Conservative Voice Quotes Capital Cloak

Capital Cloak was recently quoted by a nationally syndicated conservative columnist. Armstrong Williams, described by the Washington Post as "one of the most recognized conservative voices in America," wrote a column published by Human Events Online on July 2nd about New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s experimental cash for good behavior program. I had written a post on that topic for Capital Cloak on June 20th, and Mr. Williams, in summarizing his opposition to the socialistic nature of Bloomberg’s program, chose to utilize a sentence from my original post to illustrate his point. After outlining his objections to the cash for behavior program, Mr. Williams wrote:

One detractor of the program said it like this: “We have now gone from ‘You can feed a man with fish, but it is better to teach him how to fish’ to ‘Let’s pay the man $100 per month for having a fishing pole.’

The “detractor” was me. Here is the paragraph from my original Capital Cloak post “Clinton Policy: Hard Work No Solution to Poverty” that Mr. Williams quoted, in its original context:

The idea of paying people, regardless of their income level, to make good common-sense decisions is the epitome of government run amok. It does not matter whether the funding of such a program comes from philanthropy or taxation; the theory behind the program is morally bankrupt and dangerous to the survival of American ideals such as individualism and personal responsibility. Paying someone in cash to make the same logical decisions everyone else makes with no expectation of government reward is socialism in its purest and most personally debilitating form. The Republican [He has since declared himself Independent] Bloomberg’s experiment with such a program demonstrates how far America has fallen from the nation that tamed a continent and outpaced the world in industry and science for generations. We have now gone from “You can feed a man with fish, but it is better to teach him how to fish” to “Let’s pay the man $100 per month for having a fishing pole.”

While I was flattered to read my words in Mr. Williams’ column, unfortunately he did not credit me or provide his readers with a link to the Capital Cloak post in which the quoted sentence appeared. Regardless, Mr. Williams and I shared common ground by opposing the socialistic cash reward program put forth by New York’s “Independent” mayor, and I anticipate that Capital Cloak will continue to influence prominent conservative voices.

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Armstrong Williams, Syndicated Columnists, Human Events Online, Conservative Columnists, Michael Bloomberg, Philanthropy, Socialism

Bomb Doctors Sign of Radicalism's Reach

What would you think if, while conversing with an Iraqi Sunni sheikh at a meeting of sheikhs attempting to broker “peace” in Iraq, he began spewing a litany of anti-American rhetoric, warned you that militants would expand their operations to include direct attacks on Britain and America, and further warned you that “those who cure you will kill you?” Would that last phrase stand out in your mind? What would you conclude that the sheikh meant by his comment about “those who cure?”

You don’t have to be an intelligence specialist or counterterrorism expert to take the sheikh’s warning at face value and put two and two together, but apparently British Anglican cleric Canon Andrew White had difficulty seeing the proverbial forest for the trees. Instead of reporting the verbatim warning to the British Foreign Office in April, when the disturbing conversation occurred, White left out the statement “those who cure you will kill you,” and merely told authorities of the anti-American rhetoric at the meeting, warning in generic terms only that militants were going to target America and Britain directly.

White has received recognition from coalition forces in Iraq for his work among Iraqis and attempts to reconcile the various religious factions there. He was no stranger to radical ideology, having witnessed its brutality firsthand, and that is why it was stunning that he did not recognize the sheikh’s comments as a reference to doctors. White deserves standard kudos for reporting what little he did report to the British Foreign Office at the time, but unfortunately it took failed car bombings in London and Glasgow last week, and the subsequent arrests of 8 doctors, medical students, and laboratory technicians in Britain for it to dawn on White what the sheikh’s warning actually meant and to go public with his “discovery.” There is no question that had White shared the sheikh’s precise phrase with government authorities in April, British intelligence would have begun immediately to inquire with its informants about doctors or others in the medical profession and may very well have detected the London-Glasgow plot before its unsuccessfully execution last week.

The UK Telegraph reported today that the post-attack investigation has revealed that a group of 45 Muslim doctors may have participated in an extremist Internet chat room as long as three years ago in which they threatened to use car bombs to attack targets in the United States. One can only imagine how deeply British or American intelligence/counterterrorism agencies might have penetrated, or how closely they could have monitored such a group of doctors had they known of its existence as early as April of this year, when White first received an explicit warning about “those who cure.”

Yesterday I asked my wife, an astute thinker in her own right but who had not heard any coverage of White’s restored memory, to imagine what she would conclude if an anti-American Islamic sheikh told her “those who cure you will kill you.” She replied that not only would she immediately think of doctors, but that her concern would focus not on car bombs but rather on chemical/biological attacks that could be launched quietly through unsuspecting patients by doctors with access to biological and radiological materials. She was thinking of pandemics or radiation poisonings caused by doctors in whom Americans (or the British) would have placed their implicit trust for routine treatment, a much more frightening prospect than propane tank car bombs. Considering the large number of Muslim doctors in the United States, particularly in the Washington, DC area, it is possible that patients may reconsider their choice of doctor with the revelations of willing terrorists among the ranks of Muslim medical personnel in the west.

American and British Muslim physicians and medical staff may chafe at the suspicion and patient cancellations that are sure to come on the heels of current investigations into the London-Glasgow terror doctors. They may consider it unfair and unwarranted, but moderate Muslims, including respected physicians and other successful Muslim professionals, need to purge their own ranks of extremists like the eight medical personnel arrested since Friday’s initial botched bombing. Radio personality Fred Grandy posed a timely question to Muslims during the “Grandy and Andy Morning Show” today: “Where is the anti-Bin Laden? Where is the anti-al Zawahiri?” He explained that the world is mesmerized by each new videotaped statement by Bin Laden, but there is no corresponding moderate Muslim leader to issue rebuttals to Bin Laden or condemn his rhetoric and offer a better alternative for impressionable Muslims throughout the world.

The arrested doctors in Britain illustrate an important truth of radical Islam: it is not limited in social or educational status and has quiet support even among those who are supposedly dedicated to preserving life. It has followers in every profession, in every walk of life. When doctors, well-educated and engaged in a lucrative profession, are willing to throw away years of training and achievement by risking detonating themselves along with hundreds of innocent British or American citizens, radical Islam demonstrates the expanse of its reach and indoctrinating power. In its appeal to base human impulse, radicalism is more compelling than reason.

In an interesting concluding paragraph to its report of cleric White’s hindsight, CNN unintentionally published a compelling argument for America to remain engaged in Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries until Islamic terrorists are dealt an ultimately fatal blow. Whether it meant to or not, CNN supported President Bush’s premise that “we are fighting the terrorists over there so we won’t have to fight them here.” From CNN’s report:

According to officials, there has been long-standing concern that Iraq is a breeding ground for a new generation of terrorists who have been testing tactics of urban warfare, which can then be used in Western nations.

Terrorism analyst Marco Vicenzino, the director of the Global Strategy Project, says the world could be seeing a shift in jihadist tactics.

Confident after wounding the United States and its allies in Iraq, jihadists "are determined to take their combat experience directly to the superpower and its allies at home and around the world," Vicenzino said.

If the jihadists are “confident” after wounding the U.S. in Iraq, then it stands to reason that America’s response to a wounding should not be retreat, withdrawal, or “redeployment,” as Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, and other prominent Democrats have euphemistically recommended. Rather than allow an emboldened enemy to be confident, grow stronger, and launch widespread attacks, the enemy must be defeated and discouraged from ever attempting to “wound” America again. If they are determined, we must be doubly so. If they are confident of eventual victory, we must deny them of achieving it by dealing them defeat and crushing their capacity to strike us. If radical Islam is a disease slowly consuming the world even through the assistance of professional healers, and moderate Islam will not treat the disease devouring its ranks, who then holds the cure?

Technorati Tags:
Muslim Doctors, London Car Bombs, Radical Islam, Terrorism, Fred Grandy, Canon Andrew White, Iraq War, Muslim Medical Students, Moderate Muslims, Jihad

Chavez-Iran Axis Revives Monroe Doctrine

Summer 2007 appears to have ushered in a new season of revivals; Liberal Democrats, not satisfied with control of all broadcast TV networks, CNN, MSNBC, and most major daily newspapers in America, attempted to revive the “Fairness Doctrine” in order to destroy conservative talk radio; In Britain, the specter of summertime Islamic terror attacks was revived over the weekend with attempted bombings of nightclubs in London and the Glasgow Airport in Scotland; Scooter Libby’s freedom was revived after President Bush provided him with clemency after an agenda-driven prosecutor and a biased DC jury convicted him for having a poor memory in a case in which no underlying crime actually occurred; The level of political activity and discussion in America was revived by fierce debate and Internet blogging about illegal immigration, proving that the voices of constituents really can make a difference to our elected officials; The threat of socialism and the extension of radical Islamic ideologies in the western hemisphere was revived through the formation of an alliance between Iran and Venezuela, creating direct threats to America’s national security and economic interests throughout South America.

This last revival deserves significant consideration as it relates to America’s foreign policy and national security. An anti-American “Axis” has been formally created between Venezuela and Iran, two members of the OPEC oil cartel. This alliance, dubbed the “Axis of Unity,” is a wedding of oil-rich nations who share only one stated purpose: "The two countries will united defeat the imperialism of North America." Those words by Venezuela’s socialist president Hugo Chavez, when placed in the context of recent actions by Iran and Venezuela, constitute a direct threat to the stability and security of the western hemisphere. Chavez has issued orders to Venezuela’s rapidly growing military to prepare for war against the U.S. He has entered into several arms purchase agreements with Russia, including Russian submarines to bolster Venezuela’s expanding naval capabilities, and although the Russian subs are not the most tactically advanced or newest models, they still pose grave potential security threats to U.S. shipping in South America as well as a completely unmonitored method for smuggling terrorists and weapons (possibly WMD) from Iran to Venezuela through the quiet deep. Chavez further seized the operations of two American oil companies in Venezuela (Exxon Mobil and Conoco-Phillips) and nationalized them, forcing the companies out and adding to Venezuela’s despotic control of its oil production.

Iran, as has been reported extensively by Capital Cloak, continues its rapid march toward nuclear weapons capability, and continues to train, fund, equip, and transport Islamic terrorists throughout the world, in particular Iraq. American generals have determined that Iran is actually attempting to organize an Iraqi version of terror group Hezbollah and is responsible for most of the IEDs and VBIEDs that have killed or wounded coalition forces in Iraq. Iran, like Venezuela, is a major oil producer, and that status gives concerned nations considerable pause when contemplating use of force to halt Iran’s nuclear ambitions and terror sponsorship. Nothing would please Iran and its radical president Ahmadinejad more than establishing a secure foothold in the Americas, sheltered by a sworn enemy of the U.S., where terror operations and smuggling could bring operatives and weapons into much closer proximity to the “Great Satan” than is currently possible on any large scale. The two nations have formed an economic, ideological, and potential military partnership in America’s backyard.

I would ask our government to consider a simple question: what has happened to the Monroe Doctrine? In this summer of revivals, the return of the Monroe Doctrine would be a revival worthy of swift implementation. President Bush frequently tells us that “we are fighting terrorists over there so we won’t have to fight them here.” If that is the logical basis for the administration’s War on Terror strategy, then it would seem critical to define what is meant by “fight them here.” Under the Monroe Doctrine, “here” would include anywhere in the Western Hemisphere. The Doctrine, set forth by President James Monroe in 1823, declared to European powers that North and South America were no longer open for colonization and that any attempt by a foreign power to extend its influence into the “New World” would be viewed as dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States. Prior to the official pronouncement of the Monroe Doctrine, the U.S. had recognized Argentina, Chile, Columbia, and Mexico as republics, and the doctrine was an affirmation that the sovereignty of free governments in the western hemisphere, as well as the prevention of foreign interference, were critical to America’s national security and would be enforced through American military force as needed.

Since that time, to briefly summarize a long history of development, the Monroe Doctrine has been invoked to justify anti-Soviet operations in Guatemala in the 1950s after the Soviet Union intervened in Guatemala’s internal politics, as well as President Kennedy’s Cuban missile crisis confrontation with the Soviets. While it is true that Venezuela sought its current alliance with Iran and is not technically being interfered with by a foreign power, Latin and South American security considerations in the age of Islamic terrorism would certainly be as justified under the Monroe Doctrine today as it was in Monroe’s, Grant’s, Teddy Roosevelt’s, or John F. Kennedy’s time. In 1962, Kennedy made the following statement about the Monroe Doctrine’s role in confronting the Soviet Union over Cuba:

The Monroe Doctrine means what it has meant since President Monroe and John Quincy Adams enunciated it, and that is that we would oppose a foreign power extending its power to the Western Hemisphere, and that is why we oppose what is happening in Cuba today. That is why we have cut off our trade. That is why we worked in the Organization of American States and in other ways to isolate the Communist menace in Cuba. That is why we will continue to give a good deal of our effort and attention to it.

The Bush administration and future presidents should consider carefully Kennedy’s wording. He did not state that a foreign power must be interfering in the Western Hemisphere before America should act. He used the phrase “we would oppose a foreign power extending its power to the Western Hemisphere.” In its new “Axis of Unity” based on hatred of America, Iran is certainly making overt efforts to extend its power into the America’s, or as Chavez bragged, "This is the unity of the Persian Gulf and the Caribbean Sea."

If President Bush is serious about “fighting terrorists over there so we won’t have to fight them here,” he should study and reassert the Monroe Doctrine as previous presidents have done to prevent dangerous ideologies and avowed enemies of America from establishing a beachhead in the Western Hemisphere from which to launch attacks on our interests or foment terror on our doorstep.

It is not in the interest of our national security, or the security of other Latin and South American nations, to allow an “Axis of Unity” to join hands with the “Axis of Evil.”

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Hugo Chavez, Ahmadinejad, Axis of Unity, Venezuela, Russian Arms Sales, Monroe Doctrine, War on Terror, National Security