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Here are the Blogs in the Richard L. Benkin category.
Wednesday, 25 August 2010
Democrats turning tail in the Land of Obama
 For weeks, the Jewish community of Chicago’s North and Northwest suburbs had been looking forward to hearing their candidates for the US House and Senate debate one another in a “Candidates Forum” about Israel, the Middle East, and related security matters. While the community tends to vote Democratic, it elected Republican Mark Kirk to represent it in Congress five times and, before that, Kirk’s mentor, the GOP’s John Porter, eleven. So neither side should take their votes for granted. It appears, however, that one does.
Two weeks before the forum, Democrat Alexi Giannoulias who is running against Kirk for the US Senate seat once held by Barack Obama, abruptly pulled out citing “prior commitments.” The next day, Democrat Dan Seals, who opposes Republican Bob Dold for the House seat Kirk is vacating, announced that he, too, was withdrawing his commitment to attend. His reason was that without Giannoulias, the forum would be skewed in favor of the Republicans.
Neither man’s excuse rang true with the voters—and with good reason. The Giannoulias campaign’s story kept changing. It had confirmed their man’s availability back in March, and re-confirmed it more recently, according to forum organizers. When confronted with that fact, campaign manager David Spielfogel then claimed they never accepted the invitation and moreover that the hosting group, Protect Our Heritage PAC is partisan. Yet, the candidates’ appearance at the event had been heavily advertised for months and the Giannoulias campaign never once complained about it. According to Rabbi Victor Weissberg, the host for the event and a highly esteemed clergyman in the community, the Giannoulias campaign then told him they would attend only if he complied with several demeaning and ultimately impossible conditions. By the way, to be clear, these forums have been held for the past 25 years, and this is the first time a candidate has objected to them.
The Seals campaign explained their man’s abrupt pull-out by saying that without Giannoulias, the situation was heavily slanted in the Republicans’ favor and “had become inherently unfair and uniquely weighted against Dan.” That assertion gave many Jewish voters a good laugh. Even in a year when more Jews are expected to vote Republican than they have in decades, the community remains heavily Democratic. Current polls, for instance, show that Jewish support for Democrats has fallen this year—from three out of four to two out of three. In 2008, about 72 percent of Jewish voters cast their votes for Obama. Said Peggy Shapiro, one of the event organizers, “a majority of Jewish voters are still Democrats….And in fact Jewish voters voted for Seals last time.” Yet, neither Kirk nor any other Republican candidate used that as an excuse to avoid this or any other forum.
Speculation in the Jewish community is that the real reason the Dems pulled out were fear, arrogance, and strategy. As one member of the Jewish community noted to me, “If you were Giannoulias, would you want to debate Kirk,” who is widely acknowledged as one of Congress’s most knowledgeable and incisive members on foreign policy matters—and one of Israel’s best friends in Washington? Quite a number of people in the audience echoed that sentiment and also applied it to Dan Seals. “Seals really doesn’t know anything,” one man at the forum told me. “He spent 40 obligatory days in Israel before the last election and never even left the Jerusalem area.” Dold, on the other hand, spoke eloquently about his family’s long involvement with refusemik Lev Schrieber and other matters that clearly moved the largely Democrat-voting audience. Democratic strategists long have taken Jewish votes for granted, and for good reason. The overwhelming Obama vote was the rule rather than the exception. As former Bush White House staffer Jay Lefkowitz wrote in Commentary Magazine, “American Jews do not merely favor Democrats; they are the second most reliable bloc of Democratic voters in the country, exceeded only by African-Americans. One has to go all the way back to the election of Warren Harding in 1920 to find a Republican who gained more than 40 percent of the Jewish vote.” And as more than one strategist told me, “C’mon this is Illinois—one of the bluest states in the union.” The perception among many Democrat candidates in Illinois is that enough people will cast knee-jerk votes for a Democrat so long as he or she does not throw their incompetence in the voters’ faces—and Rod Blagojovich’s re-election in 2006 puts even that qualifier in jeopardy.
During the 2008 Presidential campaign, I attended a debate between the Republican Jewish Coalition’s Richard Baehr and the National Jewish Democratic Committee’s Ira Forman at a synagogue not far from the venue of this year’s forum. During the debate, Baehr raised several issues about then Senator Obama’s association with people like Rashid Khalidi and Bill Ayers and questioned how they might affect Obama’s actions toward Israel. These questions were becoming a real problem for the Obama campaign, and his advocates were working overtime trying to quiet them. Forman, like most of his Democrat colleagues, seemed to take offense at the very suggestion and emphatically said that Obama “would be as strongly pro-Israel as George Bush—more even.” The largely Democrat crowd took him at his word, and now express a good deal of buyer’s remorse for their Obama votes.
Both candidates made it clear that they would strongly oppose those policies and fight any pressure on Israel to make concessions for an ineffective and agreement. They also believe that Israel’s security and our own are intimately tied. Kirk told the audience of a post-9/11 Congressional task force on US aviation safety. Kirk asked the Israelis for some help, and they sent an entire team of their top security experts who gave input and information that is critical to the safety of “every American who flies” today. As one of the Israeli’s told Kirk, “for $3 billion where could you get such a deal.” Kirk also noted defiantly that “the political foundation of our alliance with Israel is not with the White House. It is with Congress”; and that the next Senator cannot simply be a pro-Israel vote, but leader, and that Congress’s “number one supporter of Israel… will be Senator Mark Kirk from the State of Illinois. Dold called Obama’s policies “dangerous for the United States, dangerous for Israel” to a rousing ovation. He also talked about his recent trip to the Arizona border area where local officials directed him to look at the trash on the ground: “’Take a look at the candy wrappers.’ I did. They were all in Arabic….The United States had to protect its border.”
The Democrats’ absence left the field wide open, and Kirk and Dold took advantage of it to introduce themselves to voter who would otherwise automatically vote Democrat. As one area couple told me, “We’re here to listen.” And listen they and others did. Most people knew Mark Kirk and his pro-Israel record, but few knew Dold that well. And according to a Dold staffer, the response went beyond the ovations. “We ran out of lawn signs,” he said, “so many people were taking them as they left.” Moreover, the Dems’ abrupt and disingenuous sounding pull-out angered quite a few Jewish voters who took their action as “a slap in the face,” according to more than one. The fact that 15 area synagogues and clergy co-sponsored the event, considering it crucial for Jewish voters, further exacerbated ill feelings. Even Rabbi Weissberg, who scrupulously maintains a non-partisan atmosphere, told the crowd not to judge Giannoulias and Seals, but not to “look for them in Profiles in Courage Part Two.” Posted on 08/25/2010 11:18 AM by Richard L. Benkin
Wednesday, 7 July 2010
Islamization of Northeast India no Coincidence
On February 15, 2010, I sat in a cab while it made its way through a traffic-clogged Kolkata to the office of Bimal Pramanik director of the Kolkata-based Centre for Research in Indo-Bangladesh Relations. Pramanik expressed serious concerns about the decades-long pattern of demographic changes in West Bengal (and Assam), and we discussed the context in which we can better understand them. Amitabh Tripathi, founder of the South Asia forum and a tireless activist in the fight against radical Islam, arranged the meeting and was a key participant in it.
Pramanik in Bangladesh’s 1971 War of Independence and is familiar with traditional Bengali Hindus and Muslims relations and how much they have changed in recent decades. While “Muslim infiltration” and demographic change itself is an issue, Primanik is more concerned about the deliberate nature of that change. He called it “Bangladeshi infiltration with Pakistani ideas,” and that the key element to the conflict is that South Asian Muslims are abandoning their traditional culture for “Arabic” dominated culture. Tripathi also noted the growth of Wahabi influence in Bangladesh, something that our colleague Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury also has documented.
In 1905 then again in 1947, Bengal was divided into a Muslim-majority entities (Bangladesh, previously East Bengal and East Pakistan) and a Hindu-majority entity (West Bengal state within India). In the second half of the twentieth century, however, the Muslim proportion of West Bengal’s population rose by 25 percent and its Hindu population declined by almost nine. In the same period, the proportion of East Bengal’s Hindu population declined by almost three-fourths, its Muslim share rose by more than one-third. Those significant shifts do not happen as a result of natural demographic processes, and the trends have continued into the 21st century. Pramanik noted that while Muslim population growth in West Bengal was nearly 35 percent between 1981 and 1991, it was only 25 percent in the same period in Bangladesh. “How can there be such a wide difference in growth rates between the two countries?” He asks. “This can only be explained by the illegal immigration from across the border.”
The South Asia Research Society conducted an exhaustive demographic study of population trends in West Bengal since 1941 and found that before 1971, almost all East Bengali refugees in West Bengal were minorities. Since then, “there has been largescale voluntary infiltration” of Bangladeshi Muslims “as well as the forced migration” of minorities, mostly Hindu.
Pramanik’s own study of Bengal population changes examined changes that occurred between 1951 (after the major share of population transfers from 1947 had been completed) and 2001. The intervening 50 years saw the rise of radical Islam as a major international player and so also several decades of efforts by radical Muslims to implement their designs. Differential growth rates between Hindus and Muslims in Bengal are startling. In Bangladesh, the Hindu population grew from about nine to eleven million, or 23.16 percent; while the Muslim population grew from 32 to 111 million, or 244.68 percent. Apologists have attempted to dismiss this disparity as free decisions by Hindus for economic reasons, but decisions were not free and even if for economic reasons they were due to anti-Hindu actions: seizure of assets under the Vested Property Act, religious discrimination, persecution, and so forth. And if it was simple population transfer, population figures for the Indian state closest to Bangladesh with the same ethnic group would reflect that. So what do we see? West Bengal had about 19 million Hindus in 1951 and 58 million in 2001, an increase of 198.54 percent. Its 1951 Muslim population of approximately five million Muslims grew to more than 20 million in 2001 or by 310.13 percent. Muslim growth rate exceeded that of Hindus in all but one district. Primanik documented a situation of “unabated infiltration,” especially during the final two decades of his study and a pattern of increased crime in these districts as the Muslim infiltration became more prominent. His findings help quantify frequent testimony by Bangladeshi Hindu refugees of increased attacks on their ersatz colonies by combined forces of Bangladeshis and Muslim villages from the surrounding areas; and my own observation of formerly mixed Hindu-Muslim villages now almost all Muslim and the disappearance or abandonment of the once ubiquitous roadside Mandirs or Hindu temples.
The prolific Primanik suggest what awaits Hindus in West Bengal, as well as the darker motivations behind the phenomena noted in this book. “This continuous infiltration from across the border is slowly and steadily changing the demographic pattern in the border areas, especially in the States of West Bengal and Assam… which is threatening our secular polity and national security. This is a religio-cultural process taking place in a geographical space considered to be strategically important. Thus, the emergence of Bangladesh has created in the North-Eastern States of India certain conditions conducive to Islamisation.” Posted on 07/07/2010 5:56 PM by Richard L. Benkin
Tuesday, 8 June 2010
Left ignores real human rights victims
Whenever I tell people I “do human rights work,” they automatically assume I am some sort of leftist. People who know me find that hilarious; but it is rather tragic at the same time because it reflects the fact that the left has imposed its own definition of what does and does not constitute human rights. For several years, I have been working with activists on the ground in South Asia primarily; people like anti-jihadist Muslim Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, who was imprisoned and tortured by the Bangladeshis after exposing the rise of radical Islam in that self-styled “moderate Muslim country.” Most of these dedicated individuals have sacrificed their comfort, their relationships, their security, some even their lives to defend the victims, and when asked will tell you that they would do so again. Among the hundreds whom I work, we would be hard pressed to find any who are not politically conservative or who do not recognize the left as one of human rights’ two greatest opponents, the other being Islamists. Thus, the current international zeitgeist will not allow their efforts—or more important their causes—to be recognized as true human rights battles. Perhaps it is because they are openly pro-US and pro-Israel, perhaps because they are fighting the Red-Green alliance of leftists and Islamists. Perhaps it is because the left cares more about ideology than people—which is only one reason why conservatives are far better suited to advocate for the downtrodden.
Recently, they have seen this double standard on display with the manufactured furor over the Gaza terror flotilla. While the United Nations, European Union, Muslim world, and the talking heads in the mainstream media are up in arms over the killing of nine “activists,” with suspect ties and motivations, they have not wasted a single breath over the destruction of Hindu communities in Kashmir, Pakistan, and now Bangladesh by Islamists who have been allowed to operate freely by complicit governments and an uncaring world whose silence tells the perpetrators, “Go ahead, they’re only Hindus.”
Between 1941 and 2001, the Hindu population of Kashmir dropped from 15 to one percent, with the most precipitous drop coming around 1990 at the hands of Islamic militants. From about 1965 to 2001, Pakistan’s Hindu population went from almost one in five to one percent, and I saw many of them streaming into India recently ahead of the advancing Taliban. The Bangladeshi Hindu population fell from almost one third at the time of India’s partition to nine percent in 2001; and 13-15 million remaining Hindus face ongoing murder, gang rape, abduction, forced conversion (to Islam), assault, dispossession of their ancestral lands, and religious desecration—even under a new government that the left, the media, and the diplomatic corps have declared “pro-minority.”
Reports of these atrocities come to us daily, and we have developed a strong network of informants and investigators to confirm or refute the allegations. Our conclusions are made with caution, so we recognize that even what we can confirm is likely just the tip of the iceberg. During just the first two months of this new government’s tenure, we confirmed major anti-Hindu atrocities at the rate of one and a half per week; in Spring 2009, we confirmed an anti-Hindu pogrom behind a police station in the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka; and in a 25 day period this March and April, we confirmed at least eight anti-Hindu incidents: rape (including child rape); abduction; forced conversion to Islam; beatings that sent critically injured victims to the hospital; attempted murder; and more. The government took no action in any of these cases with cover-ups reaching the ruling party’s upper echelons.
What makes it more chilling is that these attacks are not carried out by al Qaeda or other terror groups but by the victims’ neighbors, who acted knowing they could do so with impunity. Millions have been killed or otherwise violated; and State University of New York’s Professor Sachi Dastidar estimates that some 49 million Hindus are “missing” from the Bangladeshi census: the murdered, those forced to immigrate or convert to Islam, and those never born. While there has been no outrage about this atrocity—aside from those of us fighting it, the victims, and their families—the international left never tires of calling for strenuous action on behalf of Palestinians whose living conditions are like royalty’s compared to the squalor and illicit refugee camps in which most victims live. I know; I have seen both.
History’s most successful cases of genocide and ethnic cleansing have occurred when a committed cadre of true believers convince masses of common people to commit heinous acts—that they otherwise might not even dream of committing—against a targeted minority. That is what is happening in Bangladesh where there might be no Gestapo or Janjaweed, but where the Hindu population will disappear, perhaps within our lifetime, without immediate action. Yet, when the left demands that we act with such immediacy, it is for nine people who purposely put themselves in harm’s way to support a terrorist entity that lobs missiles onto schools in Southern Israel.
Perhaps they would help us if we said “Zionists” are killing the Bangladeshi Hindus. Posted on 06/08/2010 4:48 PM by Richard L. Benkin
Monday, 15 March 2010
Key Democrat Breaks with Obama on South Asia
Gary Ackerman is a 14-term Democratic Congressman, representing New York’s fifth district, which includes parts of Queens and Long Island. And as such, Ackerman holds the panoply of positions one would expect from a New York Democrat. He strongly supports current legislation that would result in a government takeover of the nation’s health care system. He has been given a 100 by NARAL Pro Choice America, and even voted twice against bans on partial birth abortion. The NRA gives him an “F” for his votes on gun control. Immigration reform groups rate him as having an “open borders” stance. Plus, Ackerman opposes the death penalty, school prayer, the Patriot Act, and, well, can pretty much fill in the rest. Yes, there is no doubt that Congressman Gary Ackerman is an ideological liberal and an almost certain vote for the Democrats in Congress.
Ackerman, however, is also Chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia House Foreign Affairs Committee. While conservatives might have solid, even passionate, disagreements with Ackerman on many issues, there is no question that he is one of Congress’s most knowledgeable members when it comes to that part of the world. His sentiments with that regard are rather clear, too, as his web site notes that his subcommittee “has jurisdiction over United States policy towards all countries in the Middle East and South Asia, including important U.S. allies Israel and India”[emphasis mine]. That should not be passed over lightly. Ever since the 1950s when Indian Prime Minister Nehru allied his county with the Soviet Union, the US-India relationship has been a rocky one. More recently, President Obama dismissed Indian anti-terror efforts in Kashmir and increased aid to India’s enemy, Pakistan; even though former Pakistani Prime Minister Pervez Musharraf and others have admitted that much of that aid goes to building attacks against India. Nor is there any doubt that the Obama administration is at best ambiguous about how important an ally Israel is. In 2008, Ackerman co-sponsored a resolution with GOP Congressman Mike Pence declaring Iran to be a threat to “the vital national security interests of the United States and demanding a full-scale naval, air and land blockade. Ackerman is also a fierce critic of the anti-Israel Goldstone Report.
My own path crossed with Ackerman’s briefly in 2007 when he was Democratic floor leader during debate on a resolution that called on Bangladesh to drop its false charges against Muslim Zionist and anti-Islamist journalist, Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury. The legislation was authored by Congressman Mark Kirk, Republican from suburban Chicago and currently a candidate for the Senate seat once held by Barack Obama. Kirk and I together have championed Choudhury’s cause and were able to free him from 17 months of imprisonment and torture. Ackerman spoke passionately in support of Choudhury.
Ackerman, however, might have saved his strongest and most stunning remarks for a March 11 Subcommittee hearing entitled: “Bad Company: Lashkar e-Tayyiba and the Growing Ambition of Islamist Militancy in Pakistan”; a title that is at variance with Obama’s Af-Pak policy, which focuses almost exclusively on al Qaeda and the Taliban. Beyond that, in his March 2009 speech announcing that policy, Obama targeted al Qaeda and the Taliban as our enemies but also made it clear that he considers the rest of Pakistan our friends and allies. In his opening statement at that hearing, Ackerman identified a far more general problem, “Islamist Militancy in Pakistan,” that goes well beyond Obama’s narrow definition:
While U.S. attention has focused primarily on al-Qaida, and the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, the Lashkar e-Tayyiba (LeT) and other violent, Islamist extremist groups in Pakistan have been growing in both capability and ambition. As was demonstrated in the horrific Mumbai attack of November 2008, the al-Qaida model of perpetrating highly visible, mass-casualty attacks appears to have migrated, with enormous potential consequences for the United States.
But the New York Democrat was only getting started.
We need to take this threat very, very seriously. The LeT is a deadly serious group of fanatics.They are well financed, ambitious, and most disturbingly, both tolerated by, and connected to, the Pakistani military [emphasis mine].
While Pakistan’s longstanding support for Islamists is an open secret, this public statement was a stinging rebuke and rejection of the Obama administrations entire South Asia policy. In fact, he said, this terrorist group “was set up with help from the Pakistani military as a proxy weapon” to use against India. He also accused the Pakistani military of paying compensation to families of the terrorists who killed almost 200 people in the November 26, 2008, attack on Mumbai. “These are our allies in the war on terror,” he adds contemptuously.
Beyond excoriating Pakistan and the fantasy of considering it an ally, Ackerman makes it clear that he recognizes Islamist goals as going far beyond parochial issues tied to any particular piece of real estate: “The LeT's true goal is not Kashmir, it is India [and] to establish an Islamic state in all of South Asia. Neither does it hide or try to play down its declaration of war against all Hindus and Jews.” Indians and Israelis have been trying without success to get the Obama administration to understand that the conflicts are not about Kashmir, Jerusalem, or any other phony issues.
In that March speech, Obama called for “a regional solution” but otherwise dismissed India as a key ally. In fact, he could have mentioned that for the ten days proceeding that speech, Indians were engaged in heated battles with Lashkar and defeating them quite handily. But he did not, and US representatives including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, South Asia Czar Richard Holbrooke, and Senator John Kerry have assiduously avoided even a perception of supporting India’s anti-terrorist chops or its right to self-defense from relentless terrorists based in a neighboring country; which sounds disturbingly like its actions toward Israel.
So, what does Ackerman suggest we do? Plenty!
This group of savages needs to be crushed. Not in a month. Not in a year. Not when the situation stabilizes in Afghanistan. Not when things are under control in Pakistan. Now. Today and everyday going forward. We’re not doing it, and we’re not effectively leading a global effort to do it.
Had a conservative Republican made that statement, the media would be publishing screeds that yelled, “War monger.” But the fact is that Ackerman is not a conservative Republican. He is a liberal Democrat and not even a consistent foreign policy hawk. For instance, in 2007 he voted to start deploying troops out of Iraq in 90 days; he opposed measures to restrict funds for the UN; he supports Congressional oversight of CIA interrogations; and way back when voted against SDI. That is one of the things that make last week’s strongly-worded statement so significant.
While chastising Israel, last week Vice President Joe Biden said, “Sometimes only a friend can deliver the hardest truth.” Perhaps the Obama administration needs not take its own advice and listen to what Congressman Ackerman is telling them. If not, he warned, “we’re going to regret this mistake. We’re going to regret it bitterly.” Posted on 03/15/2010 5:18 PM by Richard L. Benkin
Sunday, 14 March 2010
And I'll thank you not to call me a RINO
Conservatives are at a crossroads, poised to do one of two things. We will take back our country and restore the values and policies that have made us great; or we will blow that historic obligation out of our own sense of hubris. One of the most devastating mistakes made by the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats has been to misread their electoral victory as a mandate to implement their leftwing ideological agenda. Voters might have been angry at the Bush Administration, worried about the failing economy, or personally attracted to Candidate Barack Obama; but they did not sign up to transform the United States into France. Similarly, voters today might be angry at Obama’s broken promises or ineffectiveness, far left policies and administration personnel, or worried about the failing economy; but that does not mean that they have signed up for this country to take a hard right turn. It has become a truism to say that we are a Center-Right nation; which means neither ideologically Left nor ideologically Right.
A particular irksome manifestation of this hubris for many conservatives is the seemingly indiscriminate cat call, “RINO.” While the acronym stands for “Republican in name only,” it means for many conservatives, “Republicans who don’t agree with me.” Tea Partiers and others have done this nation a great service by fearlessly calling out those actions and individuals that are moving the United States away from its essential values; and in doing so, they also have given those values their rightful place again in public debates over our country’s direction. Yet, many of them have forgotten the words of perhaps the most revered—and most successful—conservative Republicans of our age. In 1972, then Governor Ronald Reagan famously said, “The person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally — not a 20 percent traitor.” Or would those people who so glibly scream RINO today use it on Reagan himself? After all, non-military federal spending grew under Reagan; and during his presidency, the United States went from being the world’s largest creditor nation to its largest debtor nation. The conservative lion who waged war on the growth of the federal government enlarged it. What about Richard Nixon? Did he lose his cold warrior credentials when he opened relations with Communist China and cast aside the Nationalists? This same Republican president also imposed government wage and price controls, something more at home from a President Obama. Another conservative icon, Jack Kemp, actively lobbied for the 2006 attempt at “comprehensive immigration reform” that most conservatives opposed passionately. And if what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, we might call John F. Kennedy a DINO, because he won the presidency by promising and then implementing tax cuts to stimulate the economy and increased defense spending to close the “missile gap” with the Soviets.
Even today, we can find divergent positions among our conservative heroes. Governor Sarah Palin, for instance, once vetoed a bill passed by the Alaskan legislature that would have denied benefits to gay partners of state employees. As governor, she sought a quarter billion dollars in earmarks and made sure her hometown of Wasilla (with only 6700 people) got $27 million of it. She called global warming a “challenge,” and empanelled a Climate Change Sub-Cabinet at Alaskans’ expense. Governor Mike Huckabee pardoned ten times the number of criminals, including violent ones, than did previous Arkansas governor, Bill Clinton. He favors a cap and trade bill, supported a “conservation tax,” for Arkansas, and supported amnesty for illegal immigrants, saying they more in taxes than they receive in benefits.
The point is not to tarnish the credentials of our conservative heroes. It is clear, however, that those who use the R-word will find themselves disappointed if they are consistent in their demands for ideological purity. More to the point, however, demands for ideological purity are more at home in the old Soviet Union, Communist China, and Islamist Iran than in the United States of America. It also has brought nothing but disaster for conservatives. For instance, the last time we had a populist running for President who espoused largely conservative values, we ended up with eight years of Bill Clinton. The late Barry Goldwater is acknowledged to be a man of vision who was ahead of his time. Yet, the conservative purity that made him the 1964 Republican presidential nominee—and catcalled Nelson Rockefeller off the convention podium—rewarded us with Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” and its huge government programs that are still picking our pockets.
The fact is that in 2010, all Americans have clear choices. If, for instance, Charlie Christ defeats Marco Rubio for Florida’s Senate nomination; will ideological conservative support him or keep the seat in Democratic hands? Conservative Patrick Hughes challenged Mark Kirk for the Senate nomination in Illinois. He lost. Kirk is no RINO. He repudiated his cap and trade vote, vowing to vote against the measure in the Senate; and consistently supports fiscally conservative bills. He is a foreign policy and security hawk; and is the first US Congressman since World War II to serve in forward combat areas, having just returned from his second tour of duty in Afghanistan. Kirk has a real chance to take the seemingly forever blue Illinois Senate seat; and conservatives can help make that happen. If they do not, the result will strengthen the Obama agenda with an Illinois senator who is an Obama protégé who will vote in favor of every Obama measure proposed. Count on it.
The events over the past year have placed the destiny of our country in our hands. Will we rise to the occasion or blow it?
Posted on 03/14/2010 12:35 PM by Richard L. Benkin
Tuesday, 16 February 2010
Kerry Pushing Same Nonsense
This is an amazing time to be in India. Last week, tensions here heated white hot when Pakistan refused to hold long overdue talks with India about the former’s role in the Mumbai terror attacks. At the same time, the government continued its offensive against communist rebels who have been terrorizing this country for decades; and the Maoists for the first time cried “Uncle.” Shortly after the Indo-Pak talks were on again (albeit with the two countries disagreeing on their content), terror struck.
Indians awoke Sunday morning to read about a major Islamist terror attack in the West Indian city of Pune, and industrial hub of more than five million people, that killed nine and injured scores. Security here went on high alert—something I can testify to having taken a domestic flight here later that day. More importantly, security forces were able to foil two impending attacks; one communist, one Islamist. Then on Monday, terror struck again. Lashkar e Taibe, the Islamic terror group responsible for the Mumbai and other terror attacks here, carried out another operation, this time in the disputed region of Kashmir. Then, later that day, the communists, known here as Naxalites and perhaps desperate after being knocked back on their heels by the governments offensive, attacked an army camp in the state of West Bengal, where I am located at the moment. The last was a particularly gruesome surprise attack while the soldiers were at rest, and which saw several burned alive, many gunned down, and the wounded carted off as hostages.
Also on Monday, Indian-Pakistan tensions rose again as Indian officials investigating the Pune blasts continued gathering evidence from the scene. They tentatively concluded that while local terrorists, known as Indian Mujahedeen, carried out the attack, they did so with support and direction from elements in Pakistan. At the same time, American terrorist David Headley told his captors that Pakistani intelligence (ISI) has been engaged in a project to train jihadists for attacks in India. Known as the “Karachi Project,” after the city in Pakistan, the ISI would shuttle Indian allies to Pakistan, train them, and return them to India where they were to await further orders.
And the most dramatic events occurred over a period of only two days. But from an American’s point of view, the most amazing—and confounding—thing came from US Senator John Kerry. The Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee told The Wall Street Journal “’The right thing is to talk; you lose nothing by talking,’" Sen. Kerry (D., Mass.) said while on a visit to the Indian capital en route to Islamabad. If India finds a Pakistani link to the Pune attack, “’I hope India will have that conversation with Pakistan and, if they have evidence to that effect, that should be the first thing on the table and Pakistan has to deal with it,’” he added.
Kerry completely ignores the fact that the very attitude he counsels is in part responsible for the current rise in tensions and loss of life. There certainly is much to lose in talking as President Obama’s current “engagement” with Iran demonstrates. India has been demanding that Pakistan turn over Mumbai terrorists living in the Islamic Republic and come clean in the role Pakistanis played in those and other terror attacks. Talks, in fact, are all they have been able to get, and they have stood as a substitute for action, leaving the murderers of 166 people free.
India at this moment is facing terror from jihadists and radical communists; and today an Al Qaeda communiqué warned foreign sports teams that they would face terror attacks should they come to scheduled tournaments in India. Citizens here do not know when or where the next strike will be.
And Kerry says the solution is talks? No doubt representing the views of the Obama administration as well, Kerry is sending a message to the front lines of this war that appeasement is the way. His comments cement impressions that the US favors Pakistan in this conflict (sending it billions in aid) and cannot be relied on as an ally in the war against communists or jihadists. People are taking notice. Posted on 02/16/2010 6:20 AM by Richard L. Benkin
Sunday, 14 February 2010
Chicago Terror Suspect Cased Sites For Pune Attack
We know David Headley has been charged with helping to set up the Mumbai massacre. Now there is evidence he may have had a hand in the latest terror attack in India, though he has been behind bars in the U.S. since November.
Islamic terrorist struck India yesterday, bringing death and destruction in the western city of Pune, a financial hub 58 miles from Mumbai. According to the Indian Anti-Terror Squad (ATS), which has taken charge of the case, terrorists left an explosive-filled backpack under a counter at the “German Bakery,” an establishment that is very popular with tourists and locals in this city of over five million people.
The bakery was completely demolished. At this point, there are nine dead, all Indians, and 57 injured. One of the injured remains in critical condition, and 19 have been released from the hospital as of this writing several hours after the blast.
While the specific identity of the terrorists has not been established, the ATS and major Indian officials have said that the terrorists were “Indian Mujahadeen,” as opposed to the perpetrators of the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack who were based in Pakistan. Officials have called the bakery a “soft target,” and that the Islamists were really after “hard targets”: the nearby Osho Ashram and Pune’s Chabad House. The Ashram is a prominent institution in the city for religious Hindus, who are often targeted by Muslim terrorists; and the Chabad House is a center for religious Jews and was a primary target in the Mumbai attacks, as well as the site of the most gruesome incidents of torture by the terrorists.
The Indian government has also announced that American Islamist David Headley had scouted both the Osho Ashram and the Chabad House in preparation for terror attacks. Today’s blast, was related to Headley’s actions. David Headley faces federal charges in a Chicago federal court. According to the FBI, they include “six counts of conspiracy involving bombing public places in India, murdering and maiming persons in India and Denmark, providing material support to foreign terrorist plots, and providing material support to [Pakistani terrorist group] Lashkar [e Taibe], and six counts of aiding and abetting the murder of U.S. citizens in India.”
Security has become very tight all over India, and the ATS announced that it foiled one major terrorist attack only hours after the Pune blast. Police in the city of Vapi recovered 200 kilograms of ammonium nitrate, 600 detonators, and 200 gel sticks from known Muslim terrorists there. The state of Gujurat, where Vapi is located, has become a clarion cry for radical Muslims ever since communal violence there took the lives of over 1200 people.
Although it has not been suggested that Pakistan had a role in yesterday’s attack in Pune, the incident has placed the February 25 talks in jeopardy, with tensions again rising. Posted on 02/14/2010 6:56 AM by Richard L. Benkin
Saturday, 13 February 2010
Pakistan agrees to talk, sort of
Pakistan has agreed to hold talks with India—sort of. The office of Pakistani Prime Minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani released the following statement. “It was decided that foreign secretary-level talks between the two countries would be held on February 25 in New Delhi.” The statement came only three days after Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi angrily rejected talks with India and accused India of collaborating with the Taliban to de-stabilize Pakistan. Sources here, however, are emphatic that “these will be fruitless talks.”
The reason for their skepticism is this. The request for talks came out of Pakistan’s giving aid and support to the Islamists responsible for the 2008 terror attacks on Mumbai. Surviving terrorists and numerous intelligence sources stated that Pakistan provided logistical and other forms of support for the attack and still provides them with a safe haven where they are immune from facing justice. Like many other Islamic Republics, Pakistan has tolerated and even supported the growth and development of radical Islamist groups on its soil, including the very Taliban forces that now threaten its national existence. That is why President Obama’s policy that identifies open Islamists as our target but assumes that the rest of the Pakistanis are our allies is, in the most generous terms, misguided. The Pakistanis first promised to cooperate with India, but have become increasingly resistant to doing so. Talks were to be the solution until Pakistan issued its provocative rebuke earlier in the week. But Pakistan insisted that they cover a wide range of issue, especially Kashmir. That was unacceptable to the Indians because the reason for the talks, the Mumbai attack, would get lost in such a wide-ranging agenda. Moreover, the very notion of these talks grew out of Indo-Pak conflict over Mumbai.
At the same time, standing alongside Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Galyani said that “People of Palestine and Occupied Kashmir are fighting for their just right of self-determination,” a reference clearly targeted at the Indians to equate the two issues on international agendas. In today’s announcement, Pakistan agreed only to talks that cover “all core issues,” especially Kashmir. Although Indian representatives indicated that they would be open to covering all issues,” they are clear that they want Mumbai to be the focus. In a backhanded compliment, not atypical of South Asian politics, Indian Defense Minister A K Anthony said he would even make sure the talks “would not be affected by increase in infiltration by militants from across the border or Pakistan’s failure to dismantle terror groups operating from Pakistani soil.”
Observers here also note that the Pakistanis made sure to fashion themselves as peacemakers when US National Security Advisor James Jones was in the capital of Islamabad. “The United States,” one well-informed Indian told me, “will do anything it can so Pakistan seems to be using all of its might against the Taliban—although India is their real target.” He noted that “phony talks” like this only make things worse because they give the Pakistanis the ability to pose as reasonable people without taking any concrete action, “like what is happening with the Iranians.” He then added, “This only increases [Indo-Pak] tensions because the issue of the [Mumbai] terrorists will not go away. Even Indians who are always soft on Pakistan won’t give on this one.” Posted on 02/13/2010 7:16 AM by Richard L. Benkin
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