Enemies abroad -- and at home
By Mark Alexander · Friday, May 16, 2003
The battles on the Iraq front in our continuing war with Jihadistan are concluding -- successfully, we should add -- but a reminder this week that Iraq is but one of many fronts with Jihadi terrorists.
Three massive car-bomb explosions rocked the Saudi capital of Riyadh this week, hours before the arrival of Secretary of State Colin Powell. The near-simultaneous blasts targeted facilities housing U.S. and other Western civilians, killing 25, including eight Americans. "We will not remain idle and watch certain religious figures who instigate violence by issuing edicts branding certain people as infidels," warned the Saudi interior minister, Prince Nayef. "We will hold them responsible for their words and deeds." Better late than never, we suppose, to put a rein on those inciting terror attack.
Simultaneous attacks are the modus operandi of al-Qa'ida, as in the 9/11 attacks and the 1998 car bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The State Department has ordered all nonessential U.S. diplomats and the families of all its embassy and consulate personnel to leave Saudi Arabia.
So why are the Jihadis attacking, when their major complaint of U.S. troops in their holy land is diminishing with U.S. force relocations? In essence, they are doing the Jihadi equivalent of politicians finding a parade and running to the head of it. If al-Qa'ida operatives are capable of mounting an offensive while the U.S. and coalition partners are drawing down their force numbers, they can claim they forced the withdrawal -- although the clear interest of the U.S. is to do so with or without the threat of attacks.
The war with Jihadistan continues to be a manhunt, picking off the attackers as they come up for air from the ratholes where they take refuge. "The best way to protect the homeland," President Bush affirmed, "is to track down these killers one by one and bring them to justice. That's the policy of the Bush administration." Vice President Dick Cheney added, "The only way to deal with this [terrorist] threat ultimately is to destroy it. There's no treaty that can solve this problem. There's no peace agreement, no policy of containment or deterrence that works to deal with this threat."
Preemptive strikes against our enemies abroad before they can attack our innocent countrymen here at home -- that is our decided preference!
On other "Axis of Evil" fronts, President Roh Moo-hyun of South Korea met with President Bush at the White House this week to discuss the escalating nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice synopsized the administration's position toward the Marxist rogue regime, saying, "Our policy toward North Korea can really be summed up as follows: No one should be willing to give in to the kind of blackmail that the North Koreans have been practicing on the world for a number of years now, especially not the United States."
In other news...
On the "Axis of Weasels" front, the French are protesting again -- now claiming that the Pentagon and CIA are waging an "ugly campaign to destroy the image of France." (Didn't the French accomplish that themselves years ago?) The French ambassador says that reports in the Washington Post and Washington Times claiming France sold Iraq armored vehicles, radar equipment, spare parts for military aircraft and chemical components for long-range missiles are false. The French government denies it provided Iraq information on its negotiations with the U.S. and denies it provided Iraqi officials French passports. (They're still crafting the press release that denies they had any economic ties to the Saddamite regime, obstructed NATO assistance to Turkey, or led the campaign against UN authorization of "regime change" in Iraq.)
Asked about the French complaints, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld replied, "France has historically had a very close relationship with Iraq. My understanding is that it continued right up until the outbreak of the war. What took place thereafter, we'll find out."
Quote of the week...
"My thoughts and prayers and those of our fellow citizens are with the families of the victims of yesterday's murder in Saudi Arabia. We pray for them. We mourn the loss of life. These despicable acts were committed by killers whose only faith is hate." --President George W. Bush
Open query...
"One of the two Middle Eastern pillars of the Axis of Evil has fallen; are we prepared to cope with the other?" --Michael Ledeen
News from the Swamp...
In the Executive Branch, returning his focus to domestic issues after riding high job-approval marks on the success of regime change in Iraq, President Bush dealt a heavy blow to the most loyal members of his political base this week.
In a stupefying example of bad judgment and timing, President Bush's pragmatic handlers reiterated his support for the 1994 Feinstein-Schumer Gun-Control Act -- preventing law-abiding citizens from owning semi-automatic rifles (so-called and decidedly misnamed "assault weapons") for lawful purposes -- scheduled to expire in September 2004. In so doing, the administration offended both the overwhelming majority of the President's constituency and the constitutional foundation of our Republic.
The Feinstein-Schumer Gun-Control Act narrowly passed the Démocrate-controlled House and Senate in 1994 and was signed into law by Bill Clinton. Though House Majority Leader Tom DeLay says, "The votes in the House are not there to reauthorize ... [the measure]," Feinstein and Schumer have introduced a new bill in the Senate to renew the restrictions, and they will press the House for a roll call vote in the upcoming election year.
Feinstein and Schumer praised President Bush (and when this duo is singing your praises, it's time to rethink your position!), saying: "We welcome your support and look forward to working with you to gain swift passage of this legislation. With your assistance, we will be able to pass legislation to continue the ban and help make America's streets safer."
"Safer"? For whom? Such laws claim, ostensibly, to protect law-abiding citizens. Of course, only law-abiding citizens comply with these restrictions -- and at their own peril. Criminals don't care if the weapons they're using comport with the 23,000 federal, state and local gun restrictions already on the books.
For 30 years, the Left has employed a strategy of "incremental encroachment" on the Second Amendment to achieve its ultimate goal of gun confiscation, and the Feinstein-Schumer legislation is no exception. To wit, Feinstein said of the 1994 legislation, "If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate...for an outright ban, picking up every one of them, Mr. and Mrs. America, turn them all in, I would have done it!"
As noted by Justice Joseph Story, appointed to the Supreme Court by the author of our Constitution, James Madison: "The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them." Indeed!
The Bush administration has calculated that the renewal of the Feinstein-Schumer legislation will never get to the President's desk because it won't make it through Congress. This is a dangerous gambit, and there is no excuse for the advance notice that Mr. Bush would sign the renewal, which served only to encourage other Leftist gun confiscators. That encouragement just made re-election of conservatives in Congress -- and the White House -- more difficult and more expensive.
PatriotPetitions.US has launched a national campaign entreating our President, House of Representatives and Senate to reject legislation renewing the 1994 Clinton-Feinstein-Schumer Gun-Control Act. Please join fellow Patriots on the front lines in defense of our liberty and national sovereignty. Link to -- http://patriotpost.us/petition/no-gun-ban/
In other White House news, among the most vocal critics of Sen. Rick Santorum's remarks on the potential consequences of a Supreme Court decision in the case challenging Texas' anti-sodomy law were leaders of the Log Cabin Republicans, a homosexual advocacy group. As their reward, the administration hosted 200 activists from this group for a White House "policy briefing" last Friday.
This happened in the week after the Human (read "Homosexual") Rights Campaign arranged a meeting between Republican National Committee Chairman Mark Racicot and activists from the nation's most insidious homosexual advocacy groups. HRC is also circulating a pledge asking members of Congress not to "discriminate on the basis of gender identity, expression and sexual orientation in their offices."
Memo to Karl Rove and Mark Racicot: For the record, Sen. Santorum's views, and those of most conservatives outside the Beltway, comport with the current GOP Platform.