Daniel Greenfield

Countdown to Zero in Tehran and Jerusalem

There was a time when Israel did not deal with existential threats by urging the Americans to do something. That time was fairly recent. When Saddam decided he wanted to have his own nuclear reactor, fourteen Israeli Air Force jets put an end to his dream. The year was 1981. The Reagan Administration supported a UN resolution condemning Israel which stated that it was in "clear violation of the Charter of the United Nations and the norms of international conduct" and which fully recognized "the inalienable sovereign right of Iraq, and all other States, especially the developing countries, to establish programmes of technological and nuclear development."

A Free Market Solution

In her article, Three Cheers for Romneycare, Ann Coulter insists that Romneycare and its mandate was a Free Market Solution. Of course a government mandate to buy a product is not a "free market" solution, it is a slave market solution. Using a government mandate may be a market based solution but there is nothing free about it. The purchaser isn't free not to buy. The seller is only able to move the product through coercion and has to qualify with the government to be able to force-sell the product.

Muslim Firsters and Israel Firsters

If you were to suggest in a public forum that just possibly Israel's failure to reach a peace agreement with a terrorist organization, run by kleptomaniacs and homicidal maniacs, which still continues to applaud the murder of Israeli children, might possibly be due to the terrorists and not because of Israel, then, according to the consensus of the left, you are an Israel Firster.

American Tyrants

When Elizabeth Warren went on MSNBC to deny that she was a member of the 1 percent despite her nearly 15 million dollar net worth, the denial had a cultural element to it. Despite being a millionaire, Warren did not see herself as "wealthy".

Weaponizing the Passenger Plane

On September 11 the passenger jet as a weapon came crashing into the consciousness of the citizens of the country which had made international air travel viable. Muslim terrorists had viewed planes in terms of the passengers and hijacked planes to take people hostage. But at the beginning of the millennium it was no longer the people that mattered, only the use of the plane as a makeshift missile aimed at the institutions and infrastructure of the free world. This change of tactics was a game changer because it meant the potential casualties of airplane hijackings were no longer limited to the passengers in the air who were now flying around in ICBM's with much less explosive payload, but enough to take down skyscrapers and kill thousands of people. Every passenger was no longer just a risk to other passengers, but a risk to everyone in the Empire State Building, the Sears Tower or any other clumping of people in target areas that could be hit.

Dredging the Bottom

Republican primaries are like visiting embarrassing relatives, no matter how bad you think it's going to be, it always turns out to be even worse. After months of this we're going to have a convention where we will be asked to believe in one of these men.

State of Disunion

We know that the state of the union is good no matter how many Americans are out of work, how many families are counting every penny, how many industries are falling off a cliff and how high the national debt gets. We know it's good so long as another politician takes a victory lap up to the podium and tells us that it's all good because he's here.

Food Fights and Class Warfare

There was a time when full tables signified prosperity, and thick waistlines were considered attractive. The ability to eat one's fill was what separated the gentry from the peasant making do with a few crusts and salted leftovers. Fat was in because it represented leisure and wealth. Thin meant you were on the road to the poorhouse or to consumption, which meant your body was being consumed, not that you were the one doing the consuming.

There’s Something About Mitt

So far Mitt Romney has lost two out of three primaries, twice to candidates that the establishment didn't even feel were worthy of their attention. In his biggest victory in New Hampshire he barely managed to take 40 percent of the vote. Like it or not, Republicans voters are not particularly thrilled about Romney. But how ecstatic can anyone be about a candidate whose main draw is electability. Electability is an excellent strategic calculation, but it garners about as much enthusiasm as any other form of expediency. Most people who vote the big 'R' recognize the importance of getting Obama out at any cost, but they are not going to get very fired up about a man whose only credential is that of being able to win.

The Great Internet Blackout

"This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud." For people who grew up at a certain time with a thick glowing monitor casting light on their faces these were the closing words of their own Declaration of Independence. For those people the internet was not a layout of graphics and flash videos blaring from every website, but amalgams of text. The internet before the internet was an elitist place, like Linux, it was part puzzle and part love of taking intangible things apart and putting them back together again. Like most revolutionaries they were doomed to be made irrelevant by the consequences of the forces that they had set in motion. The curiosity that was their code of honor has been overtaken by the world that they helped open up. And that world is an amazing place.

Gingrich and Arafat - Anatomy of a Smear

Two photos are being circulated of Gingrich shaking hands with Arafat, one from 1993 and one from 1998, with the context stripped away, to imply that Newt was formerly friendly with Arafat and then "changed" his position.

So You Want a Revolution…

The lawyer has more in common with the prosecutor than he does with his clients and Republican and Democratic politicians have more in common with each other than they do with the people who come out to support them and vote for them. The hopes of ordinary people for the future, their ability to earn a living and their fears are only a job to the politician. This doesn't mean that politicians are villains, only that like the police officer and the ER nurse, other people's urgent calls are just another day at work for them. Mediating them and dealing with them day in and day out gives them a different perspective that is detached from the present, and rooted in the realities of their profession.

Fact Check: Why Rick Perry is Right About Turkey

Fact checkers and truth squads are the media's latest tool for blurring the line between the editorial page and the new page. The ubiquitous fact checks are editorializing dressed up as verification. While on some occasions there are actual facts to verify, for the most part the fact checks defend a partisan liberal viewpoint on a particular issue. So no sooner did Rick Perry suggest that Turkey had no place in NATO and that some perceive its government to be run by Islamic terrorists than the media rolled out its fact checks. In the spirit of fact checking the fact checkers, let's have a fact check of our own. CNN Statement: "Turkey is not ruled by Islamic terrorists. It is led by a party with Islamist roots, the Justice and Freedom Party, or AKP."

The Society for the Protection of Iranian Nuclear Scientists

After having exhausted the indignant possibilities of protesting the extinction of whales, pelicans and polar bears, the left has found a new endangered species to be outraged about. Iranian nuclear scientists. It's one thing to hug a polar bear or a tree, but it's another to embrace an Iranian nuclear scientist, who may well be a jolly and colorful fellow with a family and a paint by numbers coloring kit of an atom, but also happens to be a participant in a plot to kill millions of people. The left which has all the moral sense of a squashed peanut would like us to feel outraged because someone somewhere has been knocking off the engineers of death in a project whose goal is genocide. Yet if you point out to them that just last week a member of the Iranian backed Hezbollah terrorist group was arrested in Thailand for plotting a terrorist attack, you can wait a week until they shrug.

Out of Options in Egypt

Back during the early days of the Tahrir Square protests I wrote, "59 percent of Egyptian Muslims want democracy and 95 percent want Islam to play a large part in politics. 84 percent believe apostates should face the death penalty. That is what Egyptian democracy will look like. A unanimous majority that wants an Islamic state and a bare majority that wants democracy. Which one do you think will win out? A democratic majority of the country supports murdering people in the name of Islam. Mubarak's government does not execute apostates or adulterers. But a democratic Egypt will. Why? Because it's the will of the people."

A little urine washes out

In case you haven't heard some US soldiers might have urinated on dead Taliban fighters. Hopefully they did it facing in the direction away from Mecca, as American soldiers have been ordered to do to avoid offending Muslims, and that the dead Taliban didn't have Korans in their pockets at the time or it'll be a holy war. Oh, wait, it already is a holy war.

Three Fundamental Mistakes in Dealing with Islam

We made three fundamental mistakes in our dealings with Islam. First, we assumed that the only politically acceptable answer was also the right answer. This is the most common mistake that politicians make.

What Does a Real Conservative Candidate Look Like?

If a true conservative is for small government, strong national defense and traditional values then there is no such candidate in the race. There might have been earlier, but there certainly isn't now. It's a sad testament to the current state of the party that the choice is between two men who believe in global warming, one who believes in big government, another who believes the terrorists are right and a third who believes in open borders. But last election the choice came down to two men, both of whom believed in global warming and one of whom thought that waterboarding terrorists was torture. That man became the nominee. So maybe we're making some progress.

The Bain of Romney

First things first. Criticizing the way a politician ran a company at a time when he is running for office on that record isn't radical leftism, it's Politics 101. Unless any of Romney's rivals have called for him to have to pay higher taxes or be closely regulated by the government, then they have nothing in common with Occupy Wall Street and suggesting otherwise is a talking point that doesn't hold up. Romney was the one who brought in his record as a job creator. It's entirely legitimate for his opponents to question whether he really created jobs or destroyed them. Asking whether a candidate's record holds up isn't class warfare, it's common sense. And it's ridiculous that some of the same figures who turned Gingrich's personal spending into a campaign issue are suddenly insisting that Romney's time at Bain Capital is off limits.

The Post-American Entertainment Industry

The decline of the entertainment industry is all around us. Movie ticket sales have dropped sharply even with inflated numbers from IMAX and 3D movies. Network viewership has declined even more dramatically leaving big three letter networks with numbers that look more like cable. Even the music industry is a ghost of its former self.