Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Those who believe that President Barack Obama had put Al Qaeda to flight, conveniently, before and during his presidential election, had better pay attention to this Institute for the Study of War update . The ISW usually gets it right, while Foggy Bottom, nearly always tied to the apron strings of any current administration, gets it wrong. Al Qaeda is on the upswing everywhere in the Levant – even in Iraq, where the United States spent its treasure in blood, sweat and tears trying to sow democracy in the area. There, too, Al Qaeda is active, and Iraq may be up for grabs. “Escalating violence in Iraq crossed a new and very dangerous threshold this week.  Al Qaeda in Iraq launched a concentrated wave of car-bomb and other attacks specifically against civilian Shi'a targets in and around Baghdad.  Shi'a militias are mobilizing and have begun a round of sectarian killings facilitated by false checkpoints, a technique characteristic of the 2006-2007 period.  Prime...

The news site of the year, TimesOnLine , is reporting that the surge has succeeded in driving Al-Qaeda from Iraq: “American and Iraqi forces are driving Al-Qaeda in Iraq out of its last redoubt in the north of the country in the culmination of one of the most spectacular victories of the war on terror.” It may take some time for the good news to trickle down to other news hot spots like The Huffington Post and MoveOn.org. It is rumored that Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama intends to visit Iraq, sometime or other, at which point his aides may disclose the news to him, after which he may -- ahem -- "adjust" his view on the withdrawal of troops without regard to realities on the ground.

During the 1960s, . . . the most influential thinker was Italian communist Antonio Gramsci . He grasped that the most effective means of overturning Western Society was to subvert its culture and morality. Instead of mobilizing the working class to take over the world, the revolution would be achieved through a culture war, in which the moral beliefs of the majority would be replaced by the values of those on the margins of society. And this would be brought about by capturing all of society’s institutions—schools, universities, churches, the media, the legal profession, the police, voluntary groups—and making sure that this intellectual elite all sang from the same subversive hymn-sheet. In Britain , Gramsci’s revolutionary aims have been accomplished to the letter -- Melanie Phillips, Londonistan How about in the U.S.? Schools . Madrassas are schools for young Muslim boys whose learning consists of memorizing the Koran. Radical Muslims look to graduates of madrassas for rec...