The last two weeks have provided some object lessons in rallying rationality in defense of the realm of Western civilization, happy examples of both creative resistance to and triumph over the sanctimonious cant and devious practices of leftist elitism. First, fully 47 U.S. senators, all Republicans, had the character and resolve to sign onto an “open letter” to the ayatollahs of the Islamic Republic of Iran apprising the mad hatters that no bad deal agreed to between them and Obama&Co. would, by that fact alone, have lasting force and effect without the U.S. Senate’s proper consent, under America’s constitutional system. Reading between the lines: If Obama’s negotiating team, wittingly or unwittingly, agrees to a deal that would enable Tehran to develop a militarized nuclear capability, the U.S. Senate can and will withhold its consent to such a deal, effectively making it fully revocable once Obama leaves office. Continue reading →

If Benjamin Netanyahu is returned to the premiership of Israel after that nation’s elections on March 17th, the clock will start ticking on an epochal geopolitical showdown between the West and Islam. Not radical Islam, mind you, but orthodox Islam — the expansionist, totalitarian religio-political ideology embodied in the Qur’an and the Hadith (the sayings of Mohammed), whose aims demand the annihilation of Israel and the United States on the way to subjugating all the world’s peoples and forcing them to submit to the brutal dictates of the Shari’a (Islamic law).

The first act in this burgeoning Wagnerian extravaganza is the “deal” now being negotiated with Iran by the United States and several European powers for the putative purpose of slowing and restraining the Islamic Republic from developing nuclear weapons. America’s Anointed One claims the impending deal with Iran, only a few terms of which have been disclosed so far, will serve to restrict Iran’s ambitions and thereby safeguard Israel and other nations from having an atomic Sword of Damocles erected over their heads. But, whatever the actual terms of any such restriction and however effective they might possibly be, said regime will last but 10 years, after which Iran will be free to create as large a nuclear stockpile of weapons as it desires. We recall that, in 1938, Chamberlain and Daladier felt – felt, I say! — that Hitler’s hunger for foreign real estate would be satiated after all of Czechoslovakia was brought under Nazi rule. And, as some might now say, feelings are never wrong, doncha know? We well know differently, of course. Continue reading →

This week Jews worldwide will celebrate the folk festival of Purim, commemorating the rescue of the Jews of Persia by Queen Esther, herself a Jew, who alerted her royal husband Xerxes to the imminent murder of her people at the behest of the king’s prime minister, Haman. Xerxes intervened, tagged Haman as the real traitor to his rule, and had him hanged for his evil scheming. One day before this traditional celebration begins, the leader of the modern Jewish State will rise in front of our nation’s assembled national lawmakers to warn America and the world of the dire threat soon to be posed by Haman’s most recent incarnation, the Islamic Republic of Iran. That this simple impending event has sparked so much vitriolic controversy in the United States in recent weeks reflects the growing mistrust and alienation of Americans for the Obama administration’s stance and posture in Middle East affairs, among others. Continue reading →

This week, Islamism made two major advances in its war to recreate a grander caliphate – a global Muslim superstate that is strictly and astringently ruled by Shari’a, Islamic law, with all infidels either dead, driven out, or dhimmified. The capital of Yemen, Sana’a, has fallen to Houthi militia, Shi’ite extremists who are theologically aligned with the ayatollah cadre that rules Iran theocratically. The U.S. Marines at the American embassy were required to disarm themselves before being allowed to board private aircraft to leave the country. Until this rather ignominious collapse, Yemen was ruled by a pro-American government allied with the U.S. in the war against Islamist aggression. Not to be eclipsed entirely by Shi’a, a government military base in Iraq near the town of al-Baghdadi where 320 U.S. Marines are stationed came under a determined assault by Sunni Islamic State (IS) militants, led by suicide bombers. News reports claim that that battle reached within 7 kilometers (less than 4.5 miles) of the base before being blunted by Iraqi troops. Now the short-term big question is: What will happen to the Marines, relatively small in number and tasked only with training Iraqi forces resident on the base, if the base is eventually overrun by IS hordes? Based on IS’s well booked brutal and bestial behavior towards infidels thus far, a failure by Obama & Co. to make good a secure and complete rescue of these troops would send a cataclysmic shock wave through the American body politic. It would make our people’s reaction to the sight of a single dead American soldier being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu in 1993 a mere spark in the night. Continue reading →

At this past weekend’s National Prayer Breakfast, Master Moralist Obama took the occasion to admonish Christians not to a get on any moral high horse in their revulsion at and castigation of the Islamic State for its ongoing atrocities by recalling that the Crusades and slavery were also justified in the name of Jesus Christ. Apart from this comparison being invidious and inapposite based on guiding scriptural authority (more on that below), his assertion reflects a classic tenet of the Left’s catechism: That no single thought system, philosophy, religion, or even person is inherently morally better or superior than any other because, whatever the infraction or behavior being complained about, everyone’s either done it at some time in the personal or historical past or is currently doing it. Here, to generalize in this context, their key principle is: Because every religion has committed atrocities, there can be no modern moral accountability or odium heaped on any particular religion today that is a current malefactor. Claiming moral equivalence is the Left’s way of deflecting criticism of anyone, anything, or any activity that works to its political or social advantage but which evokes the outrage of all people who are capable of making rather basic moral distinctions based on time-tested humanitarian values. Hey, let’s not ever judge negatively or, to use a beloved mantra of the New Age, We’re All One — unless such judgments pertain to Israel, Christianity, the Constitution, or capitalism, to name a few acceptable demons. Continue reading →

The brutal murder-by-immolation disclosed this week of a captured Jordanian combat pilot by the Islamic State (IS) extremists presages a long needed shift in war policy towards this vicious nihilistic menace that has been scourging much of Iraq and Syria for more than a year. It is long past time that an international alliance of sane civilized nations freeze all assets and facilities acquired by IS and descend militarily in full force into the Mideastern desert no man’s land and mercilessly annihilate these barbaric miscreants to the last man. Continue reading →