Two posts which caught my eye mere minutes apart, thanks to Twitter and the exertions of those more knowledgeable than myself.
The first is from Commentary magazine, “the flagship of neoconservatism.”
The UN will not, in a billion years, fire off so much as a water pistol to help dislodge Qaddafi. Among UN Security Council Members are China and Russia – autocracies with every reason to see popular liberation movements suffocate.
This is a critical point, and while I had not even considered the slow-moving and short0sighted UN as possibly helping in this instance, neither had I considered the real reasons that nothing will happen on that front. In that article, the author comes out in the pages of America’s leading Conservative/Israel magazine explicitly supporting the people in the streets of Libya (of course) in their quest to throw off the dictator. He supports air strikes or a no-fly zone, exactly as requested by all of the resistance leaders.
Israel is not the enemy of freedom.
Here’s the other. This is from a blog written by one man about the death of another in Pakistan, of which and whom neither you nor I know anything about:
The whole ‘jihad’ industry that we have constructed, the fatwah factories and an army of twisted apologists, their performance and credibility is measured by the number of ‘enemies’ they can either kill or pinpoint.
The bad news is that such beliefs are symptomatic of a society that has started to respond enthusiastically to the major symptoms of fascist thought.
This critique of Pakistan’s situation is a man raging against his country descending through the levels of “Islamic Sh*thole” on the way to “Brutal Fascist Dictatorship”. The fact that he can publish this is proof that it’s not quite there yet. Time will tell.
But here’s a Muslim condemning the violence, repression, intolerance and authoritarianism which many observers int he west call “Islam”.
Islam is not the enemy of freedom.
When I served in Afghanistan, I had Jewish friends there and Muslim friends, as well as Mormon, Catholic, agnostic, Baptist, and so forth. And when some other friends were killed in action, we all wept together.
The enemies of freedom can be found nearly anywhere. Closer than you think.
