In yesterday's featured article at FrontPage, which I was prevented from putting up yesterday by yet another attack on this site, I discussed the August 22 brouhaha, and why all those who are crowing now about "right-wing hysteria" should not lose sight of the real problem: the continuing threat from Iran (news links in the original):
Iran drew concern worldwide for refusing to respond in a timely fashion to the West’s offer of an incentives package in exchange for Tehran’s abandonment of its nuclear program. Iranian officials brushed aside the June 29 deadline set by the West and said Iran would respond on August 22. Some, including Farid Ghadry of the Reform Party of Syria (as I reported several weeks ago) and Islamic scholar Bernard Lewis, suggested that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the mullahs in Iran’s inner circle may have chosen that date in order to establish a connection with the Islamic prophet Muhammad’s fabled Night Journey, during which Allah is said to have miraculously illuminated the night sky over Jerusalem to facilitate the prophet’s journey from Mecca to Jerusalem, and thence to Paradise. Would Iran’s answer to the West’s tribute package be to illuminate the night sky over Jerusalem again, this time with a nuclear device?Obviously not – at least not on August 22 itself. That was a cue for some of the loudest advocates of Western appeasement and surrender to the global jihadists to condemn right-wing hysteria, despite the fact that no one who reported on this possibility had ever stated with any certainty that anything in particular would happen on August 22. Brian Whitaker, a columnist for The Guardian who once suggested that Gandhi would admire jihad, sneered: “The purpose of all this scaremongering is obviously to build up fears about an Iranian nuclear attack. The main obstacle to promoting such fears is that Iran does not possess any nuclear weapons but Lewis seems determined not to let that stand in the way and apparently believes that Iran already has a fully-prepared arsenal.” In dismissing these speculations as “scaremongering,” however, Whitaker and others neglect to consider one possibility: that they were correct.
How could this be, when doomsday did not materialize on August 22? Because the Iranian regime has made its desire to illuminate the night sky over Jerusalem abundantly clear. The fact that they first set the date for their reply as August 22, and then delivered a reply that budged not one inch toward conciliation, and made it clear that they had no plans to give up their nuclear ambitions, suggests that such an attack is still in the cards. When Whitaker and his ilk dismiss “fears about an Iranian nuclear attack” as “scaremongering,” they ignore both Iran’s present bellicose activities and clear indications it has been giving of its future plans:* According to the Times of London, Iran “is seeking to import large consignments of bomb-making uranium from the African mining area that produced the Hiroshima bomb.”
* On August 22 itself, an Iranian warship fired upon a Romanian oil tanker moored in the Persian Gulf; Iranian troops occupied the ship.
* Lethal roadside bombs strong enough to penetrate American and British tank armor are being turned out in large numbers by three Iranian factories. A large cache of other Iranian-made weapons and materiel were discovered last Monday in the Iraqi city of Um Qasr.
* After decisively altering the balance between Hizballah and Israel by supplying military hardware to the Lebanese Shi’ite terror organization, Iran continues even after the ceasefire announcement to ship arms and materiel to Hizballah.
* Ahmadinejad continues to indulge his now well-established taste for pugnacious rhetoric, declaring last week: “If you want to have good relations with the Iranian people in the future, you should acknowledge the right and the might of the Iranian people, and you should bow and surrender to the might of the Iranian people. If you do not accept this, the Iranian people will force you to bow and surrender.” Hardly a promising foundation for the negotiations that American officials so desperately want to initiate with Tehran.
* The Iranian President also threatened George W. Bush during his recent interview with Mike Wallace. Referring to the letter he sent several months ago to Bush inviting him to accept Islam, Ahmadinejad said to Wallace: “We are all free to choose. But please give him this message, sir: Those who refuse to accept an invitation will not have a good ending or fate.”
This is in accord with Islamic tradition. Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, tells his followers to call people to Islam before waging war against them: “Fight in the name of Allah and in the way of Allah. Fight against those who disbelieve in Allah. Make a holy war…When you meet your enemies who are polytheists, invite them to three courses of action….Invite them to (accept) Islam; if they respond to you, accept it from them and desist from fighting against them….If they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them the Jizya [the tax on non-Muslims specified in Qur’an 9:29]. If they agree to pay, accept it from them and hold off your hands. If they refuse to pay the tax, seek Allah’s help and fight them (Sahih Muslim 4294).” (Muhammad sent a letter much like Ahmadinejad’s to one of Ahmadinejad’s early predecessors, Chosroes, emperor of Persia – who contemptuously tore it to pieces. Muhammad, hearing of this, called upon Allah to tear the Persian emperor and his followers to pieces (Bukhari, vol. 5, book 64, no. 4424)). Ahmadinejad has followed Muhammad’s instruction to the letter both by calling Bush to Islam, and then by warning that his refusal would have bad consequences.
* Iran has in the last few days conducted large-scale military maneuvers and tested a new short-range missile.
* Ahmad Khatami of the Iranian Assembly of Experts said last week on government-controlled Iranian television that if Bush and Olmert “decided to display the slightest aggression against Islamic Iran, they should…fear the day that our missiles, with a range of 2,000 kilometers, land in the heart of Tel Aviv….They should know that playing with Islam is like playing with a lion’s tail.”
* Ahmadinejad continues to call for “elimination of Zionist regime.”
August 22 has come and gone. But the threat of Iran continues to hang over the world. Those who choose to ignore or downplay it may be in before too long for a most unpleasant surprise, courtesy of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Remember taqiyya.
Any day is an attack date for Islam, though I do admit they are clever - they have everyone running around like headless chickens.
The time will come when we start ignoring them because we're tired of false alarms, and we'll relax our guard.
Then we'll get hit again. That's what all these airline and airport "false alarms" are all about.
Greetings Sir henry,
Thanks for the link on the Iran thread. Excellent piece.
BTW, I am situated in Leicestershire - somewhere near Jihad Central.
Its the old Cry wolf game Sir Henry...
till we are herded like sheep courtesy of our Dhimmi Govt who respond with ever increasing reductions in our freedoms and liberty....meanwhile allowing mass registration of multiple id's for so called asylum seekers....they will know everything about honest citizens and bugger all about this lemming like migration in and out from allahs beloved.
Much easier to terrorise already flocked sheep from within.
However....even sheep have the odd Baaahhstards lets wait and see ...one thing we can be sure of they will
keep trying !!
(see hotmail)
"Ahmadinejad has followed Muhammad’s instruction to the letter both by calling Bush to Islam, and then by warning that his refusal would have bad consequences."
Muslims around the world know this means - WE HAVE WARNED YOU.AND WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CARNAGE ABOUT TO COME.YOU HAVE BROUGHT THIS UPON YOURSELVES.
Read the fine print on the "Muslim Street'.
Thats what the
newspapers,
magazines,
websites,
blogsites,
phamplets,
brochures,
videos,
religious sermons
etc
are saying in places like the Maldives, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia...And thats only in this region.
Yes, Sir. Remember Taqiyya.
THe BEast is alive and gathering strength.
Ahmadinejad's first correspondence was the invitation to Islam. This second correspondence fell well short of the terms the West wanted to see, and probably included some return concessions from Iran. This would be their request for Jizya.
So, unless the west completely crumbles, we'll see option 3 soon. It will begin with a bang in the Middle East and then we'll see the cells begin to pop-up here in the CONUS. My fear is that you'll see suicide bombers throughout the US stepping into packed McDonalds' at noon and pull their cords. And/or we'll see a few school hostage situations like we saw in Russia. This one is my fear, because our emergency response to this type of situation is "swoop in and wait" and the way schools are taught to shelter in place, will lead to severe mass casualties.
Then there's Cuba and Chavez down in Venezuala. It might be Red Dawn come to life as we loose a few southern towns to a cute little offensive push from the south. They wouldn't even have to be successful. Just having armed troops invade our borders would be enough to dump moral and raise the fright factor. Soften up some southern states with some good terror cell activities and march right in. You pay Mexico enough to look the other way...
We are just not prepared for the "Home-grown" jihadi to pop his head up out of the grass and start taking action. We've never taken the concept of the Internment Camp off the books, and I'm afraid we may have to bring that idea back in the near future.
Know your enemy.
Will Brian Whithaker just sulk and fade away when the -inevitable- attack takes place, or will he disabuse us on how its all 'our fault anyway' for not bowing to the 'great nation of Iran' and for not 'accepting Islam?'
Personally I would hope that he hangs from a lamppost,
along with gorgeous George Gallow-swine, for such people are not only traitors to our society, they are more than willing idiots and the most destructive force from within....
Sigh - We've been banging pots and pans to get the attention of anyone willing to listen, and yet they go blissfully along as if everything remains as it was. Refusing to heed warnings or even begin to learn about Islam, I fear that "PoliticallyIncorrectGuy" is correct: soon enough we will have "Home-Grown" jiadis and invaders from the South that could be jihadis or unfriendlies from Mexico and Latin America. Come-to-think-of-it, there is a whole army of unfriendlies that recently proclaimed allegiance to other states residing among us as well as several varieties of irridentists. We are indeed living in interesting times.
"The time will come when we start ignoring them because we're tired of false alarms, and we'll relax our guard."
Our guard is already too relaxed, vis-à-vis Islam itself and its institutional, ideological and psychological nourishment of terrorism. That's why Western intelligence and law enforcement are running around stamping out each new localized appearance of the global pullulation to which they are blind -- seeing only the localized picture, and only the "extremists" -- instead of working more rationally to nip the problem in the bud and "drain the swamp".
I just wonder how much longer Westerners ("elites" and non-elites alike) can go on seeing all these "extremists" popping up anywhere and everywhere, crawling out of the Global woodwork, and continue to think they have nothing substantive and damning to do with Islam. My bleak guess is that many years, and lives, will have to pass.
I am no right or left winger, but does my taking the August 22nd possibility seriously make me part of the right wing "hysteria?" I guess it is mentally easy to lump like this, but what about the majority of us who have positions that vary from right to left to in between depending on the issue?
Whenever I hear someone blaming the left or the right for this or that I continue to shake my head. If life were only that simplistic.
Mr Spencer, when it comes to the threat of Islam, there is no such thing as hysteria (right, left or in between)..as a 21st Century Liberal (a 1964 Goldwater Conservative)....I am not only chagrined but incensed by the blithe and apologetic attitude of too many (but not all) liberals and leftists towards Islam.
But even worse, I retched and retched today..appallingly the denizens of Fox and MSNBC are sounding increasingly Islamo-apologetic.. disgusting.
And here is one for you, the New York Times (you know the New Duranty Times) has taken on and excorciated CNN for that soppish piece of crap produced by that Islamic in disguise Christine Amanpour, called In the Footsteps of Bin Laden, Joe Scarborough properly dissed CNN, but then turned around and repeated the lie that Osama is not representive of Islam and that "terrorists" are a minority of Muslims.
I think that all of the media needs a write in campaign asking them "When was the last time you heard of a Catholic, Jew, Methodist, atheist suicide bomber", or "How is that 99.99% of all terrorists and terrorist acts are carried out by muslims?
Or ask them "Why do you keep repeating that false and misleading mantra, that Islam is a religion of peace?". I honestly think it is because they put politics, party and the internal culture war over reality and principal..to criticize Islam is to criticize Bush to criticize Bush is to criticize self and the RNC, as well as the preachers and priests that told them to vote Republican and for Bush.
"I honestly think it is because they put politics, party and the internal culture war over reality and principal"
You're giving them too much credit. What you describe is a process of consideration and thinking. People who follow the PC Multiculturalist template are not thinking -- they are letting the template do the thinking for them.
August 22 has come and gone. But the threat of Iran continues to hang over the world. Those who choose to ignore or downplay it may be in before too long for a most unpleasant surprise, courtesy of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
I mentioned this to a few people at a convention; they thought I had too much to drink.
All I had to drink was club soda with a slice of lemon; and they went about their merry ways.
It's like watching arrogant little sheep prance down the prim rose path gleefully to the slaughter house and denying that those nice wolves mean them any harm.
Of course Ahmadinejad is going to hit us. There are cells already here, and more are coming.
South Texas sheriffs are finding "new Spanish speakers" among the persons arrested coming across the Rio Grande (separating Texas from Mexico). These people are not native speakers, but they are not saying where they are from. Look for more.
Hugo Chavez, an avowed enemy of America, has been mighty friendly with Ahmadinejad, and has visited Tehran. Chavez will ruin his oil industry now that it has been nationalized, and he will import some Iranians to help him run things. Watch for some Iranians to start going to Spanish language school and then drifting up to and through our border with Venezuelan guides. Ahmadinejad might even get some Cubans, too, considering his friendliness with Castro. I know this is going to happen. It is such an economical and diabolical way to attack the USA, that these guys can't resist it.
I once paid a Mexican to row me across the Rio Grande in his rowboat. I wandered around in some little town, went to the store, bought a soda, and had him row me back later. Round trip cost me about two dollars. Never got wet. And never felt so alone. I left my pistol on the Texas side, as I didn't want to get caught with a gun in Mexico and spend the rest of my life eating roaches in a Mexican prison. But, it struck me at the time that it would be possible to smuggle a nuclear weapon in without any difficulty. The rowboat was big enough for three people.
I still shudder to think how easy it is.
At any rate, Chavez is going to help Ahmadinejad cause trouble in this hemisphere. He is closing the Citgo gasoline stations in Texas that cannot be supplied with existing refineries, and he is selling the 41 percent joint interest in a Texas City, Texas, refinery (about 230,000 barrels per day) jointly owned with Lyondell Chemical Company. He is paring down his holdings, and at the same time freeing up his domestic refining capacity. I predict that he will begin supplying Iran with some of Iran's gasoline needs, as Iran is a net importer of gasoline.
Chavez is building an arms factory, after having taken delivery of 100,000 Russian rifles. He has an ancient border dispute in the east and a recent intelligence agency dispute with Colombia, and who better to train his army than Iran?
These two demons have a lot of business to do. And it's all about us.