The Other Shoe

President Bush was greeted by one of the practitioners of the welcoming religion of peace in Baghdad yesterday. His press conference was disrupted by a journalist who threw his shoes at our President. The reporter is being questioned by the Iraqi President's guards, but thousands of Iraqis have rallied demanding the shoe tossers immediate release. He merits no consideration or special dispensation because of his status as a member of the fourth estate. Did the absolutely innocent Daniel Pearl get favorable treatment from the Allah akbar crowd because of his press card? The sabots were thrown at the US from conservative hawks who pushed for war, at Quaker pacifists, at crazed Code Pinkers, at our very ideals of tolerance, pluralism, and liberty. Almost everyone in the Muslim and Arab worlds despise us. The only place where there is consistent gratitude and respect for America and Americans is the Kurdish area of Iraq. Even Iraq's oil minister called for $80 a barrel oil to demonstrate the true desire of the Iraqi government to punish America for Iraq's liberation. The Mumbai murderers were reported to have demanded British and American passport holders come forward for what no doubt, if any had complied, would have meant their deaths. In the first Gulf War, President Bush's father liberated Kuwait and earned mostly the admiration of the al Sabah family, but that has not stopped Kuwatis from joining jihad against the West with two Kuwatis numbering amongst the suicide murderers of September 11, 2001. In Afghanistan, virtually any US-inflicted casualties are called "innocent civilians" often engaged in "wedding parties" by their treacherous, ungrateful Afghan mates. Harry Truman said if you want gratitude in Washington, "get a dog". America can no longer afford the cut-throat loyalty of our so-called Arab and Muslim "friends". In the Dar al-Salam, they think Americans are all dogs. But remember out here in the Dar al- Harb, we will never be your dhimmi. We have canine teeth, and we bite back.

Cats Jump Twice

Tomorrow commemorates the sixty-seventh anniversary of the day that shall live in infamy. Since then, trillions of dollars have been spent by the US on defense and intelligence gathering. This was to little avail against the machinations of a handful of cave dwellers from a remote corner of Afghanistan. There were the obligatory hearings and a commission report, but basically no one ever had to take the responsibility for the failures that left America open to attack. One can not be sanguine particularly after Mumbai with a novice taking office that the malevolent force of expansionist Islam might find an opening and Pearl Harbor us in the near future. Hirohito and Hedeki Tojo did not know of dirty bombs or nuclear weapons, Osama does. Eternal vigilance has been called the price of freedom. This has never been more true or more essential to our very survival.

Facing the Music

The atavistic Wahhabi former rulers of Afghanistan banned among other things music. They forced men to grow beards, but their most fierce animosity was reserved for women. I read on ABC's morning crawl that Taliban had been detained for an acid attack on women and girls who they had caught in the cardinal offense of education. The punishment for the Jihadi perpetrators of this crime against humanity should be swift and certain justice perhaps the same as the Nazi war criminals at Biskupia Gorka. But then a more sardonic and long lasting consequence came to mind. The acid throwers should be subjected to hearing the collected works of Andrea Dworkin read to them by Pashtoon speaking females who resemble the arch-feminist and are unveiled and clad in Western dress twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week for the rest of their lives. Maybe an Irving Berlin score could accompany the readings.