Daniel Greenfield / Sultan Knish Articles at DanielGreenfield.org

The one thing that Hagel, Kerry and Brennan all have in common, besides being Washington insiders, is that they all agree that terrorism is basically a misunderstanding. All three fancy themselves men of the world who know more than the peasants back home because they have spent a few days being shepherded through high level meetings in Brussels, Riyadh and Beijing. They have spent decades marinating in talking points and they know, for example, that terrorism is due to poverty and that Islamic terrorists aren't really Muslim, they just try to convince us that they are to trick us into going to war with Islam. Most of all they know that we can't beat the terrorists on the battlefield, all we can hope to do is wage a war for their hearts and minds, empowering moderates by resolving grievances until the extremists are discredited and peace reigns on earth. Every word of it is nonsense, but national policy runs on nonsense. In the last four years the government has run massi

The story of Islam is a murder mystery. It's not the kind of murder mystery where you wonder who did it, but when it will end. The detective peering with his magnifying glass at a scrap of fiber left behind on the carpet or a curly piece of hair caught in the door isn't really trying to sort out who did it. He knows who did it. The great mystery that consumes him is how to make the killer stop. This isn't a story about right and wrong. Right and wrong aren't serious propositions in the arid deserts where the murderer comes from. Right is power. Wrong is not having power. A man is right because he has power. A woman is wrong because she doesn't. A Muslim is right because he has power. A Christian is wrong because he doesn't. When a woman has power and a man doesn't, then the man has been dishonored. When a Christian has power and a Muslim doesn't, then the Muslim has been dishonored. There is only one answer for dishonor, death. Kill the one who has

When professional writers get together what they talk about are not the great ideas that some of their readers imagine, but mostly the mundane business of their work; the good and bad reviews, the writers, agents and editors they hate and those they like, and the relationships in their incestuous industry. Joseph Anton, Salman Rushdie's memoir of his years in hiding, is such a collection of industry talk, full of the good and bad reviews he received, the famous people he attended parties with and his opinion of every writer, lover and editor he came in contact with. There are plenty of meditations on his years in hiding and his relationship with his service branch protectors, but Rushdie is a creature of the publishing industry and the literary circles that made him famous and kept him influential, and the book is more about that world than it is about the reasons he went into hiding and stayed in hiding. All biography is at its heart fiction and Joseph Anton is a triumphant

There have been suggestions floating around that some of the bigger donors should buy a newspaper, a television network or a women's magazine to counter the media's grip. There was a time when a powerful media outlet could be bought or created by conservative owners and function and wield influence over national policy. Time Magazine in the Luce era is one example. But that was when the media was a patchwork of publications and radio stations where powerful owners often set the tone. Today the media is more of an integrated beast that is mostly localized on the internet. It's a giant echo chamber for talking points developed by left-wing think tanks and memes popularized by social media mobs. NBC News these days is less relevant than Buzzfeed. You could buy NBC News, but then what would you have? A white elephant operation whose dwindling viewers are older and either share its biases or don't care. If it shifted to the right, it would have exactly the same image a

Sending women into combat, like the end of the ban on official homosexuality, has been met with worried remarks about its impact on the "warrior culture". But the new military that the left has been building for some time now is not interested in warriors; it wants peacekeepers. The old army fought for a nation. The new one fights for vague concepts such as human rights or international law. Its goals are as intangible as those of the ideology it serves. It doesn't fight actual enemies, but concepts and social problems. It fights against climate change, poverty and obesity. It fights for education, tolerance and the right of everyone to the gender of their choice. It isn't really the army, it's the hall monitors of the United Nations, the State Department, NATO and every liberal group on the planet. Their ideal new soldier is not a warrior; he speaks three languages, appears non-threatening and can direct refugees, hand out aid to them and quickly pic

 GOING FOR BROKE According to Hillary Clinton’s long-delayed Benghazigate testimony, the State Department just did not have enough money to provide security for a mission in one of the most dangerous places in the world. It did however have 16 million dollars to spend on 2,500 kindle book readers at the drastically inflated price of $6,600 per device. It had $79,000 to spend on Obama’s books and $20,000 on a portrait of Obama. The US Embassy had $150,000 to spend on a book about the ambassador’s residence. There was $4.5 for art in embassies, but no money for Benghazi security. THE WAR IS OVER, WE LOST Mullah Baradar’s capture by the CIA in coordination with the ISI was really the only serious victory won against the Taliban in recent years. While Baradar is often referred to as second-in-command of the Taliban, with Mullah Omar’s whereabouts and aliveness still uncertain, he was in practice the leader of the Taliban. Now Pakistan plans to release all Taliban prisoners, in

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived back in the Senate, after dodging a few falling safes, multiple banana peels and an ornery dog named Henry, to give a carefully prepared histrionic rant which can be summed up, "I do care a lot" and "None of this was my fault" and "What difference at this point does it make?" The last isn't a sarcastic restatement. It's what she actually said. It might make a difference to a Coptic Christian whose trailer was blamed by the leader of the free world for a series of Al Qaeda attacks against American diplomatic facilities and who was sent to prison on the orders of members of the administration. That fellow of many names, now serving a year in prison, is the only one to actually get locked up. The ringleader of the attack walks the streets of Benghazi freely. A drone could make short work of him, but no drones are coming his way. Instead a car bomb, planted by Libyan enemies nearly took him out. Some o