Islamism and Obama's Dangerous Flight from Reality

From Peter Wehner, at Commentary.

After Terrorist Attacks, Denmark Hesitates to Blame Islam

Says the New York Times, via Blazing Cat Fur.

Wouldn't want to alienate the Ummah, or anything.

Sally Kohn Wants Her Daughter to Be Lesbian

I didn't know Sally Kohn had a daughter. Shoot, I didn't even know she was married. But she is. And it's no big deal.

The thing is, though. If you want your daughter to "turn out" gay, isn't that an admission that homosexuals aren't "born that way," and hence doesn't virtually the entire justification for the expansionist homosexual civil rights movement then collapse? Well yes, of course.

But that's never stopped homosexuals from doing absolutely anything and everything despicable, agitating for their licentious agenda with the most vicious anti-traditionalist discourse imaginable.

See, "I’m gay. And I want my kid to be gay, too."

Remember, it's not just about gay marriage. It's about the fundamental transformation of society. See Sally Kohn's program, "BEYOND SAME-SEX MARRIAGE: A NEW STRATEGIC VISION FOR ALL OUR FAMILIES & RELATIONSHIPS."

The Horrible -- HORRIBLE! -- Abuse Online Feminists Endure to the Point of Desperation, Throwing It All Away

Oh brother. It's hard out there for a lesbian feminist social justice warrior.

See far-left radical abortionist Michelle Goldberg, at the Washington Post, "Feminist writers are so besieged by online abuse that some have begun to retire."

Bill O'Reilly Destroys Low-Circulation Guttersnipe Liar David Corn (VIDEO)

I'm glad O'Reilly took on this low-life douchebag David Corn.

Corn's lies went a long way toward getting Barack Barry Hussein Soetoro Obama reelected.

At Fox News, via Memeorandum, "Bill O'Reilly's Talking Points Memo 2/20/15 Airing Tonight at 8PM ET."

Obama Doubles Down on Refusal to Name Islamic Terrorism

O's moral equivalence is killing us.

At LAT, "At summit on extremism, Obama defends his semantic choices regarding Islam":

The ideology fueling the Islamic State appears to be a twisted version of centuries-old interpretations of the prophet Muhammad, he said, bearing little resemblance to contemporary Islam. The Obama administration should spend time understanding and articulating that, Glassman said.

But that is where he sees the administration as coming late to the game. Unlike Bush, Obama and his top officials have appeared uncomfortable setting up the fight against terrorism as a "war of ideas," Glassman said.

"The way President Bush put it was usually in terms of freedom and democracy. We need to stand up for those values, and democracy is for everybody," Glassman said. "I just don't hear that from this administration. I think there is a discomfort with the notion that our ideas are in some ways superior to other people's ideas and a discomfort with the notion of marshaling ideas and sending them into battle."

Amazing that these ideas are even allowed in print at the far-left Los Angeles Times. I mean, shoot, it's like Rudy Giuliani hit the nail on the head, or something.

Chris Hayes' Show to Be Axed as MSNBC Shakeup Rumbles On

The far-left MSNBC is cutting its losses from the failing regressive agenda of the Obama interregnum.

Joy Reid and Ronan Farrow both got canned last night, and Chris Hayes is likely next. Not only that, Rachel Maddow will likely lose her prime-time 9:00pm slot as well.

See Lloyd Grove, at the Daily Beast, "After MSNBC Axes Ronan Farrow and Joy Reid's Shows, Is Chris Hayes Next?"

They suck. It's as simple as that.

ADDED: At the Other McCain, "‘Talent Search’ at MSNBC."

Iggy Azalia Quits Twitter

At LAT, "Iggy Azalea quits social media, 'ugliest reflection of man kind there is'."

And at London's Daily Mail, "I'm still Fancy: Iggy Azalea consoles herself by driving around in her $200,000 Ferrari after quitting social media over Twitter trolls."

Plus, at Radar Online, "Uh oh, Iggy. The Aussie rapper was spotted showing major cellulite in unflattering gym shorts and frumpy slippers."

She looks fine. I don't know what the fuss is all about.

Danica Patrick and Denny Hamlin Heated Exchange Post-Race Budweiser Duel

She's a tough chick.

I watched this last night.

At SB Nation, "What Danica Patrick said to Denny Hamlin after the two wrecked, again."

Hamlin calls her "honey."



And watch the crash: "Denny Hamlin Wrecks Danica Patrick - Budweiser Duel 2 - 2015 NASCAR Sprint Cup."

RELATED: "Dale Earnhardt Jr. wins a Budweiser Duel in buildup to Daytona 500."

Islamic State Videos Shock with Extreme Brutality

At NYT, "Brutal ISIS Videos Show Potency of Shock Value":

BEIRUT, Lebanon — The killings have been both deliberately lurid and strangely intimate. Designed for broadcast, they have helped the Islamic State militant group build a brand of violence that shocks with its extreme brutality, yet feels as close to viewers as the family images on their smartphones.

Broadcast specifically to frighten and manipulate, the Islamic State's flamboyant violence consumes the world's attention while more familiar threats, like the Syrian government’s barrel bombs, kill far more people but rarely provoke widespread outrage.

A few human rights advocates and antigovernment activists in Syria are trying to reciprocate, creating shocking if nonviolent images and videos — even herding children in orange jumpsuits into a cage — to call attention to the wider scope of violence. So far, though, their voices have hardly been heard.

The Islamic State's campaign of high-profile killings is not war at a remove, with the mechanized distance of drone strikes or carpet bombing. It is one-on-one slaughter with Hollywood production values, seeking to maximize emotional impact and propaganda value.

Cameras zoom in as captors lay hands on their captives — Western reporters, a Jordanian pilot, Egyptian Christian laborers. In the group’s latest video, black-clad men lead the Egyptians almost gently, one by one, down a sunset-tinged beach, then saw off their heads until the waves turn red.

For many in the Middle East who obsessively share the latest images, the Islamic State’s exhibitionist brutality is the apotheosis of several years of carnage gone viral. The group’s bloody imagery, flooding social media already widely used to chronicle conflict, makes violence seem ubiquitous, even mesmerizing, and spurs a sensory overload that can both provoke feelings and numb them.

“It’s like action movies,” said Ahmad, 39, an employee of the Damascus Opera House in the Syrian capital, who asked to be identified by only his first name for his safety. Islamic State violence is stylized, as if in a Quentin Tarantino film, he said, in a macabre bid “to win the prestige of horror.”

Yeah, well. Islamic State's winning.

They're winning the propaganda war and they're winning the terror war. We've practically capitulated to Islamic jihad. It's freakin' ridiculous.

Still more.

The Ideological Islamist Threat

At WSJ, "The Radicals Are Waging a War of Ideas the West Refuses to Fight":

President Obama opened this week’s White House Conference on Violent Extremism with a speech about community-based counter-radicalization efforts, and his Administration is being roundly mocked for its refusal to use terms like “Muslim terrorism” or “Islamism.” The mockery is deserved. Foreign policy is not a Harry Potter tale of good versus He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. And war cannot be won against an enemy we refuse to describe except in meaningless generalities.

But there is a deeper problem with the Administration’s semantic dodges. Al Qaeda, Islamic State, Boko Haram and other jihadist groups are waging more than a military conflict. They are also waging an increasingly successful ideological war for the soul of Islam and its 1.6 billion followers.

Their version of jihad is gaining adherents precisely because it is motivated by an idea that challenges the values and beliefs of moderate Islam, the West and modernity. The free and non-fanatic world won’t win this deeper struggle if the Obama Administration refuses even to acknowledge its nature.

The 9/11 Commission Report put this front and center. Its second chapter, “The Foundation of the New Terrorism,” traces what it calls “ Bin Ladin ’s Appeal in the Islamic World.” It discusses the late al Qaeda leader’s faith in “a return to observance of the literal teachings of the Qur’an and the Hadith.” It underscores bin Laden’s reliance on Muslim theologians, from Ibn Taimiyyah in the 14th century to Sayyid Qutb in the 20th. And it explains how bin Laden turned Islam into a licence for murder.

“Qutb argued that humans can choose only between Islam and jahilyya,” referring to a world of licentiousness and unbelief. “No middle ground exists. . . . All Muslims—as he defined them—therefore must take up arms in this fight. Any Muslim who rejects his ideas is just one more nonbeliever worthy of destruction.”

None of this is denied in the Muslim world, which is well aware of the increasingly radical bent of mainstream Islamist theology. Not for nothing did Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi recently visit Cairo’s al-Azhar university, Sunni Islam’s premier center of religious learning, to warn leading clerics of where Islam is heading: “Let me say it again, we need to revolutionize our religion.”

That’s exactly right, but it’s hard to see how such a revolution might take place—much less who might carry it out—if Islam can barely be mentioned in the context of a conference on “violent extremism.” In his speech Wednesday, Mr. Obama acknowledged that “al Qaeda and ISIL do draw selectively from the Islamic texts,” and he called on Muslim leaders to reject grievance narratives against the West.

But the President also insisted that the West must never grant al Qaeda and Islamic State “the religious legitimacy they seek” by suggesting they are Muslim religious leaders rather than mere terrorists. That’s a fine sentiment, but it elides the fact that the two categories aren’t mutually exclusive. The Islamic State may speak for only a minority of Muslims, but it is nothing if not Islamic in its beliefs, methods and aims. Ignoring that reality for the sake of avoiding injured feelings helps nobody, least of all Islamic State’s many Muslim victims or Islam’s would-be reformers.

The useful analogy here is to the Cold War, when the world was also challenged by an ideology that professed its superiority over an allegedly decadent West. The difference then is that Western leaders didn’t shrink from describing the evil of that ideology and defending the superiority of our way of life. The same needs to be done now.

This will have to include more sophisticated arguments to counter radical Islamism. Jihadist ideology has gained millions of adherents because it makes fundamental claims about personal virtue and social justice. Countering that narrative requires something more than making an appeal, as State Department spokesperson Marie Harf did this week, to working on “root causes” such as insufficient schooling and job opportunities in the Arab world. There is little or no correlation between poverty and Islamist extremism, many of whose most notorious figures are wealthy and well-educated.

It will also require far more support for reform-minded Muslims, from granting political asylum to persecuted Muslim intellectuals to funding civil society groups seeking to spread liberal concepts of individual liberty and religious tolerance.

Above all, we need to recognize that the strength of radical Islamists is directly correlated to their battlefield success, and the growing perception that they are the strong horse against moderate Muslim leaders. Communist ideology lost its appeal when it was seen to fail against the prosperity and freedom of the West. Islamic State will lose its allure when it is defeated and humiliated in the arena it cares about most, which is the battlefield. Mr. Obama and other Western leaders must summon the will to win the war on the ground, or they will find themselves in permanent retreat in the war of ideas.

PREVIOUSLY: "President Obama Speaks at the Summit on Countering Violent Extremism."

Islamic State Is Modern Islam

From Daniel Greenfield, at FrontPage Magazine, "There Is No Modern Islam":

Like math and the Midwest, ISIS confuses progressives. It’s not hard to confuse a group of people who never figured out that if you borrow 18 trillion dollars, you’re going to have to pay it back. But ISIS is especially confusing to a demographic whose entire ideology is being on the right side of history.

Raised to believe that history inevitably trended toward diversity in catalog models, fusion restaurants and gay marriage, the Arab Spring led them on by promising that the Middle East would be just like Europe and then ISIS tore up their Lonely Planet guidebook to Syria and chopped off their heads.

But ISIS also believes that it’s on the right side of history. Its history is the Koran. The right side of its history is what Iraq and Syria look like today. It’s also how parts of Europe are starting to look.

Progressive politicians and pundits trying to cope with ISIS lapse into a shrill incoherence that has nothing to do with their outrage at its atrocities and a lot to do with their sheer incomprehension. Terms like “apocalyptic nihilism” get thrown around as if heavy metal were beginning to make a comeback.

Those few analysts who admit that the Islamic State might be a just a little Islamic emphasize that it’s a medieval throwback, as if there were some modern version of Islam to compare it to.

Journalists trying to make sense of ISIS demanding Jizya payments and taking slaves ought to remember that these aren’t medieval behaviors in the Middle East. Not unless medieval means the 19th century. And that’s spotting them a whole century. Saudi Arabia only abolished slavery in 1962 under pressure from the United States. Its labor market and that of fellow Petrojihadi kingdoms like Kuwait and Qatar are based on arrangements that look a lot like temporary slavery… for those foreigners who survive.

Non-Muslims paid Jizya to Muslim rulers until very recently. Here is what it looked like in nineteenth century Morocco from the account of James Riley, an American shipwrecked sea captain.

“The Mohammedan scrivener appointed to receive it took it from them, hitting each one a smart blow with his fist on his bare forehead, by way of receipt for his money, at which the Jews said, ‘Thank you, my lord.’”

Those Jews who could not pay were flogged and imprisoned until they converted to Islam. An account from 1894 is similar, except that the blows were delivered to the back of the neck. Only French colonialism finally put a stop to this practice as well as many other brutal Islamic Supremacist laws.

Morocco was one of the Arab countries where Jews were treated reasonably well by the standards of the Muslim world. It’s one of the few Arab countries to still retain a Jewish population. When ISIS demands Jizya from non-Muslims, it’s not reviving some controversial medieval behavior. It’s doing what even “moderate” Muslim countries were doing until European guns and warships made them stop.

If the French hadn’t intervened, the same ugly scene would have gone on playing out in Morocco. If the United States hadn’t intervened, the Saudis would still openly keep slaves.

Islam never became enlightened. It never stopped being ‘medieval’. Whatever enlightenment it received was imposed on it by European colonialism. It’s a second-hand enlightenment that never went under the skin.

ISIS isn’t just seventh century Islam. It’s also much more recent than that. It’s Islam before the French and the English came. It’s what the Muslim world was like before it was forced to have presidents and constitutions, before it was forced to at least pay lip service to the alien notion of equal rights for all.

The media reported the burning of the Jordanian pilot as if it were some horrifying and unprecedented aberration. But Muslim heretics, as well as Jews and Christians accused of blasphemy, were burned alive for their crimes against Islam. Numerous accounts of this remain, not from the seventh century, but from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Those who weren’t burned, might be beheaded.

These were not the practices of some apocalyptic death cult. They were the Islamic law in the “cosmopolitan” parts of North Africa. The only reason they aren’t the law now is that the French left behind some of their own laws.

Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia that were never truly colonized still behead men and women for “witchcraft and sorcery.” Not in the seventh century or even in the nineteenth century. Last year.

The problem isn’t that ISIS is ‘medieval’. The problem is that Islam is...

More.

Democrat Tulsi Gabbard Says Obama is 'Misidentifying' the Enemy

I expect Rep. Gabbard to switch parties if she keeps up this line of criticism much longer. Certainly, Obama's not going to all-of-a-sudden start calling the terrorists by their real, Islamic names.

Oregon's Kate Brown Sworn In as First Bisexual Governor in U.S.

Well, as they say, Obama's the first homosexual president (and thus bisexual, considering Mooch), so I don't think this is as dramatic as it sounds.

At LAT, "Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, first bisexual governor in U.S., stresses ethics."

Analysis of U.S. Policy Toward Islamic State

Last night, at CBS Evening News:

Obama Changed His Party, Not the Country

Well, good thing, about not changing the country that is.

From Josh Kraushaar, at National Journal:

As a presidential candidate, President Obama expressed his desire to "change the trajectory of America" along the lines of Ronald Reagan, rebuking the legacy of Bill Clinton's pragmatic presidency in the process. Now that his own presidency is winding down, Obama is finding that his main legacy is only half-achieved. He has indeed transformed the Democratic party to his liking, but failed to get anyone else to follow suit.

At the same time, there's no doubt he's successfully pushed Democrats to adopt his favored policies with minimal dissent—and that will have lasting consequences for many elections to come. Despite uneven personal relations with his own party in Congress, there have been very few instances when his party's members have split from his governing course, even on issues where the politics would dictate they should.

That's the consequence of being the most polarizing president in history, according to Gallup's latest polling analysis. Obama maintains strong support from his core supporters, even as Republicans have entirely abandoned him and independents have followed suit. Gallup found 79 percent of Democrats still backing him, even with a 42.6 percent average approval rating in his sixth year in office. That unusually large disconnect has emboldened the president to push forward on controversial issues that few other Democrats would touch, thanks to unyielding support from his base.

The recent debate over the Iranian nuclear threat and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's scheduled speech to Congress on this issue is a perfect example of this new Democratic dynamic. The Democratic party has long been strongly supportive of Israel, but thanks to Obama's pursuit of a deal with Iran, relations between this White House and Israel have hit historic lows. Democrats are now presented with an uncomfortable choice: Back Obama and his aggressive diplomatic push with Iran, or support the Israeli prime minister's speech to Congress raising questions about Iran's intentions.

In the past, the invitation of the Israeli prime minister to speak wouldn't have been nearly as controversial—even so close to an election. Obama knows that. And he's using this episode and his leverage as president to get his rank-and-file members to be less instinctively supportive of the Jewish state. It's having some effect: Most African-American Democrats and many progressive members of the party—Obama's base—have said they're not attending. Even several Jewish Democratic members haven't committed to doing so.

This is what Obama's former chief strategist David Axelrod meant when he wrote about the president's desire to have so-called "Bulworth moments" after being reelected in his new book. Translated into political terms, it means pushing his party to be more outspoken on sensitive issues, even when they may not be comfortable doing so. Challenging Israel was one of the president's top second term priorities, according to Axelrod. The worsening relationship between this administration and Israel was as much the president's preconceived plan as the result of a protocol breach...

More.

A Bloody Retreat from Debaltseve as Ukrainian Forces Suddenly Withdraw

At the New York Times:

ARTEMIVSK, Ukraine — Ukrainian forces fought their way out of the embattled town of Debaltseve in the early hours of Wednesday, choosing a risky overnight breakout rather than surrender as they abandoned the town to Russian-backed militants.

President Petro O. Poroshenko said in a televised statement that he had ordered the retreat from Debaltseve, a strategic transportation hub where intense fighting raged in recent days despite a cease-fire agreement signed last week in Minsk, Belarus.

Mr. Poroshenko sought to cast the retreat in a positive light, but the loss of the town was clearly a devastating setback for the army at the hands of the separatists. Still, by avoiding capture, the soldiers who made it out also avoided handing the rebels a powerful bargaining chip.

Separatist leaders have insisted that the cease-fire agreement did not apply to Debaltseve, but no exceptions were mentioned when the deal was announced in Minsk.

Mr. Poroshenko’s decision, and his earlier refusal to hand over the town during the cease-fire talks, cost the Ukrainian army an unknown number of casualties. As the scale of the nighttime fighting around the town comes into focus, those decisions could prove contentious in Ukraine.

In a post on Twitter and in the televised statement from an airfield in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, before leaving to visit the front line, Mr. Poroshenko called the withdrawal “planned and organized” and said Ukrainian troops had accomplished their mission.

As many as 8,000 Ukrainian soldiers were said to be in Debaltseve before the withdrawal. It was unclear on Wednesday how many survived and avoided capture. Mr. Poroshenko said 80 percent of the army’s units had left.

By midday on Wednesday, limping and exhausted soldiers were showing up on the Ukrainian side of the front lines in the conflict, describing a harrowing ordeal that began with a surprise 1 a.m. order to retreat.

“Many trucks left, and only a few arrived,” said one soldier, who offered only his rank (sergeant) and his given name (Volodomyr) as he knelt on the sidewalk smoking. “A third of us made it, at most,” the soldier said.

Others said that a majority, at least, of the soldiers who set off from the town in a column of about 100 trucks had managed to escape the encirclement, many of them straggling out on foot after their vehicles were blown up.

The order to retreat was kept secret until the last minute, and soldiers were told to prepare in 10 minutes and pile into the beds of troop transport trucks, according to Albert Sardaryen, a 22-year-old medic who made the journey...

More.

And at the Washington Post, "Ukraine calls for international peacekeepers."

President Obama Speaks at the Summit on Countering Violent Extremism

Oh boy. It's terrible.

Here, at the White House YouTube page.

And snippets at AP, "Obama: 'We Are Not at War With Islam'."

Obviously, Obama's problem is that Islamic State is not pushing "a twisted interpretation of religion." Indeed, as Graeme Wood writes at the cover story at the latest Atlantic:

The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic. Yes, it has attracted psychopaths and adventure seekers, drawn largely from the disaffected populations of the Middle East and Europe. But the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam.

We can agree that there are different interpretations of Islam, but it's simply absurd to argue that Islamic State --- or al-Qaeda itself --- is practicing a "twisted interpretation."

And if you listen long enough at the video, you'll see that Obama eventually gets to the heart of the leftist-collectivist agenda for supposedly "countering violent extremism": purportedly combating the alleged "legitimate grievances" of Islamists with ever-expanding big-government programs. Recall that this initiative is predicated on lies: "The 'Jobs for Jihad Delinquents' Program."


Anyway, FWIW, there's more at the Los Angeles Times, "Obama calls for global effort against spread of extremist ideas."

Here's Obama's Op-Ed at Today's L.A. Times

See, "President Obama: Our fight against violent extremism."

I think the harsh criticism of the administration's political correctness --- especially the president's refusal to mention "Islamic terrorism" --- is having an effect.

That said, it's hard to scrape off the PC blather when it's been piled on so thick. I don't think, for example, that terrorists "betray Islam," as is claimed at the op-ed. But at least the piece mentions that it was Egyptian Christians who were beheaded last weekend.

More at Memeorandum.

And see especially, Katie Pavlich, at Town Hall, "Obama: Extremists Have 'Legitimate Grievances'."

PREVIOUSLY: "The 'Jobs for Jihad Delinquents' Program," and "Ralph Peters: Until Islam Is Held to the Same Standards as Other Religions, Terrorism Wins."

Ralph Peters: Until Islam Is Held to the Same Standards as Other Religions, Terrorism Wins

Click through to watch.

An awesome interview, at Right Wing News.