Updated: Leftist Schadenfreude

The AP is reporting that a homicide bomber attacked a military base in Afghanistan where Vice President Cheney is. From the story:

A purported Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, said Cheney was the target of the attack..."We knew that Dick Cheney would be staying inside the base," Ahmadi told AP telephone from an undisclosed location. "The attacker was trying to reach Cheney."

Just the thought of it resurrected assassination chic (Death Of A President mockudrama, a passage in Cindy Sheehan's Peace Mom about killing Bush as an infant, the Kill Bush t-shirts and postage stamps with a gun to his head) on the nutroots Left. Here are a few examples from the Huffington Post comments section to the story:

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"Cheney's spokeswoman said he was fine"

Fuck.
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They missed! Too bad.
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You can't kill pure evil....
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If at first you don't succeed ...
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They missed?? Dammit. I hope they try again before he leaves.
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And that's just the first page. Has HuffPo taken the mantle from DailyKos as the home for progressive hate and bile? With this new low they might have. The Kossacks will not be pleased.

Update: Arianna has taken down the comments section of the original report and there is a DailyKos diary out today entitled “We 100% Condemn the Attempted Assassination on Cheney.”

The Lenten Bookshelf

Today marks the beginning of the Christian holy season of Lent. Last year National Review Online asked around for some good spiritual reading suggestions for the next 40 days.

For the reading list click here.

Also from the same site, an interview with Frederica Mathewes-Green on her book First Fruits of Prayer: A Forty-Day Journey Through The Canon of St. Andrew. That interview is here.

For more information on the Christian season of Lent (starting with Ash Wednesday today and culminating on Easter) here is a page of links.

Democrat Hypocrisy on Iraq

Can the Democrats who made the following comments now defend their about face?

Gregory Wolfe and the Passion

I got my Passion of the Christ Definitive Edition DVD last week and going through the features I was surprised to see Greg Wolfe, editor of the IMAGE Journal, featured in a section on Christianity in art called Through The Ages. They didn't use many of his comments and while this section was a nice meditation on art history I would have loved to have seen Edward Knippers comment on this, particularly. Knippers's own work is raw, masculine and controversial. His grotesque Salome was inspiration for lyrics to the Vigilantes of Love song Welcome to Struggleville ("Salome she's undressed to the nines, Although a few pounds fatter. She's got Pavlov's bells on her ankles and wrists, She coming at you with her platter.") and his gigantic canvases of of a nude Jesus being whipped (above) or the crowning of thorns (below) could have been an inspiration for both scenes in the film, and a nice counterbalance to the pristine works of earlier times (and today's Christian bookstore art).

The short feature also included painter Alfonse Borysewicz, art historian Mitchell Merback, and artist Wayne Forte.

Ousting Ahmadinejad - An Endgame?

My previous post - touching on Iran and the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction - was originally posted to a discussion group, where someone commented that "one hopes that the Loon in a Windbreaker gets ousted by the big Mullah-thugs." This is my reply:

Unfortunately just ousting him won't do the trick as long as there are men in power who believe in ushering in the appearance of the 12th imam by creating chaos, injustice, and war. As I understand it there is a passive and an aggressive eschatology regarding the Mahdi and while both sides believe those conditions will bring about his return, the Hojjatieh believe that they can and should hasten his return by creating those conditions.

Ahmadinejad believes in ushering in this Christ-like figure who will bring peace, justice and an end to suffering; an end of history. His spiritual advisor is Mesbah Yazdi who is a patron of this school of thinking (but vehemently denies this since they are a banned organization) who has sought to be Supreme Leader in Iran. He sits on the Assembly of Experts which chooses the Supreme Leader and with reports that the current leader, Khamenei, is sick it is possible he could take over. Not likely, but possible.

Recent elections of the assembly seem to have seen a turn towards more moderate voices so there is reason for hope there. And Bill Roggio is reporting that the pressure on Iran is creating political discord in that country. A passage of note:

Saudi Arabia's actions with respect to Iran have been particularly of interest, as their influence on the price of oil has a direct impact on Iranian cash flow. "The Saudi oil minister has steadfastly refused calls for a special meeting of OPEC and announced that the nation is going to increase its production, which will send the price down even farther," reported NBC News. The belief is the Saudis have fired the first salvo in an oil price war with Iran.

The Saudis have directly warned the Iranians to keep out of "Arabs affairs." We speak with Iranian about Arabs affairs, said Saudi Arabias Foreign Affairs Minister Prince Saud al Faysal. We think that it is dangerous to interfere into our affairs. Therefore, we express to Iranians our concerns about their influence in the Arab world. It is logical. But when other countries speak to them about our problems, that confer legitimacy to the Iranian interferences in the Arab world. This is why we are not favorable. We hope that Iran will be a good neighbor, that the Iranians will be a part of the solution and not the problem. It is what we repeat to them: you do not interfere with our affairs.

Does multiculturalism lead to fanaticism?

The Daily Mail is reporting that multiculturalism is fueling fanaticism among British Muslims:

The poll exposes a fracture between the attitudes of Muslims aged 16 to 24, most of whom were born in Britain, and those of their parents’ generation, who are more likely to have been immigrants…

Academic Munira Mirza, lead author of the report, said: “The emergence of a strong Muslim identity in Britain is, in part, a result of multi-cultural policies implemented since the 1980s which have emphasised difference at the expense of shared national identity and divided people along ethnic, religious and cultural lines.”…

While only 17 per cent of over-55s said they would prefer to live under Sharia law, that increased to 37 per cent of those aged 16 to 24…

The poll found that just 19 per cent of Muslims over 55 would prefer to send their children to Islamic state schools. That increased to 37 per cent of those aged 16 to 24.

If a Muslim converts to another religion, 36 per cent of 16-to-24-year-olds thought this should be punished by death, compared with 19 per cent of 55s and over.

And now Bernard Lewis has weighed in at the Jerusalem Post that Muslims are "about to take over Europe":

The Muslims “seem to be about to take over Europe,” Lewis said at a special briefing with the editorial staff of The Jerusalem Post. Asked what this meant for the continent’s Jews, he responded, “The outlook for the Jewish communities of Europe is dim.” Soon, he warned, the only pertinent question regarding Europe’s future would be, “Will it be an Islamized Europe or Europeanized Islam?”…

Instead of fighting the threat, he elaborated, Europeans had given up.

“Europeans are losing their own loyalties and their own self-confidence,” he said. “They have no respect for their own culture.” Europeans had “surrendered” on every issue with regard to Islam in a mood of “self-abasement,” “political correctness” and “multi-culturalism,” said Lewis, who was born in London to middle-class Jewish parents but has long lived in the United States…

The Cold War philosophy of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), which prevented the former Soviet Union and the United States from using the nuclear weapons they had targeted at each other, would not apply to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Iran, said Lewis.

“For him, Mutual Assured Destruction is not a deterrent, it is an inducement,” said Lewis of Ahmadinejad.

It appears Bernard Lewis agrees with recent books by Claire Berlinski and Mark Steyn and Bruce Bawer that Europe has become soft and culturally relativistic.