Is Obama Laying an AfghanistanTrap For Himself?

A few thousand more centrifuges here and few more thousand there and soon you have a nuclear bomb. But what is critical is this must unfold while everyone sits around a table and talk about what they will do to stop it. That is called quiet diplomacy. Next, go to the U.N. to show you are capable of walking the extra mile. Then comes empty threats and that is called patient but ruffled diplomacy. Finally comes war and that is called failed diplomacy.

This is a primer all state department officials must learn in order to advance up the promotional ladder so they can become advisors to presidents, secretaries of state, deputy secretaries and/or ambassadors.

It is a feel good game we have learned well and it permits us to assuage our consciences of moral guilt because we can tell ourselves we took the high road at every step. It is the same PC logic that drives us to stop interrogating terrorists all the while flagellating ourselves over our harsh and inhumane treatment practices. Oh well!

I would like to discuss my understanding of Obama's strategy with respect to Iraq and Afghanistan and pose these few questions:

First, I believe he has set a deadline of 16 months for withdrawing troops from Iraq and Maliki agrees. Obama also realizes we will have to leave some level of a contingent force in Iraq - lets say 25 to 50,000 troops.

Second, his judgment tells him the "real" war is in Afghanistan so he wants to transfer a certain number of troops there, sooner rather than later.

Third, he has neither defined what winning in Afghanistan means nor has he given any "time line" for when our or NATO's troops will be withdrawn. Perhaps he will do that at some later date. Setting a time line seems a political must to me.

Fourth, he once said he would pursue al Qaeda into Pakistan but when he was reminded Pakistan was an ally, of sorts, and a sovereign nation to boot, he backed off that hasty thought. Sort of like when said Jerusalem would be Israel's capital as soon as he became president and then retracted those words the next day.

Fifth, the terrain in Afghanistan is far different than in Iraq and favors the radicals. Thus, winning in Afghanistan, without an ability to pursue cross border, makes winning far more difficult if not impossible. Therefore, we could be fighting in Afghanistan for a very long time and with less defined results. Is it fair to allow Obama to fight in Afghanistan without specifying a time line?

Sixth, how long will the far left and nay-Sayers allow Obama to engage in Afghanistan? Will they give him a pass as long as he is engaged in his own war? And what about those pesky time lines?

In essence, Obama seems to be proposing doing in Afghanistan what he attacks GW for having done in Iraq. Could this young puppy of a would be president be laying a trap for himself? Obviously Obama will be able to fall back on his vast military experience and sound judgment so he should be able to avoid GW's pitfalls. If not, Obama can always return to flip flopping. (See 2 below.)

David Bueche writes Obama, the post modern candidate, may also be laying other traps for himself.

If we elect Obama I believe we will wake up the next morning and say to ourselves:"We actually did what?" and in less than six months we will be drowning in the river of second thoughts.(See 3 below.)

A debate regarding East Jerusalem's Isaeli Arab terrorists who have begun attacking using bulldozers etc. (See 4 below.)

Jonathan Tobin discusses the throwback influence of The Grand Mufti, his embrace of Hitler and its influence on the Arab world which persists to this day. (See 5 below.)

Michael Rubin comments about Obama's Berln trip and speech and concludes leadership runs deeper than rhetoric. (See 6 below.)

Dick




1)Ahmadinejad says Iran now has 6,000 centrifuges

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Saturday, Iran now possesses 6,000 centrifuges, machines used to enrich uranium, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.

"Islamic Iran today possesses 6,000 centrifuges," Fars quoted Ahmadinejad as telling university professors in the northeastern city of Mashhad.

The new figure is double the 3,000 centrifuges Iran had previously said it was operating in its uranium enrichment plant in Natanz.

In April, Ahmadinejad said Iran had begun installing 6,000 centrifuges at Natanz. His reported comments Saturday provided the first public assertion that Iran has reached that goal.

The announcement is another act of defiance in the face of demands by the United States and other world powers for Iran to halt its enrichment work, which Washington and its allies fear Iran is intent on using to develop weapons.

However, Ahmadinejad said those nations - the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany - have tempered their demands, asking Iran not to freeze enrichment but rather not to expand its current program beyond 6,000 centrifuges, state-run radio reported.

"Today, they have consented that the existing 5,000 or 6,000 centrifuges not be increased and that operation of this number of centrifuges is not a problem," state radio quoted Ahmadinejad as saying on Saturday.

In its negotiation with Iran, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany have offered a package of technological, economic and political incentives in return for Iran's cooperation.

A report by the UN's nuclear monitoring agency that was delivered to the Security Council in May said Iran had 3,500 centrifuges, though a senior UN official said at the time that Iran's goal of 6,000 machines running by the summer was pretty much plausible.

Uranium can be used as nuclear reactor fuel or as the core for atomic warheads, depending on the degree of enrichment. Iran says it is interested in enrichment only for its nuclear power program.

The workhorse of Iran's enrichment program is the P-1 centrifuge, which is run in cascades of 164 machines. But Iranian officials confirmed in February that they had started using the IR-2 centrifuge that can churn out enriched uranium at more than double the rate.

A total of 3,000 centrifuges is the commonly accepted figure for a nuclear enrichment program that is past the experimental stage and can be used as a platform for a full industrial-scale program that could churn out enough enriched material for dozens of nuclear weapons.

Iran says it plans to move toward large-scale uranium enrichment that ultimately will involve 54,000 centrifuges.

2) Obama the irony man
By Walter Russell Mead

Reinhold Niebuhr's observation that U.S. history is often ironic has rarely seemed as relevant as it does today.

First, there is the spectacle of the war in Iraq. At the beginning, most observers thought the war would be short and sweet, and many Democrats supported it, despite their qualms, because they believed it was political suicide to oppose it. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton was one Democrat who supported the authorization to use force against Saddam Hussein, a vote widely hailed at the time as showing her as tough and realistic. Ironically, her stance on the war gave Barack Obama the opportunity he needed to deny Clinton the Democratic presidential nomination.


The fighting dragged on, the Bush administration floundered without a strategy, and the conflict became deeply unpopular. Expert opinion swung around to the view that the war was hopelessly lost. But at just that moment, with the debate turning to how we could best live with defeat and disaster, Gen. David Petraeus' surge strategy helped turn the war around. It's not over by any means, and the security gains are reversible, but the 18-month troop surge has put the U.S. on the road to a win in Iraq.

But the irony is we have a presidential contest between Obama, whose entire primary candidacy was driven by his unshakable position as the toughest and most pessimistic critic of the war, and John McCain, an unrepentant supporter of the war who called for the surge at a time when the rest of the establishment was running for cover.

Yet during Obama's visit to Iraq last week, it was the presumptive Democratic nominee who was enjoying a love fest with embattled Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, who told the world -- including U.S. voters -- that Obama's timetable was on the right track and that the quicker U.S. forces got out of Iraq, the better.

The net result, ironically, is that the antiwar candidate who predicted failure is benefiting most from the war's success. Thanks to the surge he opposed, the policy Obama championed -- a relatively swift and steady withdrawal of U.S. combat forces over 16 months, conditions permitting -- no longer looks dangerous, irresponsible or an invitation to defeat.

Military progress in Iraq is transforming the international situation in other ways and creating more ironies. The Bush administration was unwilling to negotiate with Iran when the U.S. seemed permanently stuck in an Iraq that would only grow worse. But as the situation there improves, the U.S. has a stronger hand -- and with its coalition of Western allies still holding together, the administration has gingerly initiated nuclear talks with Tehran.

For Obama, this is a godsend. Once savaged for his calls to negotiate with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's nuke-seeking, Holocaust-denying, threat-spewing government, he can now point to the Bush administration's example.

But, ironically, Obama is using his new maneuvering room to toughen his stand rather than soften it. In Afghanistan and possibly Pakistan, he wants to send in more troops, take a harder line with Islamabad and crush the elusive Taliban beneath his heel. He says the administration hasn't fought hard enough and has been too willing, out of a misguided deference for allied opinion, to let countries such as Pakistan push us around. Meanwhile, those soft and dithering Europeans need to do more. More troops. More ambitious goals. Deeper commitment. Oh -- and by the way -- our goal must be to build democracy in the Mideast, starting with Afghanistan.

In Israel, Obama went to great pains to tell anxious Israelis that his commitment to Israel's security is "unshakable" and that Tel Aviv would have no stronger or more reliable ally than an Obama administration. Like President Bush, Obama has promised Israel that he would never ask it to make concessions that endanger its security.

Obama also appears to have cleared up the ambiguity in his stance on Iran. The world community, he told the Israelis, "must prevent" the mullahs from getting a nuclear bomb. Presumably, that means if negotiations fail to stop Iran from enriching uranium, and sanctions don't do the trick either, the world community will have to explore other options.

Obama's pilgrimage abroad points to a larger truth: In the midst of a bitter political year, a loose bipartisan consensus on the Mideast may be emerging. And, irony of ironies, the consensus, seemingly embraced by Obama, seems closer to Bush's views than to those of the antiwar activists who propelled the Illinois senator to the nomination.

Here's what that consensus says:

On the war on terrorism: The terror threat is real, and we can't prevail by just fighting defense. Ultimately, we have to take this war home to the people who made it, and that means the caves of Afghanistan -- and any place in Pakistan that the Pakistanis cannot secure on their own. The military budget will grow; the U.S. presence in Central Asia will increase, at least for now. This is similar to what a Bush White House would do in a third term.

On Iraq: Bush screwed up the war in many ways. But we cannot afford to let hostile forces control this strategic country, nor can we allow Iraq to sink into genocidal strife. We will not leave Iraq like we left Vietnam. Here too Obama's current stance is, in practical terms, very close to Bush's.

On Israel/Palestine: Continuity is the theme once again. Although the U.S. must bring new energy and determination to resolve this dispute, we can't and won't throw Israel under the bus. Israel's confidence in U.S. foreign policy remains a vital asset; to lose it would diminish the chances for peace.

On Iran: Intensive multilateral diplomacy, including direct U.S.-Iranian talks when appropriate, is our preferred strategy to keep Tehran from building a bomb. We are willing, even eager, to live in peace with a non-nuclear Iran. The next president will have to pursue negotiations while considering all the options -- a policy that represents, at most, a small evolutionary change from the current Bush position.

Not everyone will like this consensus. But, overall, the U.S. seems to be edging toward it. If the policies flowing from this consensus work (always a big "if" in the Middle East), Iraq could be the first in a string of U.S. successes in the region. That, surely, would be the biggest irony of all: a stable U.S. presence in the Middle East based on a meeting of the minds between Obama and Bush.

Walter Russell Mead, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, is the author of "God and Gold: Britain, America and the Making of the Modern World."

3) Obama the Postmodern Candidate
By David Bueche

Barack Obama has earned his place in history as the first postmodern candidate for president. He belongs to the deconstructionist school; his "texts" have no fixed meaning. He is able to take varying positions and claim consistency.

Senator Obama gave a lengthy interview earlier this week to ABC News in which he expounded on his ever-evolving position on the troop surge in Iraq.

Before discussing, a little context is in order. Here's a rundown of previous statements on the topic:

January 10, 2007, on MSNBC:

"I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse."


Also from January 2007:

"We cannot impose a military solution on what has effectively become a civil war. And until we acknowledge that reality, uh, we can send 15,000 more troops; 20,000 more troops; 30,000 more troops. Uh, I don't know any, uh, expert on the region or any military officer that I've spoken to, uh, privately that believes that that is gonna make a substantial difference on the situation on the ground."


May 25th, 2007:

"And what I know is that what our troops deserve is not just rhetoric, they deserve a new plan. Governor Romney and Senator McCain clearly believe that the course that we're on in Iraq is working, I do not."


July, 2007:

"Here's what we know. The surge has not worked. And they said today, 'Well, even in September, we're going to need more time.' So we're going to kick this can all the way down to the next president, under the president's plan."


September 13th, 2007:

"After putting an additional 30,000 troops in, far longer & more troops than the president had initially said, we have gone from a horrendous situation of violence in Iraq to the same intolerable levels of violence that we had back in June of 2006. So, essentially, after all this we're back where we were 15 months ago. And what has not happened is any movement with respect to the sort of political accommodations among the various factions, the Shia, the Sunni, and Kurds that were the rationale for surge and that ultimately is going to be what stabilizes Iraq. So, I think it is fair to say that the president has simply tried to gain another six months to continue on the same course that he's been on for several years now. It is a course that will not succeed."


November 11, 2007:

"Finally, in 2006-2007, we started to see that, even after an election, George Bush continued to want to pursue a course that didn't withdraw troops from Iraq but actually doubled them and initiated a surge and at that stage I said very clearly, not only have we not seen improvements, but we're actually worsening, potentially, a situation there."


In early 2008, as statistical proof of The Surge's incredible success became indisputable, Mr. Obama abruptly reverses his assessment of the situation and his recollection of his own recent history:

January 5, 2008:

"I had no doubt, and I said when I opposed the surge, that given how wonderfully our troops perform, if we place 30,000 more troops in there, then we would see an improvement in the security situation and we would see a reduction in the violence."


And now we've evolved to this:

July 21, 2008:

When asked if - knowing what he knows now - would Mr. Obama support the Troop Surge. He replied, "No." When asked to articulate he added


"These kinds of hypotheticals are very difficult," he said. "Hindsight is 20/20. But I think that what I am absolutely convinced of is, at that time, we had to change the political debate because the view of the Bush administration at that time was one that I just disagreed with, and one that I continue to disagree with -- is to look narrowly at Iraq and not focus on these broader issues."


A few things are clear from this review of the candidate's own words:

Mr. Obama is on a nodding acquaintance with the concept of "truth."

It appears that everything he says and does must be viewed "in context" and that the framing of that context is the sole province of Barack Obama. Take the whole Reverend Wright issue for example. Over the course of six weeks we were told that he had no idea these things were said; he had a vague idea they were said; he knew they were said but could no more disown them than his occasionally racist grandmother; he had been personally disrespected and was through with Jeremiah Wright. Quite a bit of "context" to get from his initial statements to the end point a mere month and a half later...

Mr. Obama is entirely unwilling to admit he's ever wrong about anything.

Once again, the eerily prophetic, (no pun intended), experience with Reverend Wright and Trinity United is instructive. Absent from this extended public discussion was any admission that he had exercised poor judgment, reached faulty conclusions, learned a lesson etc. As we discovered when he disowned the very man that "he could no more disown" -- Barack lives in the eternal now, and at this point in time, this is what he thinks. End of story, end of discussion.

Mr. Obama will shamelessly say just about anything required to get elected.

Documented above

The Media are at best useless, at worse, complicit.

This sort of post-modern, contextual concept of truth, although horrifying to many of us, is actually quite in vogue on the Left. A deconstructed, evolving narrative - far from being seen as evasive or dissembling - is seen as a "higher truth" that the flyover folks in Kansas and Nebraska obviously don't get. The fact that Mr. Obama blatantly contradicts his own factual assertions is immaterial to the fact that he "gets it".

This late in the game, no one really knows where he stands on anything.

The beauty of shamelessly appropriating all sides of an issue is that you're never really wrong. The problem is -- should Mr. Obama get elected - he will have to pick one side. You can't simultaneously support and abandon Iraq. You can't prohibit the Iranians from acquiring nuclear weapons but refuse to consider using force to stop them. You can't have it both ways -- ask George Bush, I'm sure he could give you an earful on the topic of hard choices.

If Barack Obama becomes the 44th President there will quickly come a day when he realizes that, although his buddies in media and academia really love this postmodern journey he's on, the rest of world looks to the President of the United States for fixed principles, clear convictions, and a well-grounded view of reality. Given what we've seen to date it's far from clear that Mr. Obama is intellectually or psychologically disposed to meet the challenge.


4)Ramon: E. J'lem Arab areas should not be part of Israel



After a brief mention of the Hebron operation in which a Hamas terrorist involved in February's suicide bombing in Dimona was killed, the cabinet on Sunday turned its attention to the recent terror attacks in the capital perpetrated by east Jerusalem residents.

Vice Premier Haim Ramon said it was in Israel's interest to rid itself of east Jerusalem's Arab neighborhoods and "Whoever thinks the problem of Jerusalem and terror are specific, and that destroying one house or another will help, is burying his head in the sand. The main question is, does the government want Jebl Mukaber or Sur Bahir as part of Israel or not," he exclaimed, referring to the hometowns of the Merkaz Harav killer and first bulldozer terrorist.

Ramon went on to say that the Ariel Sharon-led Likud government made a courageous step by erecting a security barrier west of Shuafat and the village of Akab, but made an error in failing to do the same with Jebl Mukaber and Sur Bahir.


"Whoever wants there to be a fence east of Sur Bahir is deciding that Jerusalem will live permanently with terror and murderers, terror that will come from the 175,000 Palestinians who have no attachment to Israel," said Ramon. "It is in Israel's interest to rid itself of these neighborhoods and villages, that were never Jerusalem, and that endanger the Jewish and Zionist nature of the city."

Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) chief Yuval Diskin said that the increasing involvement of east Jerusalem residents in terror attacks was worrying and that a deterrence was needed.

He urged the cabinet to press legal authorities to speed up the decision on whether to demolish terrorists' east Jerusalem homes and to cancel the attackers' families social benefits.

Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz said that the issues of demolishing and sealing terrorists' homes as well as expelling attackers' families were now on the agenda.

"There is an increasing tendency indicating that Jerusalem is turning into a terrorist hotbed and this obligates a different policy," Mofaz told the cabinet. "We must discuss demolishing homes, sealing them and expulsions. A plan of action is needed that will provide a fitting response to the threat."

During the same meeting, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni spoke of the shaky Gaza cease-fire, telling the cabinet that "Israel needs to respond to truce violations, fire against fire."

"Israel's response needs to give the message that we won't accept fire, regardless of which organization it comes from," she went on.

Livni added that opening the Rafah crossing would strengthen Hamas and as such must be connected to the issue of kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Schalit, in conjunction with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' forces.

At the start of the meeting, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert praised security forces for the Hebron operation that killed Shihab Na'atsha, a senior Hamas terrorist involved in February's suicide bombing in Dimona.

"Due to the nature of the activity, I won't go into detail, but this was a very successful operation. I send the thanks of the cabinet and of the Israeli public to the members of the security services and to the Israel Police elite units that assisted," said the prime minister.

Hamas vowed to avenge Na'atsha's death, threatening retaliation "at the time and place we choose."

In a statement released by the group, it said the response would be both "swift and painful."

Also at the meeting, Olmert had a dig at Barak following the defense minister's criticism over the weekend of the premier's attack on law enforcement authorities.

When newly-appointed Immigrant Absorption Minister Eli Aflalo joined the meeting, the other ministers moved up to make space for him. The reshuffle moved Barak along a seat and meant he was no longer sitting directly opposite the prime minister.

"What happened, I am used to the defense minister looking me in the eyes," Olmert said.

Barak responded that he was now looking at Livni and Mofaz, two of the candidates for September's Kadima primary and, therefore, two of the contenders to replace Olmert as prime minister.

"From the distance you will probably be from them, it will be difficult for you to see them at all," Olmert then quipped, referring to Labor's poor showing in the polls and Barak's apparently slim chances of becoming prime minister.

5)The Mufti of Jerusalem's Nazi ideology lives on among contemporary Islamists
By Jonathan Tobin


Although some deprecate the use of the term "Islamo-Fascist," a study of the life of the Mufti shows that the combination of these disparate ideas into one ideology of hate is no Western invention


It is axiomatic that a knowledge of history is a prerequisite for understanding the present. But the question is: How much weight should we give to controversial figures from the past when deciding how to think about current conflicts?

According to the authors of a new book about Haj Amin al-Husseini (1893-1974), the grand mufti of Jerusalem, who played a key role in fomenting and exacerbating the struggle between Jews and Arabs during much of the 20th century, the answer is quite a lot.

The book, "Icon of Evil: Hitler's Mufti and the Rise of Radical Islam", by David G. Dalin and John F. Rothman, makes the case that you can draw a direct line from al-Husseini to not only the Palestine Liberation Organization and Hamas — groups that took up his battle against Zionism — but to Iran, Al Qaeda and the 9/11 conspirators.

That's a searing indictment that both supporters of Israel and its foes ought to examine closely. And if this book fails to deliver the definitive account of the Mufti's life in English that students of this period of history have been waiting for, it nevertheless shines a spotlight on a figure who deserves far greater attention than he has received in recent decades.

APPOINTED BY A JEW
Husseini was a member of an elite landed-clan of Palestinian Arabs who retain their status to this day (Yasser Arafat was a cousin). In the aftermath of World War I, he rose to prominence as a fanatical opponent of both the British and the Jews.

Ironically, it was a British Jew, Sir Herbert Samuel, who appointed Husseini to the post of mufti, the putative Muslim religious leader of Jerusalem.

Samuel became the first high commissioner of the territory in 1920. Palestine had been given to Britain as a mandate by the League of Nations in order for them to make good on their 1917 Balfour Declaration promise to create a Jewish national home in the country.

While many in the British government were openly hostile to Zionism, Samuels was not. But he was concerned about being seen as evenhanded between Jews and Arabs. So when there was a vacancy in the office of mufti, Samuels appointed the hard-line Husseini.

This was a decision the Jews would rue for decades as Husseini used his post as a platform to promote hatred against the Zionists, who were transforming the country from a barren backwater into what would become the modern State of Israel. Husseini incited the riots of 1929 in which hundreds of Jews were slaughtered by Muslim pogromists and did his best to better that record during the Arab Revolt of 1936-39.

Though the Mufti's gangs were defeated, his work paid dividends in 1939 when the British, as eager to appease Arabs and Muslims on the eve of World War II as they were the Germans, issued a White Paper that placed severe limits on Jewish immigration and land sales, effectively closing the door to a Jewish state.


But Husseini did not seize this opening and instead continued his Anglophobic campaign after the war began. Eventually, he wound up in wartime Berlin where he was received by Adolf Hitler and housed in luxury by the Nazi state as an honored collaborator of its elite killers. Husseini made propaganda broadcasts for the Germans and recruited Bosnians to serve in a special Muslim SS brigade that was responsible for the murder of more than 12,000 Bosnian Jews. As such, he played a personal role in the Holocaust.

After the war, Husseini evaded prosecution as a war criminal and, as the birth of the Jewish state loomed, he sought to take command of the Arab drive to destroy it. In that he failed, as Palestinians loyal to the Mufti were routed by the Jews. When the Arab states invaded the country on May 15, 1948, the Mufti was left on the sidelines of the conflict where he fumed impotently for the rest of his life in exile in Damascus and Cairo.

Unfortunately, Dalin and Rothman's book is hampered by a lack of original research, leaving the authors to make sometimes uninformed guesses about the Mufti's inner life that leave us with more questions about his personality than answers. Instead, at times, they rely on egregious speculation that adds little of value to the existing literature on the subject.

In this vein, they go overboard in a chapter devoted to a "what if" scenario in which their protagonist fantasizes about the mass slaughter of Palestinian Jewry had Hitler prioritized the conquest of the Middle East rather than that of Russia. Counterfactual fantasy history can be amusing, but it has no place in what promised to be a serious biography. It is especially annoying when, as in this case, the authors spin tales about what could not have happened as opposed to what might have occurred.

In this case, the notion that Hitler would have passed on invading Russia requires us to ignore everything we know about this mass murderer's most important goals: the destruction of communism and lebensraum for German colonists in the East. Their tale of the Wehrmacht being transferred en masse to North Africa instead of to Russia, also requires the British Navy, whose control of the Mediterranean restricted Hitler's ability to reinforce Manfred Rommel's Afrika Korps, to disappear.

While there's no doubt that everything we know about the Mufti shows us that he would have liked to preside over a Palestinian Auschwitz, such speculation about this nightmare obscures more important issues that require no digression into fantasy.

What is important about the Mufti is that he is a human bridge between early stages of a Palestinian nationalism, and the Muslim Brotherhood movement and its current Islamist identity in the form of Hamas, Al Qaeda and Iranian-backed Hezbollah. The authors rightly see his kinsman's Arafat's career in terrorism and rejection of peace as being inspired by the Mufti's example. And though some observers like to pretend that Islamism is a recent aberration in Palestinian culture and politics, Husseini's life is a testament to the fact that religious fanaticism has always been integral to its character.

FIRST ISLAMO-FASCIST
Despite its flaws, Dalin and Rothman's book is on target when it concludes that Husseini was a seminal figure not only in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, but in the culture of the Muslim world.

Though contemporary Palestinian Arabs bear no guilt for the crimes of the Nazis because the Mufti was one, it is both fair and reasonable to assess the influence that his philosophy had on the movement he spawned. Fatah, Hamas and the Palestinian media, as well as that of the rest of the region, show that the Mufti's bloodthirsty Nazi-like hate for Jews is alive and well today not only in Gaza and Ramallah, but throughout the Islamic sphere.

Although some deprecate the use of the term "Islamo-Fascist," a study of the life of the Mufti shows that the combination of these disparate ideas into one ideology of hate is no Western invention. Amin al-Husseini, Nazi collaborator and Palestinian religious and political leader, may have been among the first Islamo-Fascists. The tragedy of the Middle East and the Palestinians is that he was far from the last.

6) Obama in Berlin
by Michael Rubin

Obama's words are inspirational, but if anything will be learned from the Bush administration, it is that leadership must run deeper than rhetoric. Berlin's freedom was won with blood and treasure. It was secured neither with withdrawals nor unilateral disarmament.

Consistency matters. Obama has yet to recognize that grand strategy cannot be as ephemeral as public opinion. Polls measure short-term desires, not long-term wisdom. After the devastation of World War I, Britons wanted no more war. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich convinced he had fulfilled their wishes, but his diplomacy only emboldened his enemies. The American public punished Harry S. Truman for sending troops to die in Korea. Today he is remembered as among the greatest presidents, and deservedly so, as any juxtaposition between North and South Korea attests.

We must work with our allies, but we also must recognize that multilateralism comes with a price. Coalitions can dilute effectiveness. The European concept of multilateralism is Washington's obeisance to European positions. Western Europe exists in a bubble of stability and affluence, unable to fathom how dangerous extremist ideology in Tehran and Pyongyang can be. Multilateral organizations are not the answer; at best, they are ineffective soap boxes, at worst cesspools of venality. Rose petals and well-digging have never stopped bombs, racism or genocide. A strong military has.

Obama says, "Let us remember this history." Let us hope he first learns it. Leadership is about more than rhetoric.