Michael Totten writes that there are a lot more moderate Muslims than we think.
I blame the media, which rewards the radicals with lots of (biased) news coverage, and ignores those who speak out and fight against them. I think, like Michael, that it’s appalling that they pay any attention at all to CAIR. They need to actively seek out true moderate representatives of Islam.
With all the hue and cry about Korans in toilets in Guantanamo, where are all the staunch defenders of the Geneva Conventions now?
The terrorists are operating within civilian areas, many times with the actual assistance of these civilians, and more often than not with their tacit approval. Brace yourselves for the palestinian propaganda offensive going into overdrive, including stories about civilian deaths, many of which may not be true.
Here’s another point:
We are lectured a great deal about the importance of democratizing the Middle East as, somehow, a strategy to defeat terrorism. I do not want to reargue this issue or make too much (again) of the fact that popular elections have thus far succeeded in empowering terrorists.
My question for the moment is this: Does this democratization ever entail any responsibility? The Palestinian “civilians” were given a choice in 2006, and they chose to elect Hamas — a choice that was overwhelming in Gaza, where the terror organization — having ousted the more “moderate” terror-mongers from Fatah — now rules. If the civilians, eyes wide open, opt to be led by a terrorist organization whose chief calling card is its pledge to destroy Israel (a sentiment shared by a large majority of the “civilian” population), how upset are we supposed to get when the said civilians get caught in the cross-fire that is provoked by the savages they elected?
I have always thought that one of the aims of the Israeli pullout of Gaza was to demonstrate that the Palestinians are incapable of forming a functioning state, and of having someone accountable when Israel is attacked. If that was the goal, it seems to have succeeded. Hamas has declared war (or actually, Hamas has never not been in a state of war with Israel, since the destruction of Israel is one of its primary purposes), and now it will have to accept the consequences.
Hamas is blatantly violating just about every one of the Geneva Conventions, I suspect, but I fearlessly predict that only Israel will be charged with “war crimes.” We know that the world will claim that the death of every innocent civilian in Gaza, among whom these war criminals hide, will be Israel’s fault. No one, after all, can ever violate the Geneva Conventions except for the US and Israel, even when they don’t.
Hmmmm…I wonder what the ICRC has to say about this?
[wandering over and reading]
The most recent release related to the subject is from Thursday, in which it simply tells both sides to “use restraint” against killing civilians. It says nothing about military operations among civilians in Gaza, or indeed anything specific at all, about anyone’s behavior. I thought that they were supposed to be the defenders and upholders of the Conventions? Why can they not denounce this?
[Update a little while later]
I just reread the release at the ICRC site, and I just can’t get over it. Let’s just unpack this one graf:
Numerous rockets have been fired at the Israeli towns of Ashkelon and Sderot, hitting civilian areas and landing inside a hospital compound. At the same time, the Israel Defense Forces have carried out several air strikes inside the Gaza Strip. On both sides, there have been civilian fatalities and injuries.
Really?
“…rockets have been fired, and ‘at the same time’ the IDF have carried out several air strikes.” Surely they don’t mean literally “at the same time”? As though both Israel and Hamas decided to bomb babies, just for the hell of it?
All right, no doubt by “the same time,” they are simply expressing an equivalence between them, not literally saying that the events were simultaneous. Of course, the reality is that first the rockets were fired, with the deliberate intent of killing Israeli civilians to the maximum degree possible, given the crude aiming capability of the rockets, which was followed, afterward by air strikes from Israel whose purpose was to take out the facilities that were launching the rockets in order to prevent further rocket attacks.
This moral equivalence, with no mention whatsoever of the daily, ongoing war crimes by Hamas, is simply nauseating. The ICRC may have moral standing in the world, but it has none with me.
[Update on Sunday afternoon]
A good point in comments. The release isn’t even neutral. “Rockets were fired” (passive voice–who knows who fired them? Maybe they fired themselves?) versus the active and specific “IDF carried out air strikes.”
[Update a little later]
Here it comes. The Saudis (who else?) are accusing Israel of war crimes. And not just any war crimes, no. Nazi war crimes.
And a bad word for the state that is actually committing war crimes.
[Via LGF]
Chair Force Engineer writes about it:
In a true competition for transporting astronauts to low earth orbit, NASA would be beaten hands-down by SpaceX at this stage in the game. SpaceX has a capsule with more astronauts (seven versus six,) a cheaper booster (Falcon 9 vs. Ares I,) and a faster schedule.
The only thing SpaceX doesn’t have is thousands of jobs, and access to billions of dollars of taxpayer money.
[Update about 5 PM EST]
Mark Whittington continues to live in a fantasyland on this subject:
My sense is that under the scenario, COTS will be cancelled and the manned space program will consist of astronauts going in circles around the Earth forever and ever.
At least until the Chinese land men on the Moon. Then there will be a rather rude awakening.
Like it or not, the only hope for near term commercial space flight in LEO is that NASA continues to explore beyond LEO.
COTS is helpful, but in no way essential for commercial human spaceflight.
SpaceX was developing the Falcon 1 and 9 before COTS, and it would continue to do so in the absence of COTS. OSC might not move forward without COTS, but Dragon development will continue, Falcon 9 development will continue, and Atlas V upgrades will continue. The real market is not COTS, which is a sideshow from a payload standpoint, but Bigelow’s private space facilities, which were also moving forward before COTS, and would continue to do so in its absence.
I simply don’t understand Mark’s blindness to these realities that intrude so rudely on his theories, and his continuing obtuse insistence that commercial space is doomed without COTS, other than some sort of faith-based belief that it is not possible to put people into space without government funding.
And the notion that China is going to land a man on the moon any time within the next twenty years, at their current pace of development (far slower than Apollo was) remains laughable. So is the notion that they would suddenly do so out of the blue and that it would be a “rude awakening.”
This isn’t the Sputnik era, in which one can slip a satellite on a missile, in a world in which there was no space-based surveillance. There will be no surprise. If the development pace of the Chinese program picks up, it will be quite obvious, given the need for either a very large Saturn-class vehicle or (if they’re smart) orbital infrastructure, long before it actually happens. We will have plenty of time to respond, from a policy perspective, should we decide to.
CFE has it right–the race is between NASA and the private sector, not between slow-paced, expensive and moribund government space programs.
Rob Coppinger has the story.
I wonder what that propulsion system is? I hope it’s not a hybrid. I also wonder what the lift capacity of White Knight Two is.
Some thoughts from Jonah.
And I thought this bit, while not directly pertinent to the point, did seem pertinent to some recent discussion here.
The reaction from so many liberals to William F. Buckley’s death is a good case in point. How many of them insist that even though Buckley recanted his earlier views on race that these views are all important and eternal when it comes to assessing the man? But the fact that the founding fathers of Progressivism and modern liberalism were chock-a-block with imperialists, racists, eugenicists, fascist-sympathizers and crypto-fascists is not only completely irrelevant but tediously old news? Am I alone in seeing a disconnect here?
No. No, you’re not.
It would be a waste of money otherwise.
Hezbollah says that the US warship off the Lebanese coast is a theat. I wonder if the fact that it’s the USS Cole is sending a subtle message as well?
[Update on Saturday]
The Saudis must think that something is up, too:
Future Television, privately owned by Saad Hariri who heads the majority anti-Syrian bloc in parliament, said Saudi Arabia had advised its nationals to leave Lebanon ‘as soon as possible.’
Do they know something we don’t?
A week-long debate over at the LA Times (similar to the one that Homer Hickam and I had on space last fall).
Well, despite this, I don’t think so. I think that it’s pretty settled English common law that the offspring of two citizens of a nation is a natural-born citizen of that nation, regardless of the location of birth, and particularly when it occurs on that nation’s territory, even if not within its borders.
It would explain a lot, though.
Is Obama demagoguing NAFTA just to win the nomination? Will he continue to do so in the general election, if he gets the nomination?
Well, at least I’m glad to see that he’s not as bad on free trade as his campaign rhetoric suggests. But one wonders what other flowery things he’s saying that he doesn’t really mean.
Is Obama demagoguing NAFTA just to win the nomination? Will he continue to do so in the general election, if he gets the nomination?
Well, at least I’m glad to see that he’s not as bad on free trade as his campaign rhetoric suggests. But one wonders what other flowery things he’s saying that he doesn’t really mean.