† Honor Killing And Beheading: Stereotype Or True To Type?: A coalition of eight family and women’s groups are pressuring the National Organization for Women to retract comments by Marcia Pappas, NOW’s NY state, for characterizing the beheading of Aasiya Hassan as Muslim “honor killing,” reports The Buffalo News:

“We were so shocked by her comments,” said Laura Grube, coordinator for Child & Family Services Haven House, a coalition member.

The comments by Marcia Pappas, NOW’s state president, were insensitive and harmful to domestic violence victims, she said.

But Pappas stood her ground and said that dozens of Muslim women have written to thank her for speaking out.

“There will be no retraction,” she said. …

“Why is this horrendous story not all over the news?” Pappas asked in the news release.

“Is a Muslim woman’s life not worth a five-minute report? This was, apparently, a terroristic version of ‘honor killing,’ a murder rooted in cultural notions about women’s subordination to men.”

Grube insists that Aasiya Hassan’s murder is “a typical progression and escalation of domestic violence,” but Pappas is having none of it: “The beheading of the victim and the fact that the body was left for people to see - rather than hidden as in most homicides - coincide with elements of an honor killing.”

Now, Pappas just needs to connect that last dot to understand that honor killing is one manifestation of Islamic terrorism – in this case, meant to coerce Muslim women into being “obedient” wives and daughters. With the sword figuratively and literally at their necks they must choose between a life of abject subjugation or a brutal, horrifying death.

† Clinton Goes To China:  The “peace through strength” doctrine, which got the U.S. safely through the Cold War, gave way to the “peace through democracy” Bush doctrine to deter the spread of Islamic fundamentalism. Hillary Clinton’s whirlwind tour of Asia and the Middle East begins to limn the emerging Obama Fist Bump Doctrine: “Never mind what I said about unclenching your fist. Gimme a fist bump!” Here’s The Washington Post on Clinton’s trot through Turkey:     

[Prime Minister Recep Tayyip] Erdogan's government has mounted an ugly campaign against one of Turkey's largest media conglomerates, presenting it with a $500 million tax bill in a maneuver that has been compared to Russia's treatment of independent media.

Ms. Clinton was asked by a Turkish journalist what she told Mr. Erdogan when he complained about the State Department [February 25, 2009] report [on human rights abuses in Turkey]. She answered: "Well, my reaction was that we put out this report every year, and I fully understand … no politician ever likes the press criticizing them." "Overall," she concluded, "we think that Turkey has made tremendous progress in freedom of speech and freedom of religion and human rights, and we're proud of that."

† Obama Is Just About Every U.S. President All Rolled Into One!: Pat Buchanan sees parallels between the opening acts of the presidencies of Barack Obama and Lyndon Johnson:

Full of hubris in 1965, Lyndon Johnson had seized his moment. He had launched a Great Society that would outdo his beloved patron FDR. He would dispatch 500,000 troops to Vietnam to "bring the coonskin home on the wall" and create a "Great Society on the Mekong." Those were heady days of "guns-and-butter."

By 1968, LBJ's coalition was shredded. Gov. George Wallace had torn away the populist right. Sens. Gene McCarthy, George McGovern and Robert Kennedy had rallied the antiwar left against him. LBJ and Hubert Humphrey were left to preside over a shrinking center.

Why did LBJ fail? He overloaded the circuits. He tried to do it all. He misread a national desire for continuity after Kennedy's death as a mandate for a lunge to the left and a great leap forward with the largest expansion of government since the New Deal. …

History never repeats itself exactly. But Barack Obama is making the same mistakes today that LBJ made in 1965.

The GOP won 47 House seats and eight new governorships in the 1966 midterm elections, Buchanan notes, and “Nixon led the party out of the wilderness and into a White House it would hold for 20 of the next 24 years.”

† Updates To Previous Posts (fourth item, We Fight Them Over There So We Don’t Have To Fight Them Over Here?: The Washington Post reports that  the FBI is investigating extremist networks linked to al-Qaeda that are radicalizing American-born Somalis in Boston, San Diego, Seattle, Columbus, OH, Portland, ME and Minneapolis and recruiting them for suicide bombings:  

Officials are still trying to assess the scope of the problem but say reports so far do not warrant a major concern about a terrorist threat within the United States. But intelligence officials said the recruitment of U.S. citizens by terrorist groups is particularly worrisome because their American passports could make it easier for them to reenter the country.

Al-Shabaab - meaning "the youth" or "young guys" in Arabic - "presents U.S. authorities with the most serious evidence to date of a 'homegrown' terrorist recruitment problem right in the American heartland," Georgetown University professor Bruce R. Hoffman says in a forthcoming report by the SITE Intelligence Group, a private firm that monitors Islamist Web sites.

Senate homeland security committee chairman Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) is holding a hearing on al-Shabaab and its influence on the U.S. Somali community.

† Updates To Previous Posts (fifth item, Now Is Not The Time To Talk About Race): Attorney General Eric Holder might want to have a chitty chat with Townhall columnist Mike Adams, an associate professor of criminology at the University of North Carolina (Wilmington) about this column, in which he writes two letters of recommendation for a student who is applying to UNC law school. In one, he mentions her qualifications only. In the other, he mentions that she is black and notes that her “demographic characteristics will truly be an asset to your law school’s mission” even though she “would do better in her studies were she to attend another law school” because her grades “are about half a grade point below the average expected of white male applicants" and "[h]er LSAT score of 156 is also well below that expected of white males.”

[Hat Tip: Nick From NY]

† Updates To Previous Posts (third item, Why We Need Gitmo): In a six-page written statement (.pdf) responding to the charges against them, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four Guantánamo detainees accused in the September 11, 2001, terror conspiracy called U.S. allegations "badges of honor" and declared themselves "terrorists to the bone,” reports The Wall Street Journal:

The men call themselves "the 9/11 Shura Council." In addition to Mr. Mohammed, those charged include Ramzi Binalshibh, Walid bin Attash, Mustafa al-Hawsawi and Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, also known as Amar al-Baluchi.

The Bush administration filed charges against the men last year before a military commission in Guantanamo Bay. The Bush administration asserted that it would be difficult to successfully prosecute the men in federal court in part because that might force the U.S. government to disclose and defend the prisoners' treatment in CIA custody.

President Barack Obama suspended those proceedings in January pending a review of the Guantanamo detention and trial apparatus. Obama administration officials say their preference is to try alleged terrorists in federal court. The statement, along with the defendants' other public remarks claiming responsibility for the Sept. 11 attacks, suggests that conviction in federal court may not pose as many hurdles as some officials once feared.

Here are some choice bits (spelling, punctuation and emphasis left intact by The Stiletto): 

With regards to these nine accusations that you are putting us on trial for; to us, they are not accusations. To us they are badges of honor, which we carry with pride. Many thanks to God, for his kind gesture, and choosing us to perform the act of Jihad for his cause and to defend Islam and Muslims.

Therefore, killing you and fighting you, destroying you and terrorizing you, responding back to your attacks, are all considered to be great legitimate duty in our religion.

† [“Conspiracy”] is a very laughable accusation. Were you expecting us to inform you about our secret attack plans? … With regards to us, we were exercising caution and secrecy in our war against you. This is a natural matter, where God has taught us in his book, verse 71 from An-Nisa: ((0 you believers! Toke your precoutions, ond either goforth (on on expedition) in parties, or go forth together.)) Also, as the prophet has stated: "War is to deceive."

† ["Attacking civilians," "Attacking civilian objects," and "Deliberately causing grave bodily harm"]: You are attacking us in Palestine and Lebanon by providing political, military, and economic support to the terrorist state of Israel, which in turn, is attacking unarmed innocent civilians. … In addition, was it not you that attacked an entire population in Iraq, destroying civilian targets and its infrastructure? Was it not you that has killed one million Iraqi children caused by your oppressed economic sanctions, which you imposed after the first Gulf War? … Did you forget about your nuclear bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? You are the last nation that has the right to speak about civilians and killing civilians. … We will attack you, just like you have attacked us, and whomever initiated the attacks is the guilty party.

† ["Crimes in violation of the law of war," and "Destroying property in violation of the law of war"]: You have violated the law of war by supporting the Israeli occupation of Arab land in Palestine and Lebanon, and for displacing five million Palestinians outside their land. You have supported the oppressor over the oppressed and the butcher over the victim. …  We fight you to defense our nation, our religion, and our land. All heavenly and earthly laws guarantee our rights to do so. We, Muslims, are content with God's book, the Quran, to fight you with. God has granted us to fight, in verse 39, AI-Hajj: ((To those against whom war is waged, permission is given (to fight,) because they are wronged and verily, Allah is most powerful for their aid.))

† ["Hijacking and/or endangering a vessel or an aircraft"]: Which is more dangerous; Hijacking and/or endangering a vessel or an aircraft, or endangering an entire population with a military occupation, killing and endangering innocent civilians by starving them with an economic sanction? If you do not respect the innocent in our countries, then we will do the same, by exposing you to danger and hijacking in the air, at sea, and land. In God's book, he ordered us to fight you everywhere we find you … In God's book, verse 9, AI-Tawbah: (("rhen fight and slay the pagans wherever you find them, and seize them, and besiege them and lie in wait for them in each and every ambush,))

† ["Terrorism"]: Who are the real terrorists? Is it us, or is it you? America is the terrorist country number one in the world. Is has nuclear weapons of mass destruction, and the hydrogen bombs, and the biological weapons, and its ocean fleets are around the world, threatening countries' security and safety and any country that is not subjected to its oppressed will. … We do not possess your military might, not your nuclear weapons. Nevertheless, we fight you with the almighty God. So, if our act of Jihad and our fighting with you caused fear and terror, then many thanks to God, because it is him that has thrown fear into your hearts … God also stated in his book, verse 60, AI-Anfal: ((Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into the heart of the enemies of Allah and your enemies.))

† ["Material support to terrorism"]: America is the number one, and the largest country in the world, in spreading military might and terrorism. Also, America is the principle and greatest supplier to the occupying terrorist state of Israel in Palestine. Also, America supports and finances the terrorist regimes that govern the countries of the Arab world, such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan. … We will make all of our materials available, to defend and deter, and egress you and the filthy Jews from our countries. God has ordered us to spend for Jihad in his cause. This is evident in many Quranic verses.

Except for all those incitements to kill infidels quoted from the holy book of “a religion of peace,” this could have been written by any Daily Kos blogger or university professor.