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Neocon Nuttery
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Title: Rudy Roughs Up Arabs
Source: New York Times
URL Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/17/o ... 7dowd.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
Published: Oct 17, 2007
Author: MAUREEN DOWD
Post Date: 2007-10-17 11:23:05 by Brian S
Keywords: None
Views: 669
Comments: 4

Published: October 17, 2007

Now comes “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week.”

David Horowitz’s conservative Freedom Center has designated next week the time to “break through the barrier of politically correct doublespeak that prevails on American campuses, if you want to help our brave troops, who are fighting the Islamo-Fascists abroad.”

The Freedom Center’s terrorism awareness program is urging college students to stage sit-ins outside the offices of women’s studies departments to protest “the silence of feminists over the oppression of women in Islam” and to distribute pamphlets on Islamo-Fascism. Their titles include “The Islamic Mein Kampf,” “Why Israel is the Victim” and “Jimmy Carter’s War Against the Jews.”

Even before Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, the Republican presidential candidates were pitching in yesterday at the Republican Jewish Coalition Victory 2008 Forum here.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed this about the Democratic debates,” Rudy Giuliani said, “but they never use the word ‘Islamic terrorist.’ Ever.”

“They have a very hard time getting those words out of their mouth,” he continued, to the delight of his listeners. “I think it’s quite clear to me now, having listened to seven or eight of their debates, that they think it’s politically incorrect to say the words. I don’t know exactly who they think they’re offending. I don’t know what kind of view of the world they have. I understand when I say ‘Islamic terrorism,’ I’m not offending all of Islam. I’m not offending all of the Arab world. I’m offending exactly who I want to offend and making it clear to them that we stand against them.”

As the phlegmatic Fred Thompson plummeted in the polls and made a lackluster appearance at the forum, a juiced Mr. Giuliani preened in front of an audience that loved him.

He went through his greatest hits: The time he yanked Yasir Arafat out of Lincoln Center during a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth. “The thing that really bothered me was, he didn’t have a ticket,” Rudy recalled. “He was a freeloader!”

The time he tossed back a $10 million check for 9/11 families from the Saudi prince who urged America to “adopt a more balanced stance toward the Palestinian cause.”

“You know, Israel’s not perfect, and America’s not perfect, but we’re not terrorist states,” he said.

There has been much discussion about liberal Rudy stances on guns, gays, abortion, divorce and comic cross-dressing that are well-suited to Manhattan but not to G.O.P. primary voters. But there’s also his bearhug with Israel, so hearty that even W.’s embrace seems tepid in comparison.

But Rudy seems out of the Republican mainstream on even giving lip-service to Palestinian aspirations. He has no patience for buttering up the Arabs, or the Republican men’s club attitude represented by Saudi-loving Bush senior and James Baker that has always favored a more “even-handed” policy in the Middle East.

Mr. Baker once reportedly justified the tough policy of the Bush 41 administration toward Israel with the notorious comment to a colleague: “[Expletive] the Jews. They didn’t vote for us anyway.”

W. blew off the Baker-Hamilton panel suggestions on Iraq that urged the administration to aggressively referee the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, to begin negotiations with Iran and Syria and called for Israel to return the Golan Heights to Syria. Imagine what Rudy would do.

Even though he has been closer to Israel than his dad, at least W. held the Saudi crown prince’s hand in Crawford. (Bush senior and Dick Cheney were very tight with Saudi Prince Bandar. At a party at the vice president’s mansion once, I watched Bandar greet waiters like old friends.)

Rudy would probably only take the hand of an Arab leader to throw him down a ravine, or a wadi.

“We need to isolate the terror-funding theocrats in every way possible,” he told the Jewish hawks, during a rant on Iran. “And we must end direct and indirect investment until they change their course.”

Rudy lambasted Hillary and Obama for their “strong Democratic desire to negotiate, negotiate, negotiate and negotiate,” and suggested again that he would be tougher on Iran than Hillary, and would never let it get a nuclear weapon.

Last night, when he and Judi were interviewed by Fox’s Sean Hannity, Rudy ratcheted it up, saying that Hillary’s “ambiguity” and “shifting of position” on Iran was “a dangerous tendency, I think, in somebody that aspires to take on a position where you have got to be pretty darn decisive.”

He also bored in where Obama has been skittish about going: her experience. “Honestly, in most respects, I don’t know Hillary’s experience. She’s never run a city. She’s never run a state. She’s never run a business. She has never met a payroll. She has never been responsible for the safety and security of millions of people, much less even hundreds of people.”

He assured everyone he’d learned how to put his cellphone on vibrate. But he left himself at full volume.

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#1. To: Brian S (#0)

Join the Ron Paul Revolution

Lod  posted on  2007-10-17   11:43:09 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#2. To: Brian S (#0)

David Horowitz’s conservative Freedom Center has designated next week the time to “break through the barrier of politically correct doublespeak that prevails on American campuses, if you want to help our brave troops, who are fighting the Islamo-Fascists abroad.”

Someone needs to tell Whore O' Witz we're not fighting Islamofascists. We're fighting people whose countries we have invaded. I'm pretty sure the locals fight back no matter what country you invade.

Except France, of course.

Paul Revere  posted on  2007-10-17   16:58:03 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#3. To: Brian S (#0)

Back at the beginning of August, I heard an interview of one of Giuliani's aides. He kept repeating the phrase "The terrorists' war on us" when it would have been more natural to say "the war on terror." He said it at least half a dozen times.

I learn Giuliani kept using the same phrase in the recent piece on foreign policy that appeared under his signature in Foreign Affairs. I guess they must have focus-grouped the phrase. Or maybe it was pressed on Giuliani by one of his neocon advisers, like Podhoretz.

To reason, indeed, he was not in the habit of attending. His mode of arguing, if it is to be so called, was one not uncommon among dull and stubborn persons, who are accustomed to be surrounded by their inferiors. He asserted a proposition; and, as often as wiser people ventured respectfully to show that it was erroneous, he asserted it again, in exactly the same words, and conceived that, by doing so, he at once disposed of all objections. - Macaulay, "History of England," Vol. 1, Chapter 6, on James II.

aristeides  posted on  2007-10-17   17:22:00 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#4. To: Paul Revere (#2)

In any case, that otherwise very awkward-sounding term "The terrorists' war on us" does carry within itself the presumption that "the terrorists" started it, not us.

Maybe that's the real point of the phrase.

To reason, indeed, he was not in the habit of attending. His mode of arguing, if it is to be so called, was one not uncommon among dull and stubborn persons, who are accustomed to be surrounded by their inferiors. He asserted a proposition; and, as often as wiser people ventured respectfully to show that it was erroneous, he asserted it again, in exactly the same words, and conceived that, by doing so, he at once disposed of all objections. - Macaulay, "History of England," Vol. 1, Chapter 6, on James II.

aristeides  posted on  2007-10-17   17:23:36 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


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