The following is a book review by Debbie cross posted from Right Truth.

Over the life of Right Truth and prior to the inception of Right Truth Book Club, I have read, reviewed and recommended many books. I can say without reservation that The Gathering Storm by W.C. is a MUST READ for every person concerned about Islamic terrorism. I think we should send a copy of this eBook to the White House!

According to W.C., we have not begun to fight this war, we have not even been brave enough to accurately identify the enemy, out of fear we may offend someone. He notes some want to conduct the war as a “criminal investigation” while others see it as a war “against the acts of terror.” He believes both are wrong and what we are involved in now is only a “prelude to the real war.”

To quote former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld:“Churchill saw that there was a storm gathering, but there were people in Europe who didn’t believe it and who didn’t take the periodic storm clouds and the squalls as a real threat. They thought they were transitory and, of course, paid an enormous penalty in treasure and life for their failure to understand the nature of that threat. I worry we are in a gathering storm and we do not, as a society, accept it. Many of the elites of our society, the key opinion leaders, are unwilling or unable to accept what an awful lot of people believe to be the case. The penalty for being wrong can be enormous.”

We are fighting Jihadists who have one goal, “… imposing peacefully or violently the rule of Shariah law upon the world.” We have two choices — surrender or Victory. It’s that simple, and that complicated all at the same time. The Jihadists can impose their laws upon us by force or they can “change our laws.” Remind you of any current events or Islamic groups?

The enemy uses “intimidation, infiltration and disinformation tactics” and the “appeasers and apologists” defend and aid the enemy. Those would be “what Lenin called ‘Useful Idiots’,” according to W.C. The Gathering Storm is packed full of facts, figures, resources, history. You will not want to miss one page in this book.

According to Walid Shoebat in the Forward, “This book “is definitely void of any politically correct language, censorship, spin, double-talk, or complex vocabulary.” … And “explains in detail the chilling prognosis — radical Islam is even more of a threat than Nazi Germany and has so many parallels in it‘s ideology.: … “Reading The Gathering Storm will leave us with only two choices – surrender or Victory.”

I believe that there is only one choice, Victory! However, the intimidation, infiltration and disinformation tactics are sometimes so subtle that we let them slide right by us. It brings to mind the old vaudeville skit used in the Three Stooges movie, “Gents Without Cents” made in 1944 and Abbott and Costello movie entitled “Lost in A Harem”: “Slowly I turned, step by step, inch by inch…I took my revenge.”

That is the premise the Jihadists are working under right here in the United States. They are patient, subtle, effective, and will use any means to reach their goal.

The Gathering Storm is an eBook, easy to purchase, download, and easy to read. Price $6.95, order here. Jacket Notes are by Always on Watch Two

Dr. Walid Phares describes his book ‘Future Jihad,’ which I am currently reading and am riveted by it.

My first objective was to explain basic facts to the international public community: That there was an ideological current out there, aiming at world domination, which he defined as “Jihadism.” The latter comes from two trees, one is Salafi the other is Khomeinist. The Salafists, formed in Sunni environment, are inspired by middle ages doctrinaires and have emerged in modern times as Wahabis, Muslim Brotherhoods, Takfiris, Deobandis, Tablighi and others. They want the reestablishment of a modern day Caliphate. They feel they are the heirs of 14 centuries of history and reject modern international law. The Khumeinists are the Jihadists who emerged in the Shiia community. They aim at establishing an Imamate to reunify all Muslims under their guidance in pursuit of Jihad.

The books’ second objective was to show how Jihadists view the world, its modern history, its international relations, its wars, the various civilizations and how they adapt their strategies to modernity. Chapters three, seven, eight and nine were dedicated to show the readers how the Jihadists viewed the 20th century, WWII, the cold war, the choices they made and the different options they developed as Salafists, Wahabis, Khumeinists, regarding the Soviets, Israel, the West, and the Muslim regions. The bottom line was to show that there were no sheer emotional and simplistic reactions to crisis, but rather focused, integrated, and complex policies and strategic objectives. This assertion goes against the dominant theories of the past, which never went away yet, that in essence Islamist attitudes are created by Western policies. Future Jihad precisely argues otherwise: Jihadi ideologies are sui generis. They were developed before current international relations were formalized in laws, survived the latter and have projected their aims regardless of Western or non-Western policies. Certainly, diplomatic, economic and military acts by greater and small powers impact the evolution, decisions and plans of the Islamists. Policies affect other policies, but Jihadism and its various trees and branches, is a being of its own. It relates to the evolution of political Islam historically and can only be explained from inside out.

The third objective of the book was to describe the Jihadi war against the Soviet Union during the Cold War and against the United States and some of its allies after the cold war, leading to 9/11 and beyond.

The final objective in producing Future Jihad was an attempt to analyze the specific conflict between al Qaeda and the United States. In chapter twelve I examined the root causes of America ‘s failure showing that the breaches were not simple security flaws but rather systemic malfunctioning at the national security level. In Chapter thirteen, I suggested a model of what could have been a historically successful Jihadist offensive worldwide and its consequences in the US had a 9/11 of a greater dimension occurred years later instead.

The fifth objective was to offer modest guidelines and prescriptions to face off with the growing dangers of Salafi and Khomeinist ideologically based terrorism. While geopolitical threats to regional and world peace come from classical radical regimes, such as Tehran’s and to a certain extent Damascus’ and Khartoum’s, another type of threats is represented by the capacity of Jihadi networks to transform moderate or stable Muslim Governments into radical ones, with a full use of their resources.

Finally I made another set of recommendations to educate the public, the Government’s agencies and the media as to the mind, visions, strategies and if possible the tactics of the Jihadists. The prescription aimed at developing a “global resistance” against Jihad-Terrorism, both within the Arab Muslim world and within the international community. I am glad to announce that the paperback Future Jihad: Terrorist Strategies against the West is out in English and Spanish. Versions in other languages are expected in the near future.

I’ve yet to comment upon former President Bill Clinton’s tireade of ‘Fox News Sunday’ for a variety of reasons, namely because debating the past is as intellectual as trying to figure out if there is a personality trait that Coca-Cola drinkers have that Dr. Pepper drinkers don’t have.  In terms of the history of the United States pre-9/11, the facts are well presented and the political positioning done by Clinton during the interview is a stark reminder of why he was impeached in the first place.

The man doesn’t know how to tell the truth and he doesn’t know how to take his lumps; perhaps his pride gets in the way as it does with a good majority of us (as least us men).  Pecan pie or not, Clinton’s fact bending is sure to remind us all that’s what he is best known for and why Al Gore ran away from him in the election of 2000.

Every single American should take a lump for 9/11.  For that matter, every single person across the globe should too.  No one fully saw it coming outside the comfy confines of Tora Bora.  Some of us knew an attack would be forthcoming, but no one knew what Al Qaida had planned.  Al Qaida was certainly a growing threat and one that was not comprehended by all U.S. politicians prior to 9/11.  I contend it’s still not fully comprehended, and that’s what is so troubling.

Because one political party seeks to gain seats in the U.S. House and Senate through the ultimate strategy of attacking the Bush White House and attacking Bush’s strongest issue, fighting terrorism, to secure their own political hide, they’ve made these discussions newsworthy and available for criticism.  The events over the weekend have made reading Jim Geraghty’s book ‘Voting to Kill‘ even more interesting.

It’s not necessarily the Democratic Party who I don’t believe comes close to understanding the threat, but it’s that the American Left has no clue who we are up against, even more so than the rest of Americans who don’t read this site or others like it.   Take for instance the following quote by Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohammedou (apparently his parents wanted to really push his Islamic faith upon him) who is the Associate Director of the Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research at Harvard University (p. 242).

Sept. 11 was not an unprovoked, gatuitous act . . . Though dismissed widely, the best strategy for the United States may well be to acknowledge and address the collective reasons in which Al Qaeda has been true to its word in announcing and implementing its strategy for over a decade.  It is likely to be true to its word in the future and cease hostilities against the United States, and indeed bring an end to the war it declared in 1996 and 1998, in return from some degree of satisfaction regarding its grievances.

Mohammedou might not be a part of the American Left even though his position within Harvard certainly suggests otherwise, but it’s this thought that presides over us all.  So what are Al Qaida’s grievances?  U.S. soldiers in Saudi Arabia, support for Israel, support for dictators, ‘soaking’ the Middle East out of resources (i.e. world trade), our culture of tolerance, the U.S. is not an Islamic nation, Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Kashmir and any other grievance Al Qaida will throw out there for debate.

(more…)

Unpartisan.com Political News and Blog Aggregator linked with Rice Challenges Clinton's Statements on Anti-Terror Record...

I received a copy of Jim Geraghty’s new book Voting to Kill: How 9/11 Launched the Era of Republican Leadership in the mail today and I look forward to reading it.  I’ve been a fan of Geraghty’s for some time now and when I was a subsriber to National Review I always made sure I caught his columns, though I never saw him in my local rag, The Dallas Morning News.

The book is scheduled for release on September 19 and I’ll try to fully review it before that date, and I hope to give at least some preliminary review after this weekend.

I have discussed the book of translations coming from the mouth of Osama Bin Laden entitled ‘Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden‘ before to a small extent. The post I have written before criticezed The Telegraph for trying to convince its readers Bin Laden is an environmentalist.

While I am reading this book currently, I have the uncanny knack to leave several books open at one time and they quite often take me months to finish them all due to my jumping back and forth. If you think that’s strange, just imagine my Sophmore year when I decided to take two different literature courses during the same semester and had to write written reports on the books assigned. Did you know that Frankenstein, of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, was in Fahrenheit 451? My professors didn’t either. But I digress.

Brendan O’Neill writing in Sp!ked writes perhaps the editorial of the month regarding this book and what we can learn from the words of Osama Bin Laden, and those lessons are not what many media outlets are spouting off.

Arguing against the notion Bin Laden is intelligent and even what some call an elightened poet, O’Neil states:

In a nutshell, bin Laden steals from and quotes Western commentators in his justifications for al-Qaeda violence, and then Western commentators re-quote bin Laden’s rehashing of their own arguments as evidence that al-Qaeda is a rational political organisation. Talk about a vicious cycle. In the process, some commentators get dangerously close to being apologists for al-Qaeda. In the introduction to this collection, editor Bruce Lawrence asks ‘Should bin Laden…be described as a contemporary anti-imperialist fighter adaptive to the Information Age?’ He answers his own question by quoting Michael Mann (whom he describes as ‘one of the most level-headed of sociologists’). Mann says: ‘Despite the religious rhetoric and the bloody means, bin Laden is a rational man. There is a simple reason why he attacked the US: American imperialism. As long as America seeks to control the Middle East, he and people like him will be its enemy.’

What these commentators don’t seem to realise is that they provided bin Laden with the cloak of rationality and political reasoning. Their own arguments, often cynically made, about al-Qaeda being an understandable (if bloody and murderous) response to American imperialism have been co-opted – explicitly so – by bin Laden. Indeed, if the Bush administration’s scaremongering about al-Qaeda provided bin Laden with the kind of notoriety that made him a global player (in short, the Bushies’ warnings about a terrible terror threat to Western civilisation became a self-fulfilling prophecy), then the anti-war left’s opportunistic claims about al-Qaeda being some kind of rational resistance provided him with the moral authority to continue his bloody campaign.

Read the full editorial and consider buying the book. Hopefully though you will walk away from reading the book with a greater understanding of who Bin Laden is and why it is important we stop this man rather than believe he is a man who is either misunderstood and should be given fair treatment.

This is a book review of The Pocket Book of Patriotism Written by Jonathan Foreman

When I was asked to review this book, I had no idea exactly what to expect. I was very pleasantly surprised. This little 96 page book is a treasure that should not be missed. There is something in this book for everyone. I read from cover to cover without stopping and enjoyed every page. There is no narrative as such, so it is a quick read.

The first 64 pages are a timeline of history from 30,000 BC to the present 2005. This timeline is presented in two columns, ‘Abroad’ and ‘The Americas’. Items listed in this timeline range from military battles, works of art and music, creation of nations, important people, and natural disasters, to name only a few. Anyone can memorize dates and events, but to see one event flow into the next gave me an amazing panoramic view of history in its entirety.

The last 32 pages are a wonderful compilation of speeches, patriotic quotations, oaths and pledges, medals, flag traditions, songs, poems and lists like Presidents, and States. I felt my heart fill with pride as I read these familiar words of the Declaration of Independence 1776, the Gettysburg Address 1863, The Four Freedoms (F.D. Roosevelt) 1941, and on to A Forward Policy of Freedom (G.W. Bush) 2003.

As I read through events in history, events in my own life were brought to mind. One example, 1700 BC the Code of Hammurabi becomes the law of Babylon. I was lucky enough to see and touch the Code on display in the Louvre in Paris, France. More recently, 2002 President George W. Bush speaking to Graduating West Point cadets, “If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long…” This is a must have reference book for all ages and it size and price make it a great stocking stuffer.