September 25, 2006

No Apologies

If this seems a little NROver the top, so be it, but there's so much link-worthy stuff over there today, let me combine a few into one post:

Byron York revisited Richard Clarke's book after Bill Clinton constantly cited it in his own defense in his hyper-defensive Fox News interview, and says maybe Bill shouldn't count on Clarke's account to challenge the perception that he lacked the will to fight Islamist terror.

Clarke’s book does not, in fact, support Clinton’s claim. Judging by Clarke’s sympathetic account — as well as by the sympathetic accounts of other former Clinton aides like Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon — it’s not quite accurate to say that Clinton tried to kill bin Laden. Rather, he tried to convince — as opposed to, say, order — U.S. military and intelligence agencies to kill bin Laden. And when, on a number of occasions, those agencies refused to act, Clinton, the commander-in-chief, gave up.

Clinton did not give up in the sense of an executive who gives an order and then moves on to other things, thinking the order is being carried out when in fact it is being ignored. Instead, Clinton knew at the time that his top military and intelligence officials were dragging their feet on going after bin Laden and al Qaeda. He gave up rather than use his authority to force them into action.

Victor Davis Hanson says the Islamists have earned the "f-word"

Make no apologies for the use of “Islamic fascism.” It is the perfect nomenclature for the agenda of radical Islam, for a variety of historical and scholarly reasons. That such usage also causes extreme embarrassment to both the Islamists themselves and their leftist “anti-fascist” appeasers in the West is just too bad.

First, the general idea of “fascism” — the creation of a centralized authoritarian state to enforce blanket obedience to a reactionary, all-encompassing ideology — fits well the aims of contemporary Islamism that openly demands implementation of sharia law and the return to a Pan-Islamic and theocratic caliphate.

In addition, Islamists, as is true of all fascists, privilege their own particular creed of true believers by harkening back to a lost, pristine past, in which the devout were once uncorrupted by modernism.

Jay Nordlinger interviews Donald Rumsfeld:

I mention the simple fact that a lot of people think we’re losing in Iraq — including people who wish us well.

Rumsfeld: “Yeah, the people who are there don’t. Our military people don’t feel we’re losing. The people we’re up against don’t feel we’re losing. And they feel they’re having troubles. They’re getting a lot of people killed.” They are also worried about the “adverse reaction” to the killing of many Muslims by Muslims. Look, says Rumsfeld: “If the measure of success or failure depends on how many Muslims they can kill, they can kill a lot of them. It doesn’t take a genius to kill people, and they can do that. But when you read what they’re writing and what they’re saying to each other, they don’t feel they’re winning.”

And finally, Bill Crawford has another in a series of Good News From Iraq articles. You just might not see this stuff anywhere else, and it helps counter some of the media drumbeat of doom and gloom.

Posted by dan at September 25, 2006 10:39 AM