Academia Amok

Once again, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is right on target. Check out his recent Jerusalem Post article on Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's upcoming visit to Columbia University (click here). Here are some of his important points:

In reference to Columbia University President Lee Bollinger's assertion that the invitation was in keeping with, "Columbia's long-standing tradition of serving as a major forum of robust debate."

Shmuley notes:

Of course, that is nonsense. Does anyone seriously believe that Columbia would invite a politician or scholar who denied that American slavery took place, or alleged that its effects on African-Americans was benign or exaggerated? Would Columbia host a Grand Wizard of the KKK who called for African nations to be wiped off the map?

And yet, Ahmadinejad is far worse. Not only has he denied the Holocaust and called repeatedly for Israel's destruction, he has gone beyond words and worked hard to put his plan into action.

As for double standards, he recalls that:

TWO YEARS ago, Harvard President Lawrence Summers lost his job for insinuating that women were not as intellectually competent in math and science as men. Yet Ahmadinejad presides over a government that brutally suppresses women, inflicting corporal punishment if they so much as go out in the street without a head covering. But none of this has prevented him from being feted by American academia.

Most interestingly, he clearly shows that the world (and sadly, in this particular case, academics) are directly complicit in providing cover for this nutcase and his dangerous viewpoints.

When I read about the Holocaust, I often ask myself how the world allowed Hitler to rise to prominence. After all, humanity bore continuous witness to the hatred and venom that spewed from his evil tongue against Jews. Did the nations of the world not isolate him as soon as he began frothing at the mouth?

But in light of Ahmadinejad being invited, on his last visit, to address the Council on Foreign Relations, and to speak at Columbia University on this trip, I now get it. Whatever Hitler said, nobody took him seriously. They treated his rantings as a tasteless form of benign entertainment. They found him darkly amusing. It took the incineration of six million Jews and the destruction of much of Europe to discover that, ultimately, the joke was on us.

I guess I should no longer be surprised that Abu El-Haj was recommended by Barnard (Columbia's sister institution) for tenure.

Hostage Aftermath

Between preparing for Passover and celebrating the holiday, the last few weeks have been hectic and I have not had the time to sit down and blog. I have been meaning to write about the Iran standoff and the hostages, but the truth is that there was not much to actually write about. Clearly the "press conferences" and "heartfelt" letters from Seaman Turney fooled absolutely no one in the West and for that reason I did not feel like perpetuating the farce by writing about it. And then, in what many took as a complete surprise, Ahmadinejad released the hapless Brits from their captivity with a well-timed, "Open Sesame!"

I have already spoken about the background to this entire episode in my last post, so I thought I would provide a summation in five parts in this one:

I. Iranian Actions

Personally, I found it interesting that from the first televised clip that was aired by Iran on their Arabic language TV station Al Alam, they focused in on the only female among the 15 hostages, seaman Faye Turney. Clearly, this was a bid for sympathy and an attempt at leverage in the negotiations with the British. No doubt the Iranians thought that spotlighting the lone female would pressure the British government to make concessions and apologize. No doubt they calculated that the British public would not be able to withstand either the humiliation that was being meted out to her nor would they have the stomach to stand tough when a woman was involved.

Basically, Turney became an Iranian weapon that was supposed to soften up the Brits. I think that this was a miscalculation on their part, because it only angered the Brits more and provided the sailors with more sympathy than they would have had otherwise. In effect, she became the poster child for this incident. That she was the centerpiece of the Iranian propaganda effort is evidenced by the fact that she was paraded in a headscarf and wearing baggy Iranian clothing. If ever there was proof needed that the wearing of the veil is a coercive act, then this was certainly it. The fact that she was presented with a chador was clearly the Iranian way of showing that she had been truly captured and was under their control ("domesticated").

It demonstrated that, like a bird being banded by biologists, she was the object of Iranian control fantasies and being used to send the message that the Iranians were calling the shots. This was further reinforced when she appeared the following day donning a Palestinian style headscarf - a potent symbol of the political theater that was being played out and representative of the degree to which the Iranians felt she was their most central propaganda tool.

Unfortunately for the Iranians their desire to show that they were in control backfired and came across as both heavy-handed and creepy. As an aside, I think that the fact that she was always shown with a lit cigarette in hand belies a desire to repulse the Iranian (and Middle East) people and to prevent them from overly identifying or sympathizing with her. One can only imagine how a male, let alone a female viewer in a place like Saudi Arabia or Pakistan digested those images. Perhaps as a morality tale of what happens to women when they occupy traditionally male roles?

II. British Reaction

It was as a Jew that I was particularly interested in what the British public's reaction to this entire episode would be. I say this because I believe that the British, perhaps more than any other group in Europe, have so completely turned their backs on their colonialist era and its legacy and embraced the notions of multiculturalism and the political correctness that goes hand in hand with it that they have became the epicenter - if not the source of - anti-Israel sentiment among the Left in Europe.

While Blair may have maintained the "special relationship" between Britain and the US, the British public has abandoned this path and are more likely to count Israel and the US as the source of all the world's evils than Iran. Unfortunately, the British public did not fail to disappoint. In editorial after editorial, the public and the media's ire was directed squarely at the Blair government and its "overly cozy" relationship with the Bush administration. As more than one British paper noted, none of this would have ever happened if the British had not gotten themselves involved in the "illegal" Iraq war and that no matter what the British hostages were going through it would most certainly never be half as bad as either Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib.

Clearly it was too much to expect that the reader’s comments to these articles would espouse British pride and patriotism while addressing the manifold inaccuracies of moral equivalency and false comparisons. After all, those serving time in Guantanamo were not carrying out a UN mandated mission, nor were they even in uniforms, for the most part (and thus not covered by the Geneva conventions). Based on the many anti-British comments written by ordinary Brits, it did not even seem to matter that the British soldiers were forcibly abducted from Iraqi waters. This simple fact is far less surprising if you believe that all "truth" is relative or that all governments lie and therefore the actual facts of the matter are irrelevant.

In the end the British proved no better than the Spanish, who allowed a terrorist act to affect the outcome of their national elections or the Italians, who have proven that they will unreservedly negotiate with terrorists and pay handsome ransoms to release their captured citizens. Actually, in some ways the British were far worse, because they could not even muster a wee bit of indignation.

As an aside: None of this bodes well for Alan Johnston, the BBC reporter who now has the dubious distinction of being the journalist who has been held hostage for longer than any other foreigner in Gaza. That he lived in Gaza and supplied the West with unabashedly favorable reports about the Palestinians does not seem to have inured him from this sort of treatment. The fact the British public could care less about their kidnapped soldiers, would seem to imply that journalists should go at their own peril. Apparently the message has been assimilated by the press corps and they are no longer venturing into Gaza.

Latest reports state that Johnston may already be dead – a fact that would fly in the face of countless news reports and op ed pieces that attempted to downplay this incident as an attempt to obtain government jobs or loot. While one might think that such a kidnapping would turn British public opinion against the Palestinians, I will certainly not be surprised if in the end it will all be either Israel's or America's fault. Almost on cue, the British National Union of Journalists voted today to boycott Israel!

III. Diplomacy

More than anything else, the Bush administration is routinely accused of being incapable of conducting diplomacy. I think that this is a gross overstatement and over-simplification of how diplomacy works. Certainly, this administration does not engage in the kind of “feel good” diplomacy that was common of the Clinton era, but don’t let that fool you into thinking that there is no give and take in all of these crises. I also would point out that although the Clinton diplomatic style was more camera friendly and photogenic, it was no more effective at achieving its goals than the Bush method. Besides, Clinton was also not averse to committing ground troops or lobbing missiles across the world when deemed necessary.

In the case of the British hostages, there are clear signs that the Bush administration played the cards that it was dealt with a relative degree of aplomb. For starters, the US administration provided its British ally strong verbal support, yet the President said absolutely nothing until a week had gone by. If nothing else, this shows some discipline and an understanding that words could escalate matters precipitously. When the President did speak, it was at the point where the British had decided to ratchet up the pressure a bit. Perhaps for this reason it is unsurprising that he call the British soldiers by the politically charged term “hostages”.

Lest you think that I am giving Bush way too much credit for NOT saying something or for using the word that everyone was thinking, I think we should look at what was happening on the ground at the same time. First off, the Iraqi government suddenly chose to release the sole Iranian in its possession. While the Iraqis claimed that this had nothing to do with the ongoing crisis, this seems more than a little disingenuous. The timing was more than a little suspect and there was no reason that this person could not have been released at a later time. That the Iraqis were the ones to announce this provided the British and the Americans with the cover (plausible deniability) they needed to maintain that they were not negotiating with the Iranians on this matter. Together with an unwritten promise that the Iranians in American custody would receive consular visitation rights, this was the carrot.

At the same time, the US ordered the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf from the Eastern Mediterranean. For those unfamiliar with the Nimitz, it is the flagship of a class of supercarriers that are the largest warships ever built in history. Moreover, these ships do not just travel along alone with their airplanes, but are accompanied by a large armada of ships called a “strike group”. The announcement that the Nimitz would join two other supercarrier fleets in the Persian Gulf should clearly be seen as a message to the Iranian establishment that there was a time limit to their shenanigans. Clearly, this was the stick.

I would like to point out that this is not the first time that this type of dynamic has played out. One of Al Qaeda’s most consistent demands in the run up to 9-11 was that the United States needed to remove its troops from the Arabian Peninsula. For years the Saudis and Americans said that they would do this and that the US troops were only there to protect the Saudis from the Iraqis. Yet, on the cusp of the Second Iraq War the US moved its Central Command to Qatar – farther from the fighting. The only reason that I can think of is that this was meant to be a concession to Al Qaeda meant to undercut the argument that they were only acting out of defense of Mecca and Medina.

Incidentally, the British were also willing to play a bit of hard ball with the Iranians as was evidenced by the firefight that took place in the shadow of the Iranian consulate in Basra. The subsequent Iranian use of firecrackers in front of the British embassy in Tehran should also be seen as part of this same tango.

IV. Aftermath

Now that some time has passed between the benevolent “gifting” of the British hostages by Ahmadinejad, two things have become clear – this episode was meant to send a chill down the spine of the Western powers and that the stakes in any future confrontation are much higher.

Only days after the release, the Iranians cemented their position by stating that they had initiated large-scale uranium enrichment in defiance of the international community. Clearly the purpose of the hostage-taking was meant to serve as a reminder that if the West wants to confront Iran on the nuclear issue through international bodies such as the UN, that there will be a price to pay. I find it hard to believe that the Iranians were unaware that the British would undertake the revolving presidency over the Security Council that began on April 1 and that this will be immediately followed by the US presidency starting in May.

In terms of future confrontations, the death of several British soldiers in Basra on the day that the hostages were released was doubtlessly meant primarily to reinforce this point to those in decision-making posts while further undermining British resolve. Since then, it seems that both sides are happy to continue this covert war and both the actions and allegations streaming across both sides seem to indicate that we are closer to the beginning than to the end. At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, I think that events as disparate as the continued unraveling of Gaza, Hizbollah bravado, Syrian preparations for a summer war, protests in Basra and Moqtada al Sadr’s pressure on the Iraqi government all have many causes but primarily one root.

V. Philosophizing

I think that the Iranian willingness to once again take hostages can only be understood as representative of a worldview that is based on philosophical perspectives that Westerners find completely foreign. This is not meant to imply that Westerners or Western powers have not or would not be able to take hostages, but it does imply that hostage-taking has become the signature Iranian tactic and together with suicide bombing has become identified with the Middle East.

If anything underlines the difference between Western philosophic thought and non-Western philosophies, it has to do with ideas of liberty and the notion of individualism. Whereas in the West personal freedom is a value that needs to be cultivated and protected, in non-Western countries like Iran and much of the rest of the World, the individual’s desires are subsumed by the needs of the group. In fact, Mohammad Khatami, the former President of Iran has identified this distinction in his writings on political philosophy and criticized what he identified as the Western “unbridled individualism” and the, “belief that humans and their needs and desires are of central importance at all times.” From Khatami’s perspective, the very real threat of this philosophy lies in, turning “human beings into a new religion”.

Yet the danger inherent in the loss of individuality can most clearly be seen in the case of suicide bombers, who literally negate the individual for the sake of their societies in the way that certain species of ants and bees sacrifice themselves to protect the hill or hive. The taking of hostages actually accomplishes two interrelated goals – effacing the individual while using the individual as a weapon.

The former is the result of the hostage taking and effectively denies each individual their identity as they become subsumed to the group and are reconfigured as “hostages”, or the “the Americans”, or whatever tag their captors decide to pin on them. The latter results when the hostages are paraded before the "neutral gaze" of the cameras. Westerners watching on TV intrinsically identify with the hostages, imagine in their minds what they must be going through and feel empathy. For non-Western people who think in essentialist terms, the differences are chasms that far outweigh the similarities. Basically, tribalism trumps humanism.

From a strictly tactical point of view, the Western preoccupation with the well-being of individuals is a liability in a time of war. From a strategic perspective, it is the Western focus on each and every individual that is the source of its strength and innovation. After all, it is individuals unfettered by custom and tradition who will not only fight but also innovate to preserve their freedom.

Iranian Deja Vu?

The L.A. Times ran an article yesterday about the recent capture of British troops in the Shatt-al-Arab titled, "Capture of British sailors is all too Familiar" that starts with the words: "A disconcerting sense of deja vu surrounds Iran's capture of 15 British sailors and marines on smuggling patrol Friday in the Persian Gulf." Of course, the only deja vu that the article relates has to do with the capture and detention of British soldiers in 2004. As the article goes on to explain:

Three years ago, eight British servicemen traveling in small boats up the Shatt al Arab waterway near the Iranian border with Iraq found themselves surrounded by members of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard, arrested and subjected to a three-day ordeal that included mock executions and a visit to what they thought would be their graves. After a few days, they were released.

Well, it's been three days and the 15 Brits are still in Iranian custody. If anything, it looks like the Iranians are not stepping back and the latest development involved the Iranian Foreign Minister Mottaki claiming their illegal entry into Iranian waters and the possibility of trying them for espionage in Iran. So far the British have not been granted access to their soldiers (as would be expected in the case of POWs) and it is not at all clear that they will be released anytime soon.

It will be interesting to see how Great Britain will deal with this crisis. So far, Prime Minister Blair has convened his COBRA team (an acronym for Cabinet Office Briefing Room A) and has told the Iranians that, "there is no doubt at all that these people were taken from a boat in Iraqi waters" and that he wants the Iranians to understand that the Iranian actions were, "unjustified and wrong".

There is plenty of deja vu in the recent events, but it has little to do with the capture of British soldiers three years ago. Three years ago, the Iranians were in a far weaker position strategically and were quite happy to assist the US and UK in making Iraq safe for Shias. Three years ago discussions on Iran's nuclear ambitions had started, but it was clear that after the fiasco of Iraqi WMDs everyone was going to play the Iranian round "by the book" - even if it means years of cat and mouse games and IAEA inspections. Three years ago Mohammed Khatami, the Iranian reformer was in power and now the hard-line Ahmadinejad is the President of Iran.

No, the deja vu stems not from 2003, but rather from last summer's kidnapping of Israeli soldiers on the Lebanese border by Hezbollah. Like last summer, this recent kidnapping came on the eve of a United Nations vote for sanctions on Iran with regard to their non-compliance to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (of which they are signatories). Of course in the case of Israel, Hezbollah also managed to kill a few soldiers while lobbing a few katyushas into Israel. In both cases, Hezbollah and Iran crossed internationally recognized lines and captured soldiers in uniform. At the time Israel was roundly accused of over-reacting and using disproportionate force. It will be interesting to see how the British and the international community decide to handle this crisis.

In any case, I have no doubt that this accounts for the recent Iranian histrionics surrounding President Ahmadinejad's visa to attend the UN sanctions vote in New York. By blaming the US for being slow in getting his visa processed he has an excellent excuse for not going abroad at a time when he needs to be in Tehran to manage this crisis and leverage these British pawns into tangible concessions for Iran. No doubt the Iranians are sending a message with regards to the recent disappearance of former Iranian Deputy Minister of Defense, Alireza Asgari in Ankara or the detention and arrest of five Iranian mission staffers in Erbil for allegedly aiding Iraqi insurgents.

The decision to target Britain and not the United States is also hardly arbitrary. At this point the Iranians are still trying to avoid a confrontation with the US while at the same time demonstrating their military capabilities. Because the British are militarily stretched to the limit, it means that they have few choices but diplomacy. Moreover, the Iranians have probably rightly interpreted the British as the weaker link in the trans-Atlantic alliance. It is no secret that the British people have no stomach for war and are already finding ways to blame all of this on Bush and the "American embrace". On the other hand, it will be interesting to see if, together with the kidnapping of BBC reported Alan Johnston in Gaza on March 12, will initiate a sea change in British public opinion regarding the Middle East.

Then again, who knows? Maybe "Bush's poodle" can bite!

The Holocaust-Israel Non-Link

The recent "Review of the Holocaust" conference held in Iran (12/11/06) was a shameful attempt at holocaust denial that is symbolic of the growing union of Islam and fascism. To their credit, even the Iranian leadership realized that this conference and the loonies that it attracted hurt their cause and made them look like unreasonable and unlettered fools. It was at this point that they adopted the insidious "fallback" position that they were not actually questioning the existence of the Holocaust, but rather pointing out the use of the Holocaust to justify the establishment of the State of Israel. Perhaps because this was the position presented by the anti-Israel and ultra-Orthodox Jews who shamefully attended the conference, the Iranian hosts hoped that this would provide them with a stamp of authenticity.

The reality is that the establishment of a Jewish homeland in the area of the British Mandate was agreed upon in 1922 by the international community through the League of Nations. That this was 17 years before World War II started and was 23 years before the full extent of the Holocaust was known, demonstrates how chronologically challenged this contention is. Yet this does not address the underlying implication that in 1947, when the United Nations voted on Resolution 181 and the partition of Israel into a Jewish and Arab state, that the Jews were "given" a state because of European guilt regarding the Holocaust.

A recent translation by David Aisner of, “Hama’avak al Eretz-Yisrael” (“Struggle for Palestine”), by Shmuel Dotan (Published by Israel’s Ministry of Defense, 1973. 7th Edition 1988) uses primary source material to definitively prove that this linkage did not exist at the time that the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) made the recommendations that led to UN Resolution 181. Here is an excerpt from pp 370-1:

The UN decision [of November 29th 1947] provided international sanction to the idea of a Jewish state and aided in the complete victory of the Jewish people in that endeavor. The decision encouraged the Yishuv (Jewish settlement) to remain strong in the face of an impending war, and spared her from having to wage a long struggle with Britain. It was a victory of at least one, perhaps two elements of the Zionist information campaign to influence the UN – “need” and “ability”.

Proponents of partition generally believed that it was within their power to prevent a bloodbath in Palestine and save the small developed Jewish Yishuv from the hands of an underdeveloped and hostile Arab majority. They were convinced that the small Jewish state would provide a haven for a few hundred thousand displaced Jews, thereby solving the “Jewish problem”. The Jewish demand for recognition of Jewish historical rights to Palestine was not authorized in the decision; the results of this refusal on the part of the UN will surface in future UN-Israel relations, especially after 1967. The UN also refused to adopt the Zionist claim that there is a permanent link between the “Jewish problem” around the world and the Palestine question. To the contrary, it turns out that the Holocaust of European Jews had very little influence on the members of the UN, and was almost never mentioned during deliberations on the Palestine question, save for the representatives of the Soviet Union and Poland, whose primary motivation was their desire to distance Britain from Palestine.

Of course, the Holocaust provided an easier “climate” for the Zionist information campaign to try to influence the UN, but it did not succeed in influencing the considerations taken into account by UN statesmen. In the end, it was the Latin American block of the UN that was the overriding factor in securing the results of the UN vote of 1947. This UN block did not view itself responsible in anyway for the tragedy of Europe’s Jews. It seems then, that the extra emphasis found in literature regarding the supposed link between the Holocaust and the renewal of Jewish sovereignty in Palestine, is an attempt to create a myth and the results of that myth.

This attempt flows from the difficulties endured by the generation that witnessed the Holocaust, and that generation’s inability to examine this traumatic event in its entirety. This is especially the case when considering how that generation bore witness to the very weak condition of the Jewish people before and during the Holocaust and how difficult it was for that generation to then recognize that they now posses some measure of strength to be considered or reckoned with by other nations. Support for Zionist interests by the “world’s nations” after WWII has been naturally described, and with great exaggeration, as a type “compensation”. In truth, the Holocaust did not advance the Zionist cause, but rather it undermined one of its core philosophical arguments – its right to speak on behalf of Jewish millions who either wanted to or were being forced to leave their countries of origin due to anti-Semitism.

The Holocaust weakened the Jewish state which arose after termination of the British mandate and reinforced the Zionist decision to relinquish claims to a larger territory in order to save the Jewish people, since the vast majority of potential Jewish immigrants were murdered. The Jewish refugee question did not play a major role in the decision making process at the UN as thought by some researchers. The countries in which Jewish refugees were located and which sought to have them removed, were not members of the UN. The role of the United States in the UN vote has always been greatly exaggerated.

In 1947, the US had already been “entangled” in what was transpiring in Palestine and was subjected to internal political pressure from American Jewish groups influenced by the Yishuv’s struggle against the British. At the same time, a political vacuum formed in the international community due to a feeling of doubt as to whether or not the UN can actually resolve international issues of the day. Under these circumstances, UNSCOP took upon itself a far more decisive historic role than was intended with its inception. Among the considerations of whether or not to support UNSCOP’s recommendation, was the desire to stand behind a successful
international resolution that would strengthen the UN’s integrity.

UNSCOP recommended partition, which under the circumstances of 1947 was a pro-Zionist solution, because it evaluated that Britain was failing in its ability to govern the region and also because it considered the Yishuv ripe for independence and that it would be wrong to place it under the rule of a hostile and underdeveloped Arab majority. The collaboration between the Arab leadership and Nazi Germany during WWII was also considered in the decision and proved to impact the Arab interest negatively. But this consideration was related specifically to WWII, not the Holocaust. The fact that Yugoslavia did not support the pro-Zionist plan, even though Haj-Amin Al-Husseini tried to enlist the Muslim minority there at the time to assist the Nazis, shed light on how difficult it was to try and link WWII to the Palestine question after the war.

The Jewish refugee issue did influence the United States, but primarily between 1945-1946 during the first winter after the war. It also influenced the Anglo-American committee after its visit to the displaced persons camps. Even so, the refugee situation was prevented from being used as a reason to adopt a clear pro-Zionist position to the point of recommending the rise of a Jewish state. UNSCOP was influenced very little by the Jewish refugee situation.

In the mean time, the refugee situation underwent significant changes. Many of the refugees scattered or left the displace persons camps to illegally immigrate to Palestine. In 1947, generally speaking, the camps were populated with new displaced persons, most of which were “escapees” from Eastern Europe. These refugees were in better physical condition and more resilient than their predecessors. UNSCOP was influenced by the illegal immigration phenomenon. But it was justly viewed by the committee (UNSCOP) first and foremost as a revelation of the Jewish struggle for independence, not as a derivative of the Holocaust. A number of witnesses claimed to UNSCOP, and very convincingly so, that illegal immigration to Palestine would have been even stronger if not for WWII or the Holocaust, because in their opinion there was no doubt that the distressful condition of Europe’s Jews in the 1930s would have only worsened in the 1940s even had the attempt to genocide or WWII not occurred.

Under these circumstances, it would seem that the reservoir of candidates to attempt illegal immigration to Palestine would have been far greater in number and in strength than what it was after the war. More than that, in 1947 the Holocaust was far less needed by the Zionist information campaign to make its case to the UN, than just one or two years prior. Conciseness of the Holocaust among the Jewish people and worry expressed by the “nations of the world” over the fate of the Jewish state will only arise in the 1960s. Even the Zionist push for statehood did not “need” the Holocaust. In fact, the push for statehood was sufficiently strong in 1937 and even more solidified in 1941, in essence before the Holocaust even began.

Putin's Path

The Washington Times in a James Zumwalt opinion piece has raised the heat in the debate started by Putin in the recent Munich security forum. At the forum, Putin stated that,

"almost uncontained use of [U.S.] military force" is causing other nations to seek out nuclear weapons to defend themselves.

This is a bit ironic if you consider the fact that Russian nuclear scientists have been instrumental in helping Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and North Korea develop the necessary technology to make weapons-grade uranium while the Russian government has kept these countries supplied in the scud missiles that could be used to deliver their payload. This too at a time when the Russian government has all but announced its intention to opt out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) so that it can once again threaten Central Europe in a balance of power game that directly threatens American interests.

As Zumwalt rightly points out:

Turning to the substance of Mr. Putin's charge, it is clear he is uninhibited by facts. His suggestion that nuclear weapon-seeking countries like Iran have felt intimidated by U.S. use of force ignores an issue of timing. Iran's quest for this capability was ongoing for 18 years before we knew about it -- when there was no basis for such intimidation. Despite Islamic extremists having taken U.S. diplomats hostage in Tehran, America's sword of retribution was never unsheathed. Similarly, there was an absence of intimidation when North Korea mounted its latest nuclear push years earlier as the United States failed to even bare its teeth.

Iran certainly has not suddenly developed the urge for nuclear technology - it has been playing cat and mouse with the IAEA for the better part of a decade. The fact that it's research facilities are scattered and buried deep underground and far from prying eyes, is a testament to the fact that the Iranians learned the lessons of the 1981 Israeli bombing of the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq. The US was unable to prevent Pakistan and India from developing nuclear arsenals and was systematically duped by the North Koreans who were clearly working on their own timetable all along.

If anything, it seems that the world is heading into a period of instability as America's misteps in Iraq and the War on terror catch up with an American public clearly lacking a desire to continue the fight. This not only emboldens America's enemies to start acting out in new new and frightening way, but creates bedfellows and threatens to solidify the international system. The outline of these emerging fault lines are becoming clear, but only time will tell how seismically destabilizing they will be.

As for the article's contention that Russia will soon be overun by Muslims, I completely disagree with the author because, for starters, I don't believe that Islam is any more monolithic than Communism was. There are definitely many Muslims in Russia, but they are the type that can be found drinking vodka and enjoying sala (fatback) with their Russian neighbors. If anything, Chechnya has proven the futility of Muslim "resistance" in Russia and clearly demonstrates that "even Muslims" have a pain threshold. It also shows that Russians are more determined and are far less inhibited than Western Europeans and Americans when confronted with existential threats.

Suffer the Children?

A Jewish school in Vienna expelled the children of a fervently Orthodox Jew who attended a Holocaust denial conference in Iran.

See "Friedman’s Kids Expelled from Jewish School"