FrontPage interview with Bruce Tefft

More on the incompatibility of Islam with the West

I was over at VFR earlier scanning Auster's new articles when this one caught my attention. Certainly I was compelled to go over to FrontPage Mag. and read the entire interview with Mr. Tefft, so I did, and here's something intriguing that I found and thought I would share. At one point in the interview Tefft concludes his answer to an FP question in the following manner:

Tefft:

... But I'm an ex-spy, not a theologian -- from the spy-war aspect, the best thing the West can do in this war with Islam is to publicize and support morally and monetarily the apostates and ex-Muslims. They know the evils of Islam better than any outsider.

When I read this at first it sounded good and reasonable and made a lot of sense to me. Certainly a Muslim apostate/ex-Muslim who has renounced the religion of Islam would know much more than an outsider about the evils of, and inherent to Islam. And it cannot be bad, if Islam is so evil, for a Muslim to come to the light and renounce his faith in the religion of Mohammed, can it? Therefore we should publicize and fund these people, right? Then I came to my senses and recalled the Islamic principle of Taqiyya, or religious deception. In fact, earlier in the interview Tefft makes light of the practice of this principle in Islam when he states:

For a Muslim to pledge allegiance to a non-Muslim nation state would be either hypocritical or blasphemous -- something a true Muslim would not, or could not do. This is the case unless he was under a special jihadist dispensation from an Islamic cleric (as the 9/11 hijackers were) to infiltrate enemy territory and to act as the enemy does, in order to perform his mission. (italics added)

But further explanation of the principle, how it may be used and to what extent, may be found in Gregory M. Davis's excellent summation on the principles of Islam, Islam 101.

Mr. Davis writes:

Historically, examples of taqiyya include permission to renounce Islam itself in order to save one's neck or ingratiate oneself with an enemy. It is not hard to see that the implications of taqiyya are insidious in the extreme: they essentially render negotiated settlement -- and, indeed, all veracious communication between dar al-Islam and dar al-harb -- impossible. It should not, however, be surprising that a party to a war should seek to mislead the other about its means and intentions. Jihad Watch's own Hugh Fitzgerald sums up taqiyya and kitman, a related form of deception. (italics added)

So, what are we to conclude from this? Well, the conclusion I draw from it is that it would be virtually impossible to determine for sure whether you were dealing with a legitimate and sincere apostate/ex-Muslim given this principle of taqiyya in Islam to deceive the enemy in pursuit of victory over him. I mean, if the supposed apostate, working under the principle of taqiyya as described here is going to, in Tefft's words, "act as the enemy does," then he's going to dress like him, talk like him, groom himself like him, and most importantly rail against the evils and injustices of his true faith in accordance with his underlying purpose of accomplishing his mission, is he not?

So what is the answer to this dilemma? If we have no way of knowing who we're dealing with, friend or foe acting as friend, due to the deceitfulness authorized of his religion/former religion when we meet up with an "ex-Muslim"/"apostate," then what should be our approach to him? Is the answer not lying within the principles of separationism? Is it not to be skeptical of and distrust him to the point that we materially restrict his ability to harm us by his deceit, should he be operating under the principle of taqiyya or kitman -- the principle of deceiving his enemy in any way he can to accomplish his mission? Should we not thwart his mission before his mission ever gets underway?

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Muslim chairwoman offended by Okla. State Lawmaker

Marjenah Seirafi-Pour, a Muslim and the chairman of Gov. Brad Henry's "Ethnic American Advisory Council" is denouncing State Representative Rex Duncan's assessment of Islam that it is an extreme ideology.

Apparently Miss Seirafi-Pour takes exception to Representative Duncan's statement that Islam is an ideology which encourages the murder of innocent women and children. She says it is not an ideology, but a religion. Ok, so it's a religion. And what is a religion? See here.

Representative Duncan was joined by sixteen other Oklahoma lawmakers in rejecting a gift from the council of a copy of the Quran.

I only have a couple of questions, to whomever they may concern:

1. Where's the evidence showing that Islam is a "very peaceful, very inclusive religion," as Seirafi-Pour insists?

2. What's a Muslim doing chairing this council, Governor Henry???

In a related story in the McAlester News Capital, Wednesday edition, it is reported that members of the council are going to offer to meet with the representatives who refused to take the gifts. The idea being, of course, to re-educate these representatives on the "peaceful," "inclusive" nature of the religion of Mohammed. In other words, to acculturate them to Islam.

I'll be contacting Representative Duncan's office this morning, recommending that he read and pass around to his compatriots some of the articles I've collected on the subject here at Webster's. (I have now done this.)

More later.

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Hirsi Ali on the Islamic threat to the West

John Savage over at Brave New World Watch has pointed me in the direction of his October 15th entry on Hirsi Ali's contention that the trouble with is Islam is really the trouble with the West.

Hirsi Ali:

"The Western mind-set—that if we respect them, they’re going to respect us, that if we indulge and appease and condone and so on, the problem will go away—is delusional. The problem is not going to go away. Confront it, or it’s only going to get bigger.

Here again, John provides us with the necessary links in his entry. Thanks to John for the heads up.

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Converting others to the Principles of Separationism

Over at VFR I ask this question: "Since we can't control what Muslims do or decide to do, but we can control what we do or decide to do, I wonder if there's a strategy available to us which would help us to win more converts to the principles of separationism? It seems like we're trying to get people to believe what they don't want to believe about Islam, namely that it is wholly incompatible with Western civilization. Is there a way to make them understand what they apparently don't want to understand about Islam?" And LA answers me.

In short, there are no short cuts. We're just going to have to work harder.

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On the idea of Secession (Part 2)

(Update: I've added a few initial thoughts on the comments I've received so far.)

This is an important, as well as a very interesting topic. I'm going to post the excellent comments that I got to the original entry under the read more section of this entry in hopes that this will prevent their being missed (Please post additional comments pertinent to this question here)...

VA writes:

Terry, you've written a very well-thought out entry on this topic.
I appreciate your point of view.
I think many of those who are involved in the secessionist movement are not necessarily driven by pure animus towards DC, but an alarm at what is being done in and to our country. For many reasons it looks as though our elected officials have cut themselves off from the will of the people, which as you know, is supposed to be the basis for our government. I think many people, seeing a government which is utterly unresponsive to our will, think that such a government is no longer legitimate.

"[Bear] always in mind that a nation ceases to be republican only when the will of the majority ceases to be the law." - Thomas Jefferson: Reply to the Citizens of Adams County, Pa., 1808

"The mother principle [is] that 'governments are republican only in proportion as they embody the will of their people, and execute it.'" - Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816.

The fact that our government seems to be attempting to overturn the people by repopulating our country with a new majority is extremely serious. I can't imagine that our forefathers would accept such a thing; their grievances against King George were not as serious as today's grievances.
Having Confederate ancestors, I don't see secession as a great evil per se, though it's not something to be taken lightly by any means. Still I think there has to be the option of peacefully leaving the Union if it no longer is what it was designed to be, and if it no longer embodies the will of the people.
Peaceful separations have happened in history.

Fellow AFBer, Mike Tams writes:

Good post. I'd say that my thoughts on the matter aren't far different from yours. A voluntary union should imply a perpetual right to dissolve it - for legitimate reasons, and then it's not a matter to be taken lightly. Dissolving the Union would hold, in my opinion, grave consequences both here and abroad.

And lest Mark Alexander think we're on the same page here, I must reiterate that dissolving that bond would only be just for just reasons; and then, I would imagine that such a dissolution would be followed by another, different, union. History may have been written much differently had our union been less effective.

Populist writes:

While I'm not familiar with the calls for secession (who or why), I find the very notion a farse. In addition to representatives that will govern with the will of the people, I believe that the states need to rely less on the "central government" (to borrow a term from Mr. Morris)to govern. To me, because of party politics, the state governments have become to intertwined with the "central government." These so called representatives are more interested in who controls the house/senate and White House (not to mention re-election), than what is best for these United States. We, the governed, need to wake up from our seemingly endless slumber and take back our government! We have allowed a minority of power brokers, from both parties, to determine the direction of our country and it doesn't take a genious to see that they are running it right in to the ground.

(I will add any further comments on this idea under this title, as well as my own replies to the comments later on.)

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Here are my initial thoughts on what my commenters have said so far:

First, I didn't mean to imply that these secessionist groups are necessarily driven by pure animus toward the central government, only that this is the impression I get from what I've read of them so far. My impression could be totally wrong, to be sure, and VA is right to point this out.

Also, I don't necessarily believe that these secessionist movements are bad, or that they'll ultimately result in dire consequences for the United States, though this does concern me, as it does all of my commenters.

Indeed, I think a good argument can be made that the mere threat of secession might alarm folks enough to say to themselves "hey!, we've got a serious threat here of breaking up the union of these States, which could potentially result in putting the disparate parts, and therefore the whole North American Continent, in a very precarious and vulnerable situation. We better try to devise a better plan here; a plan to strengthen, not to dissolve the union."

And this is one reason that I think it is dangerous for us to ever look on secession as illegal, unconstitutional, or whatever. If we consider it to be so, then we deprive ourselves, this nation, of one method of detecting a problem and correcting itself. I.e., the threat of the break up of the union.

I've written many times in the past, but for the benefit of Populist let me reiterate, that the American Civil War resulted in some very problematic alterations to our form of government. Essentially we went from a Federal Representative Republic where there was a built-in balance between the national and the federal aspects, to a centralized form of government where the moderating influence of federalism was essentially removed via incorporation which the fourteenth amendment provided an avenue for the federal courts to assert and enforce, though this was not the intent of the framers of the fourteenth amendment. Things have steadily degenerated ever since.

Nonetheless, this is what has happened, and I think it's perfectly understandable that many Americans do not (yet) realize how far we've strayed from the original legitimate, self-correcting design of this government. I mean, this is all we've known for how many decades? We cannot allow it to continue though. And if it takes the threat of the breakup of the union to get people to realize there's a huge problem here that needs to be resolved, then I'm all for it. We just need to be able to help them understand the true nature of the problem, and the proper way of going about fixing it. If this can be done without breaking up the union (and I'm persuaded that it can and must), but rather in actually strengthening it, then I can hardly see how dissolving the union of these States to be the preferable alternative. Though an alternative it must remain.

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Knowing Your Enemies

VA has another nice post up today that she's calling "Those outlawed emotions, again." VA makes some good points that need to be made, and that I'd like to discuss here in a more lengthy entry. But for now I'd like to focus on one statement VA makes in her post...

VA writes:

"I have to return again to Yeats's line, 'The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.' Our enemies, whether they are Latinos with revanchist intentions, or Moslems with jihad, fast or slow, in mind, ARE full of passionate intensity, while too many Americans are still in a state of denial or else they have emotionally and spiritually been disarmed. That must change, otherwise we are outclassed and overwhelmed."

This brings to mind something I recently read in Paul Sperry's book, "Infiltration, How Muslim Spies and Subversives have Penetrated Washington." Mr. Sperry bemoans the fact, and rightly so in my opinion, that we Americans do not know our enemy well. In this case, of course, Sperry is concentrating on our enemy, Islamism.

Mr. Sperry writes:

"We are fighting a spiritual seduction we have yet to fully grasp and comprehend, hung up as we are on measuring the dreams and happiness of others against our own dreams and happiness...A virtual taboo exists in official circles about Islam's role in terrorism. It is treated as if it comes out of the blue, as if there is no religious pattern. According to the president, we are fighting "evil-doers" and "a bunch of cold-blooded killers." To hear him and the FBI director, terrorism is generic, not Islamic." (emphasis mine)

Sperry continues:

"The first rule of war is know your enemy. You cannot defeat it if you do not know what motivates it.

Yet shockingly few FBI supervisors running counterterrorism cases have ever picked up a copy of the Quran to read it, let alone study it. "Supervisors don't study the Quran. They don't do any independent analysis," says former FBI special agent, John Vincent..."When you're fighting terrorism, you have to know how they think," adds Vincent...

Unfortunately, the enemy knows us better than we know it. The al-Qaida training manual quotes an old Muslim general: "The nation that wants to achieve victory over its enemy must know that enemy very well." The Islamic terrorists have studied our system inside and out, and they know its weaknesses and how to exploit them. They know about our open society, our civil liberties, our heavy ethnic mix, and our lax immigration enforcement all too well."

(I'll be adding more to this post later.)

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2005 FrontPage Interview with Paul Sperry

Paul Sperry is the author of the book "Infiltration, How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington". I mentioned a while back that I had purchased a copy of Mr. Sperry's 2005 book at a local Christian bookstore.

Though I've not yet read the book in its entirety (I've been reading it in conjunction with several other volumes), I ran across Sperry's website, SperryFiles.com, while reading through the afterword of the book. Posted below is a sample Q & A from the Front Page interview conducted with Mr. Sperry, posted on Sperry's website linked above...

Sample Q & A:

FP: Islamism extinguishes women's rights, gay rights, minority rights and all democratic rights one could imagine. These are supposed to be at the core of leftist values. Why is the Left having a love affair with an entity that extinguishes everything that it supposedly holds dear?

Sperry: Because they want to continue worshiping at the altar of cultural diversity. The Left has never met a culture or religion it didn't like, no matter how extreme, violent or anathema to our way of life, even one that uses the civil liberties the Left holds dear against us to gain a bigger foothold in our culture with the hopes of one day denying us those same liberties. Islamists secretly want to Islamize America, which as you say would extinguish women's rights, gay rights, minority rights and the rights of all minority religions to flourish like we're letting Islam flourish right now. And even faced with the threat of another mass-scale attack, the lefties would rather protect their claim to the mantle of tolerance for tolerance sake than their own country. But it's not just the left that won't wake up to the threat. Republican Paul Findley wrote a book about Islam that reads like an endless love letter. Two of the Muslim leaders he lionizes on the cover—Alamoudi and Sami al-Arian—are now behind bars on terror charges! (Findley told me he only regrets putting Alamoudi, a confessed terror conspirator, on the cover.) Then there's GOP operative Grover Norquist, an agent of influence for Islamists in Washington, as I detail in Infiltration and support through several alarming documents posted on sperryfiles.com. Because he's best pals with Karl Rove, he's getting to place bad people in the White House, DHS, the Transportation Department, and other key sensitive agencies in the war on terror. And he and his partner—Palestinian activist and former Alamoudi deputy Khaled Saffuri—are getting the president to legitimize Islam by placing pro-Islam political messages in his speeches. Bush is the first president to mention "mosques" and the "Quran" in inaugural addresses. The stated goal of their Islamic Institute, which got seed money from Alamoudi, is to promote Muslim activists to positions of power.

The entire interview is posted on Sperry's website which is linked above.

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The Viability of State and Local Immigration Control

(Update: This entry has been expanded from its original.)

Look at Lawrence Auster's interesting answer to Fjordman who asks whether Separationism is a practical strategy for dealing with Islam in an age of globalization...

"Of course it's a viable policy, if there is agreement on its necessity.

There are four ways that Muslims can enter non-Muslim countries: illegal immigration, legal immigration, temporary visits for travel/business, and military invasion.

People say we can't stop illegal immigration. That is of course false. The means are all there, we just have to put them into effect. Obviously we also have control over legal immigration. Limited travel and temporary sojourns for business and diplomatic purposes can be allowed.

Any individual country has the power to do all three of these things. Therefore, separationism simply requires that all non-Muslim countries do these three things.

As for military invasion, we and other countries generally have the ability to repel military invasions. Furthermore, a plank of Separationism is the location of permanent military bases at the margins of the Muslim world and the swift destruction of any dangerous Muslim regime. If a Muslim country invades a non-Muslim neighbor, the regime ruling that country will be eliminated.

Now the response will be: "All non-Muslim countries on earth cooperating in the same policy to contain and isolate Islam? Impossible!" At this moment it seems impossible. But the first thing to remember is that we don't have to wait for all countries to defend themselves before we start to defend ourselves. Suppose, for the sake of discussion, that the United States passed an amendment to the U.S. Constitution (recently posted at VFR) that, echoing the language of the Thirteenth Amendment which outlawed slavery, would outlaw the practice of Islam in the United States. Other countries would follow our example, one by one, until the rejection of Islam, something previously considered inconceivable, became a broad consensus in the non-Islamic world."

Of particular interest to me is LA's concluding paragraph. When I first read it I said to myself, exactly!, this is precisely what I'm saying in defense of Constitutionally Consistent, or, State and local control of immigration policy here in the United States. One or a few states determine they don't have to, nor are they going to wait on all the states (or the fed) to protect them before they start defending themselves, and etc.

Of course, as with Auster's reply to Fjordman, what I say concerning the viability of such an internal U.S. immigration policy is predicated upon the idea of there being "agreement on its necessity."

**********

Be sure to check out this article over at VFR since Mr. Auster has expanded it to include my comments to the entry, AND, more importantly, where he adds a link, beneath my comments, to a VFR article from 2006 where a good discussion ensued. This is the kind of clear thinking which we must get to in order to deal rightly with these kinds of situations.

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Fortifying Christendom Against the Hostility of Islam

(Note: I may not get around to adding the excerpts I promised to this entry until in the morning.)

The European Mindset 1492: The Crescent or the Cross?

That's the title of chapter three of a book I have in my possession, which I purchased around the year 1994 I think. The book is written by John Eidsmoe, and is entitled Columbus and Cortez, Conquerors for Christ...

Incidentally, years ago I was given a number of tracts which my great grandfather, whom dad and I were both named after, had developed as apologetic materials for the local Christian church he had founded. While I won't delve into the content of these tracts generally, there was one in particular which I found then to be quite interesting, and quite illuminating. This particular tract (and if I can locate a copy of it I will add the contents to this post) dealt with the discovery of the New World by Columbus, up through the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock. In other words, it recognized the hand of Providence in America's founding, tracing back in the chain of events, Columbus's discovery of the New World, and beyond. This used to be a common theme in educational circles, The Chain of Christianity Moving Westward.

The reason I mention this tract is because at the time I was given a copy by one of my relatives, the tract itself had already been removed from the body of tracts offered by the church in question to its members, and its visitors. In fact, I was in my early twenties when I first realized that such a tract existed, authored by my Great Grandfather, and I was raised in this church. So, if the tract was offered while I grew up in the church, I never knew anything of it. I suspect it was not.

And here is the point of this post. Like the church I was raised in, the national memory of the actual historical events which surrounded Columbus's discovery of a route to the West Indies has been all but erased. And this is a sad, as well as a dangerous fact. In Eidsmoe's book, chapter three, he lays out the threat that Christian nations were facing at the time of Columbus's voyage, the threat of Islam. Most traditionalists are knowledgable of this imminent danger, I'm sure, but I would still like to post excerpts from chapter three of the book below this initial entry later on...

Update:

I note that in the second paragraph, I make the statement that "this used to be a common theme in educational circles..." I'm mindful that this may be somewhat confusing for some of you, given that it is written in the context of a religious tract formerly offered by the church of my youth, especially those of you who are unfamiliar with my understanding of what an "educational institution" is. Therefore, I want to clarify the meaning of this statement by defining educational institutions as I mean it.

By educational institutions, I understand that there are three primary institutions tasked with educating, or sharing knowledge, with those under their care or supervision, the home, the church, and the formal schools. By this understanding of education, and the institutions tasked with providing it, one is more equipped to determine, for instance, what has gone wrong (or right) with one or the other group of people, whether you divide them as states, or local communities, or by race, or whatever. An example of this would be something like what is the cause of the disparity between group A's high divorce rate, and group B's comparative low divorce rate. If you look at the three primary educational institutions from whence both groups invariably, and to one degree or the other, derive the bulk of their educations, you will find, again invariably, that in the case of the one, one or more aspects of his/her education has a more positive/negative influence than it/they do for his counterpart. If the three primary educational institutions all tend to agree in some particular, or in some general way for one group, as opposed to, on the other hand, a noticable disagreement between them for the other group, then this serves to explain many of the differences that we see between the two groups. Also, this will account for certain trends that we notice where the gap between the two groups seems to be closing in favor of group A's or group B's philosophy. This is what I mean in paragraph two by "educational circles." There are three of them, and they're always in operation whether, for instance, one attends church on a regular basis or not, and etc.

The excerpts I promised are coming, but there's a further delay which I won't get into here. My apologies.

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Amending to do away with the threat of Islam

Go check out VFR's suggestion for what we should do about the Islamic plan to take over America, uncovered by the Justice Department.

I've said before, and I'll say again that fundamentally the threat of Islam on these shores comes down to a problem with our form of Government. The fact that our form of Government was fundamentally changed by the incorporation doctrine, where all power must ultimately reside in the central authority, is what gave rise to leftist liberalism, which in turn gave rise to the Islamic presence in this country...

However, short of an immediate "return to constitutional government," which is impractical, the United States is left vulnerable by the lawful presence of Islam in this country, due to its subversive doctrines and practices, and something has to be done about it.

Auster has offered an interesting solution to amend away the threat posed by this presence. If we could push such an amendment through, we may thereby be afforded an opportunity to concentrate our efforts on returning to constitutional, or, balanced government, soberly, reflectively, and free of the fear and subversive influence of Islam.

If the practice of the religion of Islam continues to be treated as a protected religion by the first amendment, meaning that it is equally protected with the religion of Christ, then the internal threat from Islam will continue to grow, and we will be left to fight both it, and the political doctrine most responsible for giving rise to it as itself a viable and growing political force in this country. The battle against leftist liberalism is itself difficult enough without our having to fight both it, and this political holy jihad subversively waged against us by adherents to the religion of Mohammed.

It's an interesting approach that deserves to be taken seriously.

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Toward a New Strategy for Iraq

(Note: This is a re-write of an entry I put up yesterday morning. The other entry was pulled when I realized that I had made some wrong assumptions about Mr. Auster's position on the Iraq war. To that individual who made me aware of this, I thank you. And to those of you who might have read the other entry before it was pulled, I offer my sincerest apologies, as well as to Mr. Auster. -TM)

I have generally been a supporter of the Iraq war from the beginning. My reasoning for supporting that war may be summed up as follows:

After 9/11 the United States was left in a state of vulnerability while the muslim world had gotten a shot of adrenaline by the witness of those events. Whether Saddam had WMDs was never the issue with me. The issue was whether he would use them against us if he had them, and/or, if he could acquire them. And whether he was willing to put aside differences with other rogue regimes and combine forces with them to attack us, his and their common enemy while we were in a perceived state of vulnerability.

I think the answer to those questions is fairly obvious, and that's the reason I supported the invasion and overthrow of the Saddam regime...

That said, this idea of freeing the Iraqis/installing democracy has always been a thorn in my side, and though others would disagree with me, my belief has always been that the administration and the republicans were pressured into announcing these goals as of primary importance simply to garner support for the war. Yes; I believe President Bush is a true believer in the idea of democratizing the muslim world, and Iraq is his grand experiment. But my point is that I don't believe he and the republicans would have so readily announced that as a priority and a primary reason for invading Iraq had the democrats and the ultra-liberals not manipulated them into it by their anti-war rhetoric.

Now, maybe I'm wrong about that, and maybe I'm just recalling the history of the debate differently than it actually occured. That's fine, I don't always think I'm right. But the point is those goals should have never been a priority for us. And whether the administration was manipulated into announcing them as priorities or not, it should never have been so because it puts us in a position where either we're to stay in Iraq indefinately, or we are to remove ourselves having apparently failed in our objectives thus weakening us in the eyes of the muslim world and providing them with yet another shot of adrenaline.

With all of that said I have of late been contemplating whether we, the United States, have an alternative available to us that would satisfy our ends which to me boil down to self-preservation, not Iraqi democratization. I have always had a strong bias against any proposed "exit strategy" for Iraq based on the idea that they are generally liberal strategies which seem to pay no mind to the problems associated with simply retreating and effectively declaring defeat for ourselves and victory for our enemies. But I've recently been turned on to an "exit strategy" that acknowledges these problems and provides a means of dealing with them.

Now, I'm a realist in the sense that I understand that America and Americans are not prepared to embrace certain aspects of what this strategy entails. Indeed, were we so prepared, we would never have gotten into this situation to begin with. So it takes a radical shift in thinking. But as the author of this strategy might say in reply to someone like myself who might question whether Americans are prepared to accept and embrace such a strategy, which to some would be counted as wacky and radical: "How can we get there unless we talk about it and propose it and show this to people as a real alternative to our current hopeless approach?" It's a good point, because if this strategy has any merit to it at all, then we should at least accept it as a viable option. If it has a great deal of merit, then it should be adopted as our policy. And the only way to answer those questions is to first get it out there for people to see.

So, I will quote the author, Mr. Auster, from his entry posted at VFR yesterday wherein he has provided the link to the separationist strategy.

Auster writes:

"Either way, we have to leave Iraq. What must be rejected is leaving Iraq in the Democratic Party's way, in a way that looks like a defeat, which would encourage our jihadist enemies everywhere. Here, then, is what I propose. We should leave Iraq, while announcing that our former policy of Muslim democratization was a mistake and that our new policy is not to spread democracy to the Muslim world, but to stop and reverse the spread of Muslims to our world. Instead of acting like some pathetically distracted, naive do-gooder, like the James Stewart character in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, we will look like a tough country shedding our liberal illusions about the Muslims and determined to defend our own safety. Instead of being a defeat, such a withdrawal will be part of a radical strategic shift in which we leave our foolish past behind and immeasurably strengthen our own position." ("What we need to do in Iraq," VFR, July 13, 2007).

Whether this stategy has any merit to it is left to you to decide. But I've done my part to get it out there, and I'd like to hear what you have to say on the matter.

-DW

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