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Zack Lieberberg has an irritating habit of telling Russian jokes. Considering that Zack left Russia almost 25 years ago and has long since lost practically all contact with his old country, his assortment of jokes is pretty stale. Besides, due to peculiarities of the Russian (or, possibly, American) sense of humor, I often find it difficult to recognize the punch line fast enough to successfully feign a polite laugh. Once in a while, however, some of those old Russian jokes sound like a stinging commentary on current events. Here's one of them: A man is slowly tap-dancing along a crowded street in the busy Moscow downtown, loudly snapping his fingers in time with each step. A passerby asks him,

“What are you doing?”

“Scaring away the tigers,” the man responds without skipping a beat.

“But there are no tigers here,” the passerby says.

“Right,” the man replies, “And now you know why.”

This joke comes to mind every time I hear that our invasion in Afghanistan and Iraq is the reason why there has not been a major terrorist attack on American soil in the 4½ years since 9/11. Unfortunately, people who hold this view never even attempt to explain how our invasion has made us safe.

They say that now potential terrorists can see what will happen to them if they ever try anything like 9/11 again. But what exactly has happened to them? Two of the most odious regimes in the world were deposed, which is good, but how is that making us any safer than we were before? While our soldiers are fighting and dying thousands miles away from home, our enemies invade our land without a single shot, and nobody thinks of resisting their invasion.

The immediate perpetrators of the 9/11 attack were Saudis and Egyptians; both Saudi Arabia and Egypt remain on the list of our allies. Even worse, considering that we have completely lost the support of the Europeans, our betrayal of Israel has turned a true friend into an ailing vassal, Russia remains as much our enemy as the great, late Soviet Union was at the heights of the Cold War, and China is as openly hostile to us as it was during the Cultural Revolution, Saudi Arabia and Egypt are just about the only allies we have left. Besides Libya, of course.

Bin Laden remains at large and keeps himself as busy as ever. In Afghanistan, everyone, with the single exception of the Honorable Mr. Karzai, dutifully supports Islamic democracy by day, but loyally serves the Taliban by night. And the Iraqis, whom we have so selflessly (and, therefore, senselessly) liberated from a tyrant almost as brutal as Castro, but sorely lacking in comparison with Kim Jong Ill, are using their newly found liberty to blow each other to smithereens at every opportunity, which, in my view, is the only positive development we have seen since 9/11, because the victims usually hate us as much as the murderers do.

If you disagree with me, then I'd like to ask you to make a list of measures the US government has undertaken that have impeded the ability of the Muslims to do us harm. Since the list is bound to be very short (my own version of it is simply empty), I won't burden you too much if I ask you to explain exactly how each of those measures achieves its desired goal. I also expect you to explain why the terror alert indicator is as orange today as it was when Mullah Omar and Saddam Hussein merrily reigned over their respective circles of Muslim hell.

Yes, all is calm on the Western front, but not because the Muslims are no longer able to attack us. Considering how the Muslim population of the United States has grown since 9/11, we must be more vulnerable today than ever before in the history of all our conflicts with any enemy.

Canadian authorities have recently arrested a large terror cell, whose members had amassed three times as much material needed to manufacture explosives as Timothy McVeigh used to prepare the crowning accomplishment of his life. The British cops are looking for a chemical bomb allegedly built by their Muslims. Do you have a reason to believe that the Muslim settlers in the United States are any different from the Muslim settlers in Canada and Great Britain? And if our wars in foreign lands have failed to achieve safety for the Canadians and British, what makes you think that the United States is any safer today than it was on the eve of 9/11?

The terrible truth is that all is calm on the Western front simply because we have already capitulated.

We haven't even put up a fight. President Bush capitulated when, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, he cowardly, secretly ordered the evacuation of Osama bin Laden's relatives from the United States. His next act of capitulation took place just a few hours later, when he announced that Islam was not the enemy, although everyone, both the Muslims and the rest of humanity, knew that it was precisely Islam that we had to fight against if we wanted to survive. Everyone knew that Islam was the ideology behind every terrorist act in recent history, with the exceptions of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, the Atlanta bombing in 1996, and attacks on abortion clinics and their employees.

I can't list our every act of capitulation in this limited space. But we must understand that the removal of the Ten Commandments from public display was yet another one of those suicidal acts. Jews and Christians believe in the Ten Commandments; Buddists, Voodooists, or Hindus never objected to them. The only religion that opposes the Ten Commandments is Islam; by hiding them from view, we granted Islam another undeserved victory.

Celebrating Ramadan in the White House is as much an act of capitulation as celebrating Hitler's birthday would be during World War II. Condoleezza Rice's saccharine praises to the non-existent benevolence that's she pretended to have found in the heart of Islam, is as much an act of capitulation as praise of the Nazi humanitarianism would be on the day Auschwitz was liberated. The addition of the Koran to the White House library is as much an act of capitulation as the addition of the Meine Kampf would be on the eve of D-Day.

What's worse, much, much worse, is that We, the People, have capitulated as well. We capitulated when we placidly agreed that Islam was not the enemy. We capitulated again when, instead of turning against the growing number of observant and, therefore, inevitably hostile, Muslims on US soil, we decided to fight jihad in a nice way, by carrying American flags on our cars. That, of course, was a very impressive move, but not as impressive as carrying the American flag to the enemy land and rising it over the ruins of Mecca would have been.

You may feel better if I tell you that we did not capitulate alone. Israel capitulated when, instead of prosecuting the founders of Peace Now as traitors, its government allowed it to become a powerful national drive for surrender. The Oslo accords were an act of capitulation. The surrender of Gaza was an act of capitulation. The upcoming surrender of Judea and Samaria, which will be followed by the surrender of the Kotel and granting the Arabs the right of return to the land that does not belong to them, will be the final acts of Israel's capitulation.

Europe has capitulated without a fight, but that's what Europe has always done. What is truly astonishing is how quietly and thoroughly Great Britain capitulated. Without the slightest attempt to resist, the Brits allowed avowed jihadists to establish their headquarters in English cities. The goal of the relatively modest mass murder of 7/7 was to show the Brits who the boss is. Their Prime Minister responded by obediently announcing to the world how proud he was of the British Muslim community. He never mentioned their deeds that made him so proud.

Today, while Scotland Yard is desperately looking for the chemical bomb assembled by British Muslims, British academia is enthusiastically organizing a boycott of Israeli universities and scholars. Essentially, that boycott is a modern, politically-correct form of pogrom. Historically, pogroms have been used as a tool to distract people from their problems. And when people are distracted from their problems, the problems can only become worse. The boycott of Israeli universities is a sign of capitulation, one of many.

That boycott, by the way, clearly shows the role played by the benign moderate majority as opposed to the malignant extremist minority. What do British moderates do while British extremists organize their anti-Semitic boycott? Nothing. They mind their own business. Thery couldn't care less. Have you heard of a British citizen, either a Jew or a Christian, who pulled his kids out of a college in protest against the anti-Semitism of the British educational establishment? I have not. Nor do I expect to.

In the meantime, the British Muslims protest against the British flag. They have decided that the red cross so prominently featured on the Union Jack is a symbol of bloody crusades, and that's something they are not willing to put up with. Before the capitulation, an immigrant expressing blatant disrespect for the host country and its symbols would be promptly invited to leave and never come back. But that was before. Now, the Union Jack is no longer flying over Heathrow Airport, is banned by the Drivers and Vehicles Licensing Agency, and is removed from display by several corporations. Sic transit gloria mundi. Totally sic.

The latest act of capitulation here, in the United States, was inadvertently triggered by Representative Tom Tancredo, a Republican from Colorado, when he suggested in an interview that in response to the next Muslim attack the United States should destroy Islamic holy places, including Mecca. Not so long ago, the concept of repelling a mortal enemy with lethal force was considered trivial. In our enlightened times, it has become revolutionary, not to say, subversive. The New York Times (June 3) describes what happened next.

When Ms. Nayyera Haq, a spokeswoman for the Colorado Democrat John Salazar, heard Mr. Tancredo, she, in her own words, “realized something was very wrong”.

I understand Ms. Haq. She is a Muslim, and her loyalty belongs not to this infidel country, but to her religion. Her religion mandates jihad, a “holy” war whose openly stated purpose is to establish Islamic hegemony over the world. If the United States responds to Muslim attacks with appropriate force, jihad would end forever within a few hours, and Muslim dreams of ruling the world would end forever along with it. Obviously, Ms. Haq does not want that to happen. In order to prevent this and to render the United States defenseless, she organized the Congressional Muslim Staffers Association that includes 23 members, 22 of them Democrats. These numbers are symptomatic. They allow us to tell the party that represents enemies of the United States from the party of well-wishing, but incompetent fools. Let me remind you that we elected them all.

The goal of the new organization is to educate members of Congress about Islam. Apparently, it is possible for an infidel to reach such a deep understanding of that most peaceful of all Abrahamic faiths that he will welcome his own murder as long as it comes at the hands of a Muslim.

Frankly, I thought that in the post-9/11 world, every American, includшng умут our elected representatives, should know everything he or she needs to know about Islam. I outlined this simple knowledge in my response to Mr. Syed Hussain, who wrote me a letter about a year and a half ago, unsuccessfully trying to lure me with the promise of gifts of Allah that “money cannot buy”:

But let us suppose that I decide to accept your invitation and let you fill the gaping holes in my Islamic education. What can I hope to learn from you about Islam that's so vitally important for me to know? It seems to me that between the two of us, we know everything there is to know about Islam. I know what Islam does; you know how its demagogues justify its crimes. My knowledge can be expressed in two simple sentences:

If you oppose jihad, you are not a Muslim.

If you support jihad, you are my enemy.

Can you argue with that?

Whatever you may possibly add to this is nothing but enemy propaganda.

(A couple of weeks ago, Mr. Hussain sent me another letter. This time he attached one of those gifts of Allah that money cannot buy; it was a computer virus, a pretty old one, which did not survive the encounter with my anti-virus program. Too bad INS does not have its own version of anti-virus.)

Although I am confident that my two-sentence version of Islam covers everything an infidel needs to know about it, I wouldn't expect the honorable members of the US Congress to turn for their education in this delicate matter to an amateur like me. They could learn a lot from Dr. Andrew Bostom, Hugh Fitzgerald, Ibn Warraq, Dr. Wafa Sultan, Ali Sina and many other truly knowledgeable people. Instead, our elected representatives are about to turn to the Congressional Muslim Staffers Association. The New York Times gives us a fine sample of what they can expect:

The lack of knowledge about even the most basic aspects of Islam is widespread on Capitol Hill, Muslim staff members said. Many people do not know, for example, that Islam is an Abrahamic religion that shares roots with Christianity and Judaism.

“People say, ‘So you worship a different God?’” Mr. Aalim-Johnson said. “And I tell them, ‘Well, it's a lot like the difference between Judaism and Christianity. Christians give to Jesus more than we do. We say he is a messiah, but we don't give him divinity, but you do. That's where we part ways.’”

I love the root-sharing part. It is like Nazis claiming deep kinship with Jews because they spent the war at the same camp. The Congress, most likely, will once again capitulate by obediently absorbing this drivel, and this reminds me of the coming November elections.

They say that it is my civic duty as a citizen to vote. I say that it is their duty as out leaders to give me a viable choice of candidates. If they fail, I have no obligation to drag myself to the booth and decide which of the candidates disgusts me the least. I am no longer going to vote for the lesser of the two evils. I promise not to vote for any candidate, regardless of the party affiliation, who does not clearly state his or her opposition to Islam as an ideology of conquest and genocide. I am asking you to do the same.

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