Category: National

It’s not about Islam. It’s not about Islam. It’s not about Islam.

Of course it is.

But no one, from the president on down, can admit it — for obvious reasons. A billion obvious reasons.

Any religion that so self-righteously and definitively divides the world into believers and infidels is a problem. A big problem. It makes it all too easy to pervert in the name of doing unto infidels. And that’s us.

Moreover, Islamic societies have shown a nearly uniform inability to adapt well to the modern world. It’s past time to get over the Crusades — as well as the concept of women as chattel.

As a result, such sovereign societies are not among the world’s most successful — either as economies or democracies. Even the ones awash in oil are mired in corruption, feudal mores and skewed, monarchial priorities — and are running scared from Fundamentalists.

It’s a schizoid scenario that breeds internal unrest and resentment of the West’s culture and values — as well as specific jealousy of America’s economic success and military reach. And that’s just our Muslim friends, allies and “coalition” cronies.

Our Muslim enemies really hate us.

We in the West are resented for who we are and who we were — which doesn’t leave much wiggle room. Certainly not for infidels.

You better believe it’s about Islam — and it’s about infidels. It’s also about time we acknowledged as much.

For the longest time, it seemed the moral high ground in the blood-soaked, Israeli-Palestinian conflict had degenerated into an amoral crater large enough to accommodate both sides.

Where there are Hamas and Islamic Jihad; there were Irgun and the Stern Gang. Where there is an Intifada, there is an arrogant, provocative settlement policy.

But amid all the tit-for-tat violence and carnage, this much must be acknowledged.

Regardless of history, politics or injustices, nobody but nobody targets the innocent the way Islamic militants do. In Israel. In America. In India. In The Philippines. In lieu of civilized standards.

And having done so, proceeds to celebrate the heinous acts. Moreover, nobody recruits suicide bombers — with perverse promises of Paradise and posthumous family payoffs — the way Islamic militants do. And having done so, proceeds to venerate murdering “martyrs.”

Nobody considers discos, pizzerias and city buses legitimate grievance targets the way Islamic militants do. And nobody looks at “infidels,” however defined and rationalized, as fair game the way Islamic militants do.

And to think, this isn’t even “about Islam.”

The alarming increase in illegal immigrant smuggling from Cuba to the U.S. has resulted in hundreds of Cubans drowning en route to a better life. The ill-fated Elian flotilla was merely one of many. Just last month 30 fleeing Cubans perished when their boat capsized in the Florida Straits.

Encouragingly, both Cuban and American officials talk regularly and genuinely want to crack down on the despicable practice of trafficking in human smuggling. The devil, of course, is in the details.

Obviously, America’s “wet-foot, dry-foot” policy is a critical factor. In effect, this allows most Cubans who reach American soil by illegal means to avoid repatriation and eventually apply for U.S. residency.

Havana’s spin, reiterated recently by Cuban National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon, is that this Solomonic solution is to blame for the spike in human smuggling and subsequent tragic deaths.

Wrong. Disingenuously wrong.

Despite America’s 40-year legacy of a counter-productive, Cold War-era, embargo-driven policy toward Cuba, this charge won’t — or at least shouldn’t — stick. Granted, America has made it too easy to be scapegoated by Havana, but “wet-foot, dry-foot” isn’t, ultimately, responsible for all these tragic deaths at sea.

Ultimately, it is the life these people are fleeing from — even more than the promise of a better one — that is the driving force behind their perilous escapes.

No one has forced Fidel Castro to suffocate meaningful democracy and barely experiment with the demand-economy principles the rest of the world lives by. Those with ambition to better themselves are out of luck. The legal-tendering of the dollar has carved out whole new classes of relative “haves” and “have nots.” Global-village communication is a graphic reminder to many Cubans of all that they don’t have.

After two generations, the Cuban people know they can’t take revolutionary rhetoric to the bank and can’t take ration cards anywhere other than sparsely stocked, peso-only shops.

America’s policy toward Cuba has been nothing to be proud of for forty years. Havana’s policies toward its own people, however, have been shameful. And tragic.

It’s not hard to come across as the voice of reason when your opposite number is Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud “Lite” Selig. Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura personified that contrast the other day in his testimony to the House Judiciary Committee. He made some cutting comments about MLB’s absurdly inequitable anti-trust exemption, but cut to the chase when he noted MLB team’s outlandish penchant for “paying players more than they can afford.”

Selig’s show-and-tell appearance included the release of financial information showing that 25 of baseball’s 30 teams lost money this past year. Overall, pointed out the beleaguered Selig, the teams posted a combined operating loss of $232 million.

Interestingly enough, that’s roughly the size of the contract Alex Rodriguez signed with the Texas Rangers last year.

It’s not hard to come across as the voice of reason when your opposite number is Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud “Lite” Selig. Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura personified that contrast the other day in his testimony to the House Judiciary Committee. He made some cutting comments about MLB’s absurdly inequitable anti-trust exemption, but cut to the chase when he noted MLB team’s outlandish penchant for “paying players more than they can afford.”

Selig’s show-and-tell appearance included the release of financial information showing that 25 of baseball’s 30 teams lost money this past year. Overall, pointed out the beleaguered Selig, the teams posted a combined operating loss of $232 million.

Interestingly enough, that’s less than the contract Alex Rodriguez signed with the Texas Rangers last year.

“No one,” said former President Calvin Coolidge, “has the right to strike against the public welfare.” That sage dictum was applied to the air traffic controllers by former President Ronald Reagan. And it applies no less to the 240 striking New Jersey teachers– outraged over a sizable hike in their health care premiums — who were arrested for violating a back-to-work order.

The Middletown Township, NJ, teachers, who are no longer in jail, seemed to hail each other heroically upon their release. Maybe others felt similarly, but hopefully not.

Striking is, of course, a legitimate, albeit last-resort, measure in labor-management disputes. It represents leverage. Against a manufacturing plant or a newspaper or a clothing store.

But not against, for example, hospitals; police, fire and sanitation departments; or schools. Because the strike, in effect, is against those in need — patients, vulnerable homeowners, students.

The public, especially our children, shouldn’t be hostage to a collective bargaining process gone awry in bad faith and ill tempers. There is nothing “principled” — let alone heroic — in “standing up” for your rights at the expense of responsibilities to others. No number of impassioned, self-serving speeches changes that.

The real harm, however, is not in the two weeks of school that students missed. It’s the two weeks’ worth of cynicism and selfishness they witnessed and absorbed.Ultimately, a two-week hiatus from academics can be overcome. The same can’t be said for a two-week lesson in perverted principles and hypocrisy.

The U.S. is obviously in a zero-sum game with terrorists. The president has put every nation on notice that they are either “with us or with the terrorists.”

President Bush has been properly commended for his efforts at underscoring that America’s response to terrorist attacks are aimed at terrorists — not at Islam or Arabs. We don’t want a holy war, just a wholly justified military response to a despicable act of war perpetrated not by “warriors” but by craven agents of evil.

On the rhetoric front, we now need internationally respected Islamic clerics to step up and say what the president said — without qualification. In effect: “Those who pervert Islam through horrific murders and suicides deserve the harshest punishment and condemnation by Muslims.” And don’t stop saying it until this scourge has been vanquished.

America, however, only wins the war with evil if we are more committed to our cause — freedom and our way of life — than our enemies are to theirs, the destruction of same. To that end, it would be wise to remember:*How the Israelis took care of the Black September terrorists from the 1972 Munich Olympics. They painstakingly and methodically hunted them down and assassinated them. No headlines, no Muslimmania backlash. Of course, the sheer scope of the New York and Washington attacks and continued threats to the U.S. is far greater than what the Israelis faced, but the principle is the same. Not all of our commandos will be in fatigues.

*We are not the United-States-of-Hyphenated-America. We are Americans. Period.

*The critical issue with the media is not whether its members wear patriotic symbols, but that it remain mindful that in the global village, its broadcasts go everywhere.

*Never again should we refer to celebrity athletes as “heroes.”

*Should the Rev. Jesse Jackson ever make that mediation trip to Kabul, it must be with two provisos. His ticket is one-way and that he be accompanied in similar fashion by California Rep. Barbara Lee, the only member of the House who didn’t vote in favor of giving use-of-force powers to President Bush.

*There’s a lot to criticize about our culture, but that’s our call. Those who treat their women as chattel, dress them as speed bumps and enjoy a good public beheading haven’t earned that right. No more than those who believe executing the innocent punches your ticket to paradise and guarantees a virgin lay-away plan.

*America is well served by adopting contemporary counterparts of WW II “victory gardens” and war-bond drives. That means not being intimidated out of our routines. Loving and counseling our families; looking after our neighbor; doing our jobs; showing the flag; making purchases; riding planes; enduring inconveniences.

It’s zero-sum time.

President Bush is doing what he should in rallying the civilized world against terrorism. He’s assessing America’s full arsenal of carrots and sticks. Pakistan can attest to that. This is a zero-sum game and nobody draws a bye. The president effectively underscored that reality in his Thursday night speech to Congress, the American people — and the rest of the world.

While it was the U.S. that was specifically targeted on Sept. 11, all of humanity was attacked. More than 80 countries lost citizens; everyone lost a sense of civilization.

But while we ask others if they’re with us or with the terrorists, there is something else we must demand — and we must demand it of ourselves. We must be more committed to defending ourselves and our way of life than terrorists are to its destruction.

The ultimate mettle detector is in place. It already has yielded results; none more graphic than the heroism on daily display in New York. Not all are so noble.

When the House of Representatives approved the use of force by the president, the vote was 420-1. Normally that’s unheard of, de facto unanimity. Not so this time. How dare Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., vote against such a measure! Even if her Oakland constituency consisted of nothing but ethnic Afghani Quakers, Rep. Lee’s vote was an abomination. This was not the Gulf of Tonkin II; this was a morally justified, nationally necessary response to war, horrifically and despicably waged against America in our midst.

Nonetheless, the bipartisan vote was a strong signal to terrorists and civilized nations alike that as diverse as we are as a nation, we are united in our defense of ourselves and everything we value.

Now is a time for the media, which, on balance, has comported itself responsibly, professionally and even patriotically, to not yield to competitive instincts as America’s response plays out over these next weeks, months and years.

We need to know what’s going on and how we can help. We don’t, however, need to know, for instance, where Vice President Cheney is at a given time, what circuitous routes Air Force One takes out of obvious national security concerns or commando-deployment details.

More to the point, we Americans aren’t the only ones in the global village watching the network and cable news programming.

ABC anchor Peter Jennings, for one, has been a reassuring rock. And there have been others. Campbell Brown, an NBC White House reporter, however, was the antithesis with cheap-shot, smug speculation about President Bush not returning to Washington immediately after the terrorist attacks — and the implications for his “legacy.” It was beyond poor taste.

It’s now critical for Americans to finally see past the divisiveness that has long been the by-product of our politically correct infatuation with diversity and its resultant sense of separateness.

A hyphenated America, whether in the form of Irish-Americans, Jewish-Americans, African-Americans, Arab-Americans, Cuban-Americans, Disabled-Americans or Lesbian-Americans cannot be as united as it needs to be. Bring back the melting pot; hold the salad bowl.

And now is not the time for finger-pointing and scapegoating. Yes, coordination among the C.I.A., the I.N.S. and the F.B.I. would have been a good idea, and, yes, airplane and airport security could have been much better. We can fix that without rounds of recriminations.

We also need to walk that fine — but definable — line between the legitimate, prudent profiling of people at critical security links across this nation and hysterical, hateful behavior toward innocent American Muslims. Many of these people are here by choice, not just by the luck of birthright. The overwhelming majority are solid citizens with a profound sense of family and the highest regard for education and work ethic. They are loyal Americans who happen to look different. Their Islamic religion preaches peace. Its perversion is not their fault.

And speaking of religion, evangelical yahoos need to dismantle their moralizing and demoralizing pulpits that masquerade as bull horns of intolerance. Their fire-and-brimstone, “we-had-it-coming-because-of-loose-morals-and-gay-coupling” message must yield to those — across the spectrum of religious denominations — who can actually help America in its hour of need.

And we certainly don’t need to be lectured to about our corrupt culture by Islamic extremists and fatwa fanatics who treat women as chattel and mark their calendars for upcoming public beheadings.

No, America isn’t perfect, just perfectly vulnerable to the agents of evil. We may be too good for our own good. We’re going to change some things about America, and make it more secure, but we won’t change the essence of who we are and what we stand for.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said it best. “We can change the way we live, which is unacceptable, or change the way they live. We choose the later.”

Amen.

God bless America.

While the U.S. continues to bolt and reinforce the recently slammed-shut barn door of airline security and government surveillance, it must come to grips with the most pragmatic of realities regarding terrorism.

Are, as has been intimated by government officials, “all options” for dealing with terrorism on the table? And if so, we all know what that means. It means the use of tactical nuclear weapons. Hopefully that won’t be the case, for that unbottled genie is everybody’s nightmare. Prometheus unbound rescues no one.

The president, however, is certainly taking the right approach by trying to “rally the (civilized) world.” To date, we’ve received a lot of sympathy cards and rhetorical support from everybody but Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. The time to put up is now.

Here, however, is a crucial element in any plan to lead a crusade-for-humanity against the forces of evil and their sponsors. We must have a universal definition of “terrorist.”

Try this one: “Anyone who targets innocents or treats them as mere collateral damage to advance a cause.”

Necessarily absent are attempts to value-judge “causes.” That goes for Chechnyan terror in the subways of Moscow or its counterparts in Belfast, Jerusalem, Beijing, Manila, Jakarta, Cairo, Bogota, Havana, New York or Washington. The greater good of civilization takes pragmatic priority over what is a truly “just” cause, even though we all know one when we see it.

But a car bomb that takes out civilians as a means to bringing down the Castro government is no less treacherous and condemnable than a suicide bomber in an Israeli disco. The only ideology that counts is agreement on the elimination of the scourge that is global terrorism.

Next time, we have to figure, it won’t be an airplane but a cruise liner, city bus or maybe anthrax in the water supply.

Then there is this — and it’s no less touchy than the matter of nuke use. Whatever we do in the way of a coordinated military, diplomatic and economic response to terrorists and those who harbor them is not a response to the root cause of evil acts of treachery and murder. Muslim fanatics, steeped in envy and enmity, hate what they see in us — as in unfettered secularism, hegemony, wealth, power and a crass and crude culture. We’ll do anything, they would submit, for money and oil.

But not enough to warrant the execution of our innocents.

That would take our inextricable role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that is the epicenter of those terrorist shock waves that have now reached continental America. At some point, and for obvious reasons it can’t be now, we need to ask if we have signed a suicide pact with Israel.

Asking that now, of course, is to invite denunciation as a capitulating, fair-weather friend who yields to intimidation.

The broaching of this subject, however, also needs to be on the table of options. This isn’t cut-and-run time. The state of Israel, a staunch ally, is not up for brokering.

What it arguably is, however, is time to evaluate our hermetically-sealed bond with Israel, including its powerful U.S. lobby, and the policies most inimical to Palestinians. Have we, or have we not, reached the point of bloody tit-for-tat in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza that renders “who started it” the mootest of points in an ever-escalating spiral of violence and virulence? From the Irgun and the Stern Group to suicide bombers, there’s enough blame to go around through more than a half century.

The British, like the French in Indo-China, managed to extricate themselves from Palestine two generations ago. The U.S. ought to at least consider deviating from the status quo — with or without the help of the United Nations, with or without the consent of Israel.

I know you all know the feeling. The collective revulsion at watching the horrific events of Tuesday unfold with mouths agape and fists clenched. Waves of shock and anger. And a visceral, sickening sadness. And tears. And more anger. That outrageously obscene footage of Palestinians celebrating in the West Bank and Gaza. Celebrating the execution of thousands of innocent people. Beyond barbarity, beyond belief.

America’s response to a declaration of war on this country and our way of life, as we’ve heard President George Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell pledge, will be appropriate. As in, we trust, swift, sure and final. Not just, we assume, the symbolic lobbing of cruise missiles into some Afghani caves and tents.

We owe a proper military response, first and foremost, to ourselves. And to those who died — died doing their jobs in the world’s most productive economy — or died trying to save others. We also owe it to most of the rest of the world, who need us more than they know. This was a cowardly attack on civilization and humanity.

If we, as the planet’s lone super power, don’t do something, it won’t be done, and the forces of terrorism win by default. We didn’t win the Cold War only to falter against Muslim martyrs queuing up for paradise and a side order of virgins.

Here, then, is America’s World War III policy, though not in the calm calculation of State Department vernacular or the soaring rhetoric of a JFK inaugural speech: “If you aid, abet, plan or carry out terrorist acts against the U.S., you die.” Proscriptions against assassination don’t apply. These are military targets, as was Hitler in his bunker. To quote Joe Louis, who knew a thing or two about taking out someone, “He can run, but he can’t hide.” It went for Billy Conn; it goes for Osama bin Laden.

And for sovereign states: “If you harbor, you get hammered.” Don’t even try to hide behind some gauzy shield of geo-political piffle or self-serving, craven pap about Fundamentalist dynamics. You can have all-Allah-all-the-time and still not be enabling jihad junkies. We’ll help you, but you’re accountable. It’s not an option. No more than evil is an option.

And for airline passengers to, from and within the U.S., don’t even think of complaining about “profiling.” Sorry, but we have plenty of other places to celebrate diversity. And for minimum-wage, minimum-training, maximum-attitude security personnel, start looking elsewhere for employment. Your job will be federalized, professionalized and standardized.

Perspective, however, can be an early battle casualty. Pearl Harbor, for all its parallels and infamy, was war the old fashioned way. It was a lot easier to declare — and implement — war on an Empire. Bin Laden isn’t Tojo. And this just in: the United Nations sends a sympathy card and NATO says it stands with us. France has our back.

Cynicism, however, is a self-destructive vice in a time of national emergency.

It’s said that Israel is the only country that can’t afford to lose a war. It would cease to exist if it did. Well, the U.S. cannot afford to lose this one. It’s zero-sum time. Fortunately, we can rally the civilized world — and that’s still most of it — but only under two conditions.

First, we must agree on a universal definition of “terrorist.” Try “Anyone who targets innocents or treats them as mere collateral damage to advance a cause.” We can’t be value-judging causes — whether it’s Chechnyan terror in Moscow’s subways or its counterparts in Belfast, Jerusalem, Beijing, Manila, Jakarta, Cairo, Bogota, Havana or New York. The greater good takes pragmatic priority.

Second, we must be more committed to our cause than our enemies are to theirs. We, as Americans, need to jettison our heritage hyphens and defend freedom and the most productive nation in the history of the world. They, the despicable forces of evil, seek to destroy that. Ultimately, that’s a lost cause. And we can ensure it. See above.

God bless America.