re: "Former CIA Chief Hayden Bathing In Schadenfreude Over AG Holder"

GW at Wolf Howling wasn't overwhelmed by the outpouring of sympathy.

Money quote(s):

"Former CIA Director Michael Hayden has been so overcome by his schadenfreude over the many problems now besetting AG Eric Holder that Hayden had to share it with the world or burst. As you read this, you can almost hear Hayden laughing and rubbing his hands in glee at the poetic justice being dealt to Eric Holder. It really makes for a fun read."

GW then provided a nice excerpt of Hayden's remarks.

"You have to love how he refuses to give Holder the benefit of the doubt as to whether he is actually being subject to an unjust process."

2/2

re: "Reducing Politically Correct Ad Hominems to Absurdity"

Aaron Worthing at Patterico's Pontifications ("Harangues that Just Make Sense") pondered the relevance of hypocrisy.

Money quote(s):

"The modern left seems to love a particular breed of ad hominem. You cite to them the words and philosophy of Jefferson, Madison, etc. and they say “oh, those were just dead rich white men,” or better yet, “they were rich, dead, racist white slaveholders” and think that means you should dismiss what these people had to say out of hand. I particularly enjoy it when that argument is deployed in opposition to following the original constitution and in favor of the Supreme Court just making sh-t up, because then you are shifting from being ruled by rich dead white men, to being ruled by a group that is old, rich, mainly white and still mostly male. Progress!

I am not saying that background is completely irrelevant. Indeed, the fact that Jefferson was a slaveholder is sometimes relevant in determining what he meant. There are those who hold to this day that the phrase “all men are created equal” actually meant “all white men are created equal” on the theory that Jefferson clearly didn’t mean his slaves because then he would be a hypocrite. Mind you, I think the most obvious answer given the evidence is, yes, Jefferson was a hypocrite, but that doesn’t make it unfair or wrong to look at the fact he owned slaves and wonder what he really meant." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

10/24

re: "Ros-Lehtinen defends MEK as State Dept anger grows"

Josh Rogin at The Cable ("Reporting Inside The Foreign Policy Machine") provided an update on the unfolding PMOI/MEK situation.

Money quote(s):

"The State Department is growing increasing frustrated with the MEK and its American lobbyists, and now with two leading lawmakers who are injecting themselves into the cause of the Iranian dissident group.

Tensions between Foggy Bottom and supporters of the Mujahedeen e-Khalq (MEK), a State Department-designated foreign terrorist organization opposed to the Iranian regime, have been building for months. The plan to relocate 3,200 members of the group from its compound in Iraq to a former U.S. military base appear stalled as the group lobbies to be taken off the list of terrorist organizations.

A federal court has ordered the State Department to make a decision on delisting the MEK by October, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has indicated that the group's willingness to complete the move to the former base, Camp Liberty, will be a key factor in the department's decision. State Department officials, however, now believe the MEK is stalling."

Stalling or otherwise playing for time is something the PMOI is very good at.

"Administration officials believe the MEK is getting bad advice and unhelpful support from its team of American advocates, some of whom are paid handsomely to advise the MEK and lobby the administration on its behalf (though all insist they are promoting the MEK's cause out of sincere conviction). The Treasury Department has opened an investigation into the funds paid to these activists, which often come from Iranian-American groups in the United States and are paid through a speakers' bureau."

That these Iranian-American groups are acting as proxies for the PMOI and other NCRI-related groups should be obvious.

"The MEK seems to believe it can keep control of Camp Ashraf, its longtime compound near the Iran-Iraq border, and Clinton will still be under pressure to delist the group, this official said."

Camp Ashraf is where they have their own facilities, radio station, museum, cemetary, and probably weapon caches as well. Moving to somewhere they haven't had years to prepare, and during which movement they could be searched or otherwise molested, is not on their list of preferences.

"This week, the MEK got the support of two new powerful Americans, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) and Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA). The pair are circulating a letter this week to Clinton asking her to improve the conditions in Camp Liberty for the MEK."

&

"(L)awmakers are requesting that the MEK residents in Camp Liberty be connected to the Iraqi main water system, be given more power generators, and be given new cars and trucks and other supplies. The administration official said that some of the requests are valid but the characterization of the conditions in Camp Liberty as "dreadful" is unfair.

"Really, are new cars a basic human right?" the official said."

Nice snark, but are they asking for new vehicles (note that they included both cars and trucks in their request) to replace old, wornout, destroyed, or confiscated ones? Just thought I'd ask....

7/18

re: "The EU's diplomatic corps celebrates gloomy first birthday"

David Bosco at The Multilateralist ("On The New World Order") reported on the EAS' first anniversary.

Money quote(s):

"The EU's new diplomatic arm, the European External Action Service, was created a year ago. A product of the Lisbon Treaty, the EEAS was designed to give flesh and bone to the longstanding aspiration of a common European foreign and security policy. The service's first chief, Britain's Catherine Ashton, has had the unenviable task of making the EAS coherent and relevant. Operating in an often toxic political and budgetary environment, she has had to draw on and meld personnel from national diplomatic services and the EU bureaucracy.

The most obvious structural obstacle to EEAS influence has been the jealousy (and occasional disdain) of national diplomatic services, particularly those of major EU states. All EU states formally support the EEAS, but many are deeply reluctant to shed any meaningful foreign-policy autonomy. But the jealousy of nation-states has not been Ashton's only obstacle."

Predictably, for those who've studied or survived bureaucratic entities, a major difficulty the EAS folks face is infighting from other parts of the EU bureaucracy.

1/6

re: "Political Idea Bomb #1: Rejigger the Immigration Debate"

David Brin at Contrary Brin ("Author, Futurist, Scientist") has been thinking about immigration issues.

Money quote(s):

"What is the biggest driver of this rapid change in the makeup of the U.S. citizenry? Listen to the rage, and you'd think that it was an invasion, a veritable tsunami of wetback illegals. But facts speak otherwise. The driver of demographic change in America, over the last generation or so, has been legal immigration.

When ethnic quotas on immigration were removed in 1965, the number of first- generation immigrants living in the United States quadrupled, rising from 9.6 million in 1970 to nearly 38 million in 2007. In 1990, George H.W. Bush signed the Immigration Act of 1990, which resulted in an increase in legal immigration to the United States by 40%.

The United States admitted more legal immigrants in the most recent decade -- ten million legal immigrants settled in the U.S. Still, this represents an annual increase of only about 0.3% as the U.S. population grew from 249 million to 281 million. A lot of people. But remember this isn't new. By comparison, the highest previous decade was the 1900s, when 8.8 million people arrived, increasing the total U.S. population by one percent every year. Specifically, "nearly 15% of Americans were foreign-born in 1910, while in 1999, only about 10% were foreign-born." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

By itself, legal immigration by those reuniting with family members already (legally) in the U.S., even with so-called "chain immigration," wouldn't have resulted in the sweeping demographic changes the U.S. is experiencing, at least not this quickly.

But factor in the effects of the diversity visa lottery, the scheme where we deliberately recruit immigrants from countries who aren't as heavily represented in the flow of legal immigrants; well, that's what get us where we are now.

"(S)ince 1986, Congress has passed seven amnesties for illegal immigrants, converting one kind of immigrant into the other."

This is why no one believes claims that just-one-more amnesty (by whatever name) would be the last one. Because it's been proven a lie six times already.

"(T)here are issues that run beneath issues here, and they merit your consideration. Take the criteria that the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the State Department have been required to follow, when doling out legal immigrant visas.

For decades, the top consideration went to re-uniting family members. And at first sight, that does seem a compassionate and just basis to allow people into the country, instead of keeping folks separated from those they love.

Except... isn't that just rewarding the lucky with more luck? And when you admit a legal immigrant's brother, then does the brother's son come along? Of course the son's mother (his wife) is next. And then... her brother too? And that brother's kid and wife... and so on... Isn't it clear that there is no place to clearly draw a line?"

Actually, Congress has drawn several lines in this regard, numerically limiting the annual immigration numbers of more distant (and more adult) family members of legal residents and citizens.

Another factor is time. Those just arriving have to actually immigrate before they can file petitions for their non-immediate relatives (i.e., beyond the spouse and minor children who presumably came at the same time), they have to meet certain financial sponsorship criteria, and the whole process takes months to years before additional legal "chain" immigrants start arriving.

"If we're limited in the number of people we can absorb per year, and can only take a small fraction of those who are both deserving an eager, then why not have a fair number of those slots go to those whose arrival will benefit us all, in clearcut and immediate ways? Are they any less deserving, just because they happen to be instantly useful?

Indeed, won't the increased prosperity they help generate here allow us to be more generous to others, in the future?

Canada and Australia and the U.S. all issue a certain number of Employment-Based visas. And a strong case can be made for increasing this number, along with slots for inventors and company builders and major investors. It has even been proposed to solve our current housing crash by giving a green card to anyone who immediately buys a home with $500,000 or more in cash."

&

"It should be blatantly obvious to anyone with a mix of compassion and practicality that immigrant kids need health care and education... and we need them to be both healthy and educated."

Un-vaccinated children represent a public health vulnerability in that they constitute a potential reservoir for contagious disease. This is not news. Nor is the prospect of creating a self-perpetuating uneducated underclass much more palatable.

10/24

re: "Foreign Service Conversion - All About The Benjamins"

TSB at The Skeptical Bureaucrat ("From deep inside the foundations of our Republic's capital city") provided his take on the midlevel staffing gap.

Money quote(s):

"I've been browsing the GAO report on Foreign Service staffing gaps, which is discussed by Domani Spero today, and particularly the portion on Civil Service to Foreign Service conversions. She noted the comically insufficient extent of those conversions"

&

"According to the GAO report, State "opened" only 88 CS employees to conversion in 2011, of which a mere 26 applied. Those 26 were winnowed down to 7 who were given the opportunity to convert, only four of whom were actually converted. With numbers like those, something tells me State really isn't all that into the whole idea of Civil Service conversion." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

&

"State hires for FS positions only at the entry pay grades, which max out at the FP-04 level. That means the CS employees who are most likely to be conversion candidates would take a big pay cut, even if there were some flexibility as to the exact step within that pay grade at which a converted employee might enter.

By "big" I mean about 50 percent, assuming the conversion candidate is a GS-13 pay grade employee who has been around ten or more years.

Even that temporary Chief of Mission job would lose its appeal if I had to take such a severe financial haircut to convert. " (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

With the exception of our Foreign Service Specialist colleagues, State Department's Civil Service cadre are probably the best-prepared, most-likely-to-be-successful group of candidates for conversion into the Foreign Service.

7/17

re: "Ordinary People My Ass!!"

TOWNIE 76 at Op-For ("Fair Specimens of Citizen Soldiers...") had high praise for Prince Harry's statement.

Money quote(s):

"Prince Harry, the third in line to the throne of the United Kingdom, who many believe to be a dullard, uttered perhaps the best line about those who serve Queen and Country. I have serious doubt, that other than McCain and Webb who both have sons who have served, any American public official could be quite so eloquent."

Read the whole thing here.

12/19

re: "The European Union on Mount Doom"

Amb. Charles Crawford at Blogoir (" A digital hybrid of blog and memoir presented on a daily basis, or not. ") examined British parliamentary maneuvers regarding a referendum.

Money quote(s):

"The discussion focused on global trends. A striking observation was made: “in the past ten years or so we have seen one of the greatest changes in human history–a billion people have joined the global economy".

This, it was argued, changed everything. Above all, it meant a colossal downward pressure on living standards in Western economies: when so many jobs and functions could now be outsourced to poorer parts of the world, why should wages in the UK and elsewhere in Europe and the USA continue to trend upwards? This in turn had startling implications for strategic Western pension models, set up on the basis that living standards would improve indefinitely."

&

"Once a billion people in a matter of a few dozen months join the global means of production of ideas as IT gadgets get cheaper and better (see the swarming cheap telephones videoing the ghastly end of Gaddafi), everything starts to change at an exponential rate. In particular, the very logic of the existence of institutions and practices set up under completely different conditions can be called abruptly into question, in a way which is for practical purposes unmanageable."

This is a big deal. Globalization always is.

"There is something to be said for the claim that as the Eurozone burst into flames all this talk of a British referendum is an unwelcome distraction. But that looks like a puny tactical point when far bigger issues are at stake.

There is a lot more to be said for giving intellectual leadership, embracing the proposition that the time has come to look long and hard at the way the European Union is now set up. As I have previously argued, the iron laws of physics show us the fatal weakness of the European Union: it bulks up mass and reduces velocity.

Almost everything about the European Union is now at odds with scary, dynamic world we face, and reflects ideas which are now unsustainable. The huge salaries and pensions. The impenetrable procedures and untransparent decisions. The constant overriding or outflanking of voters' opinions. Above all, the truly heroic impertinence of the European elite who, having blundered in creating the Eurozone and its ruinous results, now insist that they and they alone must be given more centralised power over voters and their money." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

What could possibly go wrong that wouldn't be greated with calls for greater political centralization?

"(T)he collective determination of the main British political parties to deny the British public a say on these momentous matters looks out of touch, if not oppressive.

The deeper logic of the government's position is simple, if a trifle cynical: since the European Union is doing a good job of deconstructing itself, albeit in an appallingly risky way, there is little to be gained by the UK kicking away its Zimmer frame. Sooner or later a radical renegotiation of European arrangements will fall into the British lap, with London in a strong negotiating position. Without British taxpayers' money European “solidarity" doesn't go far."

This smacks of Leninist doctrine: "The worse, the better."

"(A) referendum on the U.K.'s attitude to European structures would make sense once new EU Treaty changes have been agreed. In normal circumstances that might indeed make sense. It risks being overwhelmed by events, although it does have the great advantage of sending a signal to other European capitals that unless any new treaty represents a really important shift of power back to national capitals it has no chance of being accepted by British public opinion." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

He concluded:

"These parliamentary games do not match the severity of the situation. The time is coming to respond to public opinion and seize the intellectual high ground, by starting a hard debate on the best way to organise Europe in the tumultuous changing circumstances brought about by the IT revolution.

Sooner or later that debate has to happen. Surely it is better to have it in some sort of controlled way with the UK using its detachment from the Eurozone debacle to define and lead the debate, rather than as a result of pell-mell collapse?

Needless to say, as soon as the British Prime Minister makes a public call for profound EU treaty revision, the shriek from Brussels (and Paris) will replicate the horrible banshee wail of the Nazgul as Mount Doom started to tumble.

So be it. The EU’s current arrangements are dying. Time to change course."

10/24

"some ideas on where the line is"

Newly-hired FSO McKeatings of All Aboard the Crazy Bus ("a just-joined Foreign Service family working through a new career and taking care of our family of five plus pets") answered my question of last week (Q: "Anybody know which number A-100 class this is?". A: "We are, for now, the 'Cheerful Members of the 168th' ".) and posed another:

"I started a blog and then we had our first ISSO briefing that more or less told us to stop it and then a briefing by the AS for PD who told us to use social media. Can you help a fellow CONS officer with some ideas on where the line is?"

This question has come up a few times before.

But in addition to re-heating the same old hash, I figured it was time for something of an update:

"Since that advice dates from JANUARY 2, 2009, here're a few thoughts for the new decade.

1. Obviously, the new administration came (and I still have my job). So far, so good.

2. Social media is definitely something you need to be comfortable using as an FSO these days. When you get to post, if your embassy doesn't already have a web page and a Facebook page (relatively few posts now, I think), get one started.

(Interjection: I shouldn't have to say this, but I will. One does not simply walk into starting a blog or web page for your post. The wheel having already been invented, there are policies and procedures in place for this already so don't go off half-cocked. Impetuousness is not one of the cardinal virtues of a diplomat.)

3. Consular officers should be especially proactive in terms of using social media such as Facebook to maximize information saturation and message dissemination when it comes to things in the consular bailiwick, whether they be things like Travel Warnings/Advisories or changes to your operating hours or holiday schedules for consular services and contact information.

Most of that stuff goes through a clearance process in-house so there shouldn't be any issues about using social media to push it out to your readers/visitors.

3. For reasons of safety/security, don't publicize your own travel/movements or those of family members or staff. I shouldn't _have_ to say that, but I will anyway.

Afterwords, put up all the (tasteful) pictures and such that you like.

Of course, if you're trying to advertise, for instance, a public event like an Amcit town hall meeting or something, then you're going to announce that; but that's the exception to the rule.

4. Use common sense. Drunken party pictures of yourself, other diplomats, &tc., don't exactly cover the Foreign Service with glory. While these things can happen (and pictures can get taken) don't be the knucklehead who puts them on their blog.

5. Keep using common sense. Writing embarrassing things about your country-of-assignment might not be helpful in terms to enabling you to accomplish your job in that country.

I'm not telling you to lie, and I'm certainly not telling you not to "tell it like it is" about the "facts on the ground" when it comes to your reporting cables back to D.C. In fact, reporting cables are _exactly_ where that stuff should be written. It's what they/we pay you to do, in fact.

6. Use some more common sense. Never discuss ongoing classified or sensitive matters within your cognizance. Declassification dates exist for a reason.

Best of luck in your new careers, 168th!"

Vaya con Dios!

re: "Foreign Service Staffing Gaps, and Oh, Diplomacy 3.0 Hiring Initiative to Conclude in FY2023"

Domani Spero at Diplopundit ("an obsessive compulsive observer, diplomatic watcher, and opinionator who monitors the goings on at ‘Foggy-Bottom’ (i.e. the State Department) and the “worldwide available” universe from Albania to Zimbabwe") went over Diplomacy 3.0 point-by-point.

Money quote(s):

"State created new positions under Diplomacy 3.0, all midlevel positions. Instead of hiring midlevel personnel to fill those positions, it continued to hire entry level personnel."

Midlevel ranks are where the shortages currently exist.

The FS cohorts hired under the first two initiatives (beginning with Sec. Powell's Diplomatic Readiness Initiative or "DRI") are already in the midlevel ranks, some even at the highest midlevel rank (FS-01: Foreign Service Officer, Class One), the equivalent of a colonel (or a Navy or Coast Guard captain).

Which is one reason State is so resistant to hiring directly into the midlevel grades. No one (or hardly anyone) in living memory has suggested that the military and naval services hire their field grade officeers (majors, lieutenant colonels, and colonels; lieutenant commanders, commanders, and captains) directly off the street.

Even special service officers such as medical doctors don't enter the medical corps above the rank of captain (O-3, equivalent to FS-04, the highest FS entry-level grade).

7/17

re: "Our America"

LC 0311 Sir Crunchie I.M.H., K.o.E. at the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler ("HQ of the Rottweiler Empire. An Affiliate of the VRWC.") shared some 9/11 remembrances.

Money quote(s):

"Do not allow the emasculated wimps of our so called ruling class to tell you that 9/11 was “a horrific event”, a “disaster” or a “tragedy”. It was a deliberate act of war, nothing less. In those 10 years many have moved on and forgotten what happened that day. Others wish only to remember the dead, and downplay the evil cult of Islamofacism that killed them."

Just like the recent shootings in Aurora are not a "tragedy." They are an atrocity, a crime. A tragedy is if the theater's roof collapsed on the movie-goers.

"We are told that we must embrace those who hate us. And the gains of the Long War, paid for with the blood of our nations finest, are squandered"

&

"(T)hese arrogant elitists who sneer at our national character, the bureaucrats who write the regulations which have kept the rebuilding from being done 10 years later, the academicians who belittle our exceptionalism, they are not the real America. They do not represent our greatness, our strength. These people, raised in a safe world, are kept free by those they demean. They are safe and secure to spout their anti-American ideals because the true Americans sacrificed and bore the heavy burden. And even when they are smacked in the face by the ugly reality that there are those who wish them dead, they still maintain their utopian world view. That they live in a country secure enough to do so is a testament to those who stepped up when our nation called. It is a testament to you, the real Americans." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

9/9

re: "FT: Top EU policy-making "Undemocratic and Ineffective" "

Charles Crawford at Blogoir (" A digital hybrid of blog and memoir presented on a daily basis, or not.") reported from front-row seats to the EU's unraveling.

Money quote(s):

"To have tired heads of government and states who themselves barely understand the issues horse-trading the rights and responsibilities of hundreds of millions of people is 'undemocratic and ineffective'. Worse. It's dangerous.

European leaders and their clever formalistic functionaries have created a structure which is now not able to work except by tottering along a policy tight-rope that gets higher and thinner as each day passes. It is hard to see how the radical centralisation of crude power needed to keep the show tottering on can be reconciled with any idea of popular democratic legitimacy as it has evolved in Europe since WW2." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

10/24

re: "“Pay to Play” vs “Pay to Pay” "

Richard Fernandez at Belmont Club noted a proposal impacting U.S. passport issuance.

Money quote(s):

"The problem with becoming a taxpayer is that it puts you in the system. You become a database record, and there’s no end to the uses that government can put that too. A proposed bill would allow the State Department to “deny, revoke or limit a passport for any individual whom the Internal Revenue Service has certified as having a ‘seriously delinquent tax debt’ in excess of $50,000. The amount would be adjusted for inflation in future years.” The provision was part of a larger amendment by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. to fund a highway bill."

There are a couple of ways that a U.S. citizen can find issuance of a U.S. passport to be delayed or denied. One is to be sufficiently behind on ones child support payments that the state in which they are paid reports that fact to the Department of Health and Human Services. They, in turn, relay that information to the State Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs and in very short order that information is available to U.S. consular and passport officials across the country and around the world.

Presumably this restriction would work in a similar fashion.

(Just to be clear, it's possible for a U.S. citizen abroad to get a limited validity passport that'll allow them to travel home to the U.S., just to keep them from being stranded.)

"One way to escape this hassle is not to join the system at all. Many Americans will never have to worry about getting their passport canceled for tax reasons because they don’t pay any. The Daily Mail reports: “Only half of U.S. citizens pay federal income tax, according to the latest available figures. In 2009, just 50.5 per cent of Americans paid any income tax to the federal government – the lowest proportion in at least half a century.”"

CAA has a problem with this.

It's not that many American aren't paying taxes at all, but their deductions and tax liability exceeds the amount of income withholding tax so they get a refund at the end of the year. In some cases, it's the entirety of the taxes they paid. Which withholding tax the federal government has the use of, interest-free, for as long as it takes the individual taxpayer to file their return.

4/4

re: "Burned Korans & Riots & Feeding the Delusions of the Delusional"

Ace at Ace of Spades HQ offered a helpful suggestion.

Money quote(s):

"If someone's having a panic attack, the worst possible thing to do, as someone trying to help, is to play into it. To pay too much attention. To act very concerned.

People do that, thinking it's helpful. In fact, in exacerbates the situation.

My point is this: To what extent have we played into and exacerbated this absurd Muslim psychopathy over the Koran?

And to what extent would it be defeated if we simply stopped playing into it, and actually routinized the destruction of Korans (or other shows of disrespect, or, more accurately, "refusing to treat the Muslim religion as the officially sanctified state religion of America")?

To what extent are we encouraging these little spells by playing along with them? By treating the Koran as scared, most of the time, to what extent are we writing our own tragic ending when some stupid book gets burned?

Isn't it dangerous to feed the delusions of the deluded? Isn't the right course of action to insist on a more grounded view of reality?

Shouldn't we set the default, routine, expected mode of behavior as "we are not a Muslim nation and furthermore are forbidden by the Constitution from treating one religion as sacrosanct"?"

&

"(O)ur current policy also seems to not help, and is furthermore repellent."

3/2

re: "Islam v. Islamism . again"

Andrew C. McCarthy at The Corner ("The one and only.") posted a correction and clarification.

Money quote(s):

"I make a habit of using the term “Islamist” (or “Islamism”) to distinguish the aggressive and often violent sharia agenda of America’s enemies from “Islam” as it is practiced by millions of Muslims — in America and elsewhere — who are not Islamic supremacists and who do not seek to impose Islamic law on civil society. I added that Messrs. Horowitz and Spencer also draw this distinction."

&

"Robert (Spencer) emailed me over the weekend. While he seemed to agree with most of what I’d written, he offered this correction: He does not use the terms “Islamist” and “Islamism.” In his view, the “Islam/Islamism distinction is an artificial one imposed by the West, with no grounding in Islamic history, theology, or law.” "

There's a lot of quibbling over terminology on this and related issues involving "moderate Islam" (is there such a thing or are its practicioners merely Muslim apostates), "Islamists," "Islamicism," and of course the ever popular "Islam is a religion of peace" narrative.

Not to mention (but I will) the diversional Greater and Lesser Jihads.

"The error does not alter my contention that CAP’s charge of “Islamophobia” is without merit. Again, there is nothing phobic about fearing the nexus between Islamic doctrine (as classically rendered in, for example, the sharia manual Reliance of the Traveller) and the threat Muslim terrorists and stealth jihadists pose to the West. Moreover, the fact that Robert sees the Islamic doctrine in question as Islam rather than as one credible interpretation of Islam (which I call Islamism) hardly makes his concerns irrational." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

10/24

re: "Silent Scream: The Sudan Ethnically Cleanses Its Christians"

Rob Miller at American Thinker (" a daily internet publication devoted to the thoughtful exploration of issues of importance to Americans ") described the traditional next phase after partition: ethnic cleansing.

Money quote(s):

"The government of the predominantly Muslim nation of Sudan has stripped its 500,000 to 700,000 Christians of citizenship and has put them on notice that they have one week to leave the country. Even sub-Jim Crow dhimmi status is to be denied them."

This sort of thing happens whenever a multi-ethnic, multi-confession country partitions into two (or more) states.

That doesn't make it right, but it does make it pretty predictable.

"(T)he government of Sudan has declared that all whose "parents, grandparents or great grandparents [were] born in the South Sudan or [who] belong to any southern ethnic group" are no longer citizens of Sudan and must leave by April 8...or else."

&

"The Sudan has always been a borderland between Arab and black African, between slavemaster and slave. And increasingly, between Muslim and Christian. During the decades-long jihad by the Sudan between the early 1980s and today against the black Africans to the east in Darfur and in the south, conservative estimates put the death toll at over 2 million. Al-Bashir has already been indicted by the International Criminal Court for genocide, something the Arab League has thumbed their noses at, with al-Bashir able to freely attend meetings and travel all over the region without fear of arrest. The charges he was indicted for -- the mass rapes, the slavetaking, the wanton murders -- make what's going on now in Syria look like a particularly sedate bridge party.

In July 2011, the jihad officially ended when the largely Christian South Sudan achieved independence, although sporadic attacks by al-Bashir's military and aircraft still continue in places like the Nuba Mountains and along the South Sudan borders.

Due to the discord caused by the breakaway, al-Bashir is under pressure to turn the Sudan into a extremist fundamentalist, Muslim Brotherhood-ruled Islamist state." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

One of the critical issues still outstanding between Sudan and South Sudan are that the border between the two states has never been officially demarcated.

"The Iranians already have an arms factory in the Sudan to supply Hamas and their allies in Somalia, Yemen, and Central Africa. If my sources are correct, they also maintain training camps staffed by Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Hezb'allah members, some of whom have been killed by Israeli air strikes on arms convoys headed north in the desert towards Sinai and Gaza.

What al-Turabi and his allies want from Bashir is a full-on Muslim Brotherhood-ruled sharia state, comparable to Iran, Gaza, Saudi Arabia, or Afghanistan under the Taliban.

After South Sudan seceded, the Islamists demanded that Bashir implement this, and they have pledged to drive him from power if he doesn't. They formed a party headed by al-Turabi known as the Islamic Constitution Front and drafted a sharia-based constitution that the imam of Khartoum's Grand Mosque endorsed, saying Bashir must "either rule by Islam or go." "

&

"The ethnic cleansing of over half a million Christians is only a first step.

What's notable about this is the hideous silence. There's little or nothing being reported in the media on this. For all the noise about the new Responsibility to Protect Doctrine that was evoked on Libya, the United Nations has nothing to say about what's happening in the Sudan, even though it violates the organization's own charter.

No one is talking about a no-fly zone to protect black Christians under air attack in South Sudan by the Bashir regime, even though our huge air base in Djibouti is within flying distance. The infamously misnamed U.N. Human Rights Commission is preoccupied with Israel to the point of derangement, and the Muslim countries running it will see to it that it stays that way."

&

"For all the demonization of Western Imperialism so popular these days, it was those hated imperialists who largely destroyed the slave trade in the 1870s and brought a measure of peace, civil order, and decency to the country for a brief time. It is our supposedly more modern and compassionate societies that have seen the horror that has gone on in Darfur and in the South Sudan and done nothing...except react with silence.

That silence comes from fear of offending Islam, no matter how egregious and hateful the actions of a significant number of its followers become and no matter how deeply those actions offend our civilized norms."

&

"It reminds me of nothing so much as the 1930s, when the appeasers in Britain and here in our own country reacted with the same indifference while Hitler armed his legions for conquest and ethnically cleansed Germany's Jews."

4/4