The Mosque at Ground Zero

Dorothy Rabinowitz, who ostensibly is a TV reviewer for the Wall Street Journal, is also one of the most brilliant writers on the follies of contemporary life. Yesterday she weighed in on The Mosque at Ground Zero.

Nine years after the Twin Towers fell into the street, and took three thousand people with them, we still don't have a replacement to fill that great hole in the ground. The political-legal process just can't handle it. (During the Great Depression, the Empire State Building went from ground breaking to first visitor in eleven months.) So it looks like the first new building to rise in the area, and to look down into that hole, will be--a thirteen-story mosque!

Read Ms. Rabinowitz's take on this. No summary of mine can do it justice. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Call them nitwits

The Atlantic has a hilarious if perhaps over-optimistic essay about Osama bin Laden & Co: "Our terrorist enemies trade on the perception that they’re well trained and religiously devout, but in fact, many are fools and perverts who are far less organized and sophisticated than we imagine." It's not just the homegrown variety, the hapless Underwear Bomber and his soulmate in farce, the Times Square Bomber. Routinely, argue the authors, jihadists blow themselves and their friends up when they perform the ritual group hug before setting out to off the infidel. And those aren't the only rituals they perform! Read it and snicker.

The authors also have a serious point to make: we should "work to undermine some of the myths built up around our enemies by highlighting their incompetence, their moral failings, and their embarrassing antics. Beyond changing how the Muslim world perceives terrorists, we can help ourselves make smarter counterterrorism choices by being more realistic about the profile and aptitude of would-be attackers."

 The first part at least could have been written by John Boyd. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

GrEaT sAtAn"s gIrLfRiEnD

The problem with blogs is that they can seem terribly funny, interesting, or challenging at first sight, then the sameness sets in. So I'm always looking out for a new one to add to my blogroll (on the lower right). Most recently I'm enjoying GrEaT sAtAn"s gIrLfRiEnD, who specializes in photos of politically incorrect hotties, along with in-your-face spelling, off-the-wall language, and an apparent right wing sensibility. The lady above is British-born and Muslim-reared Sarah Maple, who in turn specializes in equal opportunity offensiveness. I don't know if she's any relation to the GrEaT sAtAn"s gIrLfRiEnD (maybe they're the same person!) but however that may be, they're as good as a cup of coffee to get me going in the morning. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Two ways of looking at a battle

I've added a Canadian blog, Milnews.ca, to my list to check more or less daily. This in honor of its recent post about a gory "battle" in Helmand province, Afghanistan. Here is how the Taliban reported it:

HELMAND, May 11 – As many as 55 Americans have been killed and 37 terribly injured with their three Chinook-like helicopters shot down in clashes with Mujahideen of the Islamic Emirate in Helmand’s Nowzad district through much of Monday, Mujahideen officials said. According to the details, the deadly battle erupted as about hundreds of American cowardly soldiers, airdropped by some 20 helicopters into the different areas of Nowzad district, wanting to carry out a large scale operation in the area, came under simultaneous attacks by Mujahideen from every directions that caused a daylong face-to-face fighting which started on Monday afternoon (May 10) and continued till late night hours, in which the enemy, after suffering deadliest losses and severest damages, fled the areas carrying the engines of the helicopters shot down by Mujahideen during the fighting along with them, while the wreckage of the struck helicopters including their wings and other parts of the helicopters and the mutilated parts of the bodies of the American soldiers still exist at the sites. No Mujahids have, by the virtue of Allah’s bounty and His mercy, been harmed, while Mujahideen have taken the abondoned arms and ammo. Jahidic officials say it is the first operation which has been so much perfect and successful since the invasion of US cowardly troops in 2001, and one of the luckiest operations since the operation al-Fath ( The Victory) commenced throughout the country.

And here's what actually happened:

KABUL, Afghanistan (May 10) – An MH-60 helicopter made a controlled landing after being hit by enemy fire in Helmand Province this afternoon. All crewmembers have been safely returned to base. The helicopter was supporting a combined Afghan-international assault force on a targeted compound near Nangazi, in the Sangin district, and had just begun its return flight when it was hit by enemy fire and forced to make a controlled landing. After landing, the helicopter crew was immediately picked up by additional aircraft. The helicopter could not be recovered and was destroyed in place with close air support. Multiple enemy fighters were engaged by the combined force and several suspected militants were captured at the targeted compound. The assault force and remaining crew have safely returned to base.

Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Of Jihad Jane and other nutters

It's hard to miss the glee in Bob Orr's voice as he laments the case of the blonde, blue-eyed, girlie jihadist who wanted to make it her life's work to murder a Swedish cartoonist. (I'm late about this: I missed the excitement because I was skiing in the Maine mountains.) I suspect that half the hooh-hah is just the Fright of the Week that television and the internet thrive on, and most of the other half is routine madness of the sort that creates freeway snipers and schoolhouse shooters. Mr Orr passes over what to me seems a significant remark: 'I'm so bored,' she wrote on her web page, 'I want to scream.' Far from being a devious red herring, that was probably the basis of her flutter with crime. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Soldier of the Lord

Here's a taped rant from that American-born spokesman for al-Qaeda who may or may not have been captured the other day. Like all ideologues, he goes on and on, and even an excerpt is windy, but also revealing:

The year 2009, the inaugural year of a new administration in Washington, ended in a truly miserable fashion for the Crusader West and its intelligence organs, who suffered a series of moral and material blows which culminated in the bloody deaths of at least 8 CIA operatives in a masterfully-planned and executed martyrdom operation inside their clandestine base in Afghanistan. This crushing blow came just a few days after the compromising of America’s supposedly airtight security in a valiant attempt by a heroic soldier of al-Qaida to bring down an American airliner over Detroit. But I would like here to take you back to an earlier event, one whose hero wasn’t a member of al-Qaida or any other Islamic group, but was in fact, a ranking officer of the United States Army, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, who, this past autumn, opened fire on a group of American soldiers preparing to deploy to Afghanistan deep within the army’s largest domestic base, Fort Hood, Texas. According to official army figures, at least 13 Crusaders were killed and more than 30 wounded in this surprise attack. Major Nidal Malik Hasan himself was shot, wounded and captured, and has had charges filed against him in a Crusader military court of inquisition in preparation for a summary show trial whose outcome is not in question....

The Mujahid brother Nidal Hasan has shown us what one righteous Muslim with an assault rifle can do for his religion and brothers in faith, and has reminded us of how much pride and joy a single act of resistance and courage can instill in the hearts of Muslims everywhere. The Mujahid brother Nidal Hasan, by the grace of Allah and with a single 30-minute battle, singlehandedly brought the morale of the American military and public to its lowest point in years. The Mujahid brother Nidal Hasan, lightly armed but with a big heart, a strong will and a confident step, again brought into sharp focus the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of America, and again proved wrong those who claim America cannot be hit where it hurts. And most significantly, the Mujahid brother Nidal Hasan is a pioneer, a trailblazer and a role-model who has opened a door, lit a path and shown the way forward for every Muslim who finds himself among the unbelievers and yearns to discharge his duty to Allah and play a part in the defense of Islam and Muslims against the savage, heartless and bloody Zionist Crusader assault on our religion, sacred places and homelands.

If you want more, here it is on Threat Matrix. You will find, among other things, that Norway is in the crosshairs for being complicit in honoring Mr Obama. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford