The president without a country

The president without a country

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Posted: June 06, 2009
1:00 am Eastern
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=100283

"We're no longer a Christian nation." – President Barack Obama, June 2007

"America has been arrogant." – President Barack Obama

"After 9/11, America didn't always live up to her ideals."

– President Barack Obama

"You might say that America is a Muslim nation."

– President Barack Obama, Egypt 2009

Thinking about these and other statements made by the man who wears the title of president … I keep wondering what country he believes he's president of.

In one of my very favorite stories, Edward Everett Hale's "The Man without a Country," a young Army lieutenant named Philip Nolan stands condemned for treason during the Revolutionary War, having come under the influence of Aaron Burr. When the judge asks him if he wishes to say anything before sentence is passed, young Nolan defiantly exclaims, "Damn the United States! I wish I might never hear of the United States again!"

The stunned silence in the courtroom is palpable, pulsing. After a long pause, the judge soberly says to the angry lieutenant: "You have just pronounced your own sentence. You will never hear of the United States again. I sentence you to spend the rest of your life at sea, on one or another of this country's naval vessels – under strict orders that no one will ever speak to you again about the country you have just cursed."

And so it was. Philip Nolan was taken away and spent the next 40 years at sea, never hearing anything but an occasional slip of the tongue about America. The last few pages of the story, recounting Nolan's dying hours in his small stateroom – now turned into a shrine to the country he foreswore – never fail to bring me to tears. And I find my own love for this dream, this miracle called America, refreshed and renewed. I know how blessed and unique we are.

Is Shariah law coming to a court near you? Get "Stealth Jihad" – Robert Spencer's expose about efforts to quietly establish the Muslim system in Amerca

But reading and hearing the audacious, shocking statements of the man who was recently elected our president – a young black man living the impossible dream of millions of young Americans, past and present, black and white – I want to ask him, "Just what country do you think you're president of?"

You surely can't be referring to the United States of America, can you? America is emphatically a Christian nation, and has been from its inception! Seventy percent of her citizens identify themselves as Christian. The Declaration of Independence and our Constitution were framed, written and ratified by Christians. It's because this was, and is, a nation built on and guided by Judeo-Christian biblical principles that you, sir, have had the inestimable privilege of being elected her president.

You studied law at Harvard, didn't you, sir? You taught constitutional law in Chicago? Did you not ever read the statement of John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and an author of the landmark "Federalist Papers": "Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers – and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation– to select and prefer Christians for their rulers"?

In your studies, you surely must have read the decision of the Supreme Court in 1892: "Our lives and our institutions must necessarily be based upon and embody the teachings of the Redeemer of mankind. It is impossible that it should be otherwise; and in this sense and to this extent our civilization and our institutions are emphatically Christian."

Did your professors have you skip over all the high-court decisions right up till the mid 1900s that echoed and reinforced these views and intentions? Did you pick up the history of American jurisprudence only in 1947, when for the first time a phrase coined by Thomas Jefferson about a "wall of separation between church and state" was used to deny some specific religious expression – contrary to Jefferson's intent with that statement?

Or, wait a minute … were your ideas about America's Christianity formed during the 20 years you were a member of the Trinity United Church of Christ under your pastor, Jeremiah Wright? Is that where you got the idea that "America is no longer a Christian nation"? Is this where you, even as you came to call yourself a Christian, formed the belief that "America has been arrogant"?

Even if that's the understandable explanation of your damning of your country and accusing the whole nation (not just a few military officials trying their best to keep more Americans from being murdered by jihadists) of "not always living up to her ideals," how did you come up with the ridiculous, alarming notion that we might be "considered a Muslim nation"?

(Column continues below)

Is it because there are some 2 million or more Muslims living here, trying to be good Americans? Out of a current population of over 300 million, 70 percent of whom are Christians? Does that make us, by any rational definition, a "Muslim nation"?

Why are we not, then, a "Chinese nation"? A "Korean nation"? Even a "Vietnamese nation"? There are even more of these distinct groups in America than Muslims. And if the distinction you're trying to make is a religious one, why is America not "a Jewish nation"? There's actually a case to be made for the latter, because our Constitution – and the success of our Revolution and founding – owe a deep debt to our Jewish brothers.

Have you stopped to think what an actual Muslim America would be like? Have you ever really spent much time in Iran? Even in Egypt? You, having been instructed in Islam as a kid at a Muslim school in Indonesia and saying you still love the call to evening prayers, can surely picture our nation founded on the Quran, not the Judeo-Christian Bible, and living under Shariah law. Can't you? You do recall Muhammad's directives [Surah 9:5,73] to "break the cross" and "kill the infidel"?

It seems increasingly and painfully obvious that you are more influenced by your upbringing and questionable education than most suspected. If you consider yourself the president of a people who are "no longer Christian," who have "failed to live up to our ideals," who "have been arrogant," and might even be "considered Muslim" – you are president of a country most Americans don't recognize.

Could it be you are a president without a country?

Mosque flap swirls around Obama

http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=7181B9DF-18FE-70B2-A8E68A062A04F972

The White House on Saturday struggled to tamp down the controversy over President Barack Obama’s statements about a mosque near Ground Zero — insisting Obama wasn’t backing off remarks Friday night where he offered support for a project that has infuriated some families whose loved ones died in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Obama’s comments placed him in the middle of the controversy over a Muslim group’s plans for a mosque near the site of the 2001 attack — and in turn, transformed an emotion-laden local dispute in New York into a nationwide debate overnight.

Republicans pounced, amid early signs that the issue would seep into some state and congressional contests. “It is divisive and disrespectful to build a mosque next to the site where 3,000 innocent people were murdered at the hands of Islamic extremism,” said Florida GOP Senate candidate Marco Rubio. His opponent, Charlie Crist, a Republican turned independent, came out in support of Obama’s comments.

And Democrats — at least some who were willing to comment — could barely contain their frustration over Obama’s remarks, saying he had potentially placed every one of their candidates into the middle of the debate by giving GOP candidates a chance to ask them point-blank: Do you agree with Obama on the mosque, or not?

That could be particularly damaging to moderate Democrats in conservative-leaning districts, already 2010’s most vulnerable contenders.

“I would prefer the president be a little more of a politician and a little less of a college professor,” former Rep. Martin Frost (D-Texas), who once ran the House Democratic campaign arm, wrote in POLITICO’s Arena. “While a defensible position, it will not play well in the parts of the country where Democrats need the most help.”

Adding to the political problem for Democrats were the mixed messages out of the White House.

Obama’s comments Friday night — at an Iftar dinner at the White House marking the start of Ramadan — were widely reported as offering support for the specific mosque project in question near Ground Zero.

But on Saturday, Obama seemed to contradict himself, telling reporters at one point, “I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there. I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding. That's what our country is about. And I think it's very important as difficult as some of these issues are that we stay focused on who we are as a people and what our values are all about."

That impromptu answer to a TV reporter covering his trip to Florida prompted a second attempt to clarify his initial statement, this time from spokesman Bill Burton.

“Just to be clear, the president is not backing off in any way from the comments he made last night,” Burton said. “It is not his role as president to pass judgment on every local project. But it is his responsibility to stand up for the Constitutional principle of religious freedom and equal treatment for all Americans. What he said last night, and reaffirmed today, is that if a church, a synagogue or a Hindu temple can be built on a site, you simply cannot deny that right to those who want to build a mosque.”

White House officials later said that Obama was simply saying that since there was no local ordinance that would prevent construction of the mosque, he believed local officials made the right decision to allow it to go forward.

At least one Republican, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, seized on the confusion. “Mr. President, should they or should they not build a mosque steps away from where radical Islamists killed 3,000 people? Please tell us your position. We all know that they have the right to do it, but should they? And, no, this is not above your pay grade,” Palin wrote on Facebook.

The Friday statement and Saturday clarification were consistent in a literal sense, but they sent sharply different signals that may have called into question how clearly the president thought through his intervention in the controversy or how his words would echo.

The legal right to build the mosque is one even many critics of the mosque have not contested — claiming mainly that the project was inappropriate on grounds of taste and local sensitivities and therefore should be strongly discouraged.

The two statements, rather than clarifying Obama's views, may raise more questions: Had he unintentionally spoken too strongly the night before, or had he lost his nerve after the vehement early reactions? What is his real aim in wading into a controversy he had quite purposefully avoided for weeks?

For most Democrats, the muddled messaging wasn’t the problem as much as the substance of Obama’s remarks — putting himself on the record backing the construction of a mosque near the site where the Twin Towers fell, which Obama himself called “hallowed ground.”

Democratic aides say that, at the very least, the president has again knocked his party's candidates off local messages and forced them to talk about a national issue that doesn't appear likely to play well with important swing voters.

These officials planned to spend this weekend talking about Social Security’s 75th anniversary — the topic of Obama’s Saturday radio address — or the progress made containing the Gulf oil spill. Instead, they played defense on an issue at the intersection of religion and terrorism — two hot-buttons Obama won his 2008 election partly by downplaying.

"The main reaction is 'Why? Why now?’" said one House Democratic leadership aide. "It's just another day off message. There have been a lot of days off message."

The chief of staff to one politically vulnerable House Democrat said it "probably alienates a lot of independent voters" and "it's not a good issue to be talking about right now."

He said he suspects "there are a lot of (Democrats) who are spooked in tough districts today" and "a lot of Republicans licking their chops right now."

Prior to his speech, a few candidates tried with limited success to make the proposed mosque an issue outside of the tri-state area around New York City — but Obama’s words may have served to do that for them. A recent CNN poll found two-thirds of Americans oppose building the mosque in the neighborhood around Ground Zero.

Few national Democrats rushed to embrace the president. Aides to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Robert Menendez didn't offer on-the-record comments Saturday.

Empire State Democrats, known for being outspoken, stayed notably mute in response to Obama’s comments at the Iftar dinner. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who is expected to handily win reelection, has only said that he’s “not opposed” to the mosque despite weeks of prodding from reporters. There also was no statement from Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who is running for governor.

The proposed mosque quickly became a flashpoint in Florida’s contentious Democratic primary for Senate. The issue has special resonance in the Sunshine State because so many New Yorkers retire there.

Democrat Jeff Greene released a deeply critical statement. "President Obama has this all wrong, and I strongly oppose his support for building a mosque near Ground Zero, especially since Islamic terrorists have bragged and celebrated destroying the Twin Towers and killing nearly 3,000 Americans,” he said.

Rep. Kendrick Meek, the establishment’s favorite in the Democratic primary, responded by staying noncommittal.

"Our nation was founded on the pillar of religious freedom and construction of the mosque should not be denied on religious grounds, but this is ultimately a decision for the local community in New York City to make," he said in a statement to POLITICO.

Rep. Pete King, a Republican who represents a swing district on Long Island and has been vocally opposed to the mosque, issued a statement Friday night criticizing Obama for bowing to “political correctness.”

"I can just sense that is going to draw a lot of Democrats out. Most Democrats, as far as I know, have not taken a stand, certainly not taken a positive stand, they've taken a neutral stand or said they're not opposed, but almost no one has said they support it,” King said. “It's definitely going to create political problems for some Democrats, there's no doubt about it, and probably more so around the country."

House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) issued a statement, calling Obama’s Friday night comments “deeply troubling.”

Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol advised Republican candidates to frame Obama's comments as elitist and out of touch.

He urged GOP candidates to react like this: “President Obama should stop condescending to his fellow citizens, and should start listening to us. He thinks we’re traumatized by 9/11. We’re not. But we do remember 9/11, and we don’t think it honors the memory of that day to acquiesce in — or worse, to embrace — this mosque with those sponsors at that place.”

Other Republicans privately acknowledge they are torn, recognizing the merits of the Constitutional argument Obama made and remembering that George W. Bush preached tolerance for Muslims after 9/11.

Friday’s speech may very well be one of the most memorable — and debated — statements of the president’s first two years in office.

At best — depending how the issue echoes in coming days — it may remind people of some of Obama's more transcendent moments on the campaign — a politician with a biracial background  (whose estranged father was a Muslim), capable of both challenging Americans and uniting a majority of them on the most sensitive cultural questions.

At worst, it risks being lumped in with moments that have caused the public to reassess their image of him, such as when he weighed in on how "stupidly" the Cambridge police acted in arresting Henry Louis Gates, or during the campaign, when he said rural voters cling to guns and religion.

The president’s base, recognizing how intense the political fire Obama has opened himself to may become, rushed to his defense. The Center for American Progress, one of Washington's most muscular groups on the left, released a statement Saturday with a full-throated defense of the mosque.

W. Franklyn Richardson, the chairman of the Conference of National Black Churches, called it “encouraging to see a president who understands the importance of a diverse religious landscape.”

Former acting Solicitor General Walter Dellinger explained in POLITICO’s Arena that Obama deserved extra praise for his courage since he knew that “(because the group in question happened to be Muslim) he would pay a price for this defense of religious liberty that no other national figure would be required to pay” for endorsing religious freedom.

Those who need to face voters responded differently. Most Democratic members of the New York delegation didn't respond to requests for comment about the the Obama speech, seemingly concerned about being front-and-center in the same way as New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who got national press for supporting the mosque but who is not facing a reelection campaign.

If the issue impacts any election outcomes, it will more likely be in tight congressional races than statewide contests. George W. Bush’s numbers spiked in a collection of districts within 50 miles of Ground Zero between the 2000 and 2004 elections, motivated primarily by reactions to Setp. 11. Within that group, a few of those districts are in play to one degree or another in 2010.

One is NY-13, where Democratic Rep. Mike McMahon won his seat even as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) carried it in 2008. Three aides to McMahon didn't respond to repeated requests for comment.

To be sure, though, many local Republicans have not seen their standing improve in the polls even as they've tried to capitalize on the issue.

That might be partly why certain Republicans did not want to engage on the mosque issue Saturday, happy to watch from the sidelines as Democrats figured out their own messaging strategy. South Carolina Republican Nikki Haley’s campaign said they would not issue a statement. An aide to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said that he was unlikely to weigh in.

Carol E. Lee, Jonathan Martin, Jonathan Allen, Jessica Taylor, Jake Sherman, Alexander Burns and Shira Toeplitz contributed to this report.

Lessons and legacies of Israel's Gaza withdrawal

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/aug/08/world/la-fg-gaza-pullout-lessons-20100808

Five years later, the pullout continues to dominate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

August 08, 2010|By Edmund Sanders, Los Angeles Times

Although disengagement enjoyed broad support at the time, almost no one calls it a success today.

The Israeli left says the pullout was bungled because Israel never gave up control over borders, air rights and the sea, and didn't follow through with a permanent peace deal. The Israeli right says it has been proved correct: The government never should have given up land without getting something in return.

The Palestinian Authority lost credibility after it was chased out of Gaza by rival Hamas militants in 2007. Hamas, though now in control of Gaza, has seen its popularity erode over the last three years because of its inability to improve Gaza's economy amid international isolation.

The withdrawal helped put Hamas in power.

After Israel unilaterally disengaged instead of working with Palestinians in an internationally sponsored peace process, Hamas got to crow that its policy of armed resistance and attacks on Israeli civilians had led to the withdrawal.

Immediately after the pullout, 84% of Palestinians viewed the disengagement as a "victory" for armed resistance, Palestinian pollster Khalil Shikaki said.

The pullout also undercut the more moderate Palestinian party Fatah, which leads the Palestinian Authority but was shut out of the process and couldn't claim credit for it. Perceptions of a Hamas triumph over Israel and frustration over Fatah's alleged corruption propelled Hamas — which in 2004 was polling at just 20% — to victory in several local elections a few months after the withdrawal. In 2006, Hamas won parliamentary polls; a year later, it seized control of Gaza by force, creating the current Fatah-Hamas rift.

It reshaped Israeli politics too.

Under pressure from right-wing members of the Likud Party who opposed the disengagement, Sharon formed the centrist Kadima party, the so-called Big Bang of Israeli politics. The struggle between Likud and Kadima reshaped the political map and remains key. Kadima, now in opposition, all but replaced the left-leaning Labor Party as the only other party with enough support to lead the government. Kadima remains the strongest party to fully embrace the idea of giving up land to create a Palestinian state. 

Sharon sold the disengagement as a way to extricate Israel from a costly occupation. Military protection of Jewish settlements in Gaza was fueling regular clashes and casualties.

But Israel traded a low-intensity quagmire for what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today calls an "Iranian port" south of Tel Aviv, referring to Iranian support for Hamas and other extremist groups in Gaza.

Despite Israel's attempts to seal off borders, seaports and airspace, longer-range rockets were developed, and soon thousands were being launched at southern Israeli cities.

In the two years before disengagement, seven Israelis were killed by rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza. Since the pullout, 28 have been killed, according to the Sderot Media Center. In late 2008, Israel launched a 22-day offensive against Hamas; the fighting left 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis dead.

"The false vision whereby leaving the strip would improve our security situation was foolish and baseless," Israeli columnist Shlomo Engel wrote on the Ynet news website.

A plan intended to circumvent the peace process ended up leading back to it.

Sharon bet that unilateral disengagement from Gaza would freeze the formal peace process and buy time from the international community, his aides later said. Senior advisor Dov Weisglass once famously called disengagement a form of "formaldehyde."

For a while, it worked. The U.S.-backed "road map" peace plan was largely shelved. But after the Hamas takeover and subsequent rise in rocket attacks, Israeli leaders realized that unilateral moves can backfire, and formal peace talks resumed.

"The disengagement is proof that the only option is separation by agreement," said Yohanan Tzoreff, Palestinian affairs expert at the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies.

Rather than improve Israel's international standing, it contributed to increased isolation.

Sharon promised that disengagement would win Israel points with the U.S. and others by reducing friction with Palestinians. But international reaction was always a bit leery, and many were waiting to see whether Sharon would expand the policy to the West Bank. The question remains unanswered given Sharon's stroke and subsequent coma in January 2006.

But Israel's policy of isolating Hamas and Gaza, including economic sanctions and tight border controls, gradually drew widespread international condemnation, as did Israel's handling of its Gaza offensive and its raid in May on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla trying to break through its naval blockade.

Dismantling settlements was easier for Israel than most expected.

Gaza was a key test of whether an Israeli government would pay the political price needed to remove 9,000 settlers. Dire predictions that such moves would tear the nation apart turned out to be exaggerated.

"This proves that when there is consensus on evacuating settlements in the political system, it can be done," said Efraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.

It nevertheless made Israelis pessimistic about future settlement evacuations.

A common refrain in Israel these days goes like this: "We gave them Gaza and got rockets in return." The perceived failure of the Gaza withdrawal has made Israelis more cynical about the chances for future land-for-peace deals, according to figures from the Harry S. Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace.

In 2005, 58% of Israelis predicted that some or all of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank would be evacuated. Today, only 35% envision West Bank evacuations.

It raised doubts in the West about whether Palestinians were ready for statehood.

Palestinian infighting, including armed clashes between Fatah and Hamas, started weeks after the disengagement. Then Palestinian voters elected Hamas, a movement that refused to disavow violence and recognize Israel. That spurred international sanctions and an economic blockade that gave little chance for a new state to emerge.

Statehood in Gaza was never going to be easy because of its poverty and radicalism. Also, critics say Israel, rather than handing over the keys in an orderly fashion, essentially threw them into the sea.

But many in the international community blame the Palestinians for bungling their first test of statehood, leading to an effort by the U.S. and others over the last three years to strengthen Palestinian institutions.

edmund.sanders@latimes.com

How many must be shot before Kashmir is news?’

http://www.spectator.co.uk/essays/all/6187318/how-many-must-be-shot-before-kashmir-is-news.thtml

The vicious, long-lasting conflict between India and Pakistan is ignored in the West, but it is the key to understanding the region, says Jonathan Foreman

It was unfortunate timing. At the very moment David Cameron was pleasing his Indian audience by criticising Pakistan’s sponsorship of terrorism, security forces in Indian-controlled Kashmir were gunning down civilian protesters in the streets of Srinagar, the summer capital of the disputed state.

It is not clear why Cameron failed to mention the worsening crisis in Kashmir — the violence and civilian deaths have been all over the Indian media — particularly after he was so forthright about the Gaza crisis during his trip to Turkey. But the killings of demonstrators, curfews and riots in the Muslim-majority state have not gone unnoticed in the Muslim world, and Pakistan’s President Zardari will almost certainly have raised the issue in London this week. The PM’s silence about Kashmir could cost him — and the United Kingdom — considerable Muslim goodwill.

In the West, people tend to forget what a rallying cry ‘occupied’ Kashmir has been for Islamists, Pakistanis and ordinary Muslims. Osama bin Laden said in a 2002 statement that one of the reasons he was making war on America was its support for India over Kashmir. Today, the 21-year-old Kashmiri insurgency is once again coming to the boil. Two years ago the separatist rebellion — co-opted by Pakistani intelligence from the late 1980s — had calmed down. In 2009, tourists were returning in large numbers to Srinagar, and Indian troop levels were being drawn down. All that ended when the rape and murder of two local women in May 2009 — supposedly by members of the security forces, followed by what looked like an official cover-up — provoked mass riots. Things got worse in February when a 13-year-old boy playing cricket died after being struck on the head with a tear gas shell fired by Indian security forces.

The authorities have reacted with clumsiness and ruthlessness. Again and again Indian paramilitary police troopers have opened fire on crowds of unarmed protesters and gangs of stone-throwing youths. Each civilian death has prompted more demonstrations, which in turn are met with more live rounds, more economy-destroying curfews, and attempts to limit media coverage by restricting telephone and internet service.

Those who watch al Jazeera will be all too aware that Srinagar and much of the Kashmir valley have been under suffocating curfews since 11 June — when riots erupted after yet another boy was killed by a tear gas shell — with citizens sometimes allowed out of their houses for only an hour a week. They also know from news reports and internet footage that Indian police have fired on ambulances and local journalists.

Just last weekend, Indian paramilitary police reportedly killed at least 22 more civilians at different locations in the Kashmir valley, including an eight-year-old boy. Angry crowds have attacked police stations and government buildings. New Delhi seems to be incapable of calming the resulting fury. Omar Abdullah, the half-English Chief Minister of Jammu & Kashmir, who came to office promising new methods of non-lethal crowd control, ordered yet more troops into the state on Monday. (By some estimates there are already 700,000 security forces in J&K, guarding the borders and a population of about 10 million.) The Indian army, which had not been deployed inside Srinagar since the early 1990s, has now moved back into the city from its rural bases.

n response, Srinagar’s mosques are broadcasting calls for the faithful to come out on the streets and demonstrate for azadi — freedom.

It is worth remembering that since Kashmir’s uprising began in 1989, at least 80,000 people have been killed in the conflict. That is perhaps ten times the number of deaths in the Palestinian–Israeli conflict since 1967.

To understand the violence in Kashmir you need a sense of the full horror of the war during its worst years. All sides committed appalling crimes. In those days India excluded foreign NGOs like the Red Cross from the state, but according to reliable accounts, hundreds, perhaps thousands of suspected militants were made to ‘disappear’. As a result, Kashmir is awash with ‘half widows’ — women who cannot remarry because the bodies of their vanished husbands have never been found.

What has most infuriated Kashmiris — and their Muslim supporters around the world — is the alleged frequency of rape and torture by the security forces, in particular by the J&K police. Of course, the various militant groups have behaved every bit as badly if not worse than the security forces. Yet ordinary Kashmiris are simply baffled at the lack of coverage, of any kind, that the conflict gets in the West. Justine Hardy, an English writer who has been based in Kashmir for much of the last 20 years, told me that one of the doctors she works with wrote to her from outside Srinagar last month saying, ‘If a rat dies in Gaza, it is on the front page of the New York Times. How many of our civilians have to be shot on the street as they carry on with their ordinary lives before anyone pays attention?’

One explanation is that the Kashmiris are Muslims with the wrong enemies. If they were being shot and beaten by the Americans or the British or the Israelis, it might be different. Yet because the conflict cannot be cast as a colonial first-world versus third-world struggle, there are no earnest young British activists pouring into the state to escort Kashmiri children past Indian soldiers’ guns.

The few foreign and local NGOs who do operate in the valley are hobbled by travel restrictions and the threat of expulsion. The UN presence is minuscule and solely designed to monitor ceasefire line violations. Members of the foreign press corps in New Delhi tend to believe that to cover Kashmir — or any of India’s other insurgencies — too aggressively would be to endanger their precious visas.

In any case, the dark news from Kashmir gets swamped by the clichés about the new India which David Cameron echoed so enthusiastically last month. And it is understandable that foreign investors might prefer to read about India’s booming economy rather than bombs and riots.

In India proper, people choose to believe that Kashmir’s crisis is the result of foreign, i.e. Pakistani, interference and that Kashmiris have no genuine grievances. It’s hard for patriotic Indians to believe reports of security force misdeeds, largely because the army is seen as a bastion of integrity — despite recent corruption scandals and its involvement in incidents such as the mass rape of women in the village of Kunan Pushpura in 1991. Far easier to blame the Kashmiris for allowing themselves to be manipulated by ‘troublemakers’ and insist that they need a good thrashing. It is true that Indian authorities are dealing with implacable and dangerous enemies in Kashmir, as well as a frustrated civilian population. Jihadis have committed many atrocities in Kashmir and in India. They have ruined the economy of the region they claim to want to liberate.

Nevertheless, what is happening in Kashmir looks a lot like the kind of counterproductive repression that the PM and his coalition partners would be quick to condemn if perpetrated by more usual suspects. Some say that Cameron made a grave mistake and undermined the domestic struggle against Islamist terrorism by bringing up Pakistan’s two-faced approach to it while in India. He may be making a bigger mistake if he continues to ignore the crisis in Kashmir.

Utopian Dream Becomes Battleground in France

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/09/world/europe/09grenoble.html?_r=1

GRENOBLE, France — A utopian dream of a new urban community, built here in the 1970s, had slowly degraded into a poor neighborhood plagued by aimless youths before it finally burst into flames three weeks ago.

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• Times Topic: France

The New York Times

Grenoble’s planned districts were established in the 1970s.

After Karim Boudouda, a 27-year-old of North African descent, and some of his friends had robbed a casino, he was killed in an exchange of automatic gunfire with the police. The next night, Villeneuve, a carefully planned neighborhood of Grenoble in eastern France, exploded. A mob set nearly 100 cars on fire, wrecked a tram car and burned an annex of city hall.

The police, reinforced by the national riot police, responded in “Robocop” gear, with helicopters flying overhead and television cameras in place, and made a number of arrests in a series of raids.

President Nicolas Sarkozy, battered in the opinion polls, quickly seized on the event as a symbol for a new campaign to get tough on immigration and crime. On July 30, about 10 days after the riots, he flew to Grenoble to make a fierce speech condemning violence, blaming “insufficiently regulated immigration” that has “led to a failure of integration.”

He vowed to deny automatic citizenship at 18 to French-born children of foreigners if they are juvenile delinquents. He said he would also strip foreign-born citizens of French citizenship if they had been convicted of threatening or harming a police officer, or of crimes like polygamy and female circumcision, which are widespread in North Africa.

“French nationality is earned, and one must prove oneself worthy of it,” he said. “When you open fire on an agent of the forces of order, you’re no longer worthy of being French.”

Villeneuve, or “new city,” emerged directly out of the social unrest of the May 1968 student uprising.

People committed to social change, from here as well as from Paris and other cities, came to create a largely self-contained neighborhood of apartment buildings, parks, schools, and health and local services in this city of 160,000 people, at the spectacular juncture of two rivers and three mountain ranges at the foot of the French Alps.

Villeneuve was a careful mixture of private and public housing, including subsidized apartments for low-income families, with branch offices of city hall and a neighborhood corporation that would take care of public spaces while providing residents construction, plumbing and painting services at moderate costs.

“In the spirit of ’68, we made a bet, that with this social mixing we could help everyone advance,” said Jean-Philippe Motte, a longtime city councilor from the political left. “Of course, that was 40 years ago.”

Villeneuve began to deteriorate in the 1990s, with more poverty and joblessness, especially as immigrants from former colonies of the Maghreb and black Africa altered the original social and economic balance. Some of those who could afford to leave did so, and a population of nearly 16,000 dropped to the current 12,000. Three of the original nine schools closed.

“A lot of the middle class left and pulled kids out of school,” said Abderrahmane Djellal, 45, a deputy mayor who works on job training and runs a youth association called Café Crème. Mr. Djellal, who arrived from Algeria at the age of 10 and graduated from the University of Grenoble, says he is a product of Villeneuve’s good years.

“I came from a big, modest family” of eight children, he said. “We went to the local schools. It was an environment that helped me, but now it fails people. There is a social and cultural marginality that has instituted itself.”

Quiet during the day, the open spaces of Villeneuve were increasingly taken over at night by bands of unemployed youth whose parents came here from the Maghreb. Now there are drugs and arms, and a sharp increase in cases of personal aggression and robbery, said Vincent Manuguerra, who lived here until 1996 and still works here.

After the riots, Mr. Sarkozy’s interior minister, Brice Hortefeux, fired the local police chief. His replacement will be Grenoble’s third in three years. Michel Destot, Grenoble’s Socialist mayor, said the firing was unjust. Grenoble needs more police officers, he said, having lost 17 percent of its force since 2002, after Mr. Sarkozy, then interior minister, sharply reduced beat policing. The mayor said Mr. Sarkozy was using Villeneuve for political ends, when the problems are deeper and national.

“We’re in one of the so-called great countries of human rights,” he said, but Mr. Sarkozy’s pledge of “going to war against criminals” really means “going to war against an ethnic community, against a neighborhood,” which Mr. Destot called “insane.”

“The role of political leaders is, on the contrary, to bring people together, to make peace in a certain way,” he said.

His criticism was echoed widely on the left, but the Socialist Party has had little concrete to say, with officials refusing “to be dragged into the trap” of a security debate. The party leader Martine Aubry simply issued a statement saying that Mr. Sarkozy “hurts France and its values with special laws that are unfair and potentially unconstitutional.”

The Sarkozy push on security appears to have been well-planned, ready for the spark provided by Villeneuve and another attack on the police in St.-Aignan after a Gypsy was shot dead during another car chase. Mr. Sarkozy has campaigned as tough on crime and famously called suburban rioters in 2005 “scum.”

Mr. Hortefeux brushed off the criticism. “We’re waging a war against insecurity,” he said. “We’re on the side of the victims and we have only one enemy: the crooks.”

Opinion polls indicate that the Sarkozy measures are broadly popular in the country.

To Yohann Samba, 18, the unrest and the government’s reaction were not unexpected. “We knew this would happen,” he said, lounging by the Villeneuve tram station in carefully chosen athletic clothing of black and gray, mixing Nike and Adidas.

“There is no communication with the police,” he said.

Of the problems in the community, he said, “They will get worse now. They’re not trying to understand.”

Born here of Congolese parents, Mr. Samba will study law in the autumn. Mr. Sarkozy’s tough speech, he said, “is aimed directly at me, but it doesn’t shock me.”

Mr. Djellal, the deputy mayor, agrees with Mr. Sarkozy that the state “must fight the underground economy, the drugs and arms.”

“But where I can’t follow Sarkozy is when he goes too far and says it’s the fault of 50 years of immigration,” he said. His father won the Legion d’Honneur fighting for France in Indochina.

“For us, it’s insulting,” he said. “A president must make a republic for everyone, so everyone has the chance to participate in the pride of France.”

Who'll do America's job? If we go 'European' . . .

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/who_ll_do_america_job_hrMdqjAwA8nQhVkHwSoUBJ#ixzz0wJCveKti

By now, you may have heard: America is on its way to becoming another European country.

Now, by that I don't mean that we're moving off the coast of France. Rather, a century-long dream of American progressives is finally looking like it might become a reality.

The recently passed health-care legislation is the cornerstone of the Europeanization of America. And to pay for it, the White House is now floating the idea of imposing a value-added tax like they have in most of Europe.

In the ongoing debate about whether America should become more like Europe, the battle lines are split along almost perfect left-right lines. Liberals like the European welfare states, unionized workforces (in and out of government), generous benefits, long vacations, etc. Conservatives like America's economic growth, dynamism and innovation.

MELANIE FREY

Demonstrating against French labor law: The welfare state has produced chronic high unemployment for young people in France.

From what I can tell, everyone agrees that you can't have Europeanization without European-size governments. Hence, US government outlays (pre-Obama) have tended to hover around 20 percent of GDP (the average of the last 50 years), while Europe's are often more than twice that. In France, government outlays are nearly 55 percent of GDP.

In 2009, the bailout and Obama budget sent America's government outlay to 28 percent of GDP, but that should drop a bit over the next decade -- unless Democrats have something else in mind.

To be fair, liberals insist conservatives are wrong to think that Europeanizing America will come at any significant cost. Princeton economist Paul Krugman says that in exchange for only a tiny bit less growth, Europeans buy lots of security and comfort.

But economists such as Stanford's Michael Boskin say Europeans have a standard of living about 30 percent lower than ours and are stagnating. Others note that the structural unemployment rate in Europe, particularly for young people (over 20 percent in many countries), is socially devastating.

Obviously, I'm in the conservative camp. But I think the debate misses something. We can't become Europe unless someone else is willing to become America.

Look: My 7-year-old daughter has a great lifestyle. She has all of her clothes and food bought for her. She goes on great vacations. She has plenty of leisure time. A day doesn't go by where I don't look at her and feel envious at how good she's got it compared to me. But here's the problem: If I decide to live like her, who's going to take my place?

Europe is a free-rider. It can only afford to be Europe because we can afford to be America.

The most obvious illustration of this fact is national defense. Europe's defense budgets have been miniscule because Europeans can count on Uncle Sam to protect them.

If America Europeanizes, who's going to protect Europe? Who's going to keep the sea lanes open? Who's going to contain Iran -- China? OK, maybe. But then who's going to contain China?

But that's not the only way in which Europeans are free-riders. America invents a lot of stuff. When was the last time you used a Portuguese electronic device? How often does Europe come out with a breakthrough drug?

Not often, and when they do, it's usually because firms like Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline increasingly conduct their research here. Indeed, the top five US hospitals conduct more clinical trials than all the hospitals in any other single country combined. We nearly monopolize theNobel Prize in medicine, and we create stuff at a rate Europe hasn't seen since da Vinci was in his workshop.

If America truly Europeanized, where would the innovations come from?

Europhiles hate this sort of talk. They say there's no reason to expect America to lose its edge just because we have a more "compassionate" government. Americans are an innovative, economically driven people.

That's true. But so were the Europeans -- once. Then they adopted the policies they have today and that liberals want us to have tomorrow. JonahsColumn@aol.com

EDITORIAL: Tax dollars to build mosques

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/aug/10/tax-dollars-to-build-mosques/

The State Department is sending Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf - the mastermind of the Ground Zero Mosque - on a trip through the Middle East to foster "greater understanding" about Islam and Muslim communities in the United States. However, important questions are being raised about whether this is simply a taxpayer-funded fundraising jaunt to underwrite his reviled project, which is moving ahead in Lower Manhattan.

Mr. Rauf is scheduled to go to Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Bahrainand Qatar, the usual stops for Gulf-based fundraising. The State Department defends the five-country tour saying that Mr. Rauf is "a distinguished Muslim cleric," but surely the government could find another such figure in the United States who is not seeking millions of dollars to fund a construction project that has so strongly divided America.

By funding the trip so soon after New York City's Landmarks Preservation Commission gave the go-ahead to demolish the building on the proposed mosque site, the State Department is creating the appearance that the U.S. government is facilitating the construction of this shameful structure. It gives Mr. Rauf not only access but imprimatur to gather up foreign cash. And because Mr. Rauf has refused to reveal how he plans to finance his costly venture, the American public is left with the impression it will be a wholly foreign enterprise. This contradicts the argument that a mosque is needed in that part of New York City to provide services for a burgeoning Muslim population. If so many people need the mosque so badly, presumably they could figure out a way to pay for it themselves.

Americans also may be surprised to learn that the United States has been an active participant in mosque construction projects overseas. In April, U.S. Ambassador to Tanzania Alfonso E. Lenhardt helped cut the ribbon at the 12th-century Kizimkazi Mosque, which was refurbished with assistance from the United States under a program to preserve culturally significant buildings. The U.S. government also helped save the Amr Ebn El Aas Mosque in Cairo, which dates back to 642. The mosque's namesake was the Muslim conqueror of Christian Egypt, who built the structure on the site where he had pitched his tent before doing battle with the country's Byzantine rulers. For those who think the Ground Zero Mosque is an example of "Muslim triumphalism" glorifying conquest, the Amr Ebn El Aas Mosque is an example of such a monument - and one paid for with U.S. taxpayer funds.

The mosques being rebuilt by the United States are used for religious worship, which raises important First Amendment questions. U.S. taxpayer money should not be used to preserve and promote Islam, even abroad. In July 2009, the Office of the Inspector General published an audit of U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) faith-based and community initiatives that examined whether government funds were being used for religious activities. The auditors found that while USAID was funding some religious activities, officials were "uncertain of whether such uses of Agency funding violate Agency regulations or the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution" when balanced against foreign-policy objectives.

For example, our government rebuilt the Al Shuhada Mosque in Fallujah, Iraq, expecting such benefits as "stimulating the economy, enhancing a sense of pride in the community, reducing opposition to international relief organizations operating in Fallujah, and reducing incentives among young men to participate in violence or insurgent groups." But Section 205.1(d) of title 22 of the Code of Federal Regulations prohibits USAID funds from being used for the rehabilitation of structures to the extent that those structures are used for "inherently religious activities." It is impossible to separate religion from a mosque; any such projects will necessarily support Islam.

The State Department is either wittingly or unwittingly using tax money to support Mr. Rauf's efforts to realize his dream of a supersized mosque blocks away from the sacred ground of the former World Trade Center, which was destroyed by Islamic fanaticism. This ill-considered decision will raise the ire of millions of Americans and illustrates the limits of what the denizens of Foggy Bottom know about diplomacy.