America's longest war will leave no trace

By Mark Steyn
The Orange County Register
http://www.ocregister.com/
March 2, 2012

Supporters of Majlis-e-Ulema Pakistan, a religious group burn the U.S flag during an anti-American rally in Lahore February 27, 2012. Multiple U.S. soldiers have been killed as protests continue in Afghanistan and Pakistan following the desecration of Korans by NATO troops last week. (Reuters/Mohsin Raza)


Say what you like about Afghans, but they're admirably straightforward. The mobs outside the bases enflamed over the latest Western affront to their exquisitely refined cultural sensitivities couldn't put it any plainer:

"Die, die, foreigners!"

And foreigners do die. U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. John Loftis, 44, and Army Maj. Robert Marchanti II, 48, lost their lives not on some mission out on the far horizon in wild tribal lands in the dead of night but in the offices of the Afghan Interior Ministry. In a "secure room" that required a numerical code to access. Gunned down by an Afghan "intelligence officer." Who then departed the scene of the crime unimpeded by any of his colleagues.

Some news outlets reported the event as a "security breach." But what exactly was breached? The murderer was by all accounts an employee of the Afghan government, with legitimate rights of access to the building and its secure room, and "liaising" with his U.S. advisers and "mentors" was part of the job. In Afghanistan, foreigners are dying at the hands of the locals who know them best. The Afghans trained by Westerners, paid by Westerners and befriended by Westerners are the ones who have the easiest opportunity to kill them. It is sufficiently non-unusual that the Pentagon, as is the wont with bureaucracies, already has a term for it: "green-on-blue incidents," in which a uniformed Afghan turns his gun on his Western "allies."

So we have a convenient label for what's happening; what we don't have is a strategy to stop it – other than more money, more "hearts and minds" for people who seem notably lacking in both, and more bulk orders of the bestselling book "Three Cups Of Tea," an Oprahfied heap of drivel extensively exposed as an utter fraud but which a delusional Washington insists on sticking in the kit bag of its Afghan-bound officer class.

Don't fancy the tea? A U.S. base in southern Afghanistan was recently stricken by food poisoning due to mysteriously high amounts of chlorine in the coffee. As Navy Capt. John Kirby explained, "We don't know if it was deliberate or something in the cleaning process."

Oh, dear. You could chisel that on the tombstones of any number of expeditionary forces over the centuries: "Afghanistan. It's something in the cleaning process."

In the past couple of months, two prominent politicians of different nations visiting their troops on the ground have used the same image to me for Western military bases: crusader forts. Behind the fortifications, a mini-West has been built in a cheerless land: There are Coke machines and Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Safely back within the gates, a man can climb out of the full RoboCop and stop pretending he enjoys three cups of tea with the duplicitous warlords, drug barons and pederasts who pass for Afghanistan's ruling class. The visiting Western dignitary is cautiously shuttled through outer and inner perimeters, and reminded that, even here, there are areas he would be ill-advised to venture unaccompanied, and tries to banish memories of his first tour all those years ago when aides still twittered optimistically about the possibility of a photo-op at a girls' schoolroom in Jalalabad or an Internet start-up in Kabul.

The last crusader fort I visited was Kerak Castle in Jordan a few years ago. It was built in the 1140s, and still impresses today. I doubt there will be any remains of our latter-day fortresses a millennium hence. Six weeks after the last NATO soldier leaves Afghanistan, it will be as if we were never there. Before the election in 2010, the New York Post carried a picture of women registering to vote in Herat, all in identical top-to-toe bright blue burkas, just as they would have looked on Sept. 10, 2001. We came, we saw, we left no trace. America's longest war will leave nothing behind.

They can breach our security, but we cannot breach theirs – the vast impregnable psychological fortress in which what passes for the Pushtun mind resides. Someone accidentally burned a Quran your pals had already defaced with covert messages? Die, die, foreigners! The president of the United States issues a groveling and characteristically clueless apology for it? Die, die, foreigners! The American friend who has trained you and hired you and paid you has arrived for a meeting? Die, die, foreigners! And those are the Afghans who know us best. To the upcountry village headmen, the fellows descending from the skies in full body armor are as alien as were the space invaders to Americans in the film "Independence Day."

The Rumsfeld strategy that toppled the Taliban over a decade ago was brilliant and innovative: special forces on horseback using GPS to call in unmanned drones. They will analyze it in staff colleges around the world for decades. But what we ought to be analyzing instead is the sad, aimless, bloated, arthritic, transnationalized folly of what followed. The United States is an historical anomaly: the nonimperial superpower. Colonialism is not in its DNA, and in some ways that speaks well for it, and in other ways, in a hostile and fast-changing world of predators and opportunists, it does not. But even nations of an unimperialist bent have roused themselves to great transformative "cleaning processes" within living memory: The Ottawa Citizen's David Warren wrote this week that he had "conferred the benefit of the doubt" on "the grand bureaucratic project of 'nation building'... predicated on post-War successes in Germany and Japan."

It wasn't that long ago, was it? Except that, as Warren says, the times are "so utterly changed." It seems certain that, waging World War II today, the RAF would not carpet-bomb Dresden, and the U.S. would not nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And, lacking the will to inflict massive, total defeat, would we also lack the will to inflict that top-to-toe "cleaning process"?

Ah, well. Kabul is not Berlin or Tokyo. As long as wily mischief-makers are not using it as a base for global mayhem, who cares? To modify Bismarck, the Hindu Kush is not worth the bones of a single Pennsylvanian grenadier, or "training officer." Afghanistan is about Afghanistan – if you're Afghan or Pakistani. But, if you're Russian or Chinese or Iranian or European, Afghanistan is about America. And too much about the Afghan campaign is too emblematic. As much as any bailed-out corporation, the U.S. is "too big to fail": In Afghanistan as in the stimulus, it was money no object. The combined Western military/aid presence accounts for 98 percent of that benighted land's GDP. We carpet-bomb with dollar bills; we have the most advanced technology known to man; we have everything except strategic purpose.

That "crusader fort" image has a broader symbolism. The post-American world is arising before our eyes. According to the IMF, China will become the dominant economic power by 2016. Putin is on course to return to the Kremlin corner office. In Tehran, the mullahs nuclearize with impunity. New spheres of influence are being established in North Africa, in Central Europe, in the once-reliably "American lake" of the Pacific. Can America itself be a crusader fort? A fortress secure behind the interminable checkpoints of Code Orange TSA bureaucratic torpor while beyond the moat the mob jeers "Die, die, foreigners"? Or, in the end, will it prove as effortlessly penetrable as the "secure room" of the Afghan Interior Ministry?

©MARK STEYN

Releasing the Blind Sheikh?

It is too early to tell, but not too early to be very worried.

By Andrew C. McCarthy

http://www.nationalreview.com

March 1, 2012

 

Supporters of Egyptian cleric Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman demonstrate to call for his release in front of the U.S. embassy in Cairo on April 21, 2011

The Arabic-language newspaper al-Arabiya reported on Tuesday that the Obama administration has offered to release Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman to Egypt. Abdel Rahman is the infamous “Blind Sheikh” who was convicted in 1995 for masterminding a terrorist war against the United States that included the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and a plot to bomb New York City landmarks. According to the late Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda’s founder, Abdel Rahman is also responsible for the fatwa — the necessary Islamic edict — that green-lighted the 9/11 attacks.

The alleged offer to release Abdel Rahman is said to be an effort to end the impasse over 16 American “civil-society activists” (including the son of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood) being detained by Egypt’s interim government. The Blind Sheikh, the report says, would be part of a prisoner exchange: 50 Egyptians swapped for the Americans whose organizations are said to have received foreign funding in violation of Egyptian law. (See my post from last week on efforts by senior Republican senators to secure the Americans’ release.) Speculation that a quid pro quo may be in place has intensified because, in recent days, Egyptian authorities suddenly adjourned the trial of the Americans and lifted the travel ban against seven of them, including Sam LaHood — freeing them to return to the U.S.

The al-Arabiya report is available only in Arabic so far, not on the newspaper’s English-language website. It was brought to the attention of the English-speaking blogosphere late Tuesday night by the indispensable Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch (see here). Through the intercession of Andrew Bostom, the website “Translating Jihad” has now published an English translation of the full story.

Blind since the age of four, the 73-year-old Abdel Rahman has been renowned in global Islamist circles as “the Emir of Jihad” since the 1970s. He is an al-Azhar University–educated sharia jurist and the leader of an Egyptian terrorist organization, Gama’at al-Islamiya (“the Islamic Group”). Like the Muslim Brotherhood, Gama’at purports to have renounced violence. Although he was acquitted by an Egyptian court for complicity in the 1981 slaying of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, Abdel Rahman has bragged about issuing the fatwa that approved the killing. His fatwas calling on Muslims to murder Sadat’s successor, Hosni Mubarak, are numerous and notorious.

American immigration authorities permitted Abdel Rahman to settle in the United States in 1990, eventually giving him permanent residence status as a “religious worker,” even though his long history of inciting terror and his virulent anti-Americanism were well known — and even though his name appeared on U.S. terrorist watch lists.

I was the lead prosecutor at Abdel Rahman’s lengthy 1995 trial. A jury convicted him of conspiring to wage a war of urban terrorism against the United States, and of bombing conspiracy, solicitation of attacks on American military installations, and conspiring to murder — as well as soliciting the murder of — Mubarak. In January 1996, then–district judge (and later U.S. attorney general) Michael Mukasey sentenced Abdel Rahman to life imprisonment. The sheikh’s convictions and sentence were unanimously upheld on appeal. My book Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad details Abdel Rahman’s history and the investigation of the jihadist organization he built in the United States.

Egyptian Islamists have been agitating for Abdel Rahman’s release since we arrested him in New York City in July 1993. Some of this agitation has predictably crossed into barbarism. In 1997, Gama’at threatened to “target . . . all of those Americans who participated in subjecting [Abdel Rahman’s] life to danger” — “every American official, starting with the American president [down] to the despicable jailer.” The organization promised to do “everything in its power” to obtain his release. Six months later, Gama’at jihadists set upon 58 foreign tourists and several police officers at an archeological site in Luxor, Egypt, brutally shooting and slicing them to death. The terrorists left behind leaflets — including in the mutilated torso of one victim — demanding that the Blind Sheikh be freed.

Gama’at subsequently issued a statement warning that its forcible struggle against the Egyptian regime would proceed unless Mubarak met its three demands: the implementation of sharia, the cessation of diplomatic relations with Israel, and “the return of our Sheikh and emir to his land.” In March 2000, terrorists associated with the Abu Sayyaf group kidnapped a number of tourists in the Philippines and threatened to behead them if Abdel Rahman and two other convicted terrorists were not freed. Authorities later recovered two decapitated bodies (four other hostages were never accounted for).

On September 21, 2000, only three weeks before al-Qaeda’s bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, al-Jazeera televised a “Convention to Support the Honorable Omar Abdel Rahman.” Front and center were Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri (then bin Laden’s deputy, now his successor as emir of al-Qaeda). They warned that unless Sheikh Abdel Rahman was freed, jihadist attacks against the United States would be stepped up. At the same event, Mohammed Abdel Rahman, an al-Qaeda operative who is one of the sheikh’s sons, exhorted the crowd to “avenge your Sheikh” and “go to the spilling of blood.”

In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the New York Post reported bin Laden’s proclamation that his war on America had been justified by a fatwa promulgated by Abdel Rahman from prison. Abdel Rahman had indeed issued a decree casting the fight for his release as an Islamic duty. Regarding Americans, the Blind Sheikh exhorted “Muslims everywhere to dismember their nation, tear them apart, ruin their economy, provoke their corporations, destroy their embassies, attack their interests, sink their ships, . . . shoot down their planes, [and] kill them on land, at sea, and in the air. Kill them wherever you find them.”

The Mubarak regime, of course, fell last year, after Obama — following some temporizing — called for the Egyptian president to step down. Egypt is currently run by a military council, although it is transitioning to an overtly Islamist government dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood. Islamists won about 80 percent of the parliamentary seats in just-completed national elections — an outcome the Obama administration has said it welcomes.

Tuesday’s al-Arabiya story portrays the Blind Sheikh’s potential release and repatriation as an offer by the Obama administration, not a demand by Egypt’s interim government. But there have been many such demands from Egyptian sources. They have increased in number since last year’s revolt, and have featured protests outside the American embassy in Cairo. Helping spearhead the effort has been Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, the extremely influential Muslim Brotherhood jurist. Like the Blind Sheikh, the 85-year-old Qaradawi is an Egyptian alumnus of al-Azhar who fled the secular regime and is regarded by Muslim supremacists as a hero. The Egyptian press reports that, ever since the Americans were detained in December, Abdel Rahman’s family and supporters have aggressively pushed the government to barter them for the sheikh’s release.

According to the al-Arabiya report, which is entitled “Umar Abd-al-Rahman at Forefront of Egyptian-American Prisoner Exchange Deal,” Egypt’s interim rulers perceive the United States to be in a “weak position” because the 16 American prisoners were caught violating Egypt’s laws and sovereignty. Thus, according to Major General Muhammad Hani Zahir, who is described as an “expert” on terrorism matters, Egypt is in a position to “exploit” the situation and demand weighty concessions.
Zahir claims that the American activists provoked some of the violence in the Egyptian uprising, and that this offense is akin to terrorism support — a charge that can result in severe sentences in Egypt, just as it does in many American terrorism cases. Zahir thus speculates that the prospect of convictions on such extreme charges puts enormous pressure on Obama. Consequently, Zahir says, the Egyptian government is pulling together a list of all Egyptian nationals currently in American custody — intimating that the government’s demands could far outstrip the 50 prisoners the newspaper claims the U.S. has offered. It is worth noting that, besides Abdel Rahman, other convicted Egyptian terrorists serving life sentences in the U.S. include Mahmud Abouhalima, one of the 1993 WTC bombers.

It is important to stress that, while it appears the Americans are being freed, all we have at the moment to suggest an unsavory deal has been cut is a report in the Arabic press. Al-Arabiya is no fly-by-night operation, but neither is it immune to the Arab media’s penchant for sensationalism and conspiracy theories. The Obama administration has not publicly indicated any intention to resort to a prisoner swap to resolve the ongoing crisis over Egypt’s detention of Americans — let alone signaled that it would be open to releasing the Blind Sheikh in such a swap. The United States provides Egypt with billions in aid and obviously has many negotiating cards to play. There should be no need to entertain requests that convicted terrorists be released.

On the other hand, there are patent grounds for concern. While President Obama has at times been admirably aggressive in taking the fight to jihadists overseas, he has at other times lapsed into appeasement — and is especially cavalier when it comes to captured terrorists. His administration is currently trying to broker a peace deal with the Taliban and is reportedly contemplating the release of terrorists held at Gitmo in order to make it happen. The administration was pressured into releasing Binyam Mohammed, an al-Qaeda operative accused of plotting with convicted terrorist Jose Padilla to carry out a second round of post-9/11 attacks against American cities. It has participated in prisoner swaps that resulted in the release of terrorists complicit in the killing of U.S. soldiers — deals that violated longstanding American policy against negotiating with terrorists. And it has gone to great lengths to propitiate the Islamists who will soon be running Egypt — branding them as “largely secular” moderates, indicating a willingness to work with them, and remaining mum as their ascendancy has led to a campaign of violence against religious minorities.

For quite some time now, I’ve been concerned that President Obama might cave in to Egyptian pressure for Sheikh Abdel Rahman’s release. I’ve assumed, however, that the president’s political instincts rendered such a move inconceivable before the November election. In the interim, I’ve hoped that an engaged Republican opponent might highlight the matter, turning it into a campaign issue, pressing Obama for a public commitment that Abdel Rahman will not be released, period. To be sure, that would be an unenforceable promise, but one Obama could not break without severe political consequences.

Has the crisis involving Americans detained in Egypt changed those calculations? It is too early to tell, but not too early to be very worried.

— Andrew C. McCarthy, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, is the author, most recently, of The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America.

Former Megachurch Pastor Reflects on Battle With Lou Gehrig's Disease

By Eryn Sun , Christian Post Reporter

http://www.christianpost.com/

February 28, 2012

When Ed Dobson was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease, he thought his life was over.

Given only two to five more years to live, the former megachurch pastor, who fully understood the disease's degenerative symptoms, began to slowly give up on his life, which was once busy and populated, opting instead to isolate himself in bed. That is, until one day God spoke to him in a high pitched New York accent.

More specifically, God used his friend Billy, the actual one with the accent, to speak to him and wake him up from his depression.

"[Billy] said, 'Ay, you need to be a Yogi Berra Christian,'" Dobson recalled in the first of his seven-part film series produced by Flannel, the makers of Francis Chan's BASIC videos and Rob Bell's NOOMA series.

"I have no clue what he's talking about ... so I ask him what does that mean? And he says, 'It ain't over till it's over.'"

Finding profound truth in the simple statement made by his friend, who experienced the "worst of the worst" and yet still remained hopeful each day, the Michigan preacher finally began living again in spite of the disease.

"I had considered my life as over," Dobson stated. "But it wasn't. The doctors gave me two to five years. That was over 10 years ago. If I'd given up and laid down to die, I would have missed walking my daughter down the aisle, I would have missed the birth of all five grandchildren. I would say Billy's phone call was God speaking to me with a New York accent."

As a sufferer of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), a form of Motor Neuron Disease that is characterized by rapidly progressive weakness, muscle atrophy, inability to control all voluntary movement, and eventual death, the former executive of the Moral Majority had difficulty performing basic functions like brushing his teeth, putting on his clothes and eating.

"When I would be thinking about the future, about my kids, my grandkids, my wife, my job, all of which would be taken away, I would sink in the darkness," he revealed in his second short film "Consider the Birds."

"When I can't button my shirt or even do up the Velcro, it's a reminder that I'm on the downward spiral ... I'm afraid of tomorrow."

But reflecting on God's words in the Bible, particularly the verses found in the book of Hebrews, chapter 13, the Northern Ireland native stopped worrying about tomorrow and found comfort and peace.

"God has said 'Never will I leave you never will I forsake you so we say with confidence the Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid."

Those verses, which he wrote on a blue index card early on during his journey with ALS, were a reminder not only for him but also for his son Daniel, who previously served in Iraq, that God was with them.

"Giving Daniel to God and giving my disease to God is something I had to do every day and many times a day," Dobson noted. "It's not something you do and get on with your life. I was reminded of Jesus' teaching who says don't worry about tomorrow and he says look at the birds of the air, they don't sow or reap or store barns yet your father takes care of them."

The former pastor of Calvary Church, where he served for 18 years before his disease forced him to an early retirement, believes that when people are worried about the future, like he was, it is hard to find God.

But when Christians begin to live in the moment, they find that God is "right there" with them.

Though his journey with ALS has been long and filled with suffering, there have been many blessings that Dobson has discovered along the way, like newfound friendships with fellow victims of ALS.

During his last few days at Calvary, an emotional and incredibly difficult time for Dobson, he met and befriended J.J., a man who approached him at church telling him he too was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease.

"J.J. and I had not met until that Sunday at Calvary and within a week, because we were pilgrims on the same journey, he became one of my best friends," Dobson revealed.

J.J. had difficulty speaking and swallowing due to his "bulbar onset" ALS, which made his speech slurred and nasal in character. Eventually, he lost all ability to speak.

Shortly after J.J. was diagnosed with the disease, he bought a Corvette and decided to drive route 66 to California with 13 of his friends. He also asked Dobson to come along with him and they took an unforgettable journey across the states.

The pastor commended J.J. for facing death with "courage, dignity and grace," something he hoped to mirror and pass along to others in similar circumstances as well.

When J.J. passed away, he left the Corvette to Dobson in his will.

"I would have gladly given the Corvette back to have J.J. still here," he said in his short film. "If J.J. were here, he would say I encouraged him a whole lot more than he encouraged me but the truth is I found great courage in knowing J.J. and yes, I feel an obligation to pass that on to as many people as possible."

"Everyone I meet is on a pilgrimage or a journey and in the providence of God, our paths crossed and I think they crossed so we can mutually encourage each other. In retrospect, the random meeting of J.J. was a reminder that God was with me even on the worst of days."

Not only has Dobson forged new relationships with his ALS "pilgrims," but he has also learned to be an encouragement to everyone he meets, investing in one-on-one relationships as opposed to his former days mentoring thousands behind his pulpit on Sundays.

"When I was at Calvary, I preached to thousands of people every week," Dobson stated. "Today, it's one-on-one primarily and my struggle is you would think that influencing thousands is more important than influencing one. But I'm gradually learning that influencing one-on-one is way more important."

Like Adam and Eve were told to take care of their own garden, Dobson finds that he too must tend to his own appointed "garden" as well by meeting with individual people and helping them on their journey.

He has restored many broken relationships with those whom he wronged or those who wronged him in the past, and is able to now see the value in relationships and the futility of pride.

"I think forgiveness is a great idea until you have someone to forgive," he admitted. "And then it's very difficult. You have to humble yourself, you have to admit you were wrong, you have to look at the person in the eyeballs and all of that is intimidating."

Despite the initial reservations, however, once he began to forgive and be forgiven, he saw that he was now much slower to judge and quicker to listen.

His unexpected disease gave him wisdom, perspective, and also reminded him of what was important in life.

"I think humans have the capacity to think they'll live forever," Dobson commented. "You ain't living forever."

Once people begin to realize that their lives are coming to an end, they begin to realize how fragile life is and prioritize their day-to-day activities.

"One day it will be over but it's not about how long I have left, it's about how I spend the time I do have."

Dobson now continues to invest in new and old relationships, and encourages everyone he meets with his story, which has been told through his books like When Facing a Life-Threatening Illness and The Year of Living Like Jesus, as well as through his ongoing short film series.

Five of seven short films have been produced so far, with the last two films about thanksgiving and healing to be released soon.

"Ed's story is ... real," Steve Carr, executive director of Flannel, told The Christian Post. "A real individual dealing with real issues."

Unscripted and put together as a response to real questions, Flannel's film series about hope featuring Dobson is a beautiful reflection of his reaction to everyday life and death issues.

The idea for the series began several years ago after Dobson had written his book about his journey with ALS. When he sent a copy to his son Daniel who was serving in the military in Iraq, he told his father he should share his stories on film as well.

Dobson and his son eventually approached Flannel to ask them if they would be interested in turning his story into a film.

"I was amazed with and personally inspired by Ed's ability not only to deal with the circumstances, but to inspire others," Carr said. He too, knew what it felt like to face mortality, having been diagnosed with Leukemia.

"To show others the hope that only can come from Jesus is inspiring, to show them while you are facing a disease such as ALS is beyond inspiring," he added. "I am humbled and honored that we are able to help Ed share his message of hope."

His organization's goal for "Ed's Story" is simple: to share hope with a world that is desperately searching for some.

"At Flannel, we serve as a catalyst for creative communicators who share in our desire to tell the way of Jesus to the world. Ed used to do that from the pulpit, now he simply demonstrates every day. The hope he has is contagious!"

To learn more about the Dobson's series or any of the other shorts produced by Flannel, click here.

The first five films of "Ed's Story" can be downloaded or purchased on DVD.

Dobson currently lives in Grand Rapids with his wife Lorna and children. He serves as a consulting editor for Leadership magazine.

SEE VIDEO OF ED DOBSON TALKING ABOUT HIS DISEASE AND WHAT HE IS NOW DOING FOR THE LORD

Sex trafficking trial unusual in scope

As many as 23 will face jury simultaneously

By Brandon Gee
The Tennessean
http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/frontpage
February 28, 2012

John Morton, right, director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, speaks at a press conference on Monday, Nov. 8, 2010, in Nashville, Tenn., concerning arrests in Tennessee and Minnesota on charges that include sex trafficking. Twenty-nine people have been indicted in a sex trafficking ring in which Somali gangs in Minneapolis allegedly forced girls under age 14 into prostitution in at least three states, according to an indictment unsealed Monday. With Mr. Morton are Assistant U. S. Attorney Van Vincent, left, and U. S. Attorney Jerry Martin, center. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)

Nearly two dozen defendants accused of participating in an interstate sex trafficking ring are scheduled to go before a federal jury next month in what is shaping up to be one of the biggest — and most unusual — trials in Middle Tennessee history.

In an era when limited resources and risk aversion have resulted in a dramatic rise in the number of cases that end in plea agreements rather than jury trials, not even one of the 30 defendants in the case has agreed to plead guilty, setting the stage for a massive trial in downtown Nashville that is raising a variety of issues both legal and logistical.

Twenty-nine people, mostly Somalis from the Twin Cities area of Minnesota, were charged in November 2010 with running a prostitution ring that sold Somali girls as young as 12 years of age in cities including Nashville. A 30th defendant was indicted in May 2011. In addition to sex trafficking and conspiracy, the defendants also are accused of alleged crimes such as credit card fraud and burglary.

Seven defendants — including two who have not yet been apprehended — have been severed from the trial scheduled to begin March 20 and will be tried later. Even so, longtime prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Tennessee said it is shaping up to be the largest number of defendants to go to trial at once in federal court in Nashville, if not U.S., history.

“I’ve been here in this office for 21 years now, and there’s never been that number of defendants go to trial simultaneously,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Van Vincent, the lead prosecutor on the case.

Laura Sweeney, a spokeswoman with the Department of Justice in Washington, said she could not confirm or deny the claim because it “would require canvassing all 94 U.S. attorneys’ offices and asking them for knowledge of every case ever prosecuted in their office.”

Observers are chalking up the lack of plea agreements in the case to a number of factors.

Why no plea deals?

“The Somalis have a cultural thing about testifying against each other,” said former U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee Ed Yarbrough, who agreed that the trial is on course to be the largest, in terms of the number of defendants, in Nashville history. “I think it’s cultural. That’s what I’ve been told.”

For a comparison to a more typical scenario, one can look at the case of 32 defendants charged with racketeering, murder and other crimes in connection with an alleged plot by the Bloods gang to take over the local drug trade. Federal prosecutors say the gang used Galaxy Star, an anti-gang nonprofit in East Nashville, as a meeting spot. The nonprofit has since closed.

The case will go to trial, for just two of the defendants, beginning today. Twenty-nine other defendants already have pleaded guilty. The final remains at large.

Speaking in general from his experience with federal prosecutions, Murfreesboro attorney Jerry Gonzalez said that, in conspiracy cases like this one, the government tries to indict enough people in hopes that “the lower rung will flip on the higher rung.”

“It is very unusual,” said Gonzalez, who represents Dahir Nor Abraham in the case. “I think it would be safe to say that the prosecution is disappointed no one has flipped yet.”

While the lack of plea agreements is surprising to some, Minneapolis Police Department Officer Jeanine Brudenell said it’s not unusual when dealing with Somali defendants. The Twin Cities are home to the largest Somali population in North America, and Brudenell is her department’s designated “East African community engagement officer.”

“There is a slim possibility that some people would take plea agreements, but it wouldn’t be until last minute,” Brudenell said. “Most of the time, they will probably go through the trial process.”

Having immigrated from a country with no functional government, many Somalis are accustomed to resolving problems within small communities, Brudenell said, and that mindset colors the way they approach the American justice system.

“Our system of government is very slow; they want a quicker process,” Brudenell said. “They certainly don’t have control of (the legal process), and it’s outside their system.

“They truly think they can come to the resolution they’re looking for through negotiations outside of the system. I think in the past, but not necessarily in federal prosecutions, there has been success with witness tampering. But law enforcement and the courts are much more aware of the potential for it now.”

Tampering alleged

There has been at least one alleged incident of witness tampering in the case proceeding toward trial in Nashville. Three Twin Cities women — Hawo Osman Ahmed, Ifrah Abdi Yassin and Hamdi Ahmed Mohamud — were charged in June in a five-count indictment that includes charges of “conspiracy to retaliate against a witness, victim or informant.”

The three women threatened a witness identified only by the initials “MA” and then attacked her in her Minnesota apartment building elevator, according to the charges.

Cultural reasons aside, Franklin attorney John Cauley also noted that many of the defendants are facing a minimum 15-year prison sentence if convicted, which reduces the incentive to negotiate with prosecutors. Cauley represents Abdifitah Jama Adan in the case.

Finally, noting their defendants’ presumed innocence before trial, many of the defense attorneys said there may be a far simpler reason none of the defendants reached plea agreements: They didn’t do it.

“They maintain their innocence,” said Nashville lawyer Patrick Frogge, who represents Haji Osman Salad in the case. “I think a lot of the defendants are looking forward to their day in court.”

That day is going to come a lot faster for the defendants in this case than it has in other local federal prosecutions featuring multiple defendants and complex conspiracy. The lack of plea negotiations is contributing to the fast pace of the case. So has U.S. District Judge William J. Haynes Jr.’s steadfastness in rejecting any requests to continue the trial due to the difficulty of shuffling dozens of attorneys’ schedules. And at a recent hearing, all defendants in attendance said they would oppose any continuance.

“Several individuals are probably not guilty,” Gonzalez said. “If you’re sitting in jail on pretrial detention, you can’t go to trial fast enough. They want to go to trial.”

The trial, expected to last months, will require modifications of Haynes’ courtroom to ensure there is enough space for the defendants and attorneys. The judge also has granted the defendants’ request to take breaks consistent with Muslim prayer times.

Contact Brandon Gee at 615-726-5982 or bgee@tennessean.com. Follow him on Twitter at @bsgee.

Obama’s Infanticide Votes

Newt wasn’t 100 percent right — but he was about 95 percent right.

By Patrick Brennan
http://www.nationalreview.com
February 29, 2012

In last Wednesday’s debate, when the Republican candidates were asked about their positions on birth control, Newt Gingrich parried with one of his usual tactics, a fusillade against the mainstream media. He told CNN’s John King, “You did not once in the 2008 campaign, not once did anybody in the elite media ask why Barack Obama voted in favor of legalizing infanticide. If we’re going to have a debate about who is the extremist on these issues, it is President Obama, who, as a state senator, voted to protect doctors who killed babies who survived the abortion.”

Two points of Gingrich’s barrage warrant assessment. First, did Barack Obama, as a state senator, vote “in favor of legalizing infanticide,” by voting “to protect doctors who killed babies who survived the abortion”? And second, has no one in the elite media ever discussed his record on the issue? Yes; and no, but essentially yes.

Gingrich’s assertion rests on then–State Senator Obama’s opposition, in 2001, 2002, and 2003, to successive versions of the Born Alive Infants Protection Act, an Illinois bill that was meant to provide protection for babies born alive after attempted abortions. The bill gave them protection as legal persons and required physicians to provide them with care, rather than allowing doctors to deal with them as they would, literally, with medical waste. In 2008, Obama’s campaign repeatedly claimed that he opposed the bill because it was unnecessary, since Illinois law already provided protection for infants born alive. However, as Ramesh Ponnuru pointed out on NRO at the time, this extended only to babies whom physicians deemed to have “sustainable survivability.” Thus infants who were not expected to survive could be killed or left unattended to die. Obama, Ponnuru wrote, “did not want the gap filled.” (The National Right to Life Committee has a report on Obama, Illinois’s legal loophole, and its horrific consequences here.)

Obama maintained at the time, with support from Planned Parenthood of Illinois, that the bill wasn’t really about protecting infants’ lives or mitigating their suffering, but was in fact a backdoor attempt to restrict abortion. The argument (which is constitutionally dubious, anyway) goes that, by providing legal protection and “recognition as a human person” for a pre-viable infant, the law could be used to threaten Roe v. Wade. Thus, at the time of Obama’s votes, and then during the course of the 2008 campaign, Obama claimed that he would have supported a law like the 2002 federal born-alive statute, which stated explicitly that it could not be used to dispute the legal status of fetuses prior to their birth.
In committee in 2003, however, Obama voted against a version of the Illinois bill that contained the same protection included in the federal bill (which passed 98–0 in the U.S. Senate). Thus, Obama’s tenuous constitutional argument doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

One other excuse for Obama’s opposition to the Illinois bill has been proffered: that the final version of the bill was coupled with another piece of legislation that imposed criminal or civil consequences for doctors who did not properly treat infants who were covered by the Born Alive Infants Protection Act. Obama and others deemed this second bill unacceptable. However, this doesn’t begin to defend Obama’s vote on the first bill.

As Ponnuru pointed out back in 2008, FactCheck.org and PolitiFact admitted the above facts as such, but have disputed whether they constitute “legalizing infanticide”; FactCheck argued that that question remains a value judgment. Since the Illinois bill would have provided legal protection for born-alive infants who had not been protected before, by opposing it, Obama voted to continue to make it legal to kill them. Thus, the only question remaining in order to determine whether it was “infanticide” is: Were the subjects of the bill fetuses or were they infants? In order for them not to be considered infants, one would have to contend that an unviable prematurely born baby is not an infant — a claim few would be willing to make. And yet, Obama’s votes, three times over the course of three years, indicate that he believes that fetuses who have been born alive, but have not yet reached the age of viability, are not human persons worthy of protection by our laws. Such a position on abortion is, to say the least, extreme, and deserves attention.

Which leads to the second question Gingrich raised: Have the media questioned Obama’s position on the Illinois infanticide bill? Washington Post blogger Erik Wemple has turned up a few media references to President Obama’s extreme abortion stances from the 2008 campaign: two CNN segments discussing his record, including the Illinois legislation specifically; one instance in a debate, where John McCain raised the question of Obama’s record, and he defended his position on the Illinois bill; and one interview with Chris Wallace of Fox News, in which Obama was queried on partial-birth abortion, though not the Illinois legislation specifically.

The attention was most intense in August of 2008, after the NRLC managed to generate national debate about Obama’s position on the Illinois bill. Obama was asked about it during an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, where he offered a thoroughly deceptive response to the question, saying, “Here’s a situation where folks are lying” about his position. However, Obama was the one lying: He told the interviewer, David Brody, that he opposed the bill because of its threat to Roe v. Wade, and that existing Illinois law already protected infants who were born alive. As we have seen, the first assertion is implausible; the second is just plain false.

This seems to be the one instance in which a journalist asked candidate Obama directly about his support for the bill, and he was unfortunately let off, even by a conservative reporter, with his mendacious explanation.

Both the Washington Post and the New York Times reported on the controversy, noting the points the NRLC had raised about Obama’s inconsistent and extreme positions. The Times, citing sources on both sides, explored Obama’s claim that he opposed the final Illinois bill because of its unacceptable companion bill. However, Obama’s claim has no solid legal basis: Two different bills are two different bills.

Thus, while one cannot say, as Gingrich did, that the media have literally never questioned Obama’s extreme record on abortion, we can certainly say that there has not been a sufficiently revealing discussion of his views. An honest appraisal would depict him as having voted repeatedly to keep a form of infanticide illegal. Instead, the media have willingly accepted explanations that don’t stand up to scrutiny.

And they deserve scrutiny, for two reasons. First, as explained above, Obama has offered deceptive explanations of his own pro-abortion legislative work, while simultaneously accusing his pro-life opponents of being dishonest. More important, Obama’s record as a state senator was not merely pro-choice, but radically pro-abortion. His voting record indicates that he does not believe infants deserve protection even once they have emerged from the womb if they are deemed to be below the age of viability, and he did in fact, three times, vote to keep a form of infanticide legal.

— Patrick Brennan is the 2011 William F. Buckley Fellow at National Review.

Today's Tune: Bruce Springsteen - This Depression

Rape, They Cried

About the proposed ultrasound legislation in Virginia, a most pernicious lie.

By Kathryn Jean Lopez
http://www.nationalreview.com
February 28, 2012

An abortion rights activist speaks before the Virginia Senate Education and Health Committee on Thursday. Following a protest outside the state capitol and criticism from moderates in his own party, Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell asked for revisions to a bill requiring an invasive ultrasound before an abortion. (Steve Helber / AP)

This is absolutely out of control.

But it was a brilliant strategy that Planned Parenthood and friends used to defeat a bill in Virginia that would have required pre-abortion ultrasounds: Get as many people as possible to repeat the word “transvaginal” in news and commentary, in order to accomplish two things: defeat the legislation at hand and make your opposition look like a freak show.

At one protest against the legislation, “Molly Vick of Richmond said it was her first time to take part in a protest, but the issue was too infuriating and compelling,” the Washington Post reported. Ms. Vick wore a sticker on her shirt that insisted: “Say No to State-Mandated Rape.” Instead of a belt on her jeans, she wore yellow tape that warned: “Private Property: Keep Out.”

Infuriating? What’s infuriating is that we can’t have an honest debate about anything that might happen to involve women, because it might make Planned Parenthood or any of the political or business wings of the abortion industry uncomfortable. This is the new bra-burning America, and it’s just as delusional and duplicitous as the old one. These protesters aren’t anti-establishment; they are the establishment. Don’t let the gal with the yellow tape fool you.

In recent days (weeks and years, too), media coverage of just about all things regarding women have taken on new frenzied proportions. George Orwell would be impressed — even Saturday Night Live got into the messaging.

Go ahead and read the bill that caused the “rape” cries. The word “transvaginal” never appears in it.

The bill was an update on Virginia’s informed-consent law, and didn’t require a particular kind of ultrasound, but mandated that the “standard medical practice in the community” for an ultrasound be followed. So doctors on site, not the governor or the house of delegates or the legendary exorcist Rick Santorum, would be making the calls about exactly what kind of ultrasound would be best for a particular woman. Planned Parenthood clinics already do ultrasounds (it helps with the pricing of abortions, among other things). The law wasn’t meant to do anything but make sure no women fell through the cracks.

And, frankly, even if the bill did mandate an invasive form of ultrasound — sometimes gestational age or other factors will make these the most accurate methods — let’s be honest about it and “women’s health”: It wouldn’t have been state-sponsored rape, as it was being characterized. It’s standard medical care. All things in the OB-GYN world tend to be invasive. Are routine exams rape, too? Can we just drop the nonsense already?

Apparently not. Not when those who resort to the most shameless rhetoric tend to win. The chattering class is fully engaged in a self-righteous spin cycle about those right-wing hypocrites who claim to be about small government and freedom but who instead are “literally trying to insert themselves into women’s bodies,” as one talking head explained.

It’s hard to make sense of the whole ugly Virginia “transvaginal” incident other than to note that critics of the bill simply, as a matter of principle, don’t want anyone to be reminded what exactly is done in an abortion clinic. No one went into a demonizing overdrive because of ultrasound per se; they’re already routinely done. The real kick was that women would be offered the chance to look at the ultrasound. If they did, they would see the beating of a tiny human heart. And that’s a threat to the abortion industry. A glimpse of this fight shows that, while these critics of the bill talk about women’s health, they don’t really have the interests of either patient in mind.

This issue is so much broader, but the debate has created a dark and pernicious fog. One that keeps us from facing the truth about what we’re debating at a given time, and what’s best for our own lives and those who we most naturally love.

Just rewind a few weeks to what happened when the Susan G. Komen Foundation dared to make a management decision and cut off grants to Planned Parenthood, not only because the relationship increasingly distracted from Komen’s primary mission, ending breast cancer, but also because more efficient grant-making opportunities were possible. According to former Komen vice president Karen Handel, Komen’s sensible plan was betrayed by Planned Parenthood’s leadership, who leaked the defunding story to the press and launched their “well-orchestrated, vicious campaign.” And the “sisterhood” is not done yet, as Komen knows, and we can see, even on Saturday-night television.

The late John Paul II, calling on all men and women of mercy to build a culture of life, described the struggle in which we are engaged as a “war of the powerful against the weak.” We are seeing this culture of death strengthen its foundations when we let bullies have their way with public policy and nonprofits and their corporate sponsors, and when the federal government tells religious Americans they must comply with a radical ideology or be fined — and mercilessly ridiculed, dismissed, or discredited, whatever the facts.

However well-intentioned some members of this “pro-women” movement may be, instead of contributing to the discussion, the movement has become a manipulative crusade. Don’t buy the spin. Humanity is a lot more complicated, sensitive, and discerning than those insulting them with one brand of invective or another appreciate.

The SNL skit lampooning the Virginia ultrasound bill ended by proclaiming, “Don’t tell me what to do.” My sentiments exactly. Or how to think, or talk. In pursuit of faux freedom, don’t resort to the kind of dishonest rhetoric that tramples on the very reason for our Founding.

— Kathryn Jean Lopez is editor-at-large of National Review Online. This column is available exclusively through United Media.

Why Bruce Springsteen is the Boss for life

Singers come and singers go, but for Sarfraz Manzoor Bruce Springsteen has been the man to follow ever since he first heard him 25 years ago.


By Safraz Manzoor
The Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
25 Feb 2012

It was the autumn of 1987; the year Margaret Thatcher was elected prime minister for the third time, the year of Wall Street and Dirty Dancing, and it was the year I turned 16. I was a bored, restless and frustrated teenager. My father, a first generation immigrant from Pakistan, had spent years working on a production line at the Vauxhall car factory before being made redundant. My own future prospects were not promising: kids from my background – working class, comprehensive educated, Asian – weren’t visible in the popular culture and the assumption was that after an education I would settle into a solid, unexciting job and eventually marry a solid, unexciting woman. I aspired to more but the life I dreamt about seemed impossibly out of reach.

It was into this world that Bruce Springsteen entered when I started sixth-form college and met a boy called Amolak who told me that Springsteen’s music contained the secrets to the most profound questions about life and love. Initially, I was not convinced, and I countered with the criticism that even now the ignorant and foolish level at Springsteen: that he was a rich man making money by singing about the poor. Fortunately my friend convinced me to set aside my prejudices and listen to the music. It turned out that he was right.

Music can serve different purposes: it can make you dance, it can make you think and, sometimes, it can make you change your life. Bruce Springsteen’s music inspired me because it offered not empty escapism but a route map of how to transcend the constrained world I lived in. Unlike Bob Dylan – whom I also revered – Springsteen’s songs were located in a recognisable world where people lived in towns they wanted to leave, in jobs that left them unfulfilled, in relationships that left them unsatisfied.

Unlike Morrissey – whose very English rendering of alienation appeared arch and whining – Springsteen was always able to find some hope amid the desolation. There was always, to quote the title of one song, a reason to believe. In my fervour, I created a Bruce Springsteen folder into which I put articles on him and photocopied song lyrics that I studied with the intensity usually reserved for religious texts. People laughed; they thought it amusing to see an Asian teenager so pathologically drawn to the music of this almost hyper-American artist.

I tried to explain the parallels – that Springsteen was also once a working-class kid from a motor town, that he too had endured a conflicted relationship with his father and that his music was more subtle and complex than the fist pumping stereotype suggested.

Songs like "Factory" evoked the drudgery of the sort of work my own father had done and which I was determined not to follow; "Thunder Road" with its rousing final words of “it’s a town full of losers and I’m pulling out of here to win” summed up how I felt about living in a town that seemed too small for my dreams; "Independence Day", a song about fathers and sons was where I turned when I grew frustrated with my dad, and "Bobby Jean" was the song that described my friendship with Amolak: “Now you hung with me when all the others turned away, turned away, turned up their nose, we liked the same music, we liked the same bands, we liked the same clothes.” As if the words were not enough, they were underscored by music that could be gloriously anthemic or starkly spare: Clarence Clemons’s saxophone solo in "Jungleland", Roy Bittan’s haunting piano on "Racing in the Street", Danny Federici’s spectral keyboards on "Wreck on the Highway" and Springsteen’s searing guitar solo on "Prove it All Night".

It was a heady brew which is why I did not mind the abuse: I preferred to be laughed at for my music taste than for the colour of my skin. My racial, religious and class identities had been imposed on me and so I relished the fact that my identity as a Springsteen fan was one I had freely chosen. I didn’t so much listen to "Thunder Road", "The River" and "Born to Run" as mainline them directly into my heart. His songs gave me the shot of confidence I needed to believe that my destiny was not shaped by my past.

It worked. I am no longer the 16-year-old teenager dreaming of better days but a 40-year-old man blessed with a job as a writer and broadcaster that I love hugely and a wife and daughter I love even more. I have always credited Bruce Springsteen for inspiring me to aim higher than was expected of me and in an effort to convince others of both his greatness and his influence in my life I wrote a childhood memoir Greetings from Bury Park, which describes growing up in the Eighties and having my life transformed by Springsteen.

I wrote it partly to thank him for what he had meant to me but although I have been fortunate enough to meet him a number of times, I had no idea if he had even heard of my book. You can imagine my shock and delight then when I met him at a BFI party and he came up to me to say that not only had he read my book but he had loved it. Such are the privileges of my present life.

As the years have passed, so my relationship with Springsteen’s music has necessarily evolved. In my twenties and early thirties, I hurtled around the globe for the sake of Bruce. I flew to the United States to see him in New Jersey and New York, and I travelled to Europe to see him in Spain, France and Sweden. When he played six nights at Wembley Arena in the summer of 1992, I slept outside the venue for two nights to ensure I had front row seats for all six nights. In more recent years, I have spent rather less time sleeping on concrete but Springsteen’s music continues to occupy a special place in my life. I am currently writing a feature film screenplay based on my book which Gurinder Chadha – of Bend It Like Beckham fame – is hoping to direct.

My life has changed hugely from when I first stumbled on to him but listening to Springsteen is about more than a misty-eyed longing for glory days – indeed he has arguably more to say today than ever before. Consider his latest record, Wrecking Ball, released next month and reviewed above right. It is possibly the angriest and most politically direct album he has ever made. The songs were inspired by the financial crisis of 2008 and its impact on ordinary people. The new record is the latest in a series of albums that include Nebraska, The Ghost of Tom Joad and The Rising that amount to state-of-the-nation dispatches from an artist fully engaged with the times.

His nickname is The Boss but I prefer to think of Bruce Springsteen as rock music’s head of state: the people’s president. Contrast that with an artist like Madonna – a fellow Eighties icon who also has a new album out this spring – but who is so obsessed with remaining current she can’t help but appear dated. Springsteen may have rarely been hip but he also has never been embarrassing – he hasn’t acted in any dodgy films, nor has he published any children’s books or launched a fashion line or a range of his beauty products.

That partly explains why he commands such devotion among his fans. His later records may not always scale the titanic heights of his greatest works but he has held on to his integrity and, on stage, he remains utterly compelling: the greatest live performer in rock. His concerts have the ecstatic air of a revivalist gathering and one of the most invigorating aspects of seeing Springsteen on tour is realising that there are others – hundreds of thousands of others – who feel the same way about him as you do.

When I first saw Springsteen at Wembley Stadium in 1988 I was one of the youngest in the crowd; I recall meeting people who had seen him on his mythic debut British show at the Hammersmith Odeon in 1975. They seemed so worldly and grizzled to me even though they were probably only in their thirties. Now when I see him I am one of the veterans who can bore others for hours with tales of the Tom Joad tour and seeing Springsteen play a tiny venue in Asbury Park.

In recent years, Springsteen has gained a new generation of fans, some of whom were not even born when I first saw him and who have come to him through artists such as Arcade Fire, the Gaslight Anthem and the Killers who have all openly admitted their debt to his music. Once you get on the Springsteen train you rarely disembark, which is why his fans have grown older with him. Since he has always written to his age he is not like, say, Mick Jagger, condemned to prance on stage, the eternal priapic Jumping Jack Flash. When you are young the songs of Born to Run appeal with their widescreen cinematic idealism and then as life coats that romanticism with heartbreak and disappointment, the bruised love songs on Tunnel of Love start to make sense. Working on a Dream, released three years ago when he was 60, swirls with references to death and mortality, themes which evidently mean more to him today – following the deaths of Federici and Clemons – than they did in the past, and more to me now than they did when I was 16.

In the years that I have been listening to Springsteen, his music has been a source of wisdom as I fought to find my own place in this world and have a life where work was rewarding and love was real. Springsteen and the E Street Band start their world tour next month and it reaches Hyde Park in July. Among those in the audience will be Amolak, his wife and baby son, as well as me, my wife, Bridget, and my daughter Laila who will then be 11 months old. Laila is only in this world because I found the courage to defy expectations, a courage that was strengthened by listening to Springsteen. And that is why, after 25 years, Springsteen’s music remains so special to me: it is an eloquent reminder of the journey I have taken in my life and it is a wise guide for the road ahead.

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Today’s Bruce Springsteen is a Pale Imitation of the Real Thing

David Hajdu

The New Republic
http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-famous-door/
February 24, 2012

Bruce Springsteen in action at the 2012 Grammys. (Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

Before Bruce Springsteen put together the first incarnation of the E Street Band, forty years ago, he had a scrappy little bar band called Steel Mill, which played at my friend Doug Mendini’s eighth-grade graduation party. Like Springsteen, Doug and I were both literary-minded products of New Jersey factory towns (I worked for the summer before my first year of college in a steel foundry, on the late shift with my father), and a tenuous early sense of kinship with Springsteen has given me a weakness for his work. Doug, after eighth grade, went on to become a fine poet and playwright; I took up nonfiction; and Springsteen found a way to bring his adolescent ambition to be “a author” (as he later recalled his youth in the language of anti-intellectualism) together with his hunger for rock stardom.

With his new album, Wrecking Ball, Springsteen has matched my weakness for his work with the weakness of his work. Granted, he’s aging; five years older than me, Springsteen is sixty-one now. Still, age is a limited defense for having released an album as wan and shallow as Wrecking Ball. If he’s tired, as he has every right to be, his job as a author of songs is to make something of that tiredness in his music—to make pop-music art out of what he knows and feels, as Leonard Cohen (at age 77) has done this year with his lyrically autumnal new album, Old Ideas, or as Paul Simon, at 69, did last year with his So Beautiful or So What. Instead, Springsteen has avoided the hard work of vividly, intimately evoking the human experience in favor of platitudes and sloganeering in quasi-jingoistic bromides like “We Take Care of Our Own.”

The album is more polemical than emotive—and confusedly, half-heartedly so. The ideas are ones Springsteen has dealt with far more effectively before. “Death to My Hometown,” for instance, simply takes the thesis of his lacerating old “Youngstown”—avaricious corporations do more damage than warring tyrants (an idea Springsteen found in the journalist Dale Maharidge’s book Journey to Nowhere, by the way)—and applies it to the setting of his bittersweet old “My Hometown.” Line to line, too, the writing on Wrecking Ball feels tossed off and unfinished. In “We Take Care of Our Own,” for instance, Springsteen sings, solemnly, “The road of good intentions has gone dry as a bone.” Well, okay. But since when is a road supposed to be wet? Or did he not put enough effort into the lyric to come up with the word “river”?

On the cover of the album, Springsteen looks buff and grim, clutching the road-battered Fender Esquire electric guitar that has served as his rock-workhorse symbol since it swung on his shoulders on the jacket of Born to Run. Several years ago, Springsteen donated the instrument to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, where it remains a major attraction. My enduring weakness for Springsteen is such that I want to think of his guitar as the only museum piece on the cover of his new album.

Why Apologize to Afghanistan?

The reaction to an accidental Koran-burning was inexcusable.

By Andrew C. McCarthy
http://www.nationalreview.com
February 25, 2012

We have officially lost our minds.

The New York Times reports that President Obama has sent a formal letter of apology to Afghanistan’s ingrate president, Hamid Karzai, for the burning of Korans at a U.S. military base. The only upside of the apology is that it appears (based on the Times account) to be couched as coming personally from our blindly Islamophilic president — “I wish to express my deep regret for the reported incident. . . . I extend to you and the Afghani people my sincere apologies.” It is not couched as an apology from the American people, whose frame of mind will be outrage, not contrition, as the facts become more widely known.
The facts are that the Korans were seized at a jail because jihadists imprisoned there were using them not for prayer but to communicate incendiary messages. The soldiers dispatched to burn refuse from the jail were not the officials who had seized the books, had no idea they were burning Korans, and tried desperately to retrieve the books when the situation was brought to their attention.

Of course, these facts may not become widely known, because no one is supposed to mention the main significance of what has happened here. First, as usual, Muslims — not al-Qaeda terrorists, but ordinary, mainstream Muslims — are rioting and murdering over the burning (indeed, the inadvertent burning) of a book. Yes, it’s the Koran, but it’s a book all the same — and one that, moderate Muslims never tire of telling us, doesn’t really mean everything it says anyhow.

Muslim leaders and their leftist apologists are also forever lecturing the United States about “proportionality” in our war-fighting. Yet when it comes to Muslim proportionality, Americans are supposed to shrug meekly and accept the “you burn books, we kill people” law of the jungle. Disgustingly, the Times would inure us to this moral equivalence by rationalizing that “Afghans are fiercely protective of their Islamic faith.” Well then, I guess that makes it all right, huh?

Then there’s the second not-to-be-uttered truth: Defiling the Koran becomes an issue for Muslims only when it has been done by non-Muslims. Observe that the unintentional burning would not have occurred if these “fiercely protective of their Islamic faith” Afghans had not defiled the Korans in the first place. They were Muslim prisoners who annotated the “holy” pages with what a U.S. military official described as “extremist inscriptions” in covert messages sent back and forth, just as the jihadists held at Gitmo have been known to do (notwithstanding that Muslim prisoners get their Korans courtesy of the American taxpayers they construe the book to justify killing).

Do you know why you are supposed to stay mum about the intentional Muslim sacrilege but plead to be forgiven for the accidental American offense? Because you would otherwise have to observe that the Koran and other Islamic scriptures instruct Muslims that they are in a civilizational jihad against non-Muslims, and that it is therefore permissible for them to do whatever is necessary — including scrawl militant graffiti on their holy book — if it advances the cause. Abdul Sattar Khawasi — not a member of al-Qaeda but a member in good standing of the Afghan government for which our troops are inexplicably fighting and dying — put it this way: “Americans are invaders, and jihad against the Americans is an obligation.”

Because exploiting America’s hyper-sensitivity to things Islamic advances the jihad, the ostensible abuse of the Koran by using it for secret communiqués is to be overlooked. Actionable abuse occurs only when the book is touched by the bare hands of, or otherwise maltreated by, an infidel.

As our great Iraqi ally Ayatollah Ali Sistani teaches, touching a kafir (“one who does not believe in Allah and His Oneness”) is to be avoided, because Islamic scripture categorizes infidels as equivalent to “urine, feces, semen, dead bodies, blood, dogs, pigs, alcoholic liquors,” and “the sweat of an animal who persistently eats filth.” That is what influential clerics — not al-Qaeda but revered scholars of Islamic law — inculcate in rank-and-file Muslims.

And they are not making it up. Sistani came upon this view after decades of dedicated scriptural study. In fact, to take just one telling example (we could list many, many others), the “holy” Koran we non-Muslims are supposed to honor proclaims (in Sura 9:28), “Truly the pagans are unclean . . . so let them not . . . approach the sacred mosque.” It is because of this injunction from Allah that non-Muslims are barred — not by al-Qaeda but by the Saudi Arabian government — from entering Mecca and Medina. Kafirs are deemed unfit to set their infidel feet on the ground of these ancient cities. You don’t like that? Too bad — grin and bear it . . . and, while you’re at it, surge up a few thousand more American troops to improve life in Kandahar.

Understand this: Muslims are killing Muslims all the time. Sunnis attack Shiites, Shiites attack Sunnis. Ahmadi Muslims are attacked in sundry Islamic countries. Often, these Muslim-on-Muslim atrocities involve not only murder but also the torching of the other sect’s homes and mosques — necessarily meaning Muslims are burning Korans, and with far more mens rea than the American personnel had in Afghanistan. None of these atrocities incite global Islamic rioting — it is just Muslim-on-Muslim violence, the numbing familiarity of which calls for no comment, except perhaps to mumble that it must have something to do with how “fiercely protective of their Islamic faith” Muslims are. (Actually, it has to do with Muslims’ deeming the perceived heresies of other Muslims to be apostasy, for which sharia prescribes the death penalty.)

Also understand this: In sharia societies, non-Muslim religious articles are confiscated and destroyed every single day as a matter of policy. In Saudi Arabia, where sharia is the law of the land, where Mecca and Medina are closed to non-Muslims, government guidelines prohibit Jews and Christians from bringing Bibles, crucifixes, Stars of David, and similar artifacts emblematic of their faith into the country. When that prohibition is violated, the offending items are seized and burned or otherwise destroyed. Moreover, though Saudis deny having an official policy that bans Jews from entering the country at all, reports are rampant of travelers’ being denied visas either because they are Jewish or because their passports bear stamps indicative of prior travel to Israel.

In spite of this shameful, conscious, systematic abuse of non-Muslims and their religious articles, King Abdullah has yet to send a letter of apology to Obama. All the presidential bowing in the world will not change this, not when Muslim supremacism is the irreducible core of mainstream Islam — not al-Qaeda Islam, mainstream Islam. And where is Mr. Karzai’s apology over the Afghan soldier who just killed two Americans? That is only the latest incident in a largely unreported epidemic: our “allies” turning their weapons on their Western trainers.

On second thought, who cares if Karzai apologizes? Our troops do not belong in Afghanistan. They have given more than enough, way more. So has our country.

If our government believes the Taliban and other factions are our enemies, allied with al-Qaeda to kill Americans, then we should unleash our military to destroy them. This should not be an endless counterinsurgency experiment that prioritizes the protection of Afghan civilians and the construction of Afghan civil society; it should be a war that our vast might enables us to win rapidly and decisively.

But our government has repeatedly professed that the Taliban are not our enemies. If that is true, we lack not only the will but the cause for waging war. We should leave — now. It is immoral to keep our young men and women there as sitting ducks in a place where the people hate Americans but we are not trying to vanquish them. We routed al-Qaeda years ago. We don’t need to defeat the Taliban or waste time negotiating with them, Karzai, the warlords, and the rest. Let them have their Korans and work it out for themselves with the compassion that has been such a Religion of Peace hallmark for the last 14 centuries.

That, however, cannot be the end of it. If, according to the president, we need to apologize to Muslims because we must accept that they have such an innate, extraordinary ardor for their religion that barbaric reactions to trivial slights are inevitable, then they should not be invited to enter a civilized country. At the very least, our immigration laws should exclude entry from Muslim-majority countries unless and until those countries expressly repeal repressive sharia laws (e.g., the death penalty for apostates) and adopt American standards of non-discrimination against, tolerance of, and protection for religious minorities.

If you really want to promote freedom in Islamic countries, an immigration policy based on civil-rights reciprocity would be a lot more effective, and a lot less expensive, than dispatching tens of thousands of troops to build sharia “democracies.” It would also protect Americans from people whose countries and cultures have not prepared them for the obligations of citizenship in a free society.

— Andrew C. McCarthy, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, is the author, most recently, of The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America.

The all-you-can-eat-salad bar of rights

Perversion of the concept of rights is killing the Western world.\

By Mark Steyn
The Orange County Register
http://www.ocregister.com/
February 24, 2012

CNN's John King did his best the other night, producing a question from one of his viewers:

"Since birth control is the latest hot topic, which candidate believes in birth control, and if not, why?"

To their credit, no Republican candidate was inclined to accept the premise of the question. King might have done better to put the issue to Danica Patrick. For some reason, Michelle Fields of The Daily Caller sought the views of the NASCAR driver and Sports Illustrated swimwear model about "the Obama administration's dictate that religious employers provide health care plans that cover contraceptives." Miss Patrick, a practicing Catholic, gave the perfect citizen's response for the Age of Obama:

"I leave it up to the government to make good decisions for Americans."

That's the real "hot topic" here – whether a majority of citizens, in America as elsewhere in the West, is willing to "leave it up to the government" to make decisions on everything that matters. On the face of it, the choice between the Obama administration and the Catholic Church should not be a tough one. On the one hand, we have the plain language of the First Amendment as stated in the U.S. Constitution since 1791:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

On the other, we have a regulation invented by executive order under the vast powers given to Kathleen Sebelius under a 2,500-page catalogue of statist enforcement passed into law by a government party that didn't even bother to read it.

Commissar Sebelius says that she is trying to "strike the appropriate balance." But these two things – a core, bedrock, constitutional principle, and Section 47(e)viii of Micro-Regulation Four Bazillion And One issued by Leviathan's Bureau of Compliance – are not equal, and you can only "balance" them by massively increasing state power and massively diminishing the citizen's. Or, to put it more benignly, by "leaving it up to the government to make good decisions."

Some of us have been here before. For most of the last five years, I've been battling Canada's so-called "human rights" commissions, and similar thought police in Britain, Europe and elsewhere. As I write this, I'm in Australia, to talk up the cause of free speech, which is, alas, endangered even in that great land. In that sense, the "latest hot topic" – the clash between Obama and American Catholics – is, in fact, a perfect distillation of the broader struggle in the West today. When it comes to human rights, I go back to 1215 and Magna Carta – or, to give it its full name, Magna Carta Libertatum. My italics: I don't think they had them back in 1215. But they understood that "libertatum" is the word that matters. Back then, "human rights" were rights of humans, of individuals – and restraints upon the king: They're the rights that matter: limitations upon kingly power. Eight centuries later, we have entirely inverted the principle: "Rights" are now gifts that a benign king graciously showers upon his subjects – the right to "free" health care, to affordable housing, the "right of access to a free placement service" (to quote the European Constitution's "rights" for workers). The Democratic National Committee understands the new school of rights very well: In its recent video, Obama's bureaucratic edict is upgraded into the "right to contraception coverage at no additional cost." And, up against a "human right" as basic as that, how can such peripheral rights as freedom of conscience possibly compete?

The transformation of "human rights" from restraints upon state power into a pretext for state power is nicely encapsulated in the language of Article 14 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, which states that everyone has the right "to receive free compulsory education." Got that? You have the human right to be forced to do something by the government.

Commissar Sebelius isn't the only one interested in "striking the appropriate balance" between individual liberty and state compulsion. Everyone talks like that these days. For Canada's Chief Censor, Jennifer Lynch, freedom of expression is just one menu item in the great all-you-can-eat salad bar of rights, so don't be surprised if we're occasionally out of stock. Instead, why not try one of our tasty nutritious rights du jour? Like the human right to a transsexual labiaplasty, or the human right of McDonald's employees not to have to wash their hands after visiting the bathroom. Commissar Lynch puts it this way:

"The modern conception of rights is that of a matrix with different rights and freedoms mutually reinforcing each other to build a strong and durable human rights system."

That would be a matrix as in some sort of intricate biological sequencing very few people can understand? Or a Matrix as in the illusory world created to maintain a supine citizenry by all-controlling government officials? The point is, with so many pseudo-"rights" bouncing around, you need a bigger and bigger state: Individual rights are less important than a "rights system" – i.e., a government bureaucracy.

This perversion of rights is killing the Western world. First, unlike real rights – to freedom of speech and freedom of religion – these new freedoms come with quite a price tag. All the free stuff is free in the sense of those offers that begin "You pay nothing now!" But you will eventually. No nation is rich enough to give you all this "free" stuff year in, year out. Spain's government debt works out to $18,000 per person, France's to $33,000, Greece's to $39,000. Thank God we're not Greece, huh? Er, in fact, according to the Senate Budget Committee, U.S. government debt is currently $44,215 per person. Going by the official Obama budget numbers, it will rise over the next 10 years to $75,000. As I say, that's per person: 75 grand in debt for every man, woman and child, not to mention every one of the ever swelling ranks of retirees and disabled Social Security recipients – or about $200,000 per household.

So maybe you're not interested in philosophical notions of liberty vs. statism – like Danica Patrick, tens of millions of people are happy to "leave it up to the government to make good decisions." Maybe you're relatively relaxed about the less theoretical encroachments of Big Government – the diversion of so much American energy into "professional services," all the lawyering and bookkeeping and paperwork shuffling necessary to keep you and your economic activity in full compliance with the Bureau of Compliance. But at some point, no matter how painless the seductions of statism, you run up against the hard math: As those debt per capita numbers make plain, all this "free" stuff is doing is mortgaging your liberty and lining up a future of serfdom.

I used to think that the U.S. Constitution would prove more resilient than the less-absolutist liberties of other Western nations. But the president has calculated that, with Obamacare, the First Amendment and much else will crumble before his will. And, given trends in U.S. jurisprudence, who's to say he won't get his way? That's the point about all this "free" stuff: Ultimately, it's not about your rights, but about his.

©MARK STEYN