World
Rustle Of Politics
Conservative panel spotlights philosophical, strategic leanings.
Robert Sklar
Editor
0
n a crisp fall evening, Iran's
threat to America, Israel's
changing political philosophy
and America's grappling with socialistic
rumblings were among the topics filling
the air at Congregation Shaarey Zedek in
Southfield.
Those subjects were built around
the theme "From Iran Aggression to
U.S. Recession: The Challenges Ahead:'
The subject matter certainly resonated,
drawing 850 people to the Jewish Policy
Center-sponsored forum. The JPC, based
in Washington, D.C., is not for profit and
unabashedly pro-Israelit seeks to provide
scholarly perspectives on foreign and
domestic policies affecting the American
Jewish community and the broader
American public.
The Zionist Organization of America-
Michigan Region invited the discussion
panel of four of America's top conservative
political observers. By their applause and
questions, the audience was decidedly
Zionist.
A Nuclear Iran
Frank Gaffney, director of the Washington-
based Center for
Security Policy, deliv-
ered the most haunting
message in response
to moderator Michael
Medved's question about
the threat to America
a nuclear-armed Iran
Aak,
would
pose. Gaffney was
Frank Gaffney
President Reagan's assis-
tant secretary of defense for international
security policy. He founded the center in
1988, following Reagan's presidency.
While Israelis and diaspora Jews
about Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad's boasts to destroy Israel
with a nuclear blast, America shouldn't
discount such a blast over America,
Gaffney said. Ahmadinejad repeatedly
talks about a "world without America"
being not only desirable, but also achiev-
able. An Iran-launched atomic bomb —
developed in part by scientists from such
far-flung places as North Korea, Pakistan,
Russia and China — would wreak havoc if
detonated in space 200 or 300 miles above
the continental United States.
Unleashed would be a strategic electro-
magnetic pulse (EMP) attack.
"It would be a burst of intense electro-
magnetic energy," Gaffney said. "To give
you a sense of the magnitude of it, it could
be, by some estimates, a billion times the
power of the most powerful radio signal
on Earth."
The U.S. electrical power grid would
bear the brunt, triggering catastrophic
consequences, according to a blue rib-
bon commission reporting to Congress
twice in the last two years. At least half the
country could be affected, Gaffney said.
Such an interruption would couple with
our failure to find substantial alternative
energy resources.
"I think of it as transforming the United
States pretty much in a blink of an eye
from a 21st-century superpower into a
pre-industrial society, one in which most
of us over time would not be able to
subsist; in other words, a world without
America," Gaffney said.
Gaffney reminded listeners that Iranian
leaders parade their advanced missile,
capable of being launched with a nuclear
warhead from a freighter in international
waters, through the Tehran streets with
a sign on it saying, "Death to America,
Death to Jews."
A Failed Policy
Daniel Pipes, director of the Philadelphia-
based Middle East Forum and whose
column often appears in the Detroit Jewish
News, took issue with
Israel's change of heart
toward its Palestinian
adversaries since the
1993 Oslo Accords. The
Israeli government has
made a fundamental
shift from a policy of
Daniel Pipes
military deterrence to
one of diplomatic reso-
lution.
While good in theory, it has proven any-
thing but practical, Pipes said.
"The last 15 years," he said, "have seen
one Israeli concession after another in
terms of land, recognition, money, training
and arms. The result has been decreased
resolution. Compare the situation today to
1993 and Israel's status and standing is far
diminished."
Israelis should seek victory considering
that Israel's destruction remains a core of
the Hamas charter.
But compromise and remediation, not
victory, is what's on the minds of Israel's
top tier of leaders, Pipes said.
"And that won't work with an enemy
who wants your elimination:' he said.
"Victory must be sought for Israel to
remain strong and secure'
The Israeli military still hasn't
rebounded fully from its 2006 war along
the Lebanon border with Hezbollah, he
added.
The Danger Of Sharia
Frank Gaffney called the rising adherence to sharia, the
system of Islamic religious law, in Western Europe a trou-
bling phenomenon. Sharia is derived from the Koran, the
Muslim holy book; the Hadith, the sayings and conduct of
Mohammed; and fatwas, the edicts of Islamic leaders.
"It's fair to say that all adherents of sharia are Muslim,
but it's important to know that all Muslims are not adher-
ents to sharia," Gaffney said.
Gaffney distinguished between Muslims, like many in
America, who are tolerant, peaceful and law abiding, and
those in uncivilized regions who may subscribe to bar-
baric forms of sharia like floggings, stonings, beheadings,
amputations and female mutilation. He called that brand
of sharia "stealth jihad."
Typically, sharia followers, wherever they live and what-
ever level they practice, seek not only to impose their
belief on coreligionists, but also create political forces in
mosques, prisons, chaplaincies and military units through
parallel societies established through sharia courts.
Such societies eventually will affect the general com-
munity, creating a kind of totalitarian parasite, Gaffney
believes.
"For those who are doubters," Gaffney said, "I think
A Better System
Mona Charen, a Virginia-based syndicated
columnist and political analyst, addressed
moderator Medved's question whether the
financial crisis could end America's free-
market economy.
Financial shockwaves
aren't unheard of in capi-
talist societies. There's
no reason to think
our free market won't
bounce back. "In all of
human history:' Charen
said, "the great engine
Mona Charen
for prosperity and for
improving the lives of
human beings, particularly those on the
lowest end of the economic ladder, has
been capitalism. There's simply no other
system that has ever been so successful at
improving people's lives."
She fears what some disbelievers in
capitalism are gleaning from the financial
tea leaves: reason to become like Europe
and scrap the free market. In its place
would be a government run and regulated
economy, a more socialized economy.
In that scenario, our healthcare network
would be hit hard. "As you look around
the world at economic systems that have
socialized healthcare, they control costs by
rationing care Charen said. "They'd rather
ration care by forbidding people of a cer-
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important respects of the practice that I just described
is indistinguishable from the means by which the Nazis
came to power in Germany and took over a continent and
damn near took over the world."
He added, "It's the playbook of classic totalitarianism."
America must maintain its guard, he said.
Daniel Pipes said sharia and its attributes are already
happening "at a remarkable rate" in the United Kingdom.
According to Mona Charen, the archbishop of
Canterbury said he could see a recognition of UK sharia
courts, which already treat women as subservient to men.
"The British seem to have lost something," she said.
"They have no internal reserves to say, 'We really don't
have to accept sharia law. We do believe our way of treat-
ing women is superior; that our way of justice is superior.
And there will not be a compromise.
"We will stand up for thousands of years of Western
civilization.—
She added, "The British have lost confidence in Western
civilization. And that to me is even more frightening than
the sharia challenge. It's the failure on the part of the
West to have faith in our own society and in our own stan-
dards."
- Robert Sklar, editor
November 6 ffi 2008
A25