"Insert Heimlich Manuever here"
Diana West gets paid to follow public affairs with the kind of attention that brought her to focus on the White House celebration of Ramadan earlier this week. I, on the other hand, am a volunteer observer of public affairs with a normal threshold for pain. On occasion I therefore avert my eyes from events that I know will hurt too much to witness.
Thanks to Diana West, I didn't have to watch the White House doings and can laugh instead of cry while reading the following: "So, the president hosted his Ramadan dinner. Believing (and having written) that this man is all that separates us from the abyss, I'm pulling for Mr. Bush to succeed. At the same time, I'm also hoping he choked a little on his official remarks, at least on the part where he called on people of all faiths to reflect on 'the values we hold common — love of family, gratitude to God, and' — insert Heimlich Maneuver here — 'a commitment to religious freedom.'
"Islam may have a lot of things — love of family and gratitude to God, as the president said, along with jihad (holy war), dhimmitude (inferior status of non-Muslims) and a corner on the suicide bombing market — but it does not have 'a commitment to religious freedom.' And, that goes even after excluding al Qaeda, the Taliban and the entire royal family of Saudi Arabia."
You won't want to miss "Bush and the Muslims." (Courtesy of RealClearPolitics.)
SUPPLEMENTARY READING: Check out today's FrontPage symposium, "Islamic Anti-Semitism," and Victor Davis Hanson's NRO column, "Those Jews."
