bah. Israel will be at war until the Palestinians and the Arabs give up the right of the return. Any peace made before that is a false peace.

"In the battle of Jewish guns vs Palestinian wombs, the latter will inevitably win."

I believe that this quote was from the noted Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld. In his book "Defending Israel", he makes the point that holding West Bank is not in the strategic interest of Israel. The argument in this article that the West Bank is key to controlling the Jordan Valley, the invasion route from the east is invalid for the following reasons:

1. No conventional military power currently exists from the Nile to the Euphrates that can challenge Israel conventionally (except Iran, which is very far away)
2. When those conventional powers did exist (Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq), they were soundly defeated by Israeli military forces (6 day war, yom kippur war). These four aforementioned powers are now much weaker than they used to be and Israel's conventional power has only grown stronger since the 70s.
3. The distance from Amman to Tel Aviv is the same as the distance from Tel Aviv to Amman (What this means is that the lack of strategic depth goes both ways: just as a Jordanian force has only a short distance to advance, so too, an Israeli force has only a short distance to take the capital of Jordan.)
4. There is an enormous operational cost to militarily occupying the west bank: every airbase must be protected by soldiers, supply lines are vulnerable to suicide attack, for every security guard that manages to stop a suicide bomber, there are 100 security guards standing around doing nothing (which is bad for Israel's economy, b/c security guards produce nothing). The occupation of West Bank takes 4 divisions. 4 Divisions was enough to defeat the entire Egyptian army in 1973. Basically, Creveld argues that the enormous cost of counterinsurgency operations in West Bank is simply not worth the strategic gain (protection from kassam rockets)

Based on these assumptions, the major military threats to Israel lie to
1. Suicide bombs
2. Kassam Rockets
3. Ballistic missiles with WMD.

Of these three threats, the west bank serves only to decrease the threat of Kassam rockets. According to Creveld, this is not worth 4 divisions, the cost of counterinsurgency warfare, the economic cost of putting security guards everywhere, and the social cost of being seen as an occupying force. The propaganda problem the Israelis face is that the Palestinian forces are alot weaker than the Israeli forces. A strong guy fighting a weak guy is always seen as a bully regardless of the truth of the matter (the consequences of this can be seen in the rising amount of draft dodging by Israeli youth who longer see the IDF as protectors of the Jewish people but rather as bullies).

Furthermore, occupying the West Bank puts a huge number of Palestinian under Israeli governance and herein lies the problem: the Palestinians have a much faster birth rate and they can exercise the right of return by marrying into the Israeli Arab population (thereby becoming citizens) and thus creating a 5th column in the Israeli state bent on destroying it from within. The longer the conflict goes on, the more the Israeli Arabs are radicalized, and the more Palestinians manage to join the state of Israel.

Creveld argues that Israel should seek to separate the "sleek corvette of Israel from the leaking barge of Palestine". They should withdraw from West Bank, build a wall, and totally separate the two states. Doing this totally protects Israel from suicide bombers and from rising Palestinian birth rates. The problem of Kassam rockets can ultimately be dealt with by improving anti-missile technologies. Losing west bank would expose some of Israel's airbases to rocket attacks; this loss of strategic depth can be ameliorated by developing UCAV technology and creating UCAV carriers from cheap cargo ships and basing them in the mediterranean; hence, aerial and sea power can augment the loss of terrain advantage (those this point is moot given Israel's vast conventional military superiority.

Thus, it is in Israel's interest to give up West Bank and totally separate themselves from the Palestinians simply because West Bank does not provide strategic advantages and saddles Israel with the Palestinian population bomb which is much more dangerous to a democratic state than an conventional threat to Israel. In this way, the jewish nature of Israel may be preserved.

-Parthicus

I don't think it's that simple. Options in foreign policy are not between good and bad, but rather between bad and worse. Let's think about what happens if we stop funding the Paks,

Possibility 1: the current pak government falls and an openly taliban like government takes control
Possibility 2: the paks get pissed, become totally uncooperative with the U.S. and stop even half-hearted efforts to allow drone strikes and attack terrorists.
Possibility 3: the status quo is maintained with the paks getting a little annoyed

Do any of these possibilities help us? no. Hence the funding continues.

Another sign of the sophistication of Islamist propaganda. This guy is a pretty good posterboy for American jihadis: fairly well spoken, not bad looking, and he does not speak in a "crazy jihadi fashion" (those terrorists that clearly speak english as a second language, riddle their speeches with fascistic/communistic declarations, and lace their sentences with excessive Arabic phrases). He almost makes jihad look glamorous, which is his purpose. Our goal should be to make them look like bumbling idiots (see video of Zarqawi's aide grabbing gun by hot barrel)

Normally, I'm one of the moderates that comment at this site and open to ideas about finding real moderate muslims and talking to the muslim world. I understand that at certain times there is a point to being PC and not offending the person you're talking to, but this is absolutely ridiculous. Don't use the words freedom, tolerance, moderate, interfaith and religious freedom? What does he suggest we use? Without these words there can be no such thing as a dialogue. There would only be a monologue where Islamic fundamentalists dictate to the rest of the world how we should lives.

The only excuse for not using the aforementioned words of freedom, tolerance, and religious freedom is if one is practicing deception: pretending to placate an enemy while preparing to stab them in the back.

"Given the abundant evidence of violent cause and fearful effect, involving a small percentage of antagonists, the general charge of Islamophobia is an ideological fabrication...."

I don't quite understand the logic of how this article proves that Islamophobia is a fabrication. Unless I'm mistaken wouldn't the definition of Islamophobia involve a fear of all Muslims b/c of the behavior of a few? I'm not disputing that we shouldn't fear the militant and radical nature of Islam, I'm just questioning how exactly this article says that Islamophobia isn't real.

On another note, African Americans commit a larger percentage of crimes and are jailed more, thus causing the average American is fear criminality from African Americans more than from caucasians or other ethnic groups. Isn't this "African American-phobia" the same phenomenon as Islamophobia?

So i guess the key questions are what exactly is the definition of Islamophobia? Given that definition does Islamophobia exist? And finally is Islamophobia under that definition justified?

I would suggest that Islamophobia is not at all just a result of increased crime by muslim youths and is not similar to fear of African Americans, but rather a phenomenon similar to fear of communists or fascists. People fear muslims not b/c of random criminal acts but b/c they fear them as traitors to their country, systemic perpetrators of malfeasance in service of an imperialistic and totalitarian ideology (Islamic/Arab supremicism).

The residents of the US and UK are already vaccinated for polio; the protection of the polio vaccine relies on not just residents of the US and UK being vaccinated but on everyone being vaccinated. The vaccination does not work 100% of the time. What it does do is that is creates enough immunes to roadblock the spread of infection and prevent any reservoirs of infection. If 300,000 children in pakistan are not vaccinated, that's an enormous vulnerable population that will become a reservoir of infection, which will compromise the herd immunity of the world. We've already seen how a polio reservoir in Nigeria (due to the same Islamist antics) can spread to non-muslim parts of world.

In America and UK, there will be those unlucky ppl whose polio vaccines wore off or never took effect in the first place. Normally, the fact that they are surrounded by immunes prevents the virus from getting to them. However, if 300,000 children in Pakistan become a huge reservoir of polio, these unlucky ppl will be at much higher risk of polio b/c of international airline travel.

The problem with not vaccinating is that polio then spread around the world. The polio vaccine is not 100% effective. It relies on herd immunity which basically means that by vaccinating everyone, you create enough ppl that are immune that the vaccine cannot spread through a community. Thus, the effectiveness of the vaccine is not based only on making every vaccinated person immune, but rather that each immune person basically provides a roadblock for the spread of the virus. If we don't vaccinate these 300,000 children, then this is a totally unprotected community with no roadblocks (imagine Iraq with no roadblocks and polio as suicide bombers). Many children will get polio--> spread to urban areas of Pakistan --> airline --> london --> New York. Hence, there is actually a logical reason for attempting to vaccinate everyone in the world against polio. That is the most effective way to stop polio in this age of international travel.

A part of me might say "you know what, let those idiot extremists get polio", but the medical professional in me realizes that polio in Pakistan today means, polio in America the next day (especially considering there are now those crazy parents who don't get their children vaccinated in the west; these western children, through no fault of their own, are now protected only by the herd immunity resulting from everyone else getting vaccinated)

You are indeed correct in terms of your immigration policy. However, Afghanistan COIN operations is a separate issue from idiot second generation British Jihadists who we should indeed shoot.

This is from a poll from ABC:

"For example, among people who say the central government, the provincial government
or Western forces have a strong local presence, 58, 57 and 46 percent, respectively,
approve of their performance. Where the presence of these entities is seen as weak,
however, their respective approval ratings drop to just 31, 22 and 25 percent."

The polls show that when the U.S. does a good job of COIN operations, the populace strongly supports U.S. troops over the Taliban. Putting boots on the ground, fighting terrorism, protecting the local population, and building a strong anti-Taliban government does not embolden the terrorists. It is the best and most effect strategy for smashing their teeth in. Without nation building, you have no local support. Without local support, your only source of intel is corrupt warlords and satellites/UAV. Thus, every three bombs you drop, one will not hit terrorists, you'll hit civilians and create way more terrorists than you kill. Iraq has already shown that the bomb everything in site option doesn't work and that the Petraeus doctrine is the right way to go.

Petraeus is our Grant, our William Tecumseh Sherman, as long as Obama commits resources to Afghanistan to follow the Petraeus doctrine, we will win.

Finally, some right decisions from Obama. Let's hope his resolve holds and he actually follows the advice of the COIN guys instead of such running kinetic "shoot the terrorist" operations. We're not going to win this by only shooting terrorists or only building the Afghan army to shoot the terrorists. An army is supported by the people. Protect the people, build civil institutions, restore schools and power, and this war is won.