Global analysts anticipate fiercer, broader Jihad war & infiltration under prospect of Obama presidency

The prospects for an Obama presidency (blogs the Daily Mail's, Don Surber) has international newspaper columnists worried.

Add Greg Sheridan, foreign editor of the Australian, to the list of members of the foreign press who worry about a President Obama.

In a column in the Australian, “This is no time for a celebrity in the Oval Office,” Sheridan reasoned that far from calming the Middle East, a President Obama might trigger a a new Middle East war.

Sheridan joins Gerard Baker of the Times of London and Gabor Steingart of Der Spiegel in warning Americans that this is not Amateur Hour when it comes to foreign policy.

The civilized world looks to America for leadership and intestinal fortitude when it comes to standing up to evil — not fealty and Kumbaya when dealing with tyranny in the world. Heed the warning.

Blogger and law-school professor Ann Althouse dissects Obama's rhetorical slip-dance around debate challenger, Tim Russert's, challenging him to reject the support of black-supremacist clergy, like Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, in "Obama, Farrakhan, and how Hillary Clinton took the opening and then squandered it. "

CLINTON: "No. I'm just saying that you asked specifically if he would reject it.
And there's a difference between denouncing and rejecting." ...

OBAMA: "Tim, I have to say I don't see a difference between denouncing and rejecting. "
He doesn't miss the opportunities. He just drove in the knife, yet it sounded lighthearted and funny. 

"There's no formal offer of help from Minister Farrakhan that would involve me rejecting it. But if the word "reject" Senator Clinton feels is stronger than the word "denounce," then I'm happy to concede the point, and I would reject and denounce." 

This is the part everyone notices. It's hilarious. We love him. And she now seems ridiculous. Come back up for air, Hillary! Fight it! He gave you an opening! Point out where he failed.

CLINTON: "Good. Good. "

Excellent. Astounding! Hillary Clinton does not have the instinct for blood. She either gave up or she lacks the chops to keep up with him. 

(APPLAUSE) Ah, see? They like you when you concede to him. Hopeless.

DemoCast-contributor, the London-based rabbinic scholar, Jeff Berger, reccommended this Wall St. Journal piece, "The Sderot Calculus." It exposes the world's hypocrisy against Israel's defending itself from the almost 3-years 'un-occupied' Palestinian autonomy in Gaza. How would a President Barack Hussein Obama's executive administration deter Islamist imperialism from Palestine to reclaim Jerusalem from inspiring global Jihad-questers?

But technology addresses neither the Islamic fanaticism that animates Hamas nor the moral torpor of Western policy makers and commentators who, on balance, find more to blame in Israel's behavior than in Hamas's. Nor, too, would an Iron Dome or the Phalanx absolve the Israeli government from the necessity of
punishing those who seek its destruction. Prudence is an important consideration
of statesmanship, but self-respect is vital. And no self-respecting nation can
allow the situation in Sderot to continue much longer, a point it is in every
civilized country's interest to understand.

On March 9, 1916, Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa attacked the border town of Columbus, N.M., killing 18 Americans.

President Woodrow Wilson ordered Gen. John J. Pershing and 10,000 soldiers into Mexico for nearly a year to hunt Villa down, in what was explicitly called a "punitive expedition." Pershing never found Villa, making the effort something of a failure. 

Then again, Villa's raid would be the last significant foreign attack on continental U.S. soil for 85 years, six months and two days.

Finally, the Pallywood/al-Durah Affair trial against Philippe Karsenty was reported yesterday with a live audiocast from Prof. Richard Landes from outside the courtroom. Check it out on Joo-Tube.com, The Jews' News.

Should Muslims Integrate into the West?

"...Nevertheless, because Islamist jurists in the Arab world have considerable resources, they at times drown out or wear down more pro-assimilation voices. The collision between Western interpretations of personal freedom and some Islamist interpretations of Muslims' rights and duties is inevitable. For mainstream Muslim jurists, Islam trumps all aspects of human activities.

Herein lays the challenge. Many ethnic and religious minorities seek to establish an autonomous sphere within multicultural societies, but only Arab Muslim jurists consider such an autonomous sphere to constitute a substitute for the liberal state itself. Many ethnic and religious minorities attempt to speak for their countries of origin through the political systems of their adopted countries, but only Arab Muslim jurists regard their Muslim nation as overstretching the boundaries of all nation-states in its political
demands.

How then should liberal nation-states, using the principals of liberalism and multiculturalism as their shield, deal with individuals who resist their very existence? How can Western societies distinguish between those Muslims who seek a place for their beliefs and traditions within a pluralistic framework and those who adhere to a school committed to the destruction of that framework? Perhaps a good point of departure would be to understand that it is not veils that matter, but the individuals and ideas that are behind them."

Author, Uriya Shavit, is currently a scholar of the Minerva Foundation, a subsidiary of the Max Planck Society, and author of the forthcoming Wars of Democracy: The West and the Arabs from the fall of Communism to the War in Iraq (Dayan Center, Tel Aviv). Published in the Middle East Forum's fall 2007 issue of "The Middle East Quarterly."