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Sept. 5, 2008

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: What does 'doing the right thing' entail?

Caroline B. Glick: The master strategist

Sept. 4, 2008

Ron Kampeas: Biden, Palin take lead in clash on Mideast issues

Bruce Dancis: With humor as their weapon, the Three Stooges took on Hitler

Sept. 3, 2008

Rabbi S. Binyomin Ginsberg: Productive school years don't just happen

The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer: Quick lamb stew serves up flavors of India

Sept. 2, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Costly Advice

Caroline B. Glick: Calling Israel's bluff

JWisdom: Wandering in Wonder by Rabbi Mordechai Becher

August 29, 2008

Rabbi Berel Wein: 20/20 sightlessness

Caroline B. Glick: When history is not repeated

JWisdom: Blessed or Cursed: It's Really Up to You by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

August 28, 2008

Steve Lipman: A Comeback for the 'Jewish Jordan'

Jeffrey Weiss: Researcher reports 'intriguing' diabetes breakthrough

August 27, 2008

Rabbi Zecharya Greenwald: Removing the perfectionist's mask

The Kosher Gourmet by Emily Nunn: Summer harvest linguine

JWisdom:: The Missing Link in Spiritual Life by Rabbi David Aaron

August 26, 2008

Yaffa Ganz: Grandma gets lessons in staying cool

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: The Dems' 'soft' jihadist

JWisdom:: Today: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: Plague of indifference

August 25, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q: A friend is bearing a silly grudge from a supposed wrong. What recourse do I have?

Daniel Pipes: Barack Obama through Muslim Eyes

JWisdom:: The knowledge you need to overcome your insecurities by Malka Schulman

August 22, 2008

Rabbi Berel Wein: Life's essential ingredient

Caroline B. Glick: Dominos anyone?

JWisdom:: Actually, Do Sweat the Small Stuff! by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

August 21, 2008

Today in Biblical History by Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Popularization of Kabbalah: 20 Menachem-Av 1558 CE

Jonathan Rosenblum: Lessons from the Beyond

JWisdom: : The Olympian within is rooting for you -- yes, you! –- to go for the gold

August 20, 2008

Jonathan Tobin: Misleading Platform Platitudes

The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer: Chicken Salad with Asian Dressing

JWisdom: The Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith: America's Defense of the Jews --- Until WWII by Rabbi Nosson Scherman

August 19, 2008

Dennis Prager: If the Almighty doesn't exist

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Obama's Islamist problem has nothing to do with his upbringing

JWisdom: Think your life is messed up? by Rabbi David Aaron

August 18, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Business with Friends

Diana West: Roars About Russia, Bare Whispers About Islam

JWisdom: Relationship agony: The real cause by Malka Schulman

August 15, 2008

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: To love the Divine

Caroline B. Glick: Georgia, Israel, and the nature of man

JWisdom: The Truly Righteous Don't Demand Entitlements by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

August 14, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Confessions of broken spirit

Libby Lazewnik: The Numbers Game

JWisdom: Six Questions You'll Be Asked in Heaven? - Uh - Let's Just Take One for Now! by Gavriel Aryeh Sanders

August 13, 2008

Jonathan Tobin: Georgia should be on their minds

The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer: Go Greek: Pair flavorful lamb kebabs with a hearty salad

JWisdom: Human hybrids aren't science fiction by Rabbi David Aaron

August 12, 2008

Rabbi Avi Shafran: Bless us

Daniel Pipes: The West's Islamist Infiltrators

JWisdom: From Sadness to Gladness: The Route from Tisha b'Av to Rosh Hashana by Rabbi Mordechai Becher

August 11, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: A Jewish view on fair pricing

Caroline B. Glick: Ignoring failure in Gaza

JWisdom: 'Communication' Is Not The Answer! by Malka Schulman

August 7, 2008

Rabbi David Gutterman: A Continuing Story With a Sustaining Goal

Rabbi Berel Wein: Mourning and morning

JWisdom: Yes, we are still in exile by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

August 6, 2008

David Ashenfelter: Government made military engineer's life a living hell because of his faith, Defense Department report documents

Jonathan Tobin: Speak the Truth; Defeat the Lies

JWisdom: Jewish Spirituality: Fusion or Confusion? by Rabbi David Aaron

August 5, 2008

Chris Leppek: Church/state wall beginning to crumble?

Paul Greenberg: Exit Olmert (no encore, please)

JWisdom: Serenity: Make the commitment by Rabbi Zelig Pliskin (Read by Gavriel Sanders)

August 4, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Am I taking advantage of another's psychological quirk?

Andrew Silow-Carroll: A black and a Jew walk into the White House…

JWisdom: The Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith: Edward R. Morrow visits the ‘living dead’ by Rabbi Nosson Scherman

March 22, 2007

J-Rhythms with Avraham Rosenblum: JWR's cutting-edge music program showcasing performers -- singers, song writers, musicians, and bands -- who learn and live the Torah lifestyle (OUR NEWEST IGODCAST !)

Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Jan. 3, 2007 / 13 Teves, 5767

A tale of three leaders

By Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | This is a tale of three men, all prominent figures on the world stage. Two of them — Saddam Hussein and former President Gerald Ford — have died in recent days; the third, President George W. Bush, is struggling for his political life. How successful Mr. Bush is in recasting and reinvigorating his wartime presidency will depend, in part, on the lessons he draws publicly from the two lately departed.


Of course, the former Iraqi despot and the one-time American president lived very different lives and, appropriately, came to very different ends. Saddam's was dancing from a gallows, in the company of hangmen and witnesses who expressed the sentiment of millions of Iraqis and other freedom-loving peoples in damning him to hellfire. Mr. Ford's demise came quietly in his sleep, surrounded by his loved ones and remembered fondly by the nation he served for decades in war and peace.


Still, the two men constitute bookends of a sort for a Mr. Bush finalizing the strategy he will shortly present for winning the War for the Free World — a war that did not begin and will not end in Iraq, especially if the United States were to be seen as losing there.


There is but one reason that the late "Butcher of Baghdad" and his tyrannical regime are no more, and with them the threat they once posed to Saddam's people, their neighbors — and, yes — to us: Civilized nations, led forcefully by President Bush, acted to remove him from power and thereby enabled free Iraqis to bring him to justice.


By contrast, a year after the liberation of Iraq, Mr. Ford told the Washington Post's Bob Woodward (in an interview embargoed until after the former president's death), "I don't think I would have gone to war [with Iraq]." According to Woodward, his ninety-two-year-old subject declared: "Well, I can understand the theory of wanting to free people....I just don't think we should go hellfire damnation around the globe freeing people, unless it is directly related to our own national security."


Of course, Mr. Bush and those of us who supported his efforts to free the Iraqi people would argue that doing so was indeed "directly related to our national security." The fact-finding Iraq Survey Group determined Saddam was continuing to produce small quantities of chemical and biological agent right up to the end and intended to ship them "in aerosol cans and perfume sprayers" to the U.S. and Europe. The death toll created by such a state-sponsored acts of terror could have been horrific.


A no less compelling case can be made that our national security would be well-served should dangerous despots like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Ali Khameni of Iran and North Korea's Kim Jong Il were also hung by the neck until dead. It should be the object of American policy to help the long-suffering people of those two countries bring about regime changes that would lead to justice being served on such individuals.


We should do so not out of some fuzzy moral sentiment of the kind often sneeringly dismissed by so-called "foreign policy realists" like the Ford Administration's Brent Scowcroft and James Baker. Rather, we should be working to bring about regime change in Iran and North Korea because it is vital to American security that tyrants who have made no secret of their wish to hurt this country — as Ahmadinejad likes to put it, "a world without America is not only desirable, but achievable" — are as unable to act on their ambitions as Saddam Hussein.


The alternative of allowing these threats further to metastasize is to ensure not only that the tyrannies in Tehran and Pyongyang be more dangerous in the future. They will help still other threats to become more formidable, as well.


Accordingly, when President Bush addresses the nation in the days ahead, laying out his vision for "the way forward," he must explicitly remind all of us that we are in a war that is not confined to Iraq. If he chooses to "surge" into Iraq more troops, their mission must be part of a larger plan for defeating Iranian activities and proxies in that country, and working to rebuild what Tehran has helped destroy there.


At the same time, Mr. Bush must firmly reject the views of "stability" and accommodation with despotic regimes that we associate with President Ford's time in office. Assisting the peoples of Iran and North Korea to end (with apologies to Mr. Ford) their "long national nightmares" inflicted by the Islamofascist mullahs and the Stalinist Kim dynasty, respectively, is essential to the survival of the Free World's.


President Bush should provide such assistance in the comprehensive way his predecessor pursued the downfall of Soviet Communism — in sharp contrast to the Ford Administration which effectively sought to perpetuate it via "détente." In fact, Reaganesque economic and financial measures led by the Treasury Department's Under Secretary Stuart Levey are already having a salutary effect by constricting the cash-flow of both Tehran and Pyongyang. These steps need to be complemented by political warfare initiatives, information operations, expanded intelligence activity and, as appropriate, covert action.


In the spirit of "not a Ford but" the Gipper, and with a view to ensuring that more tyrants meet Saddam's fate, George Bush should ask the Nation: "If not we, who? If not now, when?"


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 Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. heads the Center for Security Policy. Comments by clicking here.

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"War Footing: 10 Steps America Must Take to Prevail in the War for the Free World"  

America has been at war for years, but until now, it has not been clear with whom or precisely for what. And we have not been using the full resources we need to win.

With the publication of War Footing, lead-authored by Frank Gaffney, it not only becomes clear who the enemy is and how high the stakes are, but also exactly how we can prevail.

War Footing shows that we are engaged in nothing less than a War for the Free World. This is a fight to the death with Islamofascists, Muslim extremists driven by a totalitarian political ideology that, like Nazism or Communism before it, is determined to destroy freedom and the people who love it. Sales help fund JWR.

© 2006, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.

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