Dr. Richard Benkin

Follow up:  Pakistan agrees to talk, sort of

Pakistan has agreed to hold talks with India—sort of. The office of Pakistani Prime Minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani released the following statement. “It was decided that foreign secretary-level talks between the two countries would be held on February 25 in New Delhi.”

Another Victory for Strength over Appeasement

When Islamists attacked Mumbai, India’s New York, many people called it that country’s 9/11. Although it certainly was the most high profile attack, it was far from the first in this country of over a billion people. India faces terrorist attacks of one sort or another multiple times each week. The South Asia Terrorism Portal collects figures on terrorism here and calculated that 47,371 Indians have died in terrorist attacks since 1994. Since 2006, about two-thirds of the fatalities occurred as a result of Islamist attacks; the rest came at the hands of radical communists.

Tensions grow as Pakistan cancels talks with India

(Delhi, February 8) “Pakistan Shows its True Colours,” screamed angry headlines here this morning after Pakistani Foreign Minister Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi abruptly and defiantly refused to schedule talks with India about the 2008 terrorist attacks on Mumbai and the countries’ longstanding dispute over Kashmir. Those attacks left 173 people dead. The terrorist group, Lashkar e Taiba, has claimed responsibility for the attacks, which shook this nation of over a billion people.

Bangladeshi Hindu Abducted, Forced to Convert to Islam:  Update

I previously reported on the abduction of a young Hindu woman from her family’s home in northern Bangladesh (Bangladeshi Hindu Abducted, Forced to Convert to Islam, Canada Free Press, August 11, 2009). At 12:45am on June 13, five Muslims broke into a home in the village of Ghosai Chandura, vandalized it, and grabbed the 21-year old the college student Koli Goswami from her bed.

For Obama, It’s only human rights if it’s anti-US

Although you would never know it from the mainstream media, many Americans never bought the ridiculous argument that Barack Obama was some sort of human rights activist. In fact, for some of us, he was just the opposite. As reported in an earlier Canada Free Press article (“Obama Sides with Islamists in Choudhury Case”), Obama was the only Washingtonian asked who did not take any action to support Muslim Zionist Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury.

Keeping Afghanistan the “Good War”

I have a good friend who fought in the 1968 Vietnam Tet Offensive. He talks about how, in the battle's aftermath, he and his buddies patrolled the streets of Hue City, site of some of the most intensive fighting. He describes walking on the bodies of dead North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers piled several layers high in the strategic provincial capital, and is also quick to remind me that Tet was a stunning military victory for the United States; that in fact, the US did not lose a single military encounter for the rest of the war.

Bangladeshi Hindu Abducted, Forced to Convert to Islam

For most of us in the West, the notion of forced conversion seems to belong to a bygone age and a long discredited mentality. The sad fact, however, is that like the slave trade and other atrocities we have left in our past, forced conversion is alive and well even today.

Is Shoaib Choudhury’s Ordeal Drawing to a Close?

The trial of Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury continued this week in Dhaka, Bangladesh. It was his second court appearance in two weeks after being called no more than once a month for the last four years. (Prior to that, he spent 17 months of imprisonment and torture for his anti-Islamist and pro-Israel articles.) The next day, he received a call from an attorney who told him that the prosecutor in his case said the government would convict Shoaib even though it did not have the evidence for it.

Why this silence on organised anti-Hindu violence in Bangladesh?

Reports began trickling out of Bangladesh this spring about an anti-Hindu violence in the heart of its capital carried out in three stages: March 30, April 17, and April 29. A community of approximately 400 Hindus was reportedly going about its business when “hundreds of Muslims” suddenly descended on them and demanded they quit the homes where they and their families had lived for the past 150 years. Witnesses also report that police watched passively while attackers beat residents and destroyed a Hindu temple.

Why Jimmy Carter Really is an Anti-Semite

For years, many people have accused former US President of being an anti-Semite, but Carter and his minions have insisted that such accusations amount to calumny and that he is simply a moral man who speaks for the oppressed Palestinians. This week, however, he finally slipped up and let his anti-Semitic slip show.

Muslim Zionist, Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, harassed by Bangladeshi Intelligence

Dhaka, Bangladesh—The Bangladeshi government resumed its harassment of pro-peace journalist Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, despite repeated promises not to. Intelligence agents have been staking out his house the“past few days,” according to neighbors; and the family cornered a man insisting that he was from Bangladesh’s DGFI intelligence service.

Fawning Media will Ignore Obama’s Pakistan Disaster

The Obama Administration continues to say all the “correct” things about Pakistan and its fight against the Taliban. Yet, knowledgeable observers in South Asia give the country no more than twelve months to stave off the terror group’s inevitable takeover of that nuclear Islamic Republic.

Obama domestic and foreign policy two sides of the same coin

The Taliban are cutting through Pakistan like a knife through butter; the Pakistani government has responded by ceding parts of the country to the terrorists and ignoring the extensive Talibanization of its intelligence service, military, and bureaucracy. David Kilcullen, former adviser General David Petraeus, recently said that Pakistan could collapse within six months; and a February report from a task force chaired by no less than former Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry said: “We are running out of time to help Pakistan change its present course toward increasing economic and political instability, and even ultimate failure.”

Those Wacky Moderate Taliban

Delhi, India. United States President Barack Hussein Obama unveiled his much awaited South Asian strategy in a globally televised speech last night (Indian time). Today many Indians told me, as one put it, that Obama “lived up to his middle name by showing the face of a pro-Pakistan US policy.” A critical component of that policy is to find “moderate Taliban” with whom the United States and its allies can negotiate a peace.

Maybe I’m just dumb, but “Smart Power” makes no sense to me.

Perhaps the Obama-Clinton concept of Smart Power is just too sophisticated for my limited conservative brain. For there is nothing smart about it, and it seems like code for avoiding the use of any kind of power. The first tip off came from the fact that it is winning high praise among those who have long detested any manifestation of US power: the Europeans and the UN. The second tip off is that the earliest manifestations of Smart Power could not have been dumber.

Obama’s inexperience deadly in South Asia

March 20, 2009 (Kolkata, India). While Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is still congratulating the Pakistani government for “resolving its crisis,” by which she means an internal political spat; the real crisis is only getting worse. The Taliban continues its march through Pakistan, imposing Sharia law and persecuting non-Muslims as it does, while President Barack Obama continues to happily search for the “moderate Taliban” among them. And that’s not all.

Clinton Puts US Head in Pakistani Sand

Rudrapur, India. If Americans (or anyone else) needed proof that our government is hopelessly lost in South Asia, this morning’s Indian papers provide all the confirmation they need. The article in question featured a beaming Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praising the Pakistanis for “themselves resolving [their] difficulties.”

Finding ‘Moderate Radicals’, Barack Obama style

The words we use are important, and each has its own specific meaning. So when the Obama Administration says that it is open to dealing with “moderate Taliban,” people should ask what in the world it means. The Taliban is by definition a radical organization that is not about to give on its maximalist demand of imposing Sharia law wherever it attains power. It is in its very essence contrary to everything we believe in as Americans. When the US President, who considers himself a master of words, speaks about moderate radicals, he needs to be asked, “Are you crazy?”

Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury Attacked by Goons

Dhaka, Bangladesh—At 10 a.m. today, local time, internationally-acclaimed journalist Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, was attacked as he was working in the office of his newspaper, Weekly Blitz, by “a gang of thugs” claiming to be from Bangladesh’s ruling Awami League. I spoke by telephone with Choudhury as he awaited medical treatment for eye, neck, and other injuries suffered in the attack. The renewed violence marks the first against him since he was abducted by Bangladesh’s dreaded Rapid Action Battalion a year ago.

Freedom Under Attack in India

“The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in the stars but in ourselves.” When historians look back on our era and wonder how a relatively small group of Islamist radicals controlled the international agenda for great countries across the globe, they will ask why we failed to heed those words that William Shakespeare wrote four centuries earlier. They might also reprise the equally pertinent words of the cartoon character Pogo: