By Diana West on Sunday, March 21, 2010 5:09 AM

We have to wait until 6pm or thereabouts to find out if the Republic as we thought we knew it will be lost to medical-collectivization, which is not for nothing a riff on Soviet-style Kulak-collectivization. All eyes on the Congress.

That, of course, doesn't mean there is nothing else to see out there. And if Barack Obama is the engine driving the "health care reform" massacre Stateside, he is also the engine driving umma-wide eruption over the "Judaization" of ... Jerusalem. If the Obama administration had not come down like a hammer on Israel for -- I still can't get over this...

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By Diana West on Saturday, March 20, 2010 4:37 PM

First, it sounded as if Gen. Petraeus were channeling Walt (if not Mearshimer) in his Senate testimony when he invoked the Arabist narrative regarding the "conflict" between Israelis and Palestinians: namely, that Israel is the font of all Islamic violence in the world that the US has to deal with (although how Israel has anything to do with, for example, Muslim massacres in Nigeria, Thailand, India, Pakistan, etc., is never explained).  It was just poisoned icing on the cake that Walt was one of Petraeus' thesis advisors back at Princeton in 1987.

But now, in Sunday's Washington Post. Stephen Walt is quoting Gen. Petraeus -- referring...

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By Diana West on Friday, March 19, 2010 11:23 AM

George Ford writes in:

Your blog on Petraeus makes me wish it's all a "24" episode and I'll grab the remote and delete the story out of existence.

But first, the plot:

The quiet hero-general of the Iraq war gets promoted to regional responsibilities amid talk of a possible presidential bid. His unfairly maligned patron/President/Commander-in Chief leaves office, replaced with a flamboyant Leftist who starts gutting the military and replacing Ollie North look-alikes with Janet Napolitano look-alikes. Just when you think the gutting and compromising with jihad can't get any worse, it cuts to a Pentagon meeting with the Joint Chiefs where the totally compromised Arab lackey Michael Mullen is saying, "So, gentlemen, it's time we move on Israel ...."

Cut to Mullen in the back of a limo saying into his cell phone: "It went well, General."...

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By Diana West on Friday, March 19, 2010 4:31 AM

Photo: Islamic Republic of Afghanistan flag over Marjah

From the AP:

MARJAH, Afghanistan — Crouched on packed earth at a barricaded Marine encampment, the village elders issued their complaint: U.S. troops had killed an innocent 14-year-old boy. Secretly, the Marines didn’t believe them. No matter. They apologized, called the death a tragedy and promised to offer a condolence payment to the boy’s family.

Here we see the act of assuaging "Arab anger" -- something of primary concern to Gen. Petraeus and the Obama administration -- in its wider Islamic context: Apologize for no reason and pay up. Or, in Islamic terms, prostrate one's self as befits an infidel and offer jizya-style protection money. Call it the COIN/sharia twofer.

It’s all part...

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By Diana West on Thursday, March 18, 2010 7:04 PM

There is an intensifying debate over how exactly Gen. David Petraeus regards Israel. (I have written about it here, here  and here.) On the one hand are the general's words -- first, as related in a blog posted at Foreign Policy, and, later, in the general's own written statement recently submitted to the US Senate Armed Services Committee. On the other hand are his supporters, who don't believe his words, either as reported in Foreign Policy (which they don't believe, either) or even...

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