobs to cheap labor overseas just to save a few bucks. How unpatriotic can you get! So now the United States government is outsourcing embassy security to cheap Welshmen who, in turn, outsource it to cheaper Libyans. Diplomatic facilities are U.S. sovereign territory – no different de jure from Fifth Avenue or Mount Rushmore. So defending them is one of the core responsibilities of the state. But that’s the funny thing about Big Government: the bigger it gets, the more of life it swallows up, the worse it gets at those very few things it’s supposed to be doing. So, on the first anniversary of 9/11 in a post-revolutionary city in which Western diplomats had been steadily targeted over the previous six months, the government of the supposedly most powerful nation on Earth entrusted its security to Abdulaziz Majbari, 29, and his pal, who report to some bloke back in Carmarthen, Wales.

Was there a connection between the guards and the attackers? Yes. A very close one according to Diana West:

Ansar al Sharia (“Supporters of Islamic Law”), the al-Qaida-linked militia believed to have led the consulate assault in September, is a spinoff of the February 17 Martyrs Brigade.

Which explains how the attackers knew where Ambassador Stevens would be on the night of 9/11/12,  the lay-out of the campus, and the location of the “safe-house”.

What says the State Department to that?

Diana West tells us:

The State Department reminds us not to forget the service of two brigade members who were beaten and two who were shot defending the compound. “But there were some bad apples in there as well” …

Was the whole tragedy a result of the State Department being granted too little money to pay for  proper security ? Joe “the Clown” Biden alleged as much in his “debate” with Paul Ryan recently.

According to this article by Daniel Greenfield, there was no shortage of money, but Obama and Hillary Clinton had what they considered better uses for it than squandering it on protecting US personnel and property:

The last, generally disavowed, excuse is that the Benghazi consulate lacked proper security because of budget cuts. This has already been disproven, but let’s take that excuse at face value. The State Department has a 50 billion dollar budget. Within that 50 billion dollar budget there was no money for reasonable consulate security in a city rife with Islamist militias who had already attacked the consulate and other diplomats in the city. But here’s what there was money for…

The 770 million dollar Middle East and North Africa Incentive Fund for the Arab Spring.

7.9 billion dollars for Obama’s Global Health Initiative.

2.9 billion for international debt relief.

2.2 billion to strengthen democratic institutions in Pakistan.

469 million for global climate change.

587 million for student exchange programs.

And of course there is the always popular Mosque renovation program …

Which raises questions connected with the First Amendment, as this report in the Washington Times points out:

The mosques being rebuilt by the United States are used for religious worship, which raises important First Amendment questions. U.S. taxpayer money should not be used to preserve and promote Islam, even abroad. …

Section 205.1(d) of title 22 of the Code of Federal Regulations prohibits USAID funds from being used for the rehabilitation of structures to the extent that those structures are used for “inherently religious activities.” It is impossible to separate religion from a mosque; any such projects will necessarily support Islam.

So would not Obama be shocked, shocked to learn that his State Department is supporting Islam?

The extreme importance of the 2012 presidential election is recognized by (among millions of others, we hope) Diana West, who warns at Townhall that “Election 2012 is anything but politics as usual. It is an existential crisis.”

She writes:

This election is for keeps. If Barack Obama doesn’t lose his bid for a second term, he and his vast, left-wing support network of Marx-inspired think tanks, strategists and elected officials will fulfill Obama’s 2008 campaign promise to “fundamentally” transform this nation, thus bringing the American experiment in liberty to what could be the final curtain…

Americans are about to decide whether to empower the increasingly dictatorial executive branch of Barack Hussein Obama, whose future plans to distort “checks and balances” promises to transform the U.S. government out of all recognition, or to break the momentum of government centralization by electing Romney-Ryan.

Yes. And we find signs that are good; signs that there is a swing to the right in public opinion, considerably boosted since Paul Ryan was selected as candidate Mitt Romney’s vice-presidential choice.

This is by Scott Johnson at PowerLine:

GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan appeared at a rally this morning at Deep Run High School in Glen Allen, Virginia. … An audience of more than 2,000 turned up for the rally. More impressive than the size of the crowd is the fact that supporters started lining up for the event around 2:00 a.m. Recent alumni of Deep Run High School, where Ryan spoke … joined the line around 7:00 a.m. with [Chick-fil-A] breakfast in hand.

In these faces we can see what optimism looks like:

Ryan is a star. Romney’s pick of him for his vice-president has energized the Republican Party and brought excitement to the electorate. Even the heavily left-biased British newspaper the Guardian has to concede that:

Democrats’ nerves start to show as Ryan fires up conservative voters …

And:

The Democrats have been sending out panic-laden appeals for donations, one of them expressing concern over the size of the crowd. One of the appeals, for $3 or more, said of Romney-Ryan attacks: “This could cost us the election.”

And quoting American pundits with a message the left canot be happy with, the Guardian raises the prospect of Republican government for the next 16 years:

 If Romney wins, then Ryan, as vice-president, will be well placed as a Republican presidential candidate for the future. …

Roger L. Klavan writes at PJ Media that the Democrats are scared of Ryan:

Obama’s main man David Axelrod looks depressed. Why wouldn’t he be? Forced to run a campaign based on lying about or distorting what the other side says, fanning the flames of non-existent racism, etc., is a sure loser, even if you win — perhaps especially if you win. Winning ugly in this instance will not be a triumph of any sort. Obama, at his worst, may succeed in destroying America as we know it, but he would destroy himself and everyone around him in the process. At this moment, I’m betting none of this will happen. Romney’s choice of Ryan, for me, saved the day.

But the black vote – that’s remaining pretty solid for Obama, isn’t it?

Or is it? A formerly prominent black Democrat has gone over to the Republicans. Former Democratic Representative Artur Davis, who was also a candidate for the governorship of Alabama in 2010, and was one of Barack Obama’s campaign managers in 2008 – making one of the nominating speeches for him at the 2008 Democratic National Convention – is to speak this year at the Republican National Convention in support of the Romney-Ryan ticket. (Read more about this in the Washington Post here.)

And there’s this (also from the Washington Post).  The story of a black community organizer’s disillusionment with Obama. He is “disillusioned” for the wrong reasons, and he probably will not be coming over to the right, but if he decides to cast his vote for Obama, it won’t be with any enthusiasm. The point is, redistributive economics and collectivist politics don’t work, and the Obama episode in American history has proved it. Once Obama has gone – and go he absolutely must with the coming election – his bad four years in the White House can be seen as a lesson millions of Americans needed to learn.

He still walks the same streets here as his old acquaintance Barack Obama once did. That is about all they have in common anymore. At 50, Chicago activist Mark Allen … [is] the head of a small, community-assistance organization called Black Wall Street Chicago. Allen regards his personal survival alone as a small victory, grateful he can pay the rent on his modest office space, aware he is doing better than many on this city’s restive South Side.

“Things haven’t gone the way we’d hoped after Barack got elected,” he says. Surveys place unemployment rates above 25 percent here, and indications are that South Side residents such as Allen aren’t nearly as passionate about the 2012 election as they were during Obama’s trailblazing 2008 campaign.

Historically, community organizers such as Allen have wielded outsize influence in the black-majority neighborhoods of the South Side, with none better known than Obama, who directed a group called the Developing Communities Project for three years during the 1980s. But old bonds between the two have frayed. Allen, who as a member of another group worked on community issues with Obama during their organizing days, has grown frustrated with his former ally in the Oval Office.

Obama’s much ballyhooed 2009 stimulus package has failed to touch ordinary South Side residents, says Allen, who has reached out to Obama administration officials, including fellow Chicagoan and prominent White House adviser Valerie Jarrett, to express his dismay. …

Allen, who views the South Side’s pain as common to U.S. inner cities, also offers a political warning for Obama’s campaign strategists. The disillusionment of once fierce Obama admirers, he suggests, may hamper the president’s reelection chances by subtly dampening black voter turnout.

Best of all there’s this:

Did you hear the one about a crowd of terrorists holding a conference in the name of counter-terrorism? Sponsored by the Obama administration? What’s painfully funny about it is that it really happened.

Diana West writes at Townhall:

The Washington Free Beacon reported this week on the continuing omission of Israel from a U.S.-sponsored organization called the Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF). At a recent forum meeting in Spain, Maria Otero, U.S. undersecretary of state for civilian security, democracy and human rights, delivered a speech titled “Victims of Terrorism,” but, in her roll call of victims, she didn’t mention Israel. The conference at which she spoke was described as a “high-level conference on the victims of terrorism,” but Israel wasn’t a participant.

It bears repeating because it is so fantastic: At an international conference devoted to victims of terrorism, the world’s leading victim or, better, leading target of terrorism — Israel — was nowhere in sight, or mind. 

Welcome to the GCTF — U.S. counterterrorism’s new “normal.” This 30-member organization got its official start last September as a “major initiative” of the Obama administration when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced its launch in New York.

It was quite an occasion; Hillary curled her hair. Seated next to her Turkish co-chairman, ensconced amid ministers from Algeria, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates …

All of which are or have been breeding-grounds of terrorists, and some of which – Turkey, Algeria, Egypt, Pakistan – are or have been active state sponsors of terrorism …

… and 18 other miscellaneous member-states plus the European Union, she then said the magic words: “From London to Lahore, from Madrid to Mumbai, from Kabul to Kampala, it’s innocent civilians who have been targeted …”

Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Ashkelon? Poof, gone. And that’s the point: This new counterterrorism organization, with its related counterterrorism center coming soon to Abu Dhabi, is Judenfrei. Not coincidentally, it is also heavily Islamic. Eleven member-states — slightly more than one-third of the organization’s membership — also belong to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), a bloc of 56 Islamic countries working to impose Islamic law (Shariah) on the world. Six of those 11 members additionally belong to the Arab League. Both groups have defined “terrorism” to exclude Israeli victims (sometimes U.S. soldiers), and “terrorists” to exclude groups dedicated to the destruction of Israel, such as Hamas and Hezbollah. It is no wonder the Arab-Islamic members would now unite in “counterterrorism” without Israel.

What is both shocking and shameful, however, is that the U.S. would, too. It shows that the U.S. has implicitly but clearly accepted the Arab League/OIC definitions of terrorism and terrorists. …

Their implied definition of terrorism is:  “Israel defending itself”. Their implied definition of terrorist: a Jew.

Under the Bushes … while Israel was not permitted to fight alongside coalition forces, at least it was still recognized for withstanding more than 60 years of Islamic terrorist attacks. Today, under the auspices of the Obama administration, Israel no longer rates mention even as a victim. “Big Satan” has thrown “Little Satan” to the sharks. Which says two things about Big Satan. Our institutions now see the world from the Islamic perspective, and, as far as the sharks go, we’re next.

And this is from politicalmavens.com by Rachel Raskin-Zrihen:

So, there’s this Global Counterterrorism Forum comprised of 32 countries, including the United States, Columbia, Canada, South Africa, Nigeria, Australia and New Zealand. It also includes the European Union, nine European countries, 10 Arab/Muslim countries and three Asian ones.

This group was formed last year, under the United States’ leadership, for policymakers and experts in the counterterrorism field to share insights and best practices.0

Great idea, right?

Inexplicably, however, not included in the forum is Israel, easily in the top three on the list of the world’s most frequent terror targets and likely the most skilled at fighting the scourge. …

Inexplicably? Not at all. It could not be more obvious: Obama loves Islam and hates Israel.

Since no explanation has been offered by our government, we are left to speculate about why this is happening, and I suspect that were they to deign to explain their actions, Obama Administration officials would likely say it’s about getting the nations where the terrorists are spawned to help fight them, without pissing them off by inviting the Jews. It’s the only thing they can say, really. But I’m not buying it. And I’m not the only one.

After it was learned that the United State’s “best friend and closest ally” was excluded from this forum, our country’s officials assured those expressing concern that “a way would be found” to include it.

I find it peculiar, since we created the forum and Israel is among our closest allies and an expert on the issue, that a special way must be found to include it, different from the way the others came to be on the panel, but, evidently, it does.

However, it’s been a year and nothing has changed. Maybe they thought no one would notice.

But, at least two U.S. Senators did notice and wrote to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who attended this forum, and demanded to know why this glaring omission remains uncorrected.

Also, the Simon Wiesenthal Center took exception to the blatant insult, not to mention the stupidity of failing to include the player with the most direct experience with the phenomenon and the best track record at fighting it, and fired off an urgent letter of protest to Ms. Clinton.

The center’s founder, Rabbi Marvin Hier, reportedly wrote of his awareness that Turkey and some others “oppose an Israeli presence,” but notes that – SO THE EFF WHAT?

Are we trying to fight the most deadly dangerous threat to humanity to ever have slithered out of hell, or are we trying to appease the Arabs?

Answer: Obama and Hillary Clinton are trying to appease the Arabs.

Rabbi Hier also said that “having a Global Counterterrorism Forum and not including Israel, is like having a global technology conference and excluding the United States of America.” And, noting “there is no one with more experience at combating terrorism or educating civilians about it, than the State of Israel,” he said, “I think the time has come for the United States to make it very clear why Israel continues to be excluded.”

Me, too. But, I’m not sure we’ll get an honest answer, or, if we do, we’re prepared to hear it.

The first, and most obvious explanation, is that the Arab/Muslim contingent “objects” to the Jewish state’s inclusion. In other words, the bully objects to the victim’s presence at a discussion ostensibly designed to stop bullying.

Bullying is too mild a word, of course, but her point is good.

It’s a phenomenon similar to the so-called Anti-Racism conference in Durban, South Africa, which was actually an officially sanctioned, international Jew-and-Israel-bashing free-for-all, with a name that really only served to add insult to injury.

It’s another act of bullying, right in our face, and we – and by we I mean the United States and the rest of the free, normal-thinking world – is afraid to set the crazies off by defying their demands. …

This is unfortunate, obviously, because it’s proof certain that terrorism is working to cow even the world’s greatest powers.

In the light of this, the appointment of an Israeli as the UN Security Council’s top counterterrorism lawyer is simply astounding.

The Washington Post reports:

The United Nations has promoted a former Israeli government attorney to a job as the Security Council’s top counterterrorism lawyer, making him the only Israeli national serving in a senior security position within the U.N. Secretariat …  David Scharia has been appointed legal coordinator for the Counter-Terrorism Committee executive directorate, where he will oversee a team of 12 international legal experts who advise the 15-nation Security Council on its counterterrorism efforts. The appointment would not typically be notable were it not so uncommon for Israelis to reach the upper levels at the United Nations. … Of the more than 44,000 international employees within the United Nations, only 124 are Israeli, according to the U.N. None serve in the top ranks of the most sensitive political jobs, which are responsible for maintaining international security, mediating peace deals and coordinating humanitarian assistance.

Why suddenly is an Israeli appointed to such a job at the UN?

A plausible explanation may be that the UN fears a cutting off of funds by the US Congress. (See here and here and here and here.)

Our preference would be for Congress to cut off all funds to the disgusting UN. The UN should be wiped off the face of the earth. See our post Why the UN must be destroyed, June 12, 2012.

The English always had rude words for foreigners: Wogs, Wops, Spiks, Frogs, Krauts …

But they were, nevertheless, a tolerant nation.

Until tolerance became compulsory.

And the intolerable was foisted upon them.

This is from Townhall, by Diana West:

Back in 2001, Britain’s political parties signed a fantastic pledge. They agreed to say nothing to “stir up racial or religious hatred, or lead to prejudice on grounds of race, nationality or religion.”

This gag order did more than keep the parties polite. Vital issues — from massive immigration and multiculturalism to their eradicating effects on British civilization — were officially banned. Thus, such concerns became impermissible thoughts. Not that such issues weren’t already thoughtcrime, as George Orwell would have put it. But this unprecedented pledge turned “violators” into political lepers.

I thought of that elite code of cowardice this week when a London judge sentenced a 42-year-old British secretary named Jacqueline Woodhouse to 21 weeks in jail. Her crime? An expletive-laden rant about immigration, multiculturalism and the disappearance of British civilization. Not in so many words. But that was the unmistakable gist of Woodhouse’s commentary one January night on the London Underground.

This same week, another London judge ordered two black girls, 18 and 19, to perform community service after a savage physical attack on two white legal secretaries. “I am satisfied what you both did, you did that night because you were fueled by alcohol,” Judge Stephen Kramer said, as though tut-tutting a child’s unknowing apple theft.

A few months ago, another London judge freed four Somali Muslim women who set upon a white couple, yelling, “Kill the white slag,” and other anti-white slurs. The gang beat the woman to the ground and ripped out a patch of her hair. Judge Robert Brown was lenient because, he ruled, as Muslims, the women were not used to being drunk.

Jacqueline Woodhouse was drunk, too, but that was no mitigating factor in her case. She harmed no one, but that was no mitigating factor, either. Judge Michael Snow invoked the “deep sense of shame” Woodhouse’s display elicited, because “our citizens … may, as a consequence, believe that it secretly represents the views of other white people.” …

Thanks to YouTube, [“thoughtcrime”] becomes continuous spectacle. Woodhouse’s court-deemed “victim,” Galbant Singh Juttla, recorded and uploaded her display. …

The video clip records her as saying (more or less, “bleep” being substituted for expletives):

“All bleeping foreign bleeping bleeps. … Where do you come from? Where do you come from? Where do you come from?”

She estimated that 30 percent of the train’s passengers were in the country illegally. …

Expletives fly [from others] regarding England: “This bleeping country is a bleeping joke.” …

“I wouldn’t mind if you loved our country,” she said … to a Pakistani beside her.

“Long live Pakistan,” he said twice in Urdu, later leading a chorus of the Pakistani national anthem.

Woodhouse then notices her “victim” recording her. “Oh, look, he’s filming,” she says. “Hello, government.” She leans into the camera.

“Why don’t you tell us your name, as well?” Juttla the “victim” says.

“Why don’t you tell me where you’re from?” she says.

“I’m British, I’m British, yeah? I’m British,” he tells her.

“Right. OK,” she says.

“So, what’s your problem?” he says.

“Oh, what’s your problem?” she says.

“Yeah, you should watch what you say.”

“Watch what I say?”

“Yeah.”

“I used to live in England. Now I live in the United Nations.”

“So keep your mouth shut then.”

“Why should I?”

Twenty-one weeks in jail, folks.

Why, Woodhouse quite rationally asks, “am I not allowed to express my opinions?”

“We don’t want to hear your opinions,” Juttla replies.

This tears it. “Why is it all right for you but not all right for me?” She’s shrieking now, her voice cutting the air like a ragged-edged razor.

There is background laughter, but nothing is funny. For a few, farcical minutes, a nation’s tragedy, its unmarked passing, has taken the spotlight, the lead role played by a drunken secretary because there is no one else.

“Just keep your mouth shut,” Juttla says for the umpteenth time.

“Why should you open your gob and I can’t open mine?”

“Because you questioned me first,” he says, which isn’t true. Juttla questioned Woodhouse first, asking for her name. Surely, Big Brother would want to know.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “Not one rule for you and one rule for me.”

Oh, yes, Jacqueline. One rule for indigenous islanders.

One rule for everyone else.

President Obama is allowing the heroic US military – and, therefore, the American people – to be humiliated in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is withdrawing US soldiers from Iraq and leaving some in Afghanistan under demeaning conditions imposed by vengeful, spiteful, corrupt enemy leaders.

Diana West writes at Townhall:

This withdrawal [from Iraq] will mark the end of a misguided misadventure to convert, in a zealously secular and even philo-Islamic way, a member of the Islamic world to the ways of the West. Despite the courage, dedication and sacrifice of American and allied troops, despite the so-called surge, despite the endless (and endlessly expensive) attempts to win Iraqi “hearts and minds,” it was a flop.

The top American spokesman in Iraq, Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan, can spin all he wants – “It’s not about winning or losing but making significant progress” – but this eight-year “counterinsurgency” didn’t work. It was a failure – unless, of course, you’re Iran. To borrow from the great Winston Churchill, also unenthralled with the British misadventure in Iraq in the year 1922, we have been paying billions of dollars “for the privilege of living on an ungrateful volcano out of which we are in no circumstances to get anything worth having.”

In Afghanistan … President Hamid Karzai has just presided over a gathering of the clans, a “loya jirga” assembly of some 2,000 Afghans, who have produced a list of conditions for a continuing American presence. 

Here, culled from different news sources, is a list of the loya jirga’s conditions:

1) no more immunity from Afghan law for U.S. forces;

2) no more night raids by U.S. forces;

3) no more “arbitrary” detention of Afghan suspects;

4) no more U.S. detention centers;

5) transfer Afghan detainees to Afghan detention centers;

6) a capped 10- year limit to any pact with the United States;

7) Afghans must lead all security missions after 2014;

8) the United States should commit to training role and “support”;

9) no more U.S.-run “parallel” structures to handle contracting and other matters; rather, America should support Afghan institutions; and

10) no U.S. attacks on neighbors [ie Pakistan, Iran] from Afghan soil.

What they’re saying, these vicious, uncivilized, dark-minded men, is “continue to give us what we want from you, but don’t interfere with anything we choose to do”.

But still Karzai wants more. “The U.S. wants military installations from us. We will give those to them. But we have conditions for this. We will benefit from this. Our soldiers will be trained. Our police will be trained. We will benefit from their money.”

The Iraqis and Afghans are, she says, “cold and numb to the blood and sacrifice of tens of thousands of Americans.”

So too, it is plain to see, is President Obama.

The Egyptian military joined a mob attack on a peaceful protest by Copts. Some victims were deliberately run over. The picture shows a man whose skull was crushed by an army vehicle.

This report, dated 10-10-2011, comes from the Assyrian International News Agency (AINA):

For the second time in five days military and police forces forcibly dispersed Coptic protesters. 24 Copts were killed today and over 300 injured. The numbers could rise dramatically as many bodies are still unidentified and disfigured beyond recognition. …

There were discrepancies between reports from the official State-owned TV and independent TV stations. Al-Hayat confirmed that army armored vehicles went into Maspero “in a strange way” and ran over the protesters. A video clip of the armored vehicles running amok through the 150,000 protesters was shown on Al-Arabia TV. Egyptian State-run TV said that Coptic protesters killed 3 soldiers and injured 20. They gave no numbers for the fallen or injured Copts. …

The story that the Copts had killed three soldiers was made up by Egyptian State Television, and later withdrawn.

“Today occurred a massacre of the Copts,” said Coptic priest, Father Filopateer Gamil …

According to witnesses, the army forces were waiting for the Coptic rally to arrive at Maspero, near the state television building. “They arranged a trap for us,” said Father Filopateer. “As soon as we arrived they surrounded us and started shooting live ammunition randomly at us. Then the armored vehicles arrived and ran over protesters.”

Father Filopateer said he saw army police and affiliated thugs torching police cars, to later blame it on the Copts. …

Copts announced a few days ago that they would stage a rally to protest the torching of the church in the village of Elmarinab in Edfu, Aswan, as well as the brutal attack on the Coptic rally in Maspiro on October 4. Rallies were to be staged in Cairo, Aswan, Minya, Beni-Suef, Assiut, Suez and Alexandria.

“When we announced this peaceful rally we made it understood that it will be from 5-8pm and no sit-in and no blocking of traffic,” said Ihab Aziz, Coptic-American activist, who was one of the organizers.

But why did they think they could act as if they lived in a free democracy? Did they believe the claim by some insurrectionists that the aim of the Egyptian uprising was democracy and freedom? Did they think that democracy and freedom had actually been achieved?

Aziz said that the procession started today at the Christian populated district of Shubra and went to Maspero, in front of the TV building, on the river Nile. On their way, some Muslims fired live ammunition over their heads to terrorize them and some bricks were hurled at them. By the time they arrived to Maspero there were nearly 150,000 protesters. “The army and police were waiting for us about 200 meters away from the Maspero TV building,” said Aziz. “They started firing at us before two army armored vehicles came at great speed and drove into the crowds, going backwards and forwards, mowing people under their wheels.” He said he saw at least 20 dead Copts around him.

“The most horrible scene was when one of the vehicles ran over a Copt’s head, causing his brain to explode and blood was all over the place,” recalled Aziz.

He held out his hand, showing two bullets in his palm. “We got a clear message today that we are no first class citizens.”

No more than than they have been as Christians ever since Islam conquered Egypt by defeating the armies of the Byzantine Empire in the 7th century.

The same description of events was confirmed by Nader Shoukry. He said that when the Copts were trapped by the army forces, some threw themselves in the Nile and some just fainted seeing other people being run-over in front of their eyes. Copts ran to hide in the neighboring buildings, but the police dragged them out and assaulted them. …

It needs to be understood in the non-Muslim world that the reaction of the Muslim majority to the Copts’ attempt to repair a church is in perfect accordance with Islamic tradition and law.

Diana West writes at Townhall:

The unarmed Copts were protesting the destruction of yet another church in Egypt, St. George’s, which on Sept. 30 was set upon by thousands of Muslim men following Friday prayers. Why? The trigger was repair work on the building – work that the local council and governor had approved.

Officially approved! That is the only really surprising part of the story.

Raymond Ibrahim, an Islam specialist, …  catalogs the key sequence of events that turned a church renovation project into terror and flames. With repair work in progress, he writes … “It was not long before local Muslims began complaining, making various demands, including that the church be devoid of crosses and bells – even though the permit approved them – citing that ‘the cross irritates Muslims and their children.'”

It irritates us too, but we atheist conservatives are the most tolerant people in the world; so tolerant that the intolerance of Islam compels us to long for that terrible ideology’s complete and permanent disappearance.  

Given our see-no-Shariah media (and government), we have no context in which to place such events. That context is Shariah society, advanced (but by no means initiated) by “Arab Spring,” where non-Muslims – “dhimmi” – occupy a place defined for them by Islamic law and tradition. Theologian, author and Anglican pastor Mark Durie elaborates … : “Dhimmi are permitted to live in an Islamic state under terms of surrender as laid out in the ‘dhimma’ pact.” Such terms, Durie writes, “are a well-established part of Islamic law and can be found laid out in countless legal text books.” When non-Muslims violate these terms, they become subject to attack.

[The] Pact of Umar … governing Muslim and non-Muslims relations stipulates … the condition that Christians “will neither erect in our areas a monastery, church or sanctuary for a monk, nor restore any place of worship that needs restoration.”

Thus, this anti-Coptic violence, which for the moment has caught world attention, is Islamically correct. This is the piece of the puzzle Westerners fail to grasp. But Durie takes us through the theological steps: “For some pious Muslims in Egypt today, the act of repairing a church is a flagrant provocation, a breach of the peace, which amounts to a deliberate revocation of one’s right to exist in the land.” As such, it “becomes a legitimate topic for sermons in the mosque (where) the faithful are urged … to uphold the honor of Islam.” In Islamic terms, then, the destruction of the church is no injustice, as Durie writes. It is “even a duty to destroy the church and even the lives of Christians who have the temerity to repair their churches.” That’s because dhimmi who take to the streets to protest the Islamically just destruction of the church “are also rebels who have forfeited their rights (under the pact) to ‘safety and protection.'” As violators of the “dhimmi” pact, they become fair game.

It is sad that the recent revolution in Egypt had led them to believe that their status might have changed. The massacre has disillusioned them. As the eyewitness Nader Shoukry commented:

“People are being prosecuted, including former President Mubarak, in courts presently because they killed demonstrators on January 28. Now the military police is doing the same to the Copts.” 

So the “Arab Spring” is the same old everlasting Muslim season of misery and death.

American soldiers are suffering horrific life-ruining injuries in Afghanistan because of a stupid directive issued by General Petraeus, who dreams ridiculously that their obedience to it will transform Afghanistan into Martha’s Vineyard (so to speak).

This is from Townhall by Diana West:

Only the U.S. military could build a defensive wall of words — “dismounted complex blast injury” (DCBI) — around the bare fact that single, double, triple, even quadruple amputations are up sharply among U.S. forces on foot patrol in Afghanistan. So are associated pelvic, abdominal and genital injuries according to a newly released report.

Even the antiseptic language of the report is excruciating, as when it calls for “further refinement” of “aggressive pain management at the POI (point of injury),” or highlights the need to train more military urologists in “phallic reconstruction surgery.” …

These grievous injuries have increased because more U.S. forces are on foot patrol in Afghanistan. More Americans are on foot patrol in Afghanistan because counterinsurgency strategy puts them there. … The Associated Press account is typical: “The counterinsurgency tactic that is sending U.S. soldiers out on foot patrols among the Afghan people, rather than riding in armored vehicles, has contributed to a dramatic increase in arm and leg amputations, genital injuries and the loss of multiple limbs following blast injuries.”

But what exactly this counterinsurgency (COIN) tactic is designed to accomplish remains off the radar. The fact is, Uncle Sam is asking young Americans to risk limbs, urinary function and testicles to win something not only intangible but also fantastical. They walk the bomb-packed byways of Afghanistan to win — to “earn” — “the trust of the Afghan people.” This is the mythological, see-no-Islam quest that drives U.S. COIN strategy. …

Once we stop trying to remake Afghanistan in something akin to our own image, once we start preventing Islam from remaking the West into a Shariah-compliant zone  … these shattering body blasts to young Americans on the other side of the world will cease.

Meanwhile, “the trust of the Afghan people” is the holy grail of the Washington establishment, and, even after retiring from the military, Gen. David Petraeus, now director of the CIA, remains chief myth-maker. “Earn the people’s trust,” Petraeus wrote in a signal “Counterinsurgency Guidance” issued Aug. 1, 2010. From his list of how-tos — which range from dispense payola (“COIN-contracting”), to “help them develop checks and balances to prevent abuses” (good luck with that), to “drink lots of tea” — one order stands out, particularly in light of this week’s report on amputations resulting from foot patrols. Petraeus wrote: “Walk. Stop by, don’t drive by. Patrol on foot whenever possible and engage the population.”

One year later, the Army is reckoning with the carnage and after-care requirements that are consequences of this key tactic of COIN strategy. It is high time for the rest of us to reckon with them, too. Is COIN working? Is the burden of suffering that the nation is placing on the military worth the return? Frankly, when it comes to winning “the trust of the Afghan people,” is there any return?

None.

And why should Americans care whether untrustworthy Afghans trust them or not? Leave the Afghans to their poor, nasty, brutish lives. Even if the Afghan nation could be saved from its chosen primitivism, perpetual inter-tribal strife, and traditional misery, its salvation would not be worth the loss of one joint of one finger or toe of a single American soldier.

Yesterday we claimed that in the very long run we atheists will win the war with Islam, because in the very long run mankind will outgrow religion.

We have to concede that at present Islam is winning most of the battles.

Diana West explains this well. She writes:

It is something to have gone 10 years without an Islamic attack of similarly gigantic proportions to those of Sept. 11, 2001, but it is not enough. That’s because the decade we look back on is marked by a specifically Islamic brand of security from jihad. It was a security bought by the Bush and Obama administrations’ policies of appeasement based in apology for, and irrational denial of, Islam’s war doctrine, its anti-liberty laws and its non-Western customs. As a result of this policy of appeasement — submission — we now stand poised on the brink of a golden age.

Tragically for freedom of speech, conscience and equality before the law, however, it is an Islamic golden age. It’s not just the post-9/11 rush into Western society of Islamic tenets and traditions on everything from law to finance to diet that has heralded this golden age, although that’s part of it. More important is the fact that our central institutions have actively primed themselves for it, having absorbed and implemented the central codes of Islam in the years since the 9/11 attacks, exactly as the jihadists hoped and schemed.

Take the U.S. military, symbol plus enforcer of American security.

In Afghanistan, our forces are now “trained on the sanctity of the holy book (the Quran) and go to significant steps to protect it,” as the official International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) website reported last year.

Are they similarly trained to take “significant steps” to “protect” other books? Hardly. It’s reckless and irresponsible to demand that troops make the protection of any book a priority in a war zone. But it’s not merely the case that U.S. troops have become protectors of the Quran in the decade following 9/11. “Never talk badly about the Qu’ran or its contents,” ISAF ordered troops earlier this year. Did the Pentagon restrict language about “Mein Kampf” or the “Communist Manifesto”? They, too, were blueprints for world conquest that the United States opposed. Of course not. But the Quran is different. It is protected by Islamic law, and that’s enough for the Pentagon. Not incidentally, ISAF further cautioned troops to direct suspects to remove any Qurans from the vicinity before troops conduct a search — no doubt for the unstated fear that infidel troops might defile the protected book. None may “touch the Qu’ran except in the state of ritual purity,” the Islamic law book Reliance of the Traveller declares. …

Since when did Uncle Sam incorporate Islamic law into military protocols?

Since 9/11.

Now take the State Department, symbol and nerve center of U.S. action on the world stage.

In July, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced a collaborative effort between the United States and the OIC, newly repackaged as Organization of the Islamic Cooperation. (It used to be “C” for Conference.) The get-together planned for Washington, D.C., is supposed to implement a non-binding resolution against religious “stereotyping” (read: Islamic “stereotyping”) that passed last March at the U.N. Human Rights Council. Such “stereotyping,” of course, includes everything from honest assessments of the links between Islamic doctrine and Islamic terrorism to political cartoons. This makes this U.S.-led international effort nothing short of a sinister attempt to snuff free speech about Islam. And that sure sounds like a U.S.-co-chaired assault on the First Amendment. Not only is this treachery on the part of the U.S. government, it also happens to be part and parcel of the OIC’s official 10-year-plan.

Since when did Uncle Sam get in the business of doing the bidding of the OIC?

Since 9/11.

This is just a snapshot of what the rush toward Islamization as a goal of national policy looks like, 10 years since the Twin Towers collapsed in a colossal cloud of dust and fire. The air has cleared, but the appeasement and the Islamization go on. Thus, a golden age begins, but unless we throw off this mental yoke of submission, it cannot be our own.

*

Palestinians handed out candy to celebrate the Islamic victory of 9/11.

The pointless and insane war in Afghanistan goes on. And on.

Diana West writes at Townhall:

The Karzai Ultimatum story is entering national consciousness in three parts. (1) U.S.-led airstrike on May 28 kills Afghan women and children in Helmand Province. (2) Afghan President Hamid Karzai delivers ultimatum on U.S. airstrikes — stop, or else Afghans will revolt against U.S. “occupation.” (3) US-led forces (ISAF) apologize.

A crucial part is missing. I refer to the shooting, also on May 28, that killed a U.S. Marine on patrol in Helmand, triggering the fighting which led to the airstrike that Karzai would take to the microphone on the world stage. Neither Karzai, nor, come to think of it, ISAF has made much noise about this fallen Marine. In ultimatum news stories, he remains anonymous. In the rush to apologize, his sacrifice is overlooked.

But I think I’ve found him. The only American killed in Helmand Province on May 28 was Lance Cpl. Peter Clore. He was 23 years old.

Only six weeks in Afghanistan, Clore and his war dog Duke were leading a patrol to find and clear IEDs somewhere in Zad District. … Shots rang out and Clore was hit. He died. His fellow Marines pursued the attackers who took refuge in a compound where they continued to fire at Marines. At some point — details aren’t just sketchy, they’re unavailable — the Marines called for an airstrike on the building the militants were in.

This takes us to where the consensus narrative begins with its familiar prompts and conditioned reflexes: women and children killed in a U.S. airstrike; Afghan outrage; American apology. Lost in the diplomatic furor — along with the life of this young Marine — is the fact that in calling on Americans not to strike at Taliban-filled houses, Karzai is demanding a free-fire zone for insurgents.

That’s fine — for Karzai and the Afghan forces he ostensibly commands. Let him send Afghans, not Americans, to patrol the IED-laced byways of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Let’s see what that Potemkin Police Force and Ghost Army, which a delusional Pentagon and a snoring Congress think they have created with your money, can really do. …

This whole nation-building misadventure in Afghanistan is a mirage, a dream that young Americans in our armed forces are paying to perpetuate with their limbs, their lives — and that includes their own “hearts and minds” — in a nightmare many never wake from.

The Afghans are not going to change, no matter how long American forces stay in their benighted land. There is nothing whatsoever to be gained by fighting the Taliban for ten long years and more.

Diana West suggests the American people should deliver an ultimatum of their own to the politicians and generals who are pursuing the nightmare mirage of nation-building in tribal, Muslim, savage Afghanistan: “Get out, or else”.

For a long time now it has been pretty darn obvious that the waging of war – or rather the waging of social work under the misnomer of war – in Afghanistan is pointless. Now it is blindingly clear that it is stupid.

How dare a government ask its bravest citizens to risk their lives in a stupid cause?

Diana West calls the war “sanity-defying”. Which is close to saying it is insane – even worse than stupid.

In an article mostly concerned with the unfair treatment of a US soldier killed by a jihadist, she tells us this:

The U.N. believes about 1 million Afghans between the ages of 15 and 64 – roughly 8 percent of the population — are addicted to drugs. The publication Development Asia estimates 2 million Afghan addicts.

Depending on whose figures you read next, some staggering number of these same addicts ends up in the Afghan National Police (ANP). Fully “half of the latest batch” of police recruits tested positive for narcotics, the Independent reported in March, drawing on Foreign Office Papers from late 2009. Also in March 2010, the Government Accounting Office (GAO) reported, depending on the province, 12 to 41 percent of Afghan police recruits tested positive. The GAO added: “A State official noted that this percentage likely understates the number of opium users because opiates leave the system quickly; many recruits who tested negative for drugs have shown opium withdrawal symptoms later in their training.” The problem was dire enough, the report continues, to place under consideration “the establishment of dedicated rehabilitation clinics at the regional police training centers.”

Pederasty, misogyny and corruption aside: This drug-addled ANP is part of the Afghan National Security Forces that the U.S. government fully expects — no, completely relies on — to secure Afghanistan against “extremist networks” and is spending $350 million per day in Afghanistan until that happens.

My question: Who’s high here? Illiterate Afghans on drugs, or educated Americans on fantasy?

Like a legion of buttoned-down and uniformed Don Quixotes seeking the impossible COIN (counterinsurgency theory) — winning Afghan hearts and minds from Islamic loyalties, constructing a heretofore unseen Afghan “city on a hill,” training Afghan police (literacy rate 4.5 percent) while simultaneously weaning them from addiction, and don’t get me started on “ally” Pakistan — the United States has plunged into a depth of denial only an extravagant “intervention” could reverse.

It has to stop.

Pity General Petraeus struggling to achieve the impossible, and let him off the slow spit.

Let the Afghans pursue their drug-addled, illiterate, savage way of life. What does it matter to the rest of the world? Only be ready, if they hit America or any American interest ever again to hit them back with the worst America’s got. Real war. All-out for victory. Fast and devastating.

Of course such an attack by American forces can never happen under Obama. But that pusillanimous figure will, fortunately, not be commander-in-chief forever.