You can run, but you can’t hide:

Pakistani intelligence officials say a U.S. missile attack close to the Afghan border has killed at least 15 people.

Friday’s drone attack was the first reported strike since Monday’s pre-dawn U.S. commando raid that killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

Authorities say the attack targeted a compound in North Waziristan, a stronghold of Taliban and al-Qaida militants on the border with Afghanistan.

It’s very encouraging to the see the Obama administration step up these kind of attacks against terrorists. You can’t appease extremists; you’ve got to crush them. And since the Pakistani government isn’t doing anything about the large Taliban- and Al Qaeda-presence in Pakistan, the U.S. has to do it. End of debate.

The United Nations is negotiating with communist and Islamist insurgencies in the Philippines in the hopes of making the insurgencies stop their recruitment of child soldiers. As Reuters reports:

The Philippines’ main Muslim separatist group has promised to hasten efforts to remove child soldiers from its ranks, the United Nations said on Friday, and it hopes to reach a similar deal with Maoist rebels. . . .

Army spokesman Arnulfo Burgos said about a dozen child soldiers fighting for the Maoists had been killed this year, with 121 captured and 215 having surrendered.

This is insane. Can we really expect organizations that engage in mass terrorism to keep their word?

The Islamists and communists have no respect for human lives and will continue to inflict atrocities on the Filipino people until they are wiped out of existence. Negotiations and appeasement will do nothing but further increase the lifespan of these totalitarian butchers.

The Filipino people should condemn the U.N’s legitimizing of the people who bomb them and send only one message to the totalitarian insurgents:  “Give up or die.”

(To read more about the situation in Philippines, see my article in the latest issue of The Objective Standard: Around the World: “The Communist War against the Philippines and Why It Rages On”)

That is at least what professor John Myhill of the BESA Center for Strategic Studies-Bar-Ilan University believes. Read the whole document here, it’s fascinating. Moneyquote:

The ruling group in Syria, the Alawites – a highly distinctive non-Muslim sect with no theological or territorial objections to a Jewish state – believe that two of God’s incarnations were Joshua Ben-Nun, the original Jewish conqueror of the Land of Israel, and the fourth Caliph, Ali, who was murdered by the Sunnis. They do not fast during Ramadan or make pilgrimage to Mecca, have no mosques or indeed any public worship, and traditionally wear crosses like Christians.

The Alawites are outnumbered in Syria by 70 to 12 percent. Thus, in order to legitimize their rule among the Sunni majority, they must publicly project an image of championing Arabism by unrelentingly rejecting Israel and flirting with Israel’s avowed enemies. Syria will not accept a peace treaty with Israel, no matter what the conditions are, because it would delegitimize the Alawite regime.

The Alawites are a purely ancestral religious group and like other groups of this type – Jews, Maronites, Armenians and Druze – their basic loyalty is to their own particular group rather than any larger unit they may seem to be part of. Even if they happen to speak Arabic, they do not necessarily understand themselves as being “Arabs.” Alawites in Syria find it indispensable to publicly claim to be Arabs, but this does not reflect their real loyalties.

His conclusion is that a Sunni leader might get involved in a war on Israel, regardless of the consequences. Assad may beat the drum of war every now and then, but he’s not so stupid as to actually declare an all-out war.

Food for thought.

Oh my, look who’s talking now:

What do you think of Osama bin Laden’s death?
I think it’s a success for Pakistan and the peace-loving people of the world. Having said that, there is one downside to it, and this is the violation of the sovereignty of Pakistan. I strongly believe that, and the people of Pakistan are very sensitive to this. They are sensitive to even drone attacks coming across and violating our air-space. So this attack by U.S. forces in Pakistan is a violation of our sovereignty.

Oh please. Keep the BS for people who’ll actually fall for it. If the United States had informed Pakistan about the attack, rogue members of the ISI would have warned Bin Laden. He already had cash on hand in case of an emergency.

Instead of complaining, I wonder why the West isn’t criticizing Musharraf about his role in all this. After all, he was president until 2008. Bin Laden’s wife told Pakistani investigators that her terrorist husband was living in Abbottabad since 2006. How come Musharraf was unaware of this fact? Was he so incompetent? Or was he secretly in bed with Al Qaeda? Those are the questions that need to be asked right now, not whether the U.S. had the right to take out Bin Laden or not.

Barry Rubin writes:

[O]nce again, let me point out that al-Qaeda is a terrorist threat but not a strategic threat. The real problem is with revolutionary Islamists: Hamas, Hizballah, Iran, Syria, and the Muslim Brotherhood. If U.S. policy goes soft on these groups — even helping them at times — terrorism, anti-Americanism, and instability are going to get worse.

That’s exactly right. There are more groups than Al Qaeda that pose a serious threat to the West and Israel. And not just terrorism-wise, but strategically. They intend to take over entire countries; Al Qaeda hasn’t been able to do that for quite some time now. But Hezbollah and Hamas? They are a different story.

Why are the media ignoring this story?

The Bashar al-Assad regime’s crackdown on dissent in Syria has been knocked off of the headlines the last several days, but that doesn’t mean that they have stopped. As a matter of fact, the near media-blackout may allow some cover for the crushing of the protesters.

According to the BBC the Syrian military is moving tanks towards Homs, one of the centers of protest. This comes after Syrian forces basically besieged Daraa last week.

I understand it that Osama Bin Laden’s death is big news, but there’s more going on in the world – heck, even in the Middle East.

A cynic may answer my question as follows: because the MSM don’t want to draw attention to the crimes this thug commits against his own people. After all, they share his hatred for the West and Israel. As Jamie Glazov wrote, they are united in hate.

This is remarkable footage (h/t to Breitbart.tv):

“I just talked to somebody very knowledgeable… This woman who was in American intelligence believes he’s in a villa – a nice, comfortable villa – in Pakistan.”

The question now is, of course: what the heck happened there? How did Amanpour know about this and how reliable was this intel? Was this something someone told the U.S. “He’s somewhere in a villa in Pakistan”, or was the information more detailed than that?

At the very least this proves that the U.S. was on Bin Laden for some time. Not per se as in his exact whereabouts, but definitely in the sense that they knew they didn’t have to look for him in Afghanistan.

Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party just won a a good majority in the recent Canadian election. As the Christian Science Monitor reports:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party won 167 seats, well past the 155 he needed to win a majority. After overseeing a series of weak coalition governments, Mr. Harper now has a strong mandate to push the traditionally centrist Canadian political agenda further to the right.

This is good news. Unfortunately, there is a new more sinsiter opposition facing the Conservatives. As the report also says, although the recent election

produced Canada’s first majority government in seven years. At the same time, it all but wiped out Canada’s traditional ruling party, the centrist Liberal Party, and propelled the historically marginal socialists to the important role of official opposition…

The New Democratic Party (NDP), a party with socialist roots, and its cheerful leader Jack Layton secured 103 seats, nearly tripling its strength in Parliament with a historically strong showing in Quebec. The NDP has played the role the role of Canada’s social conscience for decades but has never won more than 44 seats.

The rise of the socialists in the form of the NDP will be a very troubling matter for the already socialist Canada.  Hopefully Harper and the Conservatives can hold the line.

Here’s what the British newspaper the Daily Mail has to say about the eventual elimination of Osama Bin Laden:

U.S. troops were just 800 yards from Osama Bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound during a training rotation in Pakistan in 2008, it has emerged.

The embarrassing proof that some of America’s best military men were so close to the world’s most wanted terrorist was found buried in diplomatic cables released by whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks.

Mention of Abbottabad is sparse in the cables – but when it is, the significance is chilling, particularly as other information indicates the U.S. may have been on the path that would lead them to Bin Laden as early as 2008.

These people are pathetic. On the one hand they’re now criticizing the U.S. for killing the most wanted man on earth, on the other hand they’re criticizing the States for not eliminating him sooner.

Can leftists at least make up their mind on what America’s big sin is here? Or is that too much to ask?

Oh.My.God:

White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan painted a stunning picture Monday of Osama Bin Laden’s final moments alive: the al-Qaida leader was armed and possibly firing at oncoming U.S. forces while using his own wife as a human shield.

The problem with that specific telling of the story, however, is that the White House is now saying, quietly, that that is not what happened.

The Washington Post‘s Dana Milbank seems to be very happy with Glenn Beck’s and Fox’s decision to cancel Beck’s television show. He writes:

When Beck’s show made its debut on Fox News Channel in January 2009, the nation was in the throes of an economic collapse the likes of which had not been seen since the 1930s. Beck’s angry broadcasts about the nation’s imminent doom perfectly rode the wave of fear that had washed across the nation, and the relatively unknown entertainer suddenly had 3 million viewers a night — and tens of thousands answering his call to rally at the Lincoln Memorial.

But as the recession began to ease, Beck’s apocalyptic forecasts and ominous conspiracies became less persuasive, and his audience began to drift away. Beck responded with a doubling-down that ultimately brought about his demise on Fox.

Oh my. Dana, did you ever actually watch Beck’s show or are you just listening to what Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow say about him? If you actually watched the show, you’d know that he didn’t “double-down” anything. He continued doing what he has always done: exposing the radicalism of the Obama administration.

What’s more, unlike Milbank I didn’t notice any remarkable change in the nation’s mood. Well, not about its economy at least (the only upswing happened recently when Osama bin Laden was killed). Americans – and especially centrists and conservatives – remain worried by Obama’s socialist agenda. They realize he aims to take away their economic liberty; and they don’t like it one bit – neither does Beck.

The Russians are at loggerheads over Osama Bin Laden. They can’t decide if they killed him themselves, or if he isn’t really dead at all, just part of another big American hoax, like the moon landing.  This kind of confusion arises in Russia because, just as in Soviet times, while the U.S. was working on liquidating terrorists Russia was working on liquidating newspapers, broadcast journalism, opposition political parties and the Internet, where freedom rivals that in Rwanda.  Like the infamous “Emperor” with his “new clothes” Russians are now so sadly lacking in basic information that they can’t make credible judgments about what is happening in the outside world, or for that matter within Russia.  That’s why a proud KGB spy with a host of failed policies still enjoys two-thirds support in opinion polls after more than a decade in power.

Barack Obama said yesterday: “For over two decades, bin Laden has been Al Qaeda’s leader and symbol. The death of bin Laden marks the most significant achievement to date in our nation’s effort to defeat Al Qaeda.”

Although his death certainly is important, I don’t quite see how it’s more important than the West’s victory in the war against Afghanistan. After all, that’s when Al Qaeda lost its safe haven. Ever since, these radical terrorists have been on the run. Bin Laden certainly was an important figure, but in the end, he’ll simply be replaced by someone else; someone who shares his sick ideology and who’s more than willing to kill thousands and thousands of innocent people to further his totalitarian agenda. It’s an important victory for us, certainly, but the most significant achievement to date in the war on terror? No.

It is, by the way, typical for Obama to tout his own horn this way. You’d think he’d at least praise his predecessor for taking the war to Al Qaeda. But no, he’d rather tell us all how brilliant he is.

The Washington Post believes that Osama bin Laden will be replaced by Al Qaeda’s number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri. That makes sense, to the say the least. Zawahiri is considered to be Al Qaeda’s most important ideologue. He’s the man behind the group’s violent ideology and has a lot of influence.

Having said that, he’s not a second Bin Laden. He has much less appeal in the Arab world. As such, Bin Laden’s death is a problem for Al Qaeda.

Good news: U.S. forces have finally been able to take out Osama bin Laden. The leader of Al Qaeda was hiding in a Pakistani village.

House Speaker John Boehner: this is a “victory in our continued fight against al Qaeda and radical extremism around the world.”

If this isn’t great news, I don’t know what is. Bin Laden was responsible for the worst terror attacks in history. The world is a much better place without him.