A front page story in the New York Times reviews something that really isn’t news at all (except maybe for The Times): There are plenty of extremist Muslims in England recruting for terrorists and instigating hate. Steve Coll, writing in the Washington Post, has more detail. A sample:

As bin Laden’s ideology of making war on the West spread in the years before Sept. 11, 2001, London became "the Star Wars bar scene" for Islamic radicals, as former White House counterterrorism official Steven Simon called it, attracting a polyglot group of intellectuals, preachers, financiers, arms traders, technology specialists, forgers, travel organizers and foot soldiers. Today, al Qaeda and its offshoots retain broader connections to London than to any other city in Europe, according to evidence from terrorist prosecutions. Evidence shows at least a supporting connection to London groups or individuals in many of the al Qaeda-related attacks of the past seven years. Among them are the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania; the assassination of Afghan militia leader Ahmed Shah Massoud on Sept. 9, 2001; outer rings of the Sept. 11 conspiracy, involving Moussaoui and the surveillance of financial targets in Washington and New York; Reid’s attempted shoe bomb attack in December 2001; and the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002.

The evidence in these and other cases describes al Qaeda connections here as remarkably diverse, ranging from the core organization’s early formation through its phase of elaborately planned global strikes between 1999 and 2001, to its more recent period of diffuse franchises and younger volunteers to an attack this week that authorities here said bears al Qaeda’s stamp. In the 1980s and 1990s, between 300 and 600 British citizens passed through Afghan training camps, officials here have acknowledged. Today, several recent cases suggest the seeding of a new generation of British residents who traveled as volunteers to fight with the insurgency in Iraq.

The Rumsfeldian theme of Old vs. New Europe is a bit long in the tooth by now, but in the course of doing background research on events in Poland in the 1980s I came across this prescient passage from the late Leopold Tyrmand written in 1982, shortly after martial law was declared in Poland:

A time may come when America will understand that if European civilization means not only the majesty of European culture, but also the burning courage in defense of the most fundamental values of humanness, then Western Europe is no longer heir to European civilization--Eastern Europe is.

Over at Powerline, John Hinderaker writes about the strikingly pro-American attitudes found in India today. I recall an international poll shortly after 9/11 showing that India had some of the highest number of people who supported the U.S. going to war for retribution. Of course, this may be pure opportunism, since our war on terror is bound to box up Pakistan, India’s mortal enemy, to some extent. But it might also have something to do with India becoming an English-speaking democracy.

I also had a conversation with an American diplomat from the region more than a year ago, who told me of the significant support India is giving to the U.S. effort. Since India can’t sent any troops to Pakistan or Afghanistan because it would be unacceptable to the Paks, etc., India’s navy is doing things such as providing harbor guard for our ships in Singapore (to prevent another Cole-style bombing). But I also get the impression that if things went bad in Pakistain, India would gladly help clean the place out.

Proponents of evolution have made much of Pope John Paul II’s statement, which "noted that the scientific case for evolution was growing stronger and that the theory was ’more than a hypothesis.’" Well, if they had read the whole statement, they would have noticed this as well:

Consequently, theories of evolution which, in accordance with the philosophies inspiring them, consider the mind as emerging from the forces of living matter, or as a mere epiphenomenon of this matter, are incompatible with the truth about man. Nor are they able to ground the dignity of the person.

And then they would not have been so surprised by this op-ed, which contains the following statement:

The [International Theological C]ommission’s [2004] document, however, reaffirms the perennial teaching of the Catholic Church about the reality of design in nature. Commenting on the widespread abuse of John Paul’s 1996 letter on evolution, the commission cautions that "the letter cannot be read as a blanket approbation of all theories of evolution, including those of a neo-Darwinian provenance which explicitly deny to divine providence any truly causal role in the development of life in the universe."

Furthermore, according to the commission, "An unguided evolutionary process - one that falls outside the bounds of divine providence - simply cannot exist."

The commission, I should note, was headed by Cardinal Ratzinger.

There are, of course, complicated issues here, far beyond my theoligical and scientific ken, but one thing seems clear: those evolutionists who do not leave room for a designer cannot find any comfort in anything Pope John Paul II said or in anything the Roman Catholic Church teaches.

This WaPo article tries, not very successfully in my view, to show that there’s a division between business and social conservatives in the upcoming nomination fight. Yes, business conservatives were much happier than were social conservatives with Sandra Day O’Connor, but that doesn’t mean that GWB has to appoint another O’Connor to please them. Birnbaum and Edsall to the contrary notwithstanding, it’s entirely possible for a jurist to favor some national business legislation (under the commerce clause, for example), while arguing that matters like abortion fall under state jurisdiction.

E.J. Dionne, J.r thinks we should have a political fight over the Supreme Court nominees, because, if you look at the numbers, Democrats didn’t really lose the last few elections, so they deserve to have their voices heard. Mr. Dionne, please read the Constitution! His other reason--that politicizing the nomination process is preferable to the politics of personal destruction, which is all opponents are left with if they can’t make political points--would be persuasive if political argument didn’t almost always include personal destruction as well. Last I looked, electoral politics included personal attacks as much as, if not more than, policy debates. If he really wanted to elevate the tone of the nomination process, he would urge Democrats to act like a loyal opposition, essentially giving the President the nominee he wants and then fighting the next election in part over differences in judicial philosophy.

Finally, the appellate decision in this case only serves to turn the heat up more. Howard Bashman covers it here and here.

Scott Johnson at Powerline offers an extended defense of Judge Michael McConnell against this vicious hit from the right. Everything I know about McConnell (whom I have known for 30 years) suggests that Johnson is right and the author of the hit piece is wrong and misguided.

Update: There’s more here and here. As bonus the latter includes Ken Masugi’s choice comments on this revealingly nasty piece by Jonathan Chait.

Update #2: Andrew Hyman, with whom I engaged in a long colloquy in the comments section, has posted the relevant passages from McConnell’s Appeals Court confirmation hearings here. Read them for yourself and then read the comments. Hyman persists in placing the most damaging possible construction on McConnell’s testimony, which is rather carefully phrased. And note that he persists in a post made after he said (comment # 10, at 7:24 p.m. Sunday evening) that he had received "some pretty solid assurances about Judge McConnell from other people I’ve communicated with, so I don’t expect to be opposing his nomination." I can’t understand how he thinks offering his construction of the evidence doesn’t amount to opposing a McConnell nomination. Did something happen between 7:24 p.m. and 11:11 p.m. Sunday evening? Is this confusion, a genuine change of mind or heart, or something less savory?

Darrin McMahon, in "A Right, From the Start" (Wall St. Journal, July 1), writes a deft essay on the meaning of "the pursuit of happiness," even highlighting its possible meanings from Christian, classical, and Lockean writings. Alas, he is too clever by half when he claims that Locke "never employed the specific phrase ’life, liberty, and property.’" In addition, he fails to point out that the pursuit of happiness was understood within an ordered, moral context. Here’s my letter to the editor:

This analysis suggests that al Qaeda is less an organization than a brand, mindset, or ideology. Thomas Friedman is singing from the same hymnbook, drawing this conclusion:

The double-decker buses of London and the subways of Paris, as well as the covered markets of Riyadh, Bali and Cairo, will never be secure as long as the Muslim village and elders do not take on, delegitimize, condemn and isolate the extremists in their midst.

Since I’m not a Hobbesian, I’m attracted to his "cultural" solution (which of course must be coupled with the most effective security measures possible, and continued vigorous prosecution of the GWOT). The question he doesn’t answer is how we "persuade" the Muslim leadership to condemn the jihadists. Here is an account of the response offered by leaders of the British Muslim community, which is described in this portrait.

Update: I was reminded of this smart piece, written last year.

Update #2: Powerline (naturally) has lots more, including this article about Islamist networks in the U.K., this one on radical Islamic preacher Abu Hamza al-Masri, who formerly led the Finsbury Park mosque that is widely regarded as the center of Islamicist radicalism in Great Britain, and these two columns by Christopher Hitchens, both of which are so full of choice nuggets that I dare not provide excerpts. But this quote from another article is worth highlighting:

We assume that Tony Blair has been with us on Iraq, and Britain has a robust counterterrorism strategy. But the British have a notoriously liberal perspective in interpreting laws on monitoring their radical Islamist elements," a terrorism expert, Ilan Berman of the American Foreign Policy Council, said yesterday.

Finally, Tom Cerber reminds me that the analyses published today have been around for awhile. Osama bin Laden is the Colonel Sanders of Islamic terrorism: even if he were killed or captured, his franchisees would continue doing their bloody business. Cerber notes the risk in a strategy aimed at eliminating the franchisees:

The danger to this newer strategy is that it would likely entail widening the net of operations, jeopardizing the other dimension of the fight against al-Qaeda: the propaganda war that it’s a war against extremism, not against Islam. Going after mid-level operatives is still a matter of going after extremists. However, by going after a larger group - and one further embedded in Muslim societies - one necessarily makes it more difficult to signal to the Islamic world that one is simply going after extremists.

Permit me this analogy: attacking bin Laden is like hunting sharks with harpoon guns. Hunting mid-level operatives is more like hunting smaller fish with nets. The danger with nets is that you also catch “innocent” fish like dolphin.

Update #3: Ken Masugi has more, including this from Daniel Pipes.

Last Update: Here’s a piece on the silence of the Imams since the London attacks. And another, asking "where is the Gandhi of Islam?" The best bit from the latter:

It is only when you start thinking about what we are not getting from leaders of British Muslims, and indeed Muslim religious leadership throughout the world, that you start to see how much needs doing. The moderates are not pressed hard for anything more than a general condemnation of the extremists.

When did you last hear criticisms of named extremist groups and organisations by Muslim leaders, or support for their expulsion, imprisonment or extradition? How often do you see fatwas issued against suicide bombers and other terrorists, or statements by learned men declaring that people who commit such deeds will go to hell?

When do Muslim leaders and congregations insist that a particular imam leave his mosque because of the poison that he disseminates every Friday? When did a British Muslim last go after a Muslim who advocates or practises violence with anything like the zeal with which so many went after Salman Rushdie?

Why is not more stigma attached to the Muslims who are murdering other Muslims every day in Iraq and the Middle East?

What communal protection is offered to those Muslims who really are brave and confront Islamist violence, or the poor treatment of women, or call for democracy in the Middle East? How much do mainstream political parties with Muslim councillors and candidates really insist on their religious moderation and co-opt them to extrude the bad people lurking within their communities?

I understand and accept that there are many moderates among British Muslims, but I want to know why Britain gets so pitifully little to show for their moderation.

As everyone knows, Tony Blair picked "climate change" as one of the two key issues (along with Africa) to discuss at the G8 meeting going on right now. Blair’s science adviser, Sir David King, last year said that "In my view, climate change is the most severe problem that we are facing today--more serious even than the threat of terrorism."

I was on the road out in California and out of keyboard range for the last two days, and so wasn’t able to respond promptly to the sad news of the passing of Admiral James Stockdale. I recall reading some of his first writings on his prison camp experience in the late 1970s and early 1980s and thinking to myself, "This man should be be in public office."

Of course, eventually he did seek public office of sorts, as Ross Perot’s running mate in 1992, where he was thought not to have done well.

I had the privilege of sharing a couple rounds of drinks in a bar with Stockdale in the fall of 2001 (a few weeks after 9/11) at a conference where we were both speakers, and I got up the courage to ask him for his account of the infamous vice presidential debate. It seems he was mostly ignored by Perot and his campaign staff (such as it was) throughout the whole thing, to the point that about two weeks before the vice presidential debate, Stockdale called Perot and said, "Well, Ross, I haven’t heard anything about doing the debate, so I guess I’ve dodged this thing."

Perot says to him, "Oh, sorry Jim, we accepted the invitation for you. Guess we forgot to tell you." So Stockdale had no "debate prep" or rehearsals or help from Perot’s people, and little time to prepare.

Someone on a Churchill listserv (you can sign up at www.winstonchurchill.org) posted the following quote from the Great Man today: