The plot thickens—or thins...

As tedious as it is, let’s recount the timeline here:

The morning of February 13, Andrew Bostom on his blog discusses Colonel Allen West, the only American politician who had recently demonstrated in a public debate a healthy Islamorealism—i.e., a literacy about the danger of Islam.

February 14, Diana West on her blog picks up on this, and publishes on her blog the same story.

February 15, Lawrence Auster on his blog picks up on this, and publishes the same story, adds excellent commentary, and includes an important tidbit of information from a reader about Allen West that only makes him shine all the more (i.e., that, to help save the men under his command, he engaged in what his hypersensitive Abu-Ghraibophobic superiors apparently considered the psychological torture of an Iraqi terrorist-enabling soldier).

February 16, I posted here on this blog the curious failure of Robert Spencer to make any mention on Jihad Watch of this story about Allen West. Meanwhile, Lawrence Auster posts on his blog a reminder about his Feb. 15 post on Allen West.

February 17, Lawrence Auster posts on his blog a notice that adverts to my February 16 post, and echoes my curiosity about Spencer’s ongoing oversight.

February 18, I post an Update on this which, aside from noting that Spencer’s oversight continues, at that point, into Day Six, also reports the interesting wrinkle that Spencer’s friend and career partner, Pam Geller, had already mentioned Allen West more than once on her blog, Atlas Shrugs. Indeed, Pam Geller posted a notice about Allen West on Feb. 15, praising him, and informing her readers that Alen West would be a speaker on Feb. 19 at the upcoming FDI event (a new anti-jihad organization created by her in partnership with Spencer). In that Feb. 15 post, Geller provides the same pertinent information about Allen West as did the other bloggers mentioned above, and she adds that Allen West has been contributing, and continues to contribute, essays to her blog. And she even gave a “hat tip” to Andrew Bostom in that notice. Since Geller is professionally involved with Spencer—not only in their creation of the new anti-jihad organization FDI, but also in terms of Spencer’s frequent and regular features of Geller’s pieces on Jihad Watch (and hers of his on hers), giving her a regular platform there far exceeding both in number, and in praise, what he offers to anyone else (at least for the past year or so; before that, he was doing the same favor for Diana West, who meanwhile has since then vanished from the Jihad-Watchscape)—it is reasonable to suppose that Spencer’s oversight in this regard was more or less an innocent matter of it slipping through the cracks of his busy schedule.

Indeed, today (February 19), Spencer posted on Jihad Watch a notice of today’s FDI/CPAC event which, among others, features Allen West as speaker. And in that notice, he adds:

One final note: I am generally pressed for time to such a degree that I never post everything that I would like to post here at Jihad Watch. In the crush of preparations for this conference and other matters over the last few days, I neglected to post the remaining three speaker profiles for today’s event: those for the superb Lt. Colonel Allen West, one of the very few politicians who fully understands the nature and magnitude of the jihad threat; Steve Coughlin, once the Pentagon’s only expert on Islamic law, whose job was terminated after politically correct pressure from Muslims in the military; and Wafa Sultan, the peerless freedom fighter and author of the extraordinary book A God Who Hates. Click on the names to read more about each.

In the original of this “final note”, the name “Allen West” links the reader of Jihad Watch—finally!—to the pertinent information about Allen West; though of course, the link does not take one to the blogs of any of Spencer’s current personae non gratae, but rather to his new hip-joined partner, Pam Geller. While it is arguable that this constitutes “better late than never”, it still does not quite absolve Spencer of the obligation of dedicating a special Jihad Watch post featuring Allen West and his remarkable words in his response to a questioner at a panel discussion in which he was participating.

It is also worthy of note that Spencer’s “final note” quoted above smacks of an expression of concern—imbued with an ever so exiguous hint of anxiety—to exculpate himself of his tardigrade performance in this regard. And that ever so slightly anxiety-tinged concern, in turn, seems to indicate it was motivated by an awareness on his part of Auster’s and/or my posts.

At any rate, what matters most in this whole context is getting Allen West to Congress. If there really does exist out there, amongst the ordinary grass-roots American voters, a hunger for a more robustly anti-Islam candidate to vote for, then getting the word out in these so-called “Islamophobic hate sites” on the Blogosphere (i.e., one of the rare locations in the world for important critical information about the problem of Islam)—particularly one of the most influential of all, Jihad Watch—can only help his campaign.

(For all the pertinent links, see my essay from a couple of days ago, The only American politician—so far—who demonstrates a healthy Islamorealism.)