The War against Freedom

If you are the type to occasionally tire of our President's endless hypocritical nonsense, subject as above, you might want to check out Juan Cole's Jerusalem and Terrorism. I consider Cole an indispensable resource on all things Middle East and Muslim, doing, among other things, the work that Tom Friedman could do if he wasn't such a shit.

Sorry Tom, that just slipped out. I'm sure your study of the Flat Earth will, sometime in the future, be deservedly forgotten, allowing your more substantial works to be once again appreciated.

I strongly recommend Juan's post, which starts with
The Ariel Sharon government in Israel has announced that it will build a huge wall on someone else's land through Jerusalem, cutting off 55,000 Arabs from the city (they'll have to go through nasty Israeli checkpoints every day to get into their own city!)

However you feel about the morality of this
And, folks, this sort of thing, which the Washington Post didn't even notice, may very well get you and me killed. I think what Sharon is doing is morally and politically wrong to begin with. But I sure as hell resent the possibility that I or my family is going to get blown up because of it.
The larger point is that terrorism is not motivated by hatred of freedom, but by more specific injuries, mostly real. Most especially
...Chicago political scientist Robert Pape has shown that the vast majority of suicide bombings in the past 30 years have come in response to foreign military occupation (or what the terorists perceived as such).
Knowing your enemy, and his motives, is a first principle of warfare, not a liberal affectation. Propagating lies and nonsense, by contrast, is the first principle of tyranny.

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