Daniel Pipes belongs to the completely discredited group of neoconservative "thinkers" who helped influence George W. Bush in the disastrous invasion of Iraq. Like Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, Daniel Pipes avoided military service in Vietnam (he was safe in Harvard Yard), and yet he condemned opponents of that war and any other (US-led ) war. While many of the neocons now avoid the glare of public spotlight since their ideas have been repudiated by history, Pipes remains committed to all-out war with the Islamic world. In particular, Pipes dreams of a bombing campaign against Iran and wakes up every day with new schemes on how to make this dream of war a reality. Last week, Pipes hit upon a novel idea: President Obama must bomb Iran to save his presidency (How to save the Obama presidency: Bomb Iran). It should be pointed out that Daniel PIpes has always done everything possible to undermine both candidate Obama and president Obama by calling him a practicing Muslim (and American Muslims, Pipes has written, should be interned in detention camps.)
It is bad enough that Pipes can publish his fantasies of total war in the neoconservative National Reivew, which, in some quarters at least, is viewed as a serious journal of (mostly discredited) ideas. But what would motivate a mass circulation daily newspaper - Die Welt - to translate and publish such nonsense on its Web site? As Politblogger points out, the decision to publish Pipes' masturbatory fantasies of bombs and rockets is a scandal:
Die Tatsache, dass WELT ONLINE Daniel Pipes überhaupt die Möglichkeit gegeben hat, seine fetischhaften Gewaltfantasien öffentlich auszuleben, ist jedoch der eigentliche Skandal. (The fact that Welt-Online provided a public platform for Pipes' fetishist fantasies of violence is the real scandal).
The editorial staff of Die Welt must have had second thoughts about publishing this piece of garbage, since it has since been scrubbed from the site (but can still be found here).
The Linke Zeitung even accuses the publisher of Die Welt of committing a crime under Article 26 of German Basic Law, which reads in part:
(1) Acts tending to and undertaken with intent to disturb the peaceful relations between nations, especially to prepare for a war of aggression, shall be unconstitutional. They shall be made a criminal offense.
Actually, the fact that Die Welt gave Pipes a public forum is not that surprising. In the past, the Springer daily regularly published an Islamophobic hate blog by Leon de Winter and advocated torture.
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