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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; trigger</title>
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		<title>Terror Decentral</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/caroline-glick/terror-decentral/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=terror-decentral</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/caroline-glick/terror-decentral/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 07 Nov 2014 05:24:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Caroline Glick]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[car]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[incitement]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jerusalem]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Palestinian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[trigger]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=244807</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Time for Israel to destroy the indoctrination and incitement that trigger Palestinians to kill. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/F141105YS01-e1415190015595-635x357.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-244812" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/F141105YS01-e1415190015595-635x357-406x350.jpg" alt="F141105YS01-e1415190015595-635x357" width="328" height="283" /></a>Originally published by the <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Column-One-Terror-decentral-381065">Jerusalem Post</a>. </em></p>
<p>In the postmortems of the terrorist car attacks in Jerusalem, it is easy to see the writing on the wall. Ibrahim al-Akary, the terrorist who on Wednesday ran over crowds of people waiting to cross the street and catch the Jerusalem Light Rail, was the brother of one of the terrorist murderers freed in exchange for IDF hostage Gilad Schalit.</p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">He had placed the photograph on his Facebook page of Moataz Hejazi, the terrorist killed by police after shooting Yehuda Glick outside the Begin Heritage Center last Wednesday.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">A few days before Abdur Rahman Slodi got into his car and mowed down three-month-old Chaya Zissel Braun and a dozen other pedestrians two weeks ago, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas exhorted the Palestinians to prevent Jews from visiting the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site, by all means possible.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Slodi had served time in prison for terrorist offenses and was active on social media where he expressed murderous hatred for Jews and a desire to kill them.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">So yes, the writing was on the wall. But unfortunately, the writing is on all the walls, or Facebook walls. It is not at all clear how Israeli security services could have known to distinguish these men from the thousands of other Palestinians and Jerusalem Arabs who hate Israel, support the murder of Jews and identify with various terrorist organizations.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">On Thursday security forces arrested several people in villages around Hebron with suspected ties to Akary. So he may not have been acting on his own. But all the same, neither he nor Slodi seem to have been directed to carry out their attacks by a cell commander who himself was directed by a higher level terrorist operative.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Rather, in all likelihood, something triggered both men to carry out attacks in a wholly independent or semi-independent manner.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The question is, what was the trigger and how was it pulled? The Israeli media are obsessed with the question of whether or not we are experiencing an third Palestinian terrorist onslaught, or intifada. Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch insists that we are not. Others insist that we are. Whatever we want to call it, we are seeing a new form of Palestinian terrorist warfare against Israel, which in many key aspects mimics the larger jihad carried out by al-Qaida and its affiliates and spin-offs.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">In a recent article in the online Small Wars Journal, Maj. Nicholas Pace from NATO’s Joint Forces Command discussed how al-Qaida and Islamic State have decentralized their terrorist networks.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Due to the superior signals intelligence fielded by the US, Pace explained, al-Qaida and Islamic State have diffused and decentralized their networks into smaller hubs that operate independently.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The role of terrorist chiefs like al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri is to inspire and incite, and to a degree direct, operations, rather than plan and order them.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Today the main factor unifying al-Qaida and Islamic State and their sister groups and followers in the region and worldwide is ideology.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">They all share the same hatred of the West, of all religions other than Islam and of all competing forms of Islam. They all seek the establishment of a global caliphate that will rule the world under the banner of Islam.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">As Pace notes, this shared ideology was all that US Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hassan needed to feel that he was a member of al-Qaida when in 2009, after have a few Internet communications with al-Qaida ideologue Awar al-Awlaki, he walked onto the Fort Hood military base in Texas and massacred his fellow soldiers.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Pace argues that Islamic State forces in Iraq and Syria also operate along a decentralized model of operations, and the more they are directly targeted by the US and its allies, the more they will decentralize and compartmentalize their force structure.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The operational advantage of this model is that it gives enormous flexibility and independence to operatives in the field to maximize their resources. The drawback is that those resources tend to be less sophisticated than those that can be brought to bear by a centrally organized and resourced military organization.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">But this isn’t really a problem for jihadists.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">As Pace notes, they see themselves as soldiers in a long-term struggle. Their goal is not necessarily to conquer their target populations. Rather they seek to make life impossible for target societies.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Mass chaos sowed by constant, low intensity, near-scatter-shot attacks can over time be sufficient to break the will of a targeted society or military organization to fight them.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Certainly this has been the case for the Iraqi military that has melted away in the face of Islamic State’s fanatical troops.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">For such a decentralized military system to work, the leadership needs two things: a shared ideology, and communications capabilities that enable them to incite and loosely directly violence.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Ideology is not something that people pick up or discard quickly or easily. For a person to be attracted to the jihadist cause he has to undergo indoctrination over a significant period of time.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">You cannot incite a person to strike if he hasn’t already been indoctrinated in a manner that makes him amenable to your incendiary call to action.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">And this brings us back to the Palestinians and the trigger for the attacks conducted by independent or semi-independent terrorist operatives.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">With the exception of Pakistani students in madrassas, few societies have undergone the mass indoctrination that the Palestinians have undergone over the past 20 years of Palestinian Authority rule. From the cradle to the grave, and most significantly in the school system, Palestinians are indoctrinated to hate Jews and seek the violent destruction of Israel. They are told that it is an Islamic duty to fight Jews and destroy Israel.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">This is as true in regular PA schools as it is in schools run by the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA).</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">We are experiencing today in Jerusalem a decentralized terrorist campaign rooted in the 20-year indoctrination of the Palestinians.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Yes, Hamas and Fatah still operate terrorist cells and units that are members of terrorist hierarchies.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">But at the same time, they have used a model similar to al-Qaida’s in developing semi-independent and wholly independent networks of operatives and operational cells. These independent cells are highly motivated and are willing to wait until they receive generalized signals from their leadership to strike.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">So it was for instance in June with the kidnapping and murder of the three teenagers in Gush Etzion. A few weeks before the kidnapping took place, from his home in Qatar, Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal remarked that Hamas needed more hostages to trade for jailed terrorists.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The terrorists in Hebron were motivated to strike. With the financial assistance of Saleh al-Arouri, the Hamas ideologue and operational commander in Turkey, they were able to purchase what they needed for the kidnapping. And when Mashaal said the time had come to kidnap Israelis, the countdown to the kidnap and murder of Naftali Fraenkel, Gil-Ad Shaer and Eyal Yifrah began.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The cell was isolated and tiny. Mashaal’s order was indirect.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">In the case of the violence in Jerusalem, indoctrination in UNRWA schools in places like Shuafat refugee camp where Akary lived, not to mention throughout Judea, Samaria and Gaza, has raised generations of Arabs who hate Israel and Jews.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Owing to this indoctrination, when presented with mass incitement by preachers in the mosques, and most importantly by the official Palestinian Authority media, these calls for violence are immediately embraced on a massive scale. Indeed, the comfort level that the Arabs of Jerusalem feel today in supporting terrorism may well be unprecedented.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">For instance, until this Wednesday night, every time terrorists in Jerusalem used motor vehicles to murder Israelis, their families and neighbors insisted that they were not terrorists but hapless drivers. There had been no attack, merely a traffic accident.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">On Wednesday night when reporters went to interview Akary’s family and neighbors, they were met by shouts of praise for his murderous act. He was embraced as a martyr. And just as important, his act inspired mob violence in Shuafat and other Arab neighborhoods against police forces. For the first time, support for terrorism outweighed concern about alienating their Jewish neighbors or forcing police retaliation.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">On Thursday Fatah’s Facebook page was full of images calling for Palestinians to run over Jews.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">As Palestinian Media Watch reported, one used a play on words between the Arabic acronym for Islamic State and the Arabic word for running something over, thus positively associating the terrorists who run over Jews with members of Islamic State.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Hamas – Fatah’s partner in the PA’s coalition government – was similarly quick to praise Akary and call for more such attacks.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">In dealing with this burgeoning, decentralized terrorist campaign, aside from taking action to protect bus stops with various barricades, Israel needs to go after the triggers.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">It needs to break up the indoctrination system.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">And it needs to destroy the Palestinian leadership’s ability to communicate their incendiary messages.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Since UNRWA schools operating in Jerusalem engage in anti-Semitic indoctrination, Jerusalem municipal authorities must give them the choice of using Israeli textbooks or shutting down. If Israel wishes to assert its sovereignty, UNRWA schools would be a good place to start. Beyond that, preachers in mosques who incite murder and call for the destruction of Israel should be arrested.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">As for the PA’s communications networks, all of the radio and television signals operating in the PA come from the Israeli electromagnetic spectrum. It is time to shut them down. As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated on Wednesday, Abbas is directly inciting the murderous attacks on Jerusalem through the PA media organs. The way to protect Jerusalem is to remove him and his Hamas partners from the airwaves.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">There has been a lot of talk over the years about providing positive and negative incentives to convince the Palestinians not to engage in terrorism.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">But now is not the time for incentives. The population mobilized through incitement has become too fanatical to engage with reason.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The terrorists who take the wheel and run over pedestrians know that they will more than likely never come home. And they don’t care.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">They certainly don’t care that Israel will destroy their homes. And they also certainly won’t be impressed by discounted mortgages if they integrate into Israeli society.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">In the long term, it is imperative that Israel provide incentives to both the Jerusalem Arabs and the Palestinians to integrate peacefully with Israeli society. But before the government can seriously engage in this task, it needs to destroy the triggers of this terrorist onslaught. It is not enough to complain about Palestinian indoctrination and incitement. It is time for Israel to end them.</span></p>
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		<title>The Credit Obama Deserves (and Doesn&#8217;t) For Killing Osama</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/ben-shapiro/the-credit-obama-deserves-and-doesnt-for-killing-osama/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-credit-obama-deserves-and-doesnt-for-killing-osama</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/ben-shapiro/the-credit-obama-deserves-and-doesnt-for-killing-osama/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 03 May 2011 04:41:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ben Shapiro]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[abbottabad pakistan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[death]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hortly]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Leon Panetta]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[national security team]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=91992</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The president is due praise, but the self-congratulation reveals a sad truth about the expectations for liberal presidents. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/obama-on-osama.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-92077" title="obama-on-osama" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/obama-on-osama.jpg" alt="" width="504" height="336" /></a></p>
<p>My first reaction upon hearing of Osama Bin Laden’s death was sheer, unadulterated joy – a monster was dead, with a bullet through the head.  A just end to an evil human being.  My only regret was that Bin Laden didn’t suffer more before meeting his forty virgins.</p>
<p>I was also filled with gratitude to President Obama for authorizing the trigger pull.  My wife and I were at Disneyland when we heard the news, and I immediately whipped out my cell phone and tweeted, “Obama deserves all credit for pulling the trigger as Clinton never could.”</p>
<p>Then I watched President Obama’s speech, and realized that he didn’t need me to give him credit – he was too busy taking it for himself.  “[S]hortly after taking office,” Obama informed the American public, “I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority of our war against al Qaeda.”  This is 20/20 hindsight triumphalism at best – if Obama truly informed the CIA director that Bin Laden was at the top of the priority list at a time when the figurehead leader was holed up without telephone or internet, and when we were at full-scale war with al Qaeda across the Middle East, it demonstrates his lack of understanding about the nature of the terrorist threat rather than his determination.</p>
<p>Obama continued, “I met repeatedly with my national security team as we developed more information about the possibility that we had located Bin Laden hiding within a compound deep inside Pakistan.  And finally, last week, I determined that we had enough intelligence to take action … Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan …”  These, naturally, are all functions the president of the United States is expected to perform. Obama felt it necessary to enumerate them only for purposes of self-aggrandizement.</p>
<p>It is unseemly for the Commander in Chief to take personal credit for the operations of the U.S. military.  And make no mistake – that is precisely what he did.  Obama and his team are the heroes of this drama, at least according to Obama and his team.  All that was missing from this little laundry list of braggadocio was a personal description of the operation itself: “As I gazed through the sites of my sniper rifle at Bin Laden and waited for that brief pause between heartbeats …”</p>
<p>Obama’s fans, like Obama himself, are entranced with Obama’s supposed personal victory here.  The incoming chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) has already given Obama full credit for the kill.  So has Andrew Sullivan, who posted a picture of Obama with the caption, “Sorry it took so long to get you a copy of my birth certificate … I was too busy killing Osama bin Laden.”  (Apparently, Obama had no such time crunch preventing him from repeat appearances on Oprah.)</p>
<p>This is unserious and unbecoming for the left.  There are certain events for which Obama deserves credit, and certain events for which he does not.  First and foremost, Obama deserves credit for authorizing the kill.  President Clinton supposedly could have authorized a kill shot on Bin Laden several times, and let each and every one of those opportunities slip away.  Obama made no such mistake.  Of course, it’s setting a rather low bar to congratulate a president for granting authority to take a shot at the face of 21<sup>st</sup> century evil incarnate.  The fact that so many Americans feel proud of Obama for greenlighting the hit simply demonstrates the depths of pusillanimity to which the presidency has sunk over the past twenty years.</p>
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		<title>Bomb kills Iran nuclear physicist tied to Mousavi &#8211; AP</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/bomb-kills-iran-nuclear-physicist-tied-to-mousavi-ap/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=bomb-kills-iran-nuclear-physicist-tied-to-mousavi-ap</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 12 Jan 2010 17:23:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ali]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=45752</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[TEHRAN, Iran – A nuclear physics professor who publicly backed Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi in the disputed June presidential election was killed Tuesday when a bomb-rigged motorcycle blew up outside his home. The blast, apparently set off by a remote trigger, left a puzzling mix of clues about why a 50-year-old researcher with [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>TEHRAN, Iran – A nuclear physics professor who publicly backed Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi in the disputed June presidential election was killed Tuesday when a bomb-rigged motorcycle blew up outside his home.</p>
<p>The blast, apparently set off by a remote trigger, left a puzzling mix of clues about why a 50-year-old researcher with no prominent political voice, no published work with military relevance and no declared links to Iran&#8217;s nuclear program would be targeted.</p>
<p>State media identified the victim as Masoud Ali Mohammadi, a professor at Tehran University, which has been at the center of recent protests by student opposition supporters. Before the election, pro-reform Web sites published Ali Mohammadi&#8217;s name among a list of 240 Tehran University teachers who supported Mousavi.</p>
<p>via <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100112/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iran">Bomb kills Iran nuclear physicist tied to Mousavi &#8211; Yahoo! News</a>.</p>
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		<title>The Right’s PC Police &#8211; by Jacob Laksin</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/the-right%e2%80%99s-pc-police-by-jacob-laksin/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-right%25e2%2580%2599s-pc-police-by-jacob-laksin</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/the-right%e2%80%99s-pc-police-by-jacob-laksin/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 12 Jan 2010 06:17:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=45705</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Reid affair is one conversation about race Republicans shouldn’t want to have.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-45706" title="michael-steele-2-718320" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/michael-steele-2-7183201.jpg" alt="michael-steele-2-718320" width="500" height="340" /></p>
<p>Like vultures circling a wounded quarry, Republicans have wasted little time flocking over Majority Leader Harry Reid’s recent stumble into America’s racial midfield. The trigger is a 2008 interview that Reid gave to journalists John Heilemann and Mark Halperin for their new book <em>Game Change</em>, in which he <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100109/ap_on_el_se/us_obama_reid">observed</a> that Barack Obama was electable because he was “light skinned” and “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.”</p>
<p>Reid’s apercu was artlessly delivered. In this it was par for the course for a gaffe-prone politician whose previous forays into questionable social commentary include calling President George W. Bush a “<a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/05/07/politics/main693713.shtml">loser</a>,” prematurely declaring the Iraq war “<a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18227928/">lost</a>,” and musing about the <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/YeasandNays/Reid_We_wont_smell_the_tourists_anymore_12_02_2008.html">olfactory offenses</a> of summer visitors to Washington D.C. Still, it’s hard to see how Reid’s latest rhetorical infelicity merits anything like the outrage that has been leveled at the Senator from the right. Republicans’ opportunistic charges aside, nothing Reid said rises even remotely to the level of racism. And the GOP has little to gain – and much to lose – by pressing this case.</p>
<p>Few would seriously dispute that Obama’s oratorical gifts have served him well with white voters. It is also demonstrably true that those gifts include an ability to alter everything from his <a href="http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/11/in-reids-comments-hints-of-obamas-own-words/?hp">mannerisms to his intonation</a> to appeal to different racial constituencies. Sounding like a <a href="http://isteve.blogspot.com/2010/01/obamas-accents.html">Southern preacher</a> in one speech, a constitutional law professor in another, Obama has mastered the skill of situational delivery. Black or white, he is who his audience wants him to be. That Reid made this point clumsily makes it no less defensible.</p>
<p>Reid’s insights about skin color are less compelling. It’s possible that some voters genuinely cared about Obama’s lighter complexion. It seems more plausible to say that being black was his greater asset. As others have <a href="http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/11/in-reids-comments-hints-of-obamas-own-words/?pagemode=print">noted</a>, Obama’s rapid emergence in the national spotlight, from his <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWynt87PaJ0">speech</a> at the 2004 Democratic National Convention when he was not yet an elected Senator, to his million-dollar book deals, had more than a little do with the fact that he was a rising <em>black </em>politician. Likewise, the not-so-subliminal premise of Obama’s “historic” 2008 campaign was that the country could elect its first black president and atone for the sins of a slave-owning past. That worked out well enough.</p>
<p>Being wrong does not make Reid a racist, however. Republicans, meanwhile, do themselves no favors by enlisting in America’s ever-growing ranks of politically correct police. GOP national chairman Michael Steele has <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/11/us/politics/11reid.html?partner=rss&amp;emc=rss">led the way</a>, accusing Reid of racism and bemoaning that any Republican who spoke as Reid did would be vilified and urged to resign the Senate leadership by Democrats and allied groups who are now rallying to Reid’s defense. Former Mississippi Senator Trent Lott was forced to do just that in 2002 when he made racially tone-deaf comments at the late Sen. Strom Thurmond&#8217;s 100th birthday party.</p>
<p>Steele is of course right about this double standard. But the chairman does nothing to restore integrity to the political debate by validating the political left’s pernicious smear that any and all comments about race, however innocuous, must be treated as an act of racism, with their author forced to prostrate himself before various racial lobbies or risk banishment from polite society.</p>
<p>For Republicans to play the race card is also strategically short-sighted. It’s possible that the shrill cries of racism will depress Reid’s already <a href="http://www.lvrj.com/news/reid-hits-new-low-in-poll-81060702.html">tumbling poll numbers in Nevada</a> and damage his reelection prospects. But Republicans won’t emerge unscathed. Exaggerated sensitivity on racial matters will win the GOP no credit from multicultural censors. It will merely perpetuate the depressing cycle that sees intelligent debate silenced for unintelligent reasons and ensure that the racism charge is deployed again in future – likely against Republicans. It’s hard to see how anyone but Democrats will benefit from that. As Peter Collier <a href="http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/01/10/harry-reid-gets-dealt-the-race-card/">observes</a>, “<em>Nobody</em> beats the Democrats at race-baiting!”</p>
<p>As evidence, consider that Democrats have already launched a <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/31340.html">counterattack</a> that casts Republicans as the real racists in the Reid affair. The crux of the campaign is that Reid can’t be a racist because he is a Democrat, whereas Republicans are, well, Republicans. Lest one think this a crude oversimplification, listen to Congressional Black Caucus chair Barbara Lee defend Reid: “Senator Reid’s record provides a stark contrast to actions of Republicans to block legislation that would benefit poor and minority communities — most recently reflected in Republican opposition to the health bill now under consideration.” Just so Lee’s meaning is clear: To oppose ObamaCare is to be a racist. This is what political debate has been reduced to.</p>
<p>One expects these kinds of tactics from Democrats. Republicans, though, are supposed to be the adult party. In the current political climate, it may be too much to hope that they will forgo an opportunity to bloody one of their leading opponents, especially now that he is at his most vulnerable. But as the GOP leadership does its best impersonation of the sensitivity monitors it otherwise reviles, it should realize that, in taking the racial war to Reid, it is fighting on their terms.</p>
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		<title>Iran’s Smoking Nuclear Gun &#8211; by Matt Gurney</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/matt-gurney/iran%e2%80%99s-smoking-nuclear-gun-by-matt-gurney/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=iran%25e2%2580%2599s-smoking-nuclear-gun-by-matt-gurney</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/matt-gurney/iran%e2%80%99s-smoking-nuclear-gun-by-matt-gurney/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 16 Dec 2009 05:00:03 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matt Gurney]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=42024</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Is Tehran finally out of excuses?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-42026" title="Iran-leader" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Iran-leader.jpg" alt="Iran-leader" width="450" height="453" /></p>
<p>Could this finally be the smoking gun? In the United   Kingdom, <em>The Times</em> has revealed that it is in possession of an <a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article6955706.ece">Iranian document</a> discussing plans to construct and secretly test a “neutron trigger.” If the document is legitimate (there has been no official word yet confirming that, but it’s certainly being <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gOGgYiQomTS48gUI7WH5-yXI8tNA">taken seriously</a>) then Iran would finally be out of excuses. Their intention to build a nuclear weapon would be obvious to the whole world.</p>
<p>The Iranians, as it is now well known, have long denied that their nuclear program is for military purposes, improbably claiming that their petroleum-rich country desires a nuclear program to generate electricity. If the document obtained by <em>The Times</em> is to be believed, that will no longer be possible to claim. Neutron triggers, in this case the rare material uranium deuteride, serve only one possible function — triggering atomic explosions. They have no peaceful purposes, no other possible application. They are a key component of a nuclear bomb, and if Iran is developing a trigger, their intention is clear as can be.</p>
<p>The Iranian claims of peaceful intent have been straining credibility for some time, but the revelation earlier this year that they constructed a uranium processing facility under a mountain should have been enough to wake up the world to the threat posed by Tehran’s theocratic regime. If the purpose of their nuclear program is peaceful, as they’d have us all believe, then there is no reason that it could not have been open to international inspection, with the facilities constructed in plain view.</p>
<p>The only possible reason to go through the time and expense of building a facility under a mountain is to maximize its resilience to a possible air strike. And yet the Iranian regime still claimed innocence. Now that it has been credibly suggested that they are building a trigger for an atomic bomb, the regime is sticking to the same strategy of obfuscation — <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8414373.stm">denials</a> mixed with anti-Western rhetoric.</p>
<p>Their denials might work on some; there is no shortage of people around the world disinclined to believe anything the West says. But Iranian can hardly claim that as a victory: Even if millions of people around the world believe that the theocracy is innocent of the charges leveled against it by the West, proof that Iran is building a neutron trigger will have a powerful psychological impact on Western decision-makers.</p>
<p>This is especially true because the documents are believed to have originated in 2007, four years after a Bush administration <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2007/dec/09/opinion/op-powers9">National Intelligence Estimate</a> claimed that “in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.” That NIE was a major setback to those calling for a hard-line to be taken against Iran’s program. If it can be proven that Iran was working on a neutron trigger four years after it was supposed to have suspended its weapons development, not only will it be yet another black eye for the American intelligence community, it will also be a crippling blow to those eager to downplay the risks posed by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s nuclear ambition.</p>
<p>Whether or not it will result in any firm action is less clear. The brutal nature of the Iranian regime is well known, and their desire to destroy Israel, a liberal-democratic beacon of decency in an otherwise forsaken part of the world, is quite literally a matter of public record. Even so, many in the West — unfortunately including President Barack Obama — have chosen to act like Iran was a naughty child in need of a firm, but kindly, form of diplomatic discipline. Only the Israelis, whose history has taught them to take seriously threats of genocide, have consistently been willing to deal with Iran rationally.</p>
<p>The Iranians have deftly exploited Western naivety and bumbling diplomacy. Iran has repeatedly accepted a deal, trumpeted it to the world, and then reneged at the last minute, buying time for its scientists to complete a nuclear bomb. There are signs, however, that the international community is finally tiring of this transparent scheme, and if the Iranians are indeed developing an atomic trigger as the document suggests, not only will the anti-Tehran forces in the West be strengthen, they’ll also have a diplomatic advantage.</p>
<p>This is because the document, dated to 2007, lay out a four-year plan to develop the trigger. That leaves two years, at the very most, before Iran would have the technical capacity to complete a nuclear weapon. (It would also need enough enriched uranium to build one, but whether or not they would have enough within two years is unknown, and perhaps at present unknowable.) One would hope that a sense of urgency would help focus the minds of the Western diplomats who have thus far proven so ineffective at reining in Iran.</p>
<p>President Obama seems to have marginally hardened his tone on Iran, warning that if it cannot show concrete signs that it is cooperating with the international community by the end of the year, it would face consequences. Defense Secretary Robert Gates <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/12/world/middleeast/12gates.html">seems to agree</a>, having recently spoken of more stringent sanctions than Iran has yet had to deal with. Those calling for tough action will have their causes boosted if the document is proven credible. To be blunt, it would leave the left with no possible excuse to not take action.</p>
<p>But as must always be remembered, the most dramatic steps to be taken are not those being considered in the halls of foreign ministries all over the Western world. While diplomats from America and Europe debate how best to cope with Tehran and whether or not this document is valid, Israeli generals and defense experts are quietly waiting, wondering if the world will come to their rescue, knowing that each passing day makes a final, devastating confrontation more necessary. Those calling for diplomacy with the obviously untrustworthy Iranian regime are doing the cause of peace no favors.</p>
<p>For Israel, the clock is ticking. And this document can only make it tick louder.</p>
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