Ut Humiliter Opinor

Cori Dauber at Rantingprofs points out this Washington Post article: Security Tight After Beheading of 3 Indonesian Girls

The bodies of the girls, dressed in brown school uniforms, were left at the site of the attack. Their heads were found at separate locations two hours later. One student survived the attack, which police said was carried out by six men wielding machetes.

My first reaction is just sheer anger. al Qaeda has made beheadings of “infidels” a vogue statement of Islamist faith. I can only assume that these six men are now looking forward to their rewards of virgins in paradise.

Once again, we see evil staring us in the face. It’s not because of Bush or Iraq or oil that this happened, and no amount of left-wing spin can make it so. This is sick, twisted behavior instilled in men by those who are using them to inject themselves into power.

Why should we even try to appease this “philosophy”?

Update: If you have the stomach for it, pictures are at Dog Pundit (hat tip: Foreign Dispatches).

I wonder what the ACLU would say if we did this here.

Never mind, I think I can imagine the outrage.

Crackdown On Hate Peachers

The type of conduct to be outlawed includes inflammatory preaching and publishing views which foster hatred or foment terrorism. Mr Clarke said the new powers would be used in a “measured and targeted” way. “They are not intended to stifle free speech or legitimate debate about religions or other issues,” he said.

Bottom line, any deportation for political views is scary, but when web site owners are positively portraying suicide bombers it doesn’t take a lot of effort to realize they have moved beyond legitimate policital dissent.

Jason at Countercolumn discusses Cluelessness on CNN

That’s right. The explosion flipped a 31-ton APC. And what is Wolf Blitzer’s argument? That the military didn’t provide good vehicles in the Al Anbar Province. And that — and I quote verbatim, — “an up-armored Humvee would have stood a better chance.” Do the math. If the explosion flipped vehicle weight 31 tons (plus another ton and a half or so of marines and gear), then what are the survivability chances of a 4-ton uparmored Humvee? I’ll tell you:Anything left of the Humvee would have been parked in Syria, dumbass. The retired general was being too diplomatic to tell Blitzer he was being a moron, but Blitzer kept pressing the point. “I’m very disappointed that we don’t have the good vehicles in the Al Anbar province,” he says. “It’s a very sensitive issue for me, because I was there in March.Yeah, Wolf. How was the ride to the hotel? This is the kind of dimwittery posing as military analysis in the media.

It’s heard to trust the media on a lot of analysis, really. Whenever I see a mainstream report on networking, computing, hacking or programming, I usually cringe. I’m willing to bet that most professionals have the same problem. You have to keep that sort of thing in mind whenever you watch the so-called experts on cable.

Michael Chertoff has an article today called Securing Our Subways. Reading it, however, makes it painfully clear that we can’t. His three items to improve security are: intercept sleeper cells, not to focus solely on subways and buses, and encourage research that will identify potential WMDs.

All of these are good ideas, but they don’t really help much in securing mass transit - they involve finding the terrorists before they strike.

If you need any further proof that it is next to impossible, then look at Israel. It’s one of the most secure countries, and its airline security is top-notch. However, bus bombings are routine there.

So, let’s do away with the fiction that we can somehow make our mass transit safe with random searches of bags and a slightly increased police presence. It’s a feel-good measure at best, and a diversion from the real investigations at worst.

Update 7/30: Ogre comments in a related post that indicates 60% of people think random searches help fight terrorism and that 49% of Americans think racial profiling should not be used to stop terrorists. (Hat tip: Beltway Traffic Jam.)

It’s absolutely assanine NOT to use profiling. If you local police chief took this view on crime-fighting, when a woman reported that she’d been raped by a 6′6″ Asian male, they’d have to arrest and question 75-year old ladies and 6-year old kids! I think America has indeed changed. If this poll accurately reflects the attitudes of Americans today, we are no longer the country that was formed in 1776, and we have no hope of ever being that great country again. This country was founded on individual liberty — once that’s removed, this country is not a representative republic.

Profiling is just statistical sampling by another name. If you’re going to spened the time and money to search, you have to stop the 75-year old lady once in a while (about 1 out of 100 searches), but the vast majority of searches (approximately 2/3rds of the time) should be of people who fit the normal methods used by terrorists. Yes, it stinks, but that’s how it should be done.

(Here’s a good graphic of the normal curve and associated percentages.)

We need more statements like this from Muslims fed up with the use of Islam for radical purposes, not only in how Islam has to reform itself, but on how the Left refuses to lay blame where it belongs - with the terrorists themselves:

After London, Tough Questions for Muslims:

I was against the invasion of Iraq and would not have voted for George Bush if I were a U.S. citizen, but I’m done with the “George Bush made me do it” excuse. We must accept responsibility for this mess if we are ever to find a way out. And for those non-Muslims who accept the George Bush excuse, I have a question: Do you think Muslims are incapable of accepting responsibility? It is at least in some way bigoted to think that Muslims can only react violently.

(Hat Tip: Ranting Profs)

Via Wizbang Carnival of the Trackbacks:

THE TOMO REPORT: SHOULDER-FIRED MISSLE INCIDENT AT OKC AIRFORCE BASE!

On 14 Jul 05, three individuals were observed outside of the perimeter of Tinker AFB, OK. They were looking through binoculars, taking pictures and one appeared to be holding a large weapon at chest level. The weapon appeared to be aimed towards a low flying aircraft. The three individuals were described as being of Middle Eastern decent and left the area when approached. The weapon was later identified as a rocket launcher (MANPAD) and the low flying aircraft to be a B-1 Bomber. FBI in Oklahoma City and AFOSI determined the threat to be credible.

This is the first and only source I’ve seen for this. It’s frightening if true. Under the circumstances I can’t help but wonder about its authenticity, but it’s hard not to be concerned after seeing something like this.

Well here’s some good news. The UK had some excellent luck on this one. He’d already gotten out of the country: ABC News: Alleged Mastermind of London Bombings Captured

Magdy Elnashar, 33, who authorities believe helped build the bombs, was taken into custody in suburban Cairo, Egypt. Elnashar had left England two weeks before the bombings, and British authorities had initiated a worldwide manhunt for him. Police say it was Elnashar who helped the bombers set up their bomb factory in Leeds.

Considering the speed at which this happened, I can’t help but think that the al-Qaeda network is starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel for its “help”. Still more evidence that we’re doing better at keeping the pressure on than we realized.

Caelestis is one our deployed soldiers in Iraq. I wish him the best of luck on his mission.

This morning he does a comparison between us and the Islamists:

Their coalition is built upon the belief that all men and women are NOT created equally, that slavery is not only accepted but encouraged, especially if your slave is an infidel. Their beliefs are based on their interpretation of religious texts that they believe gives them permission to behead innocents, to kill women for the way they dress, and to attack children who receive candy from infidels. They rage against us and say we are committing holy war upon them, but which coalition quotes religion at every turn? Which coalition talks about peace and freedom and which one talks about destroying all infidels? Our coalition values and respects life, we believe in the freedom of the individual to make his own way in life, to make mistakes and learn from them, they believe that certain mistakes must be punished by death. The Coalition of the West and its allies are a culture of life, love and freedom, the Coalition of Islamic Fascists is one of death, hate and oppression. Yet in their eyes our love of life and freedom is the very thing that makes us so hated, in their eyes our freedoms are tools of Satan, and we are the agents of Satan come to pollute the purity of what they believe Islamic culture should be. How twisted must one’s mind be to believe that the freedom to make ones way in life is evil. What kind of god do they worship that believes killing innocents is acceptable and encouraged? What have they become to be so enraptured with death and hate?

The relativists on the Left would have us believe that if we just pulled out of Iraq, then everything would be fine. They have yet to accept that this is a clash of cultures. There is but a handful of ways that this can be resolved: we cut-and-run, we destroy the Islamists, or Muslim culture destroys them from within. The latter is obviously the preferred way. However, if money alone were to do it, then Saudi Arabia would be the most modern democracy in the Middle East. Reform will only come when individual rights - not religious doctrine - become the dominant school of thought.

We will be in Iraq and the Middle East for decades. We must accept that much as we accepted being in Europe during the Cold War. Europe doesn’t need us anymore, and the Department of Defense is making a wise choice in shutting many bases in Europe down. Eventually, those forces will be in the Middle East instead. I do not believe that we will be on the offensive at all times as we are now. It may take years to help Iraq settle into a real democracy - it took the US twelve years to go from the Declaration of Independence to the Constitution we use today - and Iraqi people need support. It is in our interests and theirs to be there. Our interest is not oil, and not even necessarily freedom directly, but to hopefully prevent the day that the Islamists gain the resources to use more terrible weapons against our society.

CQ has summarized my thoughts on this morning’s attacks very well:

Captain’s Quarters

We are all Britons today. When we say that, we don’t mean it to imply that this is conditional on Britain engaging in self-flagellation to maintain our sympathy. We don’t mean that we expect our friends to simply remain victims to retain our friendship and support. We don’t mean that the people who have been attacked should withdraw into a corner in order to somehow earn our tears. We mean that we support our friends — and that support means that we plan on standing shoulder to shoulder with them when they decide to take the necessary action to ensure that our enemies can never do something like this again. In other words, we are all Britons in the sense that Britons stood with America after 9/11.

When I first heard news of this attack, I was convinced it was not al-Qaeda because of the proximity of the G-8 summit. The anarchist demonstrators who usually frequent these conferences were the first to spring to my mind - especially since the British elections were very recent. I would have expected al-Qaeda to try to influence the elections much as they did in Spain. However, there has since been an initial claim of responsibility from them. That tells me that they did not think they could influence the outcome of British elections any more than the OBL tape released before the US elections did.

Britain and the United States - probably more than any other countries - are willing to take the fight with the Islamists to them, not wait and be attacked again. We will not be bullied by thugs who reject Western values of pluralism to enforce Islamic extremism as the one and only way of life. Nor should we hesitate in the face of constant cries of the moral relativists that seek to understand the Islamists grievances as somehow legitimate.

My thoughts, prayers and condolences to all who are suffering in these latest assaults.