Cascajun

SouthComm comments on, and links to, a recent Fresh Air with Terry Gross program, noting that it’s value “is the window it provides into the cookie-cutter liberal mindset with which Terry Gross approaches the world.”

I suppose “cookie-cutter” is one way to describe the mindset. Frighteningly obtuse would be another.

The program, titled A Conservative Perspective on U.S.-Iran Relations, is an interview with Michael Ledeen. I don’t have copies of transcripts, but the following is an accurate summary of one segment that illustrates my point.

Ledeen has long held the opinion that Iran has been at war with the United States ever since the Iranian Isamic Revolution of 1979. Gross challenged that assertion and Ledeen responded that there was a 27-year history of Iranian attacks against the US to support it.

Gross probed further. What attacks are you referring to? The recent attacks on US soil were not committed by Iran. What attacks in the last 27-years?

Ledeen promptly began listing:

• the 1979 hostage taking in Tehran;
• the 1983 bombing of the US Embassy in Beirut (63 deaths);
• the 1983 bombing of the US Marine Barracks in Beirut (305 deaths);
• the 1996 bombing of the Kobar Towars in Saudi Arabia (20 deaths).

Gross quickly interrupted, “But that’s just 4 attacks, none on US soil.” Ledeen correctly stated that there were many more attacks to be listed. However, I was quite astounded at Terry’s obtuse remark, as if the number of attacks has anything to do with the issue at hand.

Only 4 attacks and none on US soil?

So what! Each of those attacks alone was an act of war carried out by an Iranian sponsored proxy. Each resulted in the deaths of both American and foreign citizens and military personnel. That’s an act of war.

It would be interesting to hear Terry explain to the relatives of those dead American military personnel why any one of those attacks, much less all of them, are not illustrative of the state of war that exists between the US and the clerical facist regime presently ruling in Iran.

GUANTANAMO BAY, Aug. 27 — Dozens of enemy combatants were set free unharmed after being forced to participate in a gunpoint Baptism service lead by a US Marine Corps chaplain.

It’s obvious that is made up. It would be labeled an outrage by the MSM. But somehow, the NYT thinks gunpoint conversions to Islam are harmless.

Melanie Phillips, a columnist for London’s Daily Mail and the author of Londonistan, on the Islamofacist threat:

The Islamic jihad is a nonnegotiable position. The Islamic jihad says, We’re in the business of destroying Western civilization, of overturning Western society, of destroying America, of destroying Britain, and turning them into Islamic societies, and of murdering large numbers of people to that end. Now, that is a nonnegotiable position. And so we cannot possibly, in my view, adapt, or adopt, the same techniques that we have used in the past towards discrete, particular terrorist programs, which are a very different matter.

I think what we’re facing with the global Islamic jihad is something we’ve never faced before. It’s not war as we understand it between states, but it’s certainly not terrorism as we understand it. And this is the problem we face. We haven’t got the language to describe this. We’re facing a new phenomenon.

Follow the link to read the full transcript. There’s quite a discussion of balancing freedom of speech and religion with fighting terrorists whose religious beliefs are antithetical to fundamental Western values that enable freedom.

Michael Totten writes about Katyusha rocket attacks in Kiryat Shmona.

Rockets rained down on Kiryat Shmona almost constantly. There were no soldiers, no tanks, no artillery cannons, no bases, nothing of military value in that city at all. None of the journalists I met wanted to linger there for very long. But we were all over the army bases because our odds of being hit by a rocket were merely random, the same as if we were out among cows in the farmland. Haifa, which is away from the border, was hit more often than bases that are right next to the border and therefore easier targets.

He’s got lots of photos, too.

Glasses full and smiles wide, here we come baby! Freedom, divorced from some deeper purpose, is the way to play this game called ‘Lifestyle’. That’s where evolution has taken today’s predominant strain of Western culture.

Until a deeper sense of purpose is found, the West will not muster the commitment necessary to survive.

Bruce Schneier, noted technology and security expert, on airport security:

It’s easy to defend against what the terrorists planned last time, but it’s shortsighted. If we spend billions fielding liquid-analysis machines in airports and the terrorists use solid explosives, we’ve wasted our money. If they target shopping malls, we’ve wasted our money. Focusing on tactics simply forces the terrorists to make a minor modification in their plans. There are too many targets — stadiums, schools, theaters, churches, the long line of densely packed people before airport security — and too many ways to kill people.

Security measures that require us to guess correctly don’t work, because invariably we will guess wrong. It’s not security, it’s security theater: measures designed to make us feel safer but not actually safer.

I spent Saturday afternoon on Lummi Island at the 2nd Annual Reefnet Festival. Perhaps the oldest net fishing method known to man, reefnet fishing was practiced by the Indians of the Puget Sound region from canoes using cedar bark rope and marsh grass nets. According to our tour guide and a local reefnet fisherman, there are only 11 licensed reefnet rigs operating in the Northern Puget Sound region.

Reefnet rig on Lego Bay, Lummi Island, WA

What else has the Times lied about?

Dave Sifry, founder and CEO of Technorati, was interviewed on NPR’s Weekend Edition. He says the blogoshpere continues to double in size every 5 to 7 months, averaging 175,000 new blogs each day.

It says that fundamentally, we are social creatures. […] The real hope is that this will lead to a reinvigoration of civics.

On the Virtues of Killing Children, a post at Blackfive is a hypothetical debate between Grim and a gentle soul.

“It is our love of these innocents that endangers them. If we did not care if children died, they would be in little danger.”