Mohammed Cartoons redux: Make no apology for defending Western values;
Update: Obama bows again
Michelle Malkin:
The Religion of Perpetual Outrage will never give up until you give in.
* OMG: what made him fail? ‘Turkey foils plot to assassinate Obama’
There is a reason we call Muslim mau-mau-ers the Religion of Perpetual Outrage. They will never give up until you give in. Three years after the Mohammed Cartoon conflagration, the grievance-mongers are still trying to extract contrition out of the Danes and others who stood up for the West and for free speech.
Unfortunately, the ROPO bullies squeezed conciliatory remarks from Former Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen. He didn’t say the exact words “I’m sorry,” but he might as well have tattooed it on his forehead:
New NATO chief pledges conciliation with Muslims Read it all
How about telling the thugs to start paying attention to the sensibilities of civilized people who don’t wage riots, murder people, and issue death threats over cartoons?
How about a reminder of the cultural insensitivities of the Mo mob to tolerance and free speech?
What the Obaminator didn’t say:
The United States is not at war with Islam. But Islam is at war with us and Islam’s warriors remain hell-bent on destroying our way of life. And that, let me say this as clearly as I can, will not stand.
Why not? Why didn’t he say that?
Other News:
* Uighurs at Gitmo take case to high court
* Eight dead, 80 hurt in India blasts
* Iran poised to deliver ‘good’ nuke news
* Multiple car bombings kill 32 in Baghdad
Does Turkey Still Belong in NATO?
Smack on its 60th anniversary, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization finds itself facing a completely novel problem – that of radical Islam, as represented by the Republic of Turkey, within its own ranks.
Ankara joined NATO in 1951 and shortly after Turkish forces fought valiantly with the allies in Korea. Turks stood tough against the Soviet Union for decades. Following the United States, Turkey has the second-largest number of troops in the alliance.
With the end of the Cold War, NATO’s mission changed and some saw Islamism as the new strategic enemy. Already in 1995, NATO Secretary General Willy Claes compared Islamism to the historic foe: “Fundamentalism is at least as dangerous as communism was.” With the Cold War over, he added, “Islamic militancy has emerged as perhaps the single gravest threat to the NATO alliance and to Western security.”
Indeed, NATO first invoked Article 5 of its charter, calling on “collective self-defense,” to go to war against the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001, responding to the 9/11 attacks launched from that country.
More recently, former Spanish prime minister José María Aznar argues that “Islamist terrorism is a new shared threat of a global nature that places the very existence of NATO’s members at risk” and advocates that the alliance focus on combating “Islamic jihadism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.” He calls for “placing the war against Islamic jihadism at the center of the Allied strategy.”
Claes and Aznar are right; but their vision is now in jeopardy, for Islamists have penetrated the 28-state alliance, as was dramatically illustrated in recent days.
As the term of Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer concludes in July, a consensus had emerged to make Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, 56, his successor. But Fogh Rasmussen was in office in early 2006, when the Muhammad cartoon crisis erupted and he insisted that as prime minister he had no authority to tell a private newspaper what not to publish. This position won him much criticism from Muslims, including Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep TayyipErdogan, who instructed Fogh Rasmussen at the time that “Freedoms have limits, what is sacred should be respected.”
When Fogh Rasmussen came up for the NATO post, Erdogan continued his grudge, saying that his government looks “negatively” on Fogh Rasmussen’s candidacy because, Erdogan explained, “I asked for a meeting of Islamic leaders in his country to explain what is going on and he refrained from doing that. So how can I expect him to contribute to peace?”
Eventually, Fogh Rasmussen was selected as the consensus candidate, but at a steep price. The Dane won the job only after engaging in intensive negotiations with Turkish president Abdullah Gül hosted by Barack Obama. Fogh Rasmussen promised to appoint at least two Turks and publicly to address Muslim concerns about his response to the cartoons. More broadly, Erdogan announced. Obama “gave us guarantees” concerning Turkish reservations about Fogh Rasmussen.
The hoops that Fogh Rasmussen had to jump through to win Ankara’s support can be inferred from his cringe-inducing, dhimmi-like remarks on winning the appointment: “As secretary general of NATO, I will make a very clear outreach to the Muslim world to ensure cooperation and intensify dialogue with the Muslim world. I consider Turkey a very important ally and strategic partner and I will cooperate with them in our endeavors to ensure the best cooperation with Muslim world.”
We appear to be witnessing the emergence not of a robust NATO following the Claes-Aznar model, one leading the fight against radical Islam, but an institution hobbled from within, incapable of standing up to the main strategic threat for fear of offending a member government.
Nor is Islamism NATO’s only problem with Turkey. In what is emerging as a Middle Eastern cold war, with Tehran leading one faction and Riyadh the other, Ankara has repeatedly sided with the former – hosting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, advocating for Iran’s nuclear program, developing an Iranian oil field, transferring Iranian arms to Hezbollah, openly supporting Hamas, viciouslycondemning Israel, and turning Turkish public opinion against the United States.
Noting these changes, columnist Caroline Glick urges Washington to “float the notion of removing Turkey from NATO.” The Obama administration is not about to do that; but before Ankara renders NATO toothless, dispassionate observers should carefully think this argument through.
Mr. Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org) is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.
