Bent Notes

As if you needed any more challenges to your resolve to remain robustly sunny and possibility-oriented, here comes a report from a bipartisan commission that says you can pretty much count on a nuke or biochemical attack by 2013.

Indian intelligence says it has in its possesion a satellite phone that makes indisputable the connection between the Mumbai terrorists and Pakistan’s ISI.

And then Pakistan says, “We get a clear indication that India is massing troops along the border, we’ll pull our troops off their Taliban-hunting duty and mass them along the border as well.”

At least 78 dead so far.  Several hostages.

It was indeed well-coordinated.  Looks like they were targeting Westerners.

Yemen expert Jane Novak provdes a detailed account of where the veracity lies in the latest rumblings about new al-Qaeda attack plans.

Claudia Rosett in Forbes on how six-way-talk diplomacy with North Korea has brought us to the same damn juncture every earlier attempt at acting like we were dealing with reasonable, decent human beings did.  The unique aspect of this time around is that rogue regimes with nuclear ambitions - and there’s one regime in particular that is very close to having nukes - have every reason to feel encouraged by the precedent set.

The EU - The EU, mind you- says Iran is on the verge of upfitting a long-range missile with a nuclear warhead.

And, on the other side ofthe Asian land mass, North Korea is kicking out IAEA inspectors and restarting the Yongbyon plutonium facility.

Also, I just heard Jed Babbin on Greg Garrison’s radio show a little while ago saying that a reliable source has told him that there are a million jihadists training in the remote, mountainous semi-autonomous region of Pakistan.

As the W era comes to a close, I’m afraid I’m coming to the conclusion that it is basically the administration’s luck tht has kept its cluelessness from having worse consequences than it has had.  We have patty-caked in Six-Way Talks, an Annapolis summit between Israel and those who wish to destroy it, and “regional-security” pow-wows in Baghdad with the apocalyptic mullahs’ representatives, and all we have to show for it is that what is going to happen hasn’t happened yet.

I understand that finance and energy are on the nation’s front burner right now, but the threat from our enemies hasn’t gone away.  There’s not much road left for kicking this can.  The situation of twenty years ago looks like a luxury from the present vantage point.  Oh, to have all hose options again.

Truck bombing at the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan.

Caroline Glick in the Jerusalem Post details what the uranium missing from Isfahan indicates about how far along Iran’s nuclear-bomb program is.  It’s too late for ecoonomic pressure, of either the governmental-sanctions kind or the capital-markets-disinvestment kind, to work.  Israel will have to bomb Natanz.

What this will do, says Glick, is buy the world a couple of years to get serious about the above measures, plus covert measures to undermine the mullahs’ regime.

Her column is one of those in which the last line is key to all that has come before.  She says, “Too bad Israel doesn’t have a  government.”

Car bomb and gun battle at the gate of the US embassy in Yemen.  Ten dead.  Well, sixteen, if you count the slugs posing as humans who did the attacking.

Do you have any doubt about who did this?

Russia and Venezuela are going to conduct a joint naval exercise.

Israel releases nearly 200 more Palestinian prisoners, this time of the Fatah variety, and including Said al-Atba, who bombed a market in 1977.  (He would be this release’s equivalent of Samir Kunta, the child-skull-crusher who was part of the July release). 

Condi Rice says this is good because it’s “something that matters a lot to the Palestinians.”

Why are clarity and resolve so easily muddled in this world?  Why, in spite of irrefutable evidence that one is dealing with bad actors, does one yet again expect goodwill and civility out of them?  We’ve seen it in the utter failure to get Iran and North Korea to give up their nuclear programs.  We’ve seen it in the tepid moral equivalency that characterizes the NATO statement about Russia’s war against Georgia.  Is it the high stakes involved?  Or is it some kind of bureaucratic mindset, along the lines of holding a meeting to discuss the household’s options when fire breaks out in the kitchen, a sense that anything can be solved in a conference setting?

This one, though - appeasing the thugs of Fatah and Hamas - is really puzzling, as it all occurs at such close range.  There are no oceans to cross.  In fact, prior to the enhanced security measures of the last few years, Israel got a very up-close-and-personal look at many of these vest-and-belt-attired “partners in the search for peace.”  They were infiltrating Israel proper and blowing up pizza parlors and bus stops with increasing regularity.

A complete recognition of evil entails acting on that recognition.  It means “co-existing” with those who embrace evil in an appropriate way.

It’s often pointed out that suicide is a serious transgression against God. Some argue that it’s on a par with murder.  That’s becasue one’s life is not one’s own.  One is granted stewardship over it by it Author.

Carelessness has suicidal overtones to it.  Certainly, recklessness does.  The interesting thing is that an overabundance of caution - known in its extreme form as cowardice - constitutes a type of recklessness.  In the case of dealing with evil, this is clearly so.  It’s a plain spiritual truth that you can’t interact with those given over to evil the way you can with normal people.  You invite your own demise.  Seen this way, the folly of negotiating with those known to hate you may qualify as sin.

In any event, it’s a dumb thing to do.  To return to my question about how resolve anc clarity get eroded, it may be that what happens is that the principle of habit comes into play.  Something done once becomes easier to do a second time, and then even easier subsequent times.

The real answer to this question would come from observation of more instances of it.  The problem with that is that we can’t afford any more of such data-gathering. 

Then again, maybe all 200 of these prisoners released by Israel today will go home to families, jobs and lives of productive civilization-building, and everything I’ve asserted here will be proven wrong.

Any bets?

Russia threatens Poland with nuclear attack.

What I want to know is, is this stuff some kind of big surprise to our intellegence, security and diplomacy functions?

Syria and Lebanon have normalized relations.  I guess that questions about all those assasinated Parliament members and cabint members will go unanswered.  So much for the Cedar Revolution. 

Are the people in Israel in a position to react to the strategic implications of this getting ready to do so?

I’ve been seeing more frequent discussion lately of the ISI’s role not only in Pakistan’s internal situation but the civilized world’s struggle against jihadism generally.

Now it seems there’s U.S. intelligence to confirm ISI complicity in a specific dirty deed: the attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan.

After the convulsions of last year - Musharraf’s state of emergency, Bhutto’s assassination - Pakistan kind of slipped off teh radar screen.  I have, however, since then had this feeling that its ongoing shakiness was going to influence events in a major way again fairly soon.

The much-ballyhooed sit-down between Undersecretary of State Wiliam Burns and chief Iranian nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili was a dud from the get-go.  This whole line of effort is so stupid.  We’ve had three rounds of sanctions, numerous incentives packages and now a high-level meeting.  The upshot:  Iran has told the West, “Go pound sand.  We’re going to keep right on enriching uranium, and we still envision a world without that filthy Zionist regime or the Great Satan America.”

Our State Department is a very sick institution.  It lets North Korea make a mockery of the notion of honoring its deadline obligations  in the Six-Way Talks agreement, it sees a constructive partner for talks on a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians even when that partner, Mahmoud Abbas, sends “blessings” to the family of released child-killer Samir Kantar, and it keeps prattling on about what Iran needs to do to “avoid further isolation” and quit being “unhelpful.”

There is no such thing as a “way forward” in any of these situations.  It’s time - it was time three years ago - to quit talking to any of these enemies and instead demonstrate adherence to some principles, state clearly what will not be accepted and what we understand we may have to do and experience to to stop any crossing of that line.

Independence Day finds BN waxing reflective like many another punditry outlet.  The word “paradox” keeps surfacing as the most apt characteristic for the juncture at which this marvelous country finds itself on the 232nd occasion of the signing of Mr. Jefferson’s thunderous document.  Comparatively speaking - compared, that is, to other nations, and to other periods in time - we’re doing great.  We are, however, beset by some unique and unprecedented challenges, some of which ualify as threats requiring a sense of urgency.

I can’t argue with such sunny perspectives as those of Ed Fuelner’s Townhall column, or Victor Davis Hanson’s NRO piece.  Such problems as high oil prices, the mortgage-market upheaval, and even the array of undeniably hostile countries and forces on the world stage aren’t making much of a dent at this moment in our ability to exercise our freedom, enjoy our prosperity, invent, consume, wander, wonder, form and raise families, worship, not worship, become civic leaders or become hermits.  We’re comfortable, secure and free beyond the imaginings of most human beings alive either today or at any time in the past.

To call that the end of the matter, however, is to turn a blind eye to some glaring aspects of everyday life.  We are not okay.

Our most immediate threat is moral and intellectual atrophy.  We no longer have any idea how our circumstances came to be, their real value, or what’s required to preserve them.

The most handy piece of evidence to offer in substantiating this assertion is the Democrat candidate for president: a member of the Senate for three years, an Illinois state senator before that, and a “community organizer” in the mold of the radical Saul Alinsky before that.  His radicalism, his ambivalence (at best) about America’s greatness, his ties to both Marxists and corrupt Chicago-machine figures, his cultural elitism, and his phony religiosity are well enough known that in a country with solid intellectual and moral bearings, he would be an embarrassment with no chance of going past a couple of primary races.

It’s not as if anyone were offering a hopeful alternative, either.  The current administration is apparently going to let Iran build, test and use a nuclear weapon, and let North Korea keep its asernal of same, along with its uranium-enrichment capabilities, and its network for proliferation.  It’s also the bunch that is determined to get Israel to allow a state to a group of people dedicated to its obliteration.  Obama’s opponent in the current race to succeed this administration is a vacuous, tired and stubborn has-been who thinks we shouldn’t drill in ANWR and has a problem with corporate profits over some arbitrary level (at which they become, in his worldview, “obscene”).

Our preoccupation with silly, fabricated non-issues that distract us from what ought to be our real concerns is another manifestation of our atrophy.  When corporations and universities alike rush to form “diversity councils,” when federal judges find “rights” to homosexual “marriage,” when developers rush to build “green” housing units and commercial structures, it is clear our ability to muster rigor and clear-sightedness is slipping away.

When you opened your web browser home page just now, you saw yet another ominous sign of our emaciation.  Where were the headlines dealing with issues of economic challenge, jihadist design or nuclear proliferation?  Well underneath coverage of the attire or the sybaritic antics of celebrities who have no more qualification to be pop-culture icons than Barack Obama has to be a presidential candidate.

Yes, our most pressing problems - after this breakdown of our moral and intellectual health - could be solved fairly easily, but that’s a lot like saying the stroke victim could easily reach the water glass beside his bed.

It’s a fine Fourth.  I’ve seen happy people all over town as I’ve driven and biked about.  I’ll be throwing a T-Bone and a mahi-mahi filet on the grill this evening.  I’m about to pour myself a sparkling cocktail.  Checks are in my mailbox and gigs on my calendar.  I know lots of people who love the one true God and who understand free-market economics.  Somehow, though, it all has the feel of the last tune the orchestra on the Titanic played before dance partners in the ballroom started to say to each other, “Did you feel that?”

He Who Definitely Doesn’t Walk On Water in Oregon, pronouncing on Iran and Venezuela and environmental leadership.

Oh, and on Good Morning America, he tries to  delare his wife untouchable.

What is the common thread in the last few posts here at BN - Hizbollah’s smackdown of Lebanon’s ineffectual “official” government, the attack on the Ashkelon shopping center, and Ahmadinejad’s latest threats - as well as this news item from Jaipur, India about near-simultaneous bomb blasts that killed 61 and injured 216?

Go to the front of the class if you said “radical Islam.”

Anybody who thinks Western civilization is jauntily rolling along save for the occasional random challenge of a law-enforcement nature is sadly and willfully ignorant of what is going on.

Occasionally, commenters here at BN respond to posts in the various dhimmitude categories with remarkds along the lines of “Oh, lighten up.  These isolated instances aren’t making any serious transformations of our culture.”  How pathetically blind.

It’s way past time to see the pattern in all the “diversity” / multiculturalism programs in our educational system, the Muslim-women-only days at public fitness gyms and swimming pools, the British prison toilets turned to face Mecca, the Anglican archbishop’s acceptance of the encroachment of sharia into British law, the bathing of the Empire State Building in green light for the end of Ramadan, and so on - and on and on and on.

Let me be blunt.  It doesn’t look like our way of life is going to make it.  We don’t have the will to resist the above violations, dilutions and affronts, much less rockets or nuclear bombs. 

The degree of resolve it would take to seriously address what we face would require a shift in our mindset that I’m not sure we can accomplish.  I don’t know that I’m blaming anyone - us, collectively, or any one group or individual.  It’s probably just a natural result of the veil of normalcy that’s still draped over our daily lives, which, for all the high fuel prices and economic uncertainty, are still pretty cush by worldwide standards.  The worst stuff is still happening “over there.”

I think such canaries in the coal mine as Robert Spencer and Mark Steyn look like skunks at the garden party to the major swath of our populace that still preoccupies itself with pop culture and personal ambition.  We’ve seen this set of circumstances before in history.  Is it just the nature of things for an ominous threat to be just beyond the periphery until a sudden moment when it appears center stage?

Hizbollah is effectively in control of Beirut.

UPDATE: Gateway Pundit is doing excellent work providing video and photos of streetfighting, as well as informative links.  Hizbollah is putting up posters of Syrian president Assad in areas it takes over.  Also, Iran is blaming “the Jews” for the whole thing.