Advice from an expert — and thoughts on Saudi Arabia

Sometimes, you stumble across an expert who has such manifest expertise, it might be a grave mistake to ignore him. And sometimes, if you’re not the stumbling kind, you’re lucky enough to have someone tell you how to find information from that expert. Thanks to Kevin, I can tell you what a reformed terrorist has to say about Israel’s current actions against Hezbollah in Lebanon. He says, “You go, guys.”

“An international peacekeeping force in Lebanon will change nothing, and we will have chosen shame.

“We [not only Israel but the threatened West] need to choose war once and for all to eradicate that system,” a former terrorist told NewsMax in an exclusive interview about the current Middle East crisis.

His name is Walid Shoebat and he is a man with a tough message.

He is also a former fundamentalist Islamic terrorist who, incredibly, reformed. He is now an author, lecturer, and unabashed friend of Israel.

He travels the United States repeating, in a modern context, Winston Churchill’s warning to those who would appease Hitler’s evil: “We have a choice between shame and war!”

Shoebat was born in Bethlehem. As a young man, he entered the belly of the beast and became a member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, participating in acts of terror and violence against Israel.

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But then in a life-changing event, his wife challenged him to study Israeli history and leave behind the Jew-hating indoctrination of his youth. He did and emerged from the “detoxification” experience with the fresh orientation that Israel is not a demon but simply perennially on the defensive against extremists.

The Arabic speaker, who now makes a study of the fanaticism that once enveloped his life, told NewsMax that the West had better abandon its political correctness and worries about world opinion and get down-and-dirty in the war on terrorism. And the West should start with taming the roots of that terrorism, the “mosque clergy” that preaches the hate.

“We have to treat the problem by going to the source of the problem, and that is what we are not doing,” Shoebat said. “We are trying to destroy terrorist infrastructure – after it has been established. We have to look at the root causes of terrorism and the root causes spring from the mosque clergy.” Shoebat explained that in his opinion there are thousands of hate-dispensing Islamic clergy, including hundreds in the United States:

“We can’t touch it because we don’t want to invade another religion,” he lamented. “We have to treat this dogma – not as a religion – but as a political dogma.”

All over the world, Shoebat wants laws enacted that just say – no more hate-mongering from so-called religious leaders: “Once a religion goes beyond its borders, it has to be treated differently. It has to be shut down. You have to arrest these clergy. You’ve got to throw them in jail.”

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He derided the European Union’s notion that if you can’t beat them, then include them, and maybe they will learn from us – from our way of life – to change their ways.

“This is a stupid thing,” he unabashedly concluded.

One of the things I really like about Shoebat’s advice is that, aside from stating the obvious, he attacks multiculturalism. I haven’t blogged about multiculturalism in a while, but those who have been following my blog know that it’s one of my pet peeves. I’m perfectly willing to respect cultures that are deserving of respect by any civilized norms, but I have no patience for pandering to cultures that have abandoned civilized norms.

By the way, this Shoebat story, to my mind, also goes some way towards answering Dagon’s question about Saudi Arabia. (I’m going to digress a bit here, but then I’ll wrap back around to Shoebat’s point.) In a comment, Dagon pointed out, rightly, that Saudi Arabia, along with sending out oil to the world, is also one of the primary exporters of some of the world’s most virulent Islamist thinking, and he wondered what I thought America could do to deal with that situation. The problem, of course, is that we’re dependent on the black gold flowing out of Saudi sand. To reduce the problem to a simple adage, when it comes to Saudi Arabia, we can’t cut off our nose to spite our face. While we know what the Saudis are doing, we can’t charge in to stop it without killing ourselves.

Of course, that doesn’t mean we can’t do anything. George Friedman, of Stratfor, believes that part of why Bush invaded Iraq was because it places America in a position where it’s breathing down Saudi Arabia’s neck. Certainly, Saudi Arabia has been more vigilant in going after Al Qaeda within its own borders. This may of course be because Al Qaeda is turning with increasing viciousness on S.A. After all the Saudi potentates never bought into the fundamentalist stuff themselves. It was their own deal with the devil, akin to the Lebanese deal with Hezbollah: we’ll fund you and let you do what you want, as long as you promise (a) to let the petrodollars flow and (b) to turn a blind eye to the fact that the parasitical Saudi royalty live lifes that have very little to do with Islamic dictates (aside from the plethora of wives).

Increased Saudi policing against Al Qaeda, however, may also be because the U.S. presence really is putting pressure on the Saudis. In addition, the US, by stirring up the slightly dormant Iranian hornets nest — that is, Iran got activated when it saw an opportunity in Iran — also put pressure on Saudi Arabia. The fact is, Iran is as dangerous to Saudi Arabia as it is to anything else in the region. That’s why we get interesting things like Saudi spokesmen denouncing Hezbollah. They do it, not for love of Israel, but for fear of Iran.

Another thing we can do is precisely what Shoebat suggests — shut down the hate speech. (See, I promised I’d get back to the Shoebat story.) I’m a true believer in the First Amendment, but I’m also a believer in Justice Holmes’ warning that the First Amendment does not stretch to falsely shouting “Fire” in a crowded theater. That is, freedom of speech does not extend to speech that is intended to destroy public safety. I think, therefore, that we need to — and have the Constitutional right to — police much more aggressively direct incitements to violence. Right now, as Shoebat states, we’re afraid to go anywhere near speech wrapped in a religious mantle. We have to overcome that fear and actually pay attention to what they’re saying — and when it’s actionable, we need to act.

Lastly, I would love to see us less dependent on foreign oil, which would free us from both Saudi and Venezuelan chains. Notwithstanding either Al Gore or the “No War For Oil” mantra, Americans don’t seem to have much desire to give up their oil loving habits. Clearly, we need a viable alternative fuel that will allow us our oil profligate ways, while shutting down the flow of petrodollars to people who really don’t like us. That would also serve as a solution for the burgeoning, polluting economies in India and China, both of which are singularly unimpressed by Al Gore’s message.

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