Real Time - 2/23/07

When this show is on, it's perhaps the best show on television and is really the best opportunity to hear honest and fresh discussion on today's issues (since you're not getting that from CNN).

In this clip Ayaan Hirsi Ali tells it like it is on Islam. This commentary is coming from someone who has a death threat against her and has experienced first hand the oppression that is so commonplace throughout the Islamic world. For more on her extraordinary story, read this interview. I think this is the most revealing quote,

"But when someone has to die for his world view, what he may have done wrong is no longer the issue. That's when we have to stand up for our basic rights. Otherwise we are just reinforcing the killer and conceding that there was a good reason to kill this person."

I have said many times that our government has done more to recruit terrorists, than the terrorists could possibly imagine. We do bin Laden endless favors by invading other countries, detaining prisoners and denying them due process, and (worst of all) torturing. Ali's message is an important one. If we cannot even make the effort to defend our own standards for what's right in the West, and we capitulate to terrorists' threats, than it makes what we do with guns and bombs look so much more illegitimate.