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May 22, 2013

John Thorne: They launched the 'Arab Spring' but now yearn for the good old days of a strongman

John Rosemond: 'Disciplinary math' adds up to parental successl

Warren Richey: Are prayers before public meetings OK? Supreme Court to decide
Rick Montgomery: Use of ADHD drugs as study aid raises concern on campuses

Brierley Wright, M.S., R.D.: 6 convincing reasons you should keep carbs in your diet

Eoin O'Carroll: Scientists examine nothing, find something

The Kosher Gourmet by Carole Kotkin: This soup is made from one of the great pleasures of spring: A wonderful pairing of rosy color and earthy tang

May 20, 2013

Richard A. Serrano: Is Meir Kahane's assassin now a changed man?

Hannan Adely: Town raises Palestinian flag at City Hall

Melissa Healy: Genetic copies of living people from embryos no longer science fiction
Morgan Housel: When smart investors do stupid things

Sharon Saloman, M.S., R.D.: Hunger games: Eat more, weigh less, without starving

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Jews Inducted into Rock Hall of Fame; Anton Yelchin co-stars in New "Trek" film; Kutcher (but not Kunis) visits Israel; Jewish TV Star Praises Jewish Rap Star

The Kosher Gourmet by Cathy Pollak: WARNING: This WALNUT CAKE WITH PRALINE FROSTING, perfect for afternoon coffee, is addicting

May 13, 2013

Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Why the giving of the document that would permanently change the world could only be done in desolation

David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church

Emily Alpert: Recession dragged down birth rates for less-educated women
Morgan Housel: The deep downside of home ownership

Peter Teffer: Will Dutch police soon be stalking cybercriminals on your computer?

Heidi McIndoo, M.S., R.D.: Meatless 'meat' can have its own set of problems

The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington: Celebrate! This must-try appetizer is delicate yet has depth of flavor: Corn-Leek Cakes with Caviar, Smoked Salmon and Creme Fraiche

May 10, 2013

Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be

Caroline B. Glick: The dirty little secret about Israel's Arabs

Mona Charen: Hawking's Moral Calculus: The man and the movement he embraces
Morgan Housel: The biggest retirement myth ever told

Sandi Doughton: Eyes may provide new insight into brain problems

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : The Great Gatsby's Jewish Ties; Jews in the "Time 100 list" List; People's Most Beautiful Women

The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer: A sweet-hot meal: Pear salsa spices up salmon

May 8, 2013

Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas

Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate

Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
Amanda Paulson: Study reveals sad truths about community colleges

Harvard Health Letters: Evidence weak that zinc, echinacea are beneficial

The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility

May 6, 2013

Edmund Sanders and Patrick J. McDonnell: Think Israel's objective in Syria is to weaken Assad or embolden the rebels? Think again

Brian Bennett: Israeli airstrikes may show weakness in Syrian defense

Michael Ollove: Millions of ex-felons, parolees and those on probation are about to be entitled to tax-payer paid health coverage
Karen Kaplan: Most men can skip PSA test for prostate cancer, urologists say

Kimberly Lankford: How to track down a lost life insurance policy

Dream of Mars exploration achievable, experts say

The Kosher Gourmet by Susan M. Selasky: EGGPLANT WRAPS are an easy, sumptuous and scrumptious meal

May 3, 2013

Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Human Courage and the Unavoidable, Disturbing Text

Steven Emerson: Attorney General Fights CAIR in Court, Lauds it in Public

Mediterranean diet helps beat dementia: study
Harvard Health Letters: When to be screened for a hearing problem

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Iron Man's Jewish Connections; Marc Maron's New TV Show; Martin Landau Grows Up with Israel; Shalom, Allan Arbus

The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington: A sweet surprise for Mother's Day dessert

May 1, 2013

Jonathan Rosenblum: An Improbable Journey to Orthodoxy

Jonathan Tobin: Blame Obama, Not Israel for Syria Push

Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Halena M. Gazelka, M.D.: Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: What you need to know about implanted pain relief devices

Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine

Jessica Shugart: When it comes to math, MRIs may be better than IQs

The Kosher Gourmet by Mario Batali: The celebrated chef on how high-maintenance ASPARAGUS RISOTTO need not be

April 29, 2013

Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust

Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?

Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Morgan Housel: He's rich, smart and old: Listen to him

Thomas Salinas, D.D.S.: Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: The safety of amalgam fillings

Harvard Health Letters: Tomatoes and stroke protection

Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA

The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington: Swing into spring with lemon cream pie

April 26, 2013

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: The world is a mirror

Caroline B. Glick: Time to confront Obama

Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Kimberly Lankford: New strategies ease pain of paying for long-term care insurance

Howard LeWine, M.D.: Ask the Harvard Experts: Too much ibuprofen?

Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom: Jewish Major Leaguers, 2013; New Movies and Comedy Show; Shalom, 'Lumpy' (Leave it to Beaver)

The Kosher Gourmet by Emily Ho : A bright and cheerful salad to herald the warmer months ahead

April 24, 2013

Steven Emerson: Boston Bomber Exposes Islamist Secret

Morgan Housel Admit it: No one has any idea what's going on
Harvard Health Letters: Can you get headaches from headache medication?

Kerri-Ann Jennings, M.S., R.D.: How to easily get more Omega-3s in your diet

Melissa Healy: Pot in a pill: All the pain relief without the smoke

The Kosher Gourmet by Susan Russo: Chipotle Chili Butternut Squash Soup is bold, zesty, hot

April 22, 2013

Ken Dilanian: Counterterrorism's future is unclear

US man departing country arrested on terror charges
Barbara Williams: An unorthodox but growing treatment in a 9-year-old's battle against cancer

P.J. Skerrett, M.D.: How to recognize a good whole grain product

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom: Teen actor Jonah Bobo in New Flick: Hunky James Wolk on Mad Men; Erich Segal's Daughter Writes Prize-Winning Jewish Novel


Jewish World Review August 22, 2005 / 17 Av, 5765

Getting back to Bush basics

By Diana West


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | It's not enough to say that world affairs are in a crazy state, and leave it at that — which is exactly what I did last week in outlining how the United States is effectively boosting the spread of sharia law and the Iranian sphere of influence in the Middle East. It's easy to say this is nuts. But what do we do now?


It's time to get back to basics. And by basics, I mean getting back to First Term W, back to when the president's strategy to defend and protect the United States was to take military action against terrorists and the nations that sponsor them. By unfortunate contrast, the security strategy of Second Term W is best described as bringing to these same terrorists and the nations that sponsor them universal suffrage. Getting back to Bush basics requires a re-reckoning of what and why we fight — and, just as important, for what and why we don't fight.


Do we fight to spread democracy? Or do we fight to stop jihad? Far better to fight to stop jihad. Second Term W believes democratic principles will neutralize jihad — a.k.a. "extremism" in the strangled parlance of political correctness. It may not be polite to notice, but the nasty reality is that jihad is neutralizing democratic principles. The fact the administration must reckon with is that the concept of human rights — the ideal of liberty and justice for all — isn't a natural byproduct of majority rule. Islamic terrorists still support Islamic terrorism, even when, as in the Palestinian Authority or Lebanon, they are democratically elected; and Islamic sharia erodes human rights, even when, as in Afghanistan and likely Iraq, it is implicitly mandated by a constitution.


It's time for the administration to consider the possibility that the democractic process alone — constitutions, legislatures, ballot boxes — doesn't result in Jeffersonian democracy. Such a re-reckoning doesn't mean abandoning Iraq. But it does mean reordering our goals. Forget the Iraqi constitution for now. More important is a single-minded effort to eradicate the death squads that destabilize the country and threaten to exhaust our staying power. In getting back to Bush basics, that means taking action against the nations that sponsor these terrorists: Iran, for instance.


Tragically for the human race, the strategy articulated by First Term W is a novel, never-before-implemented doctrine. Re-reading Claire Sterling's "The Terror Network" (Holt, Rinehart and Winston), a 1980 work of careful analysis that unraveled the Soviet-sponsored tangle of terrorists from the Baader-Meinhof Gang (now defunct) to various Palestinian terror groups (now approaching statehood), drives home the shocking fact that throughout the 1970s — the first real "fright decade" of terrorist kidnappings, assassinations, embassy takeovers and bombings designed to destabilize mainly Europe, often in the name of Palestinianism — the Western democracies never took action against, never even mentioned the names of, terrorism's state sponsors.


This was the time of the Cold War, and a craven policy of "soft neutrality" toward the terror masters in the Kremlin and its proxies prevailed.

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More astonishing, the democracies never took action against the extensive network of martial training camps that turned out tens of thousands of deadly terrorists, not only in the Soviet Union and the Eastern European "bloc" countries, but also in Cuba, Libya, Algeria, Syria, Lebanon, South Yemen and North Korea. These camps for killers — camps for killing Western democracy — functioned freely under clear skies never penetrated by a NATO bomber. This was a moral surrender that undermined Western civilization to an incalculable extent. Nothing really changed (Ronald Reagan's one-time bombing of Libya notwithstanding) until Sept. 11 and George W. Bush.


This little history lesson should ring a bell, particularly in light of Time magazine's report about how Iran has marched its Revolutionary Guard units into Iraq to kill Americans — units that, according to Time, train in Iraq's Sadr City district, Lebanon and "another country" (very possibly diplospeak for Iran). Putting this together with a most encouraging discussion of America's massive Air Force potential against proto-nuclear Iran from The Guardian (flagged by the blog View from the Right) makes me wonder: Can Iraq ever be stabilized without de-fanging Iran? Shouldn't there be, for starters, a big bull's-eye on these Iranian training camps?


Such questions need addressing. It's not enough for Donald Rumsfeld to glancingly refer to, in an interview, Iranian interference in Iraq, or for the president to let drop that "all options are on the table" regarding Iran's compliance with international nuclear regulation. We need to be educated, not left wondering in what sounds like pusillanimous silence. We need to be prepared. We need First Term W.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

JWR contributor Diana West is a columnist and editorial writer for the Washington Times. Comment by clicking here.

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