Daniel Greenfield / Sultan Knish Articles at DanielGreenfield.org

The extremist group carved out territory for its utopian state through ruthless brutality and a steady flow of international recruits who arrived believing that the new terror state represented the fulfillment of their belief system. The world was horrified as the radicals who had seized towns and cities showed off severed heads and mutilated bodies, killed hostages and openly threatened the world. The Americans, British and French intervened hoping to end the reign of terror and restore stability to the region. But their mission had no clear commitment behind it. The President of the United States, a Democrat often accused of putting transnational idealism over national interests, did not believe that the terror group could be defeated. While he did not agree with its brutal tactics, he shared some of its ideological worldview and was reluctant to attack it. His credo was democracy and the terror group had enough popular support to win elections. Under pressure from Britain and

Naval Base Bombed, Shinto Worshipers Fear Backlash - New York Times - December 8 1941 A day after planes passed over their peaceful village on the way to attack the Naval Station at Pearl Harbor, local fishermen are still picking up the pieces. "I don't know what any of this is about," a man who would only give his name as Paji said, holding the remains of a net which he had used to earn a living. "All I know is that the killing has to stop." In Washington, government officials urged the public to stay calm and not to jump to any conclusions warning that such reactions might play into the hands of the militant extremists responsible for the attack. Early copies of President Roosevelt's upcoming speech to Congress likewise warn the American public of the dangers of overreaction. "We are not at war with Japan," it says. "We are at war with a tiny handful of extremists who are attempting to drag the Japanese people into a conflict. But

A candle is a brief flare of light. A wick dipped in oil burns and then goes out again. The light of Chanukah appears to follow the same narrative. Briefly there is light and warmth and then darkness again. Out of the exile of Babylon, the handful that returned to resettle and rebuild the land faced the might of new empires. The Jews who returned from the exile of one evil empire some twenty-six hundred years ago were forced to decide whether they would be a people with their own faith and history, or the colony of another empire, with its history and beliefs. Jerusalem's wealthy elites threw in their lot with the empire and its ways. But out in the rural heartland where the old ways where still kept, a spark flared to life. Modi'in. Maccabee. And so war came between the handfuls of Jewish Maccabee partisans and the armies of Antiochus IV’s Selecuid empire. A war that had its echoes in the past and would have it again in the future as lightly armed and untrained ar

A few weeks before Syed Farook went on his ritual killing spree in San Bernardino, he got into an argument about Islam with one of the co-workers he later murdered. The co-worker said that Islam wasn't peaceful. Farook said it was. Like most Islamic theological arguments, this was one was settled with bombs and bullets. The motive is officially still unknown. Obama said it might be terrorism or a workplace thing. His laughably corrupt Attorney General, Loretta Lynch said, "We don't know if this was workplace rage or something larger or a combination of both." The kind of workplace rage that leads a couple to assemble a small army's worth of firepower, some bombs and tactical gear, destroy their cell phones and carry out a massacre all within 20 minutes. This story is brought to you by the same people who insisted that the assault on the Benghazi compound conducted with heavy firepower was really a spontaneous movie review. Farook's father said, “He

Syria is a terror state. It didn’t become that way overnight because of the Arab Spring or the Iraq War. Its people are not the victims of American foreign policy, Islamic militancy or any of the other fashionable excuses. They supported Islamic terrorism. Millions of them still do. They are not the Jews fleeing a Nazi Holocaust. They are the Nazis trying to relocate from a bombed out Berlin. These are the cold hard facts. ISIS took over parts of Syria because its government willingly allied with it to help its terrorists kill Americans in Iraq. That support for Al Qaeda helped lead to the civil war tearing the country apart. The Syrians were not helpless, apathetic pawns in this fight. They supported Islamic terrorism. A 2007 poll showed that 77% of Syrians supported financing Islamic terrorists including Hamas and the Iraqi fighters who evolved into ISIS. Less than 10% of Syrians opposed their terrorism. Why did Syrians support Islamic terrorism? Because they hated Am

When we celebrate Thanksgiving, after being thankful for family and friends, for health and comfort, for food and shelter; we shouldn't forget to be thankful for the left. There is no light without darkness and without evil, the good often fails to find their own voice. It is in the presence of slavery that we remember the worth of freedom. Men and nations are forged in war; not only the war of shell and shot, but the war of ideas. War teaches us to fight for what we have. Wars of ideas teach us to stand up for what we believe. It is because conservatives are basically hopeful and confident that we are also prone to extremes of despair. Too many us were shocked at the decline of our society because of our great confidence in it. The faith that conservatives have in America makes them vulnerable to being crushed by the latest victory of the left. I have seen far too much despair and defeatism, too many comments that suggest there is no hope for America and the only thing lef

Last month, French President Francois Hollande ridiculed the idea that the massive numbers of Muslim migrants entering his country were any kind of threat. “Those who argue that we are being invaded are manipulators and falsifiers, who do this only for political reasons, to scare,” the left-wing politician huffed. And then the pudgy little Socialist had to be rapidly evacuated from France’s national soccer stadium after one of those refugees blew himself up trying to reach Monsieur le Président, and Merkel’s Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Minister Steinmeier had urged rejecting “barriers, fences” when it came to the Muslim migrants, but it was a barrier and the security in front of it that kept one of his beloved refugees from reaching him. The ordinary people who didn’t have and don’t have the security measures that protect Hollande and Steinemeier died in Paris, blown up and gunned down where they sat, lay and stood. Hollande's rhetoric is familiar. You can

Last year at a NATO summit, Obama explicitly disavowed the idea of containing ISIS. "You can't contain an organization that is running roughshod through that much territory, causing that much havoc, displacing that many people, killing that many innocents, enslaving that many women," he said. Instead he argued, "The goal has to be to dismantle them." Just before the Paris massacre, Obama shifted back to containment. “From the start, our goal has been first to contain them, and we have contained them,” he said. Pay no attention to what he said last year. There’s a new message now. Last year Obama was vowing to destroy ISIS. Now he had settled for containing them. And he couldn’t even manage that. ISIS has expanded into Libya and Yemen. It struck deep into the heart of Europe as one of its refugee suicide bombers appeared to have targeted the President of France and the Foreign Minister of Germany. That’s the opposite of a terrorist organization that had b

"He it is who has sent His Messenger (Mohammed) with guidance and the religion of truth (Islam) to make it victorious over all religions even though the infidels may resist." Koran 61:9 Islamic violence is a religious problem. Islam derives meaning from physical supremacy, so war becomes an act of faith. To believe in Islam, is to have faith that it will conquer the entire world. And to be a true Muslim, is to feel called to aid in that global conquest, whether by providing money to the Jihadists or to become a Jihadist. The fulfillment of Islam depends on the subjugation of non-Muslims so that violence against non-Muslims become the essence of religion. When Hamas states that , “Killing Jews is worship that draws us close to Allah” or the ISIS rapists tell Yazidi girls that rape "draws them closer to Allah", they really do mean it. They are not perverting a great religion, as our politicians claim, they are living it. Everything they do is based on