Fox News covers this story: the rest of the media seems to be intent on covering it up.

Hamas's TV station, "Al Aqsa TV" (aka The Squatters Mosque Station) is teaching kids all about how they're going to have a glorious uprising, kill the jews, murder anyone who isn't a totalitarian islamist, etc... and they're doing it with a Mickey Mouse lookalike.

Europe just gave these disgusting terrorists 60 million Euros in aid.

Bush has greenlit sending them money as well.

I can't be alone in thinking that as long as this kind of stuff goes on, they don't deserve one red cent.

Conservative Dinesh D'Souza wrote a widely disdained book called The Enemy At Home (The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11) in which he outlines the role that America's social liberalism played in the attacks of 9/11. As one might expect, it was received with great hostility among the left. It also, however, with little exception was met with derision by the right. The only thing surprising to me is Dinesh's surprise at the right's reaction, expressed in a four part series in the National Review where he complains about being silenced:

I expected, in this book, to stir the angry passions of the Left. Any book with the subtitle “The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11” cannot expect to be well received by leftists. Sure enough, the New York Times and the Washington Post have raged against my book. Alan Wolfe portrayed me as a follower of bin Laden, and a senior editor of Esquire even threatened to fight me and send me to the hospital. I am constantly crossing swords with leftist professors and pundits who combine small-mindedness with viciousness, and so this line of attack was entirely expected.

Much stranger have been the petulant, even belligerent, attacks from the Right. [...] What I say may be flawed or wrongheaded, and I am happy to learn from my mistakes, but why the savagery of the attacks? What heresy have I committed that the angry men of the Right have drawn their daggers against me?

Mr. D'Souza needs to find himself some new friends. Somebody, somewhere along the line needed to pull him aside and say that this book was publicly going to sting the right as much as, if not more than, the left. But unless D'Souza is being disingenuous with his surprise, nobody did. He's surrounded himself with yes men or a rather questionable ideological cocoon. Maybe what he said truly needed to be said, but he should not have been surprised at the reaction.

Conservatives have spent the last five years arguing against the proposition that 9/11 was provoked by our own behavior, specifically our support for Israel and our imperialist tendencies. Even if that argument is completely wrong, and I don't believe that it is, conservatives have a great deal invested in that argument and are not going to change their minds simply because we can say it was provoked by the our American opponents.

The best response I have read, to date, has come from Jonah Goldberg:

It needs to be said that the problem with D'Souza's case is one of emphasis. If one were to make a list of important reasons why the Muslim world or Islamists in particular want to kill us, just about every reasonable person would put the D'Souza thesis on the list, though partisans of particular schools might rank it higher or lower depending on their agendas. But very few would rank our alleged pagan depravity at the top of the list. And virtually no one, save D'Souza himself, would say that our pagan depravity is pretty much the entire list. [...]

There's something about The Enemy at Home that gets the Irish up, even in a guy named Goldberg. I can criticize and complain about my brother all I like, but if my brother bothers somebody outside the family, well, that's just too bad. Similarly, Ted Kennedy may or may not be a Caligulan carbuncle, but if the jihadists want to behead him for it, they'll have to get through me first. In short, if our debauchery fuels Islamic terrorists to kill us, the blame for that still resides entirely with the terrorists. One can wholeheartedly agree that some Americans make poor use of their freedom, and that certain behavior shouldn't be promoted, but that's our problem. And if it makes it harder for us to make our case to the Muslim world, then harder it must be.

Omaha, Nebraska's got an interesting new chain of gas stations going up: "Terror Free Oil".

The group responsible also has a website.

These occasionally pop up, with some regularity. I still don't buy from Citgo, because their oil comes primarily from Venezuela, and whether "Citgo USA" is an American corporation or not, they have ties to Hugo Chavez that I don't want to support.

And the connection between many Middle Eastern oil exporters, and money that's gone to fund terrorist groups, has been examined time and again.

However, the problem is that someone - somewhere - is going to buy the "terror" oil, even if we don't. Oil's a globally scarce commodity, and shifting who you buy it from might not help a whole lot. For instance, embargoes on Iraq didn't change much, and trying to embargo Iran wouldn't do much because they sell mostly to Russia, China, and states in that area (one of the reasons Russia and China are willing to overlook the insane Iranian quest for nuclear weapons is that if sanctions were put in place, they would be the ones impacted most because they are the ones who'd have to be searching for new oil suppliers).

I support them, in theory. In practice, however, "only" buying from certified terror-free places would be an amazing trick to pull off.

US, UAE postpone trade talks after DP World furore

A day after Dubai Ports World said it would cede control of the six ports, sparing the Bush administration a showdown with Congress, officials said the trade negotiations with the Gulf state had been postponed.

No date has been set for the next round of talks, which had been scheduled for next week in the UAE, said Neena Moorjani, spokeswoman for the office of the US Trade Representative. [...]

House of Representatives Speaker Dennis Hastert said the postponement was wise coming just a day after DP World's pullout.

"Probably it would be a good time for both countries to kind of step back and evaluate a little bit. We'll move on from there," he said.

Burning Allies -- and Ourselves

The ports deal was part of the UAE's embrace of things Western. Wednesday night, I traveled with the minister of higher education, Sheik Nahayan bin Mubarak, to the dusty city of Al Ain to attend a Mozart festival at which the Vienna Chamber Orchestra performed. And I visited the American University of Sharjah, created nine years ago as a beacon of liberal arts education. On a wall next to the chancellor's office is a photo of the twin towers in New York, taken by one of the students on June 8, 2001. "There are no words strong enough to express how we feel today," reads a statement signed by UAE students. [...]

Arab radicals will be gloating, admonishing the UAE leaders, "We told you so." But officials here recognize that they're in a common fight with us against al-Qaeda. And unlike some Arab nations, the UAE really is fighting -- reforming its education system to block Islamic zealots and taking public stands with the United States despite terrorist threats. They have created one of the best intelligence services in the Arab world, and their special forces will be fighting quietly alongside the United States in Afghanistan tomorrow, and the day after.

President Bush tried to do the right thing on the Dubai ports deal, but he got rolled by a runaway Congress. The collapse of the deal was a measure of Bush's political weakness -- but even more, of America's traumatized post-Sept. 11 politics. The ironic fact is that the UAE is precisely the kind of Arab ally the United States needs most now. But that clearly didn't matter to an election-year Congress, which responded to the Dubai deal with a frenzy of Muslim-bashing disguised as concern about terrorism. And we wonder why the rest of the world doesn't like us.

Arab Firms May Reconsider U.S. Investments

Neena Moorjani, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Trade Representative said Friday in Washington that both sides in the free trade talks needed more time to prepare and she refused to say whether the postponement was related to the ports issue.

UAE government officials could not immediately be reached for comment on Friday, a weekend day in the Mideast. But UAE Central Bank Governor Sultan Bin Nasser Al Suwaidi was quoted Friday as saying the move by U.S. lawmakers to block DP World's port takeover could harm chances of resolving final issues holding up the pact.

"It is something that doesn't reflect well," Al Suwaidi said of the controversy, according to the local paper Gulf Today.

In Dubai and elsewhere in the Gulf, the controversy was largely seen as reflecting an anti-Arab bias. DP World's concession was likely to solidify that belief. [...]

"It's a sobering moment," said Eddie O'Sullivan, Dubai-based editorial director of the Middle East Economic Digest. "People are going to have to be much more careful. There's a fear they (members of Congress) may move on to other targets in the Arab world. If it happened once it can happen again."

Investors and businesses in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia will be reviewing portfolios for U.S. holdings that could spark a similar uproar in Congress, O'Sullivan said.

"Most of (the holdings) are in dollar-denominated assets. They'll want to see how vulnerable it is to the U.S. Congress," O'Sullivan said. "It'll be more difficult to finalize an investment proposal that involves an American bank or an American asset."

Considering how effective the UAE's embrace of trade was in winning us over, no one can particularly blame them for their sudden lack of enthusiasm for trade, much less assisting our armed forces and helping us track down terrorists.

Such an amazing victory for national security this is.

Continued:

Port Deal's Collapse Stirs Fears of Repercussions in Mideast Ties

"I think we are all very grateful that the government of U.A.E. has taken this statesmanlike step," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters on her plane traveling to Chile.

The United States will now do "everything that we can to continue to strengthen" ties to the United Arab Emirates, Ms. Rice added.

But even Mr. Bush could not completely dismiss concerns that there could be repercussions in the United Arab Emirates and other Middle East countries over widespread suspicion that anti-Arab bias lay at the center of the Congressional opposition to the ports deal. In a speech to newspaper executives in Washington, he said he was "concerned about a broader message this issue could send to our friends and allies around the world, especially in the Middle East."

Business leaders decry Dubai decision

On Thursday, The Hill, a newspaper that closely covers Congress, quoted "a source close to the deal" who described members of Dubai's royal family as furious — "They're saying, 'All we've done for you guys, all our purchases, we'll stop it, we'll just yank it,' " the source said.

The UAE's main trading relationship with the United States is the purchase of Boeing airplanes.

Last year Emirates Airlines of Dubai ordered 42 long-range 777 wide-body jets, worth $9.7 billion. Boeing is pitching Emirates to order 50 of its new 787s and also its enlarged 747-8 jumbo. Etihad Airways of neighboring emirate Abu Dhabi ordered five 777s the previous year.

Boeing said its orders aren't threatened. "Nothing has been done or said since the ports controversy erupted that would indicate to us that our relationships with customers in the UAE have been damaged," said Boeing spokesman Tim Neale.

The important thing to remember in all this, though, is that we got to stick it to a country that doesn't like the western world as much as we would like it to!

Yay!

Q: There has been a lot of talk and objections to giving administrative control of our ports over to a company of the United Arab Emirates. As far as Middle Eastern countries go, of course, the UAE has been one of the most capitalist-minded and more uniformly supportive of our War on Terror than just about any other save Israel. So the question is whether, considering UAE's relative support for us and the fact that our government will still be controlling customs, is there a more clear way of demonstrating (a) how little faith we have in our customs systems and (b) that no matter how much any Middle Eastern country resists the anti-American tide over there, as long as they are Arabs and Muslims we will view any and all of their kind with abject suspicion?

A: No.

Bonus Loaded Q & A:

Q: How do you reward a nation that is surrounded by hostile states, hosts your armed services in said hostile region, has been threatened by your mortal enemy for being too friendly to you, put its citizens in mortal danger when traveling throughout the rest of the Middle East, helped facilitate the CIA's infiltration of a terrorist's network, hosts port calls for your military, has embraced trade and capitalism moreso than almost all of its neighbors, and tightened its bank regulations in response to 9/11? [1] [2]

A: Equate it with a terrorist state. [3]

LA Times writer Joel Stein is being raked over the coals for saying that he does not "support the troops":

I'm not for the war. And being against the war and saying you support the troops is one of the wussiest positions the pacifists have ever taken — and they're wussy by definition. It's as if the one lesson they took away from Vietnam wasn't to avoid foreign conflicts with no pressing national interest but to remember to throw a parade afterward.

Blindly lending support to our soldiers, I fear, will keep them overseas longer by giving soft acquiescence to the hawks who sent them there — and who might one day want to send them somewhere else. Trust me, a guy who thought 50.7% was a mandate isn't going to pick up on the subtleties of a parade for just service in an unjust war. He's going to be looking for funnel cake.

Many on the right are almost gleefully appreciative of the club he's given them. I haven't really seen the left's reaction. The political fallout (which, from an unfamous talking head in a forgotten newspaper, will be nil) isn't what interests me. What interests me is that philosophical dilemma Stein brings forth.

There are, I suppose, two main reasons to oppose the war in Iraq.

The first is tactical. Raiding Iraq was the wrong thing to do because it distracted us from the war on terror, increased instability in an already unstable region, and has generally made us more vulnerable security-wise and not less. It is extremely easy for these people to say that they oppose the war but support the troops. It's not that they disagree with the US's aims as the things Bush has talked about have an appeal to both the left and the right. Throwing out tyrants is a good thing. Democracy is a good thing. They may harbor a deep mistrust of the messenger, but not a liberal I have met is in favor of tyrants or against democracy in the abstract. So these people can quite easily claim that they think that Iraq was a grave mistake, but hope that we can make the best of it. Or these days earnestly want us to just cut our losses and come home. So no problem there.

The second main reason to oppose the war in Iraq is moral. Whatever Hussein may have done does not warrant a pre-emptive invasion against the wishes of the UN. Tyranny is preferable to going to war for cheap mineral goods and/or to line the pockets of oil fatcats. The good that might come from saving lives in Iraq may be outweighed by its encouraging of further foreign policy adventures in Syria and Iran. According to this thinking, the world would truly be a better place if the United States lost. The hegemony would be humbled. We may even look inward at our own failings. The money spent on the military can be better spent elsewhere. Victory in Iraq would cost us more than it would get us, materially perhaps but especially morally.

This second group's ability to credibly claim that they "oppose the war" but "support the troops" is quite tenuous and the claims themselves disingenuous. For this group to achieve their ends, our troops will have to fail. That's not supporting the troops. Not actively hoping that they die does not constitute support. The military rank-and-file's continued support of Bush even suggests complicity. You may, like Joel Stein, be uncomfortable with it, but if you think that the United States is clearly in the moral wrong here and yet you hope they win, then you are morally confused, morally unserious, or morally irreprehensible.

Presuming:
(A) that John Kerry had won the 2004 Presidential Election, and
(B) that, acting on the same information that President Bush has at his disposal, had kept our troops in Iraq and done things mostly the same way;

Answer the following question: what percentage of the current Democrats/War Protesters would still be protesting, and what percentage of the current hawks on the Republican/Conservative side would be protesting instead for some reason?

Bonus Points: What does this reveal about the state of current politics?

Wandering through the Washington Post the other day, I happened across an interesting article/opinion column (not sure how to classify it) on Israel's pullout from Gaza.
It was interesting to start with, not because anything in it was unexpected, but because it was written by a Palestinian.

Re-read it a couple times. Much of the "woe is us" mentality readily apparent. Much of the standard variety blame games. One bit struck me:

I ask him about the job creation programs sponsored by the Palestinian Authority and some international organizations. These temporary, low-paying jobs are just "painkillers," Ala'a said; they're mostly useful "just to keep people's mouths shut." Ala'a is a supporter of Hamas because its Islamic charities provide food, education and medical services to many refugee families here. "Hamas provides not only political alternatives, but economic ones also," he says.

Much has been made by politicians grandstanding on the Israeli/Palestinian issue on the so-called "cycle of violence", in which they claim that one side or the other (usually, Israel) is required to simply sit back and take repeated attacks on the chin as a "gesture of good faith", because the other side will always "respond" to an attack. Many times it's also used as an epithet trying to emphasize how sad things are in the region.

Allow me to put forth another version of the "cycle of violence", one which makes more sense to me. It works like this: Hamas gets up in the morning and hates Israel. Hates Israel so much, in fact, that killing Israelis is secondary to the livelihood of the Palestinian people.

So Hamas gets up and shoots a few rockets at Israel, sends in a few suicide bombers, shouts Allahu Akbar a few times, and before you know it there's dancing in the streets and someone's passing out candies to kids because they "struck a blow" by lobbing in ordnance that killed random Israeli civilians. And a few hours later, wouldn't you know, Israeli troops are lobbing missiles back or coming through the streets looking for the terrorists (Hamas) who are responsible. And since there's been a suicide bombing and rocket attack, Israel locks down their border, and goods don't flow, and workers can't cross over.

And so in a day or so, Palestinians are miserable. They don't have jobs anymore, the money supply dries up. People get hungry. And Hamas comes back, because they see an opportunity. They can hand out a few loaves of bread, shout "we are protecting you from the Occupation", fire their guns into the air, and gain popularity. And they repeat the process: shoot the Israelis, make sure the border stays closed up or locked down, or at least on heightened security, let the people starve, come by with a few loaves of bread, give a sermon about how Hamas are "saving" the Palestinian people...

Nevermind that had Hamas not attacked in the first place, the Palestinians would still have jobs, would not be worrying about Israeli missiles or troops, and would be eating real meals rather than the lousy loaf of bread Hamas is handing out. Because by this point, all the Palestinians have been fed for years is the Hamas propaganda.

That's the cycle of violence in a nutshell. A really cynical ploy, based on keeping Palestinians down for the political goals of Hamas - because the last thing Hamas or any of the other terrorist groups needs, even the Palestinian Authority themselves, is a HAPPY Palestinian populace.

However, in anticipation of one comment: no, the common suggestion doesn't work. It doesn't work for Israel to just leave their border open. Why? Because if they do, we're going to see more buses bombed and more innocents killed by suicide bombers. And they have every right to do what they can to keep their own citizenry alive.

In reference to Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a fallen soldier that's been stalking President Bush as of late, the Esteemed Houston Chronicle said thus:

Bush has not yet found it in himself to meet a grieving mother or invite her to the ranch to discuss his policies. Thursday Bush told reporters he sympathized with Sheehan but that pulling out of Iraq "would be a mistake for the security of this country and the ability to lay the foundations for peace." Sheehan responded that the best way to show compassion would be to meet with her and other parents of soldiers killed in action.

Bush previously dispatched his national security adviser and an aide to meet with Sheehan's group, but that only increased the perception that Bush cannot bring himself to face his critics. Until the president addresses the doubts about the conduct of the war that Cindy Sheehan now symbolizes, the voices of the opposition will only grow louder.

Sometimes, when a formerly amorous romantic couple parts ways, both parties are not of the same mind as to whether or not the break-up should have occured. Strange, but true. Oftenly, in fact, one party wants to reverse the breakup and get back together. She believes that they fix whatever was wrong.. The other party, however, has absolutely no interest in resurrecting the relationship because he was likely unhappy in for some time before the breakup occured.

This can lead to an awkward situation. She wants something that he clearly cannot give him. When faced with conflict, it's pretty natural for people to go binary and see things in black-and-white. So, in her world, if he loves her then they should get back together. If he doesn't want to get back together than he really doesn't love her, even if he says that he does in a qualified manner. 'I don't love you that way anymore?' What the hell is that supposed to mean. You loved me that way six months ago. You're going to throw this all away because you've been in a funk for the last couple months? And you're going to say, while you're destroying my whole world, that you love you? You don't love someone and then not even do so much as to take their phone calls!"

And he's not taking her phone calls. He's been in this situation before, unfortunately, on both sides of the table. She called him because she just wanted to talk. Then she just needed to see him again. Given what he'd put her through, he owed that to her. And in his heart of hearts, he knew that he did. So he met with her. The problem was, as he suspected from another similar situation even before that one, that she did not want to talk to him on the phone. She did not want to see him and air her grievances. She wanted to get back together! The phone call, the lunch, they were merely means to that end.

I'm not saying that she's lying, though she might be. But in the more benign circumstances, she truly feels she can get closure by just hearing his voice or seeing him "one last time." Sure, she knows she wants to get back together with him, but she erroneously believes that she has accepted that she can't. The problem is that when she sees him, she wants to see him again. If he could do it once, why not more than once? If he can see her and be civil regularly, and he loves her (even if not in 'that way' whatever the hell that means), then they should get back together. And we're back to binaryland where he can only demonstrate that he really cares about her by pretending that he's in love with her (except that, even then, she would want him to stop pretending and do it for real). Except that now he's even further back because by relenting and agreeing to see her, he's giving her "mixed signals."

And that's in the most benign circumstance. In the least benign, she's trying to engineer a reunion, and she will use every tool at her disposal - including guilt and shame - to make it happen. She will fight to bring him closer, step-by-step. And she will be baffled and hurt and enraged when he reaches the point that he is not willing to take another step for the very reasons he walked away in the first place, whatever those reasons might have been. Despite all the "compromising" he's done by agreeing to talk to her and see her, he will still be the mean stupidhead that's hurting her even while he says that he cares about her.

And he can see all this happening all over again if he relents to her simple and quite reasonable request to see him again. As long as she wants to get back together again, they really don't have anything to talk about. Whether or not he will see her again is immaterial because that's not what she's after. And if the only way he can address her needs is by complete capitulation, and if he's not willing to do that, then finding middleground is a rather pointless venture and whether she realizes it or not, her claims for simple meets not being met are disingenuous because her overall aims are starkly at odds with what he wants.

“And the other thing I want him to tell me is ‘just what was the noble cause Casey died for?’ Was it freedom and democracy? Bullsh*t! He died for oil. He died to make your friends richer. He died to expand American imperialism in the Middle East. We’re not freer here, thanks to your PATRIOT Act. Iraq is not free. You get America out of Iraq and Israel out of Palestine and you’ll stop the terrorism,”

Those are not the words of someone who is asking for lunch, closure, or anything the administration can really provide.

More:
blogHouston
Lonestar Times
Isolated Desolation [also]

There's apparently a site of lefties wondering how they can convince conservatives that they're correct. That's a noble goal and I am very much in favor of communication across the divide. That said, I can't say that they're off to a remarkably good start:

Vehicles in New Jersey are covered with decals representing little ribbons inscribed with the legend: “Support Our Troops.” I have done a lot of driving recently and have noticed geographical disparities in the distribution of these symbols. There are fewer in the Midwest and very few at all in the LA area. They are also disproportionately displayed on SUVs and vans, which isn’t surprising given that the owners are disproportionately reliant on the oil supplies that our soldiers are in Iraq to protect (among their other purposes).

What?!

Do they really think that the average SUV user thinks to himself, "I support the troops cause it lets me drive this SUV for 10c more a gallon, and then just to rub sand in my selfishness, I'm going to pretend I care about these blood-for-oil pawns."

There are a number of reasons why SUV drivers may be more likely to support the war, whether you agree with them or not.

A van or SUV driver may, for instance, have a family. Polls show that married voters of both genders are more likely to vote for Bush and support Bush and "his" war.

Since the left holds the "environmentalist" banner, they are more likely to buy cars that get better mileage. Since those on the right are less frantic about the environment and would not as likely have an ethical problem driving an SUV, then they would be more likely than liberals to own them.

Hunters are more likely to be Republican and thus are more likely to support "Bush's war" and the troops fighting it.

SUVs, vans, and trucks generally have more utility outside of the city. Voters outside of the city tend to be more conservative and are therefore more likely to support the president and "his war."

The mere fact that the first thing that he thinks of when he sees an SUV with an "I support the troops" tag on a car is that "He supports blood-for-oil" shows just how far some on the left have to go before understanding those on the right much less convince them of anything.