The Telegraph has an article on "combat marketing" -- providing wells, roads and schools to win hearts.
It comes down to deep pockets.
As Sgt Maj David Turnbull, of the 1st Battalion 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, said: "We can outspend al-Qa'eda and the Taliban."We are not bribing them, but making them realise that the Afghan government and American government are legitimate and we are the ones building wells, and schools for children. Their loyalties will shift and hopefully they will come out and talk."
On the other hand, the local bazaars still sell Osama bin Laden popcorn balls.
On the famed Silk Road, jewel of Asia,
Hindu, Buddhist,Xian, Jews,
zoroastrians, Hellenists and many others
mixed and mingled
until the war god came
and crushed the gardens in mohammed's name
and made the mountain a rubble of dust,
All for al-lah's lust for power
to make the "others," cower,
no music, no dance, no wine, no chance to be.
No, nyet, never! say the Free.
The afghani want submission,
to make a $comission (from arabia)
by hanging out, shooting and shouting
at the Free . . . hey see me!
I'm your master, get down on your knee.
No I say.
This is my call to you.
Oh my precious Afghani,
the light of truth and freedom
shines in the hearts of humanity.
Come and join us, swap other for brother,
love for hate.
It's not too late,
to remember your roots,
writes the poetess.
This is madness. Are we expected to pay for the Extreme Makeovers of Afghanistan and Iraq, in the hope that these countries will be our friends? They will not be, they cannot be. They can pocket the wells for water in Afghanistan, or the wells for oil, repaired and re-repaired, in Iraq; they will pocket the schools built, the hospitals outfitted, the electricity grids, the potable water -- as they do, by the way, among the Shi'a in southern Iraq, and in the Sunni isosceles and deadly triangle.
And it is the same with other Muslim states. Egypt pockets $2 billion a year, yet Egypt is, next to Saudi Arabia, our great "ally," and to Jordan, also for a long time on the American dole, the most anti-American of all Muslim states.
What is to be the policy now? Shall the non-Muslim states from now unto eternity pay what is effectively a 'jizyah,' protection money, in order to ensure ever greater improvements in living standards so as to win "hearts and minds"? It is not poverty, and it never was poverty, that causes the Jihad, but the tenets of Islam. If it were poverty, the problems world-wide would emanate from the Congo, and Bolivia, and the Hindu slums of Bombay. But they do not; they come from Muslim states, including the very richest states in the world, enjoying the greatest transfer of wealth in human history, from the industrialized world to them, and all the result of an accident of geology.
The army officers and of course Reservists (for it is they who make up 97% of the Civil Affairs Units involved in such endless dogoodery -- thereby ensuring that any Reservists now involved in Civil Affairs are guaranteed to be sent to Iraq and Afghanistan (where their lives are as much as risk as those in combat units, given the circumstances, and their conditions far different from what the recruiters led them to reasonably expect.
The sums involved in keeping Afghanis, or Iraqis, happy are extaordinary, and are misallocated. The nearly $20 billion now being spent to reconstruct Iraq, and its entirely ungrateful population (this does not mean that the U.S. government cannot extract an occasional speech from one of the new leaders, thanking the United States -- what I am referring to is real gratitude, heartfelt gratitude, the gratitude that is not a political ploy to extract more money, but felt by people who can speak the truth).
It is not the American traxpayers who should be contributing a cent either to the rebuilding of Afghanistan or Iraq. For Afghanistan, force the Saudis -- and there are ways to force them -- to contribute money; read them the riot act; tell them that the Taliban and Al Qaeda, while based on Qur'an and hadith, were given a great boost by the Saudi money that went into those Pakistani madrasas in which, in turn, those theological students (talib) were prepared, and then gave birth to the Taliban, and by the Saudi money that flowed as well, from many individuals and institutions, to support Bin Laden and his operation.
It is infuriating to learn, as I did from Le Figaro (June 2, 2004), in an interview with Amar Shawkat, who just resigned as the Deputy Minister of Youth and Sport in Iraq, that the 130 Iraqi-Americans (or Anglo-Iraqis) who have been sent, as Wolfowitz's agents, to be his eyes and ears throughout the Iraqi government, even though most of them are, in Shawkat's words, "inculte" (completely uneducated), being paid -- well, just guess? $14,000 a month.
Could have fooled me. I thought all those Iraqi-Americans pitching in, going back to build that country, helping out, were all impelled by patriotic fervor, a generous impulse to bring light unto their own native land. Nope, it's the fabulous amounts of money that the American government is distributing like confetti all over the land. What a way to buy loyalty -- which will not last a nanosecond, once the money stops -- and even while it keeps flowing, the amount of gratitude it buys is remarkably small.
What spendthrift fools, what a failure to analyze, what an infuriating waste of our money.
How much better to take the tens of billions and apply it to a serious energy program, or to building a communications system that will be a real equivalent to Radio Liberty. That had no holds barred about Communism; we should beam, not so much to the Muslim world, as to the non-Muslim world, trying to create, and support, a united front of all non-Muslims. But we won't out of fear and misunderstanding of Islam. We are allowing ourselves to believe the Esposito-supported nonsense about Islam. Get it straight and memorize it, and then learn why the statement of Ibn Warraq is true: "There may be moderate Muslims, but Islam itself is not moderate." And even those "moderate Muslims" have to be clearly defined; no one who helps to mislead Infidels as to the true tenets of Islam can be considered a "moderate," for by misleading (through evasion, distortion, distraction, ommission, irrelevancies), the "moderate" is, objectively, rendering the Infidel less wary, and thereby helping to promote his vulnerability to Islamic domination, by whatever means (for terrorism is only a tactic, and not the most effective instrument of the Jihad).
Damn, Hugh, right on target. My only critiscim is this comment: "where their lives are as much as risk as those in combat units, given the circumstances, and their conditions far different from what the recruiters led them to reasonably expect." Bullshit. Anybody wearing the uniform today knows there is a chance of being sent into harms way. So please don't degrade them by making it sound as if they didn't know. It ranks right up there with those clowns at Abu Ghraib stating they didn't know what the Geneva Convention was. God Bless America, our troops, and Mr. Bush.
During lunch break, I took a stroll over to AL's bar .
Ed was sitting there looking kind a' thoughtful.
"Hey Eddie, d'you see that show on last night on our boys getting killed by those Nazis during the D. Day landings ?"
"You betcha , but those guys were'nt Nazis , they were Germans"
"Geez ! Not the Germans that make those cool Benzes and that great beer ?"
"That's right buddy"
Guess you learn something every day!
I got home that night . Charlene was watching the TV.
"Charl , did you know the Nazis were really germans "
"Just shut up and take out the trash"
Next day i saw Ed again in the bar.
"Ed. d'yo see that show on those damn terrorists and all the killng that's goin' on ?"
"You betcha, but those guys ain't terrorists they'r Jihadists of Islam."
"Geez! Not those guys who preach peace to the world and make those great kebabs"
"Thats right buddy".
Guess you learn something every day!
I had to leave early caus Charlene was giving me heaps . On the way home I met Mr Duke , that good old patriot who knows my name.
" Mr Duke . I just found out from Eddie that all those Nazis were germans and those terrorists are Muslims . How about that?"
"Don't you believe a word of it son. they're all Jooos. See you at the next meeting and make sure your white,white white."
I got home and Charlene was watching TV. So i took out the trash.
Geez that Eddie is sure wrong about a lot of things!
AMerica MUST STOP funding all countries who espouse SHar/ia Laws!
It can then INCREASE its aid to countries that do not.
That will send a clear message.
Time to put a financial moratorium on every nation in the world.
That'll fix their @$$es.
The only way that the US can win hearts and minds is if Islam is abolished altogether. I am not a christian, I don't even believe in god, but I don't think it would be a bad thing if christian missionaries were sponsored by the US so that at least Afghanis could leave this evil religon.
The only way that the US can win hearts and minds is if Islam is abolished altogether. I am not a christian, I don't even believe in god, but I don't think it would be a bad thing if christian missionaries were sponsored by the US so that at least Afghanis could leave this evil religon.
The only way that the US can win hearts and minds is if Islam is abolished altogether. I am not a christian, I don't even believe in god, but I don't think it would be a bad thing if christian missionaries were sponsored by the US so that at least Afghanis could leave this evil religon.
I want some OBL popcorn balls!
Hello everyone,
OK, I'll try again, I know I keep citing the same book, but I give credit where credit is due - let's not be afraid to "stand on the shoulders of giants" and at the very least not lose valuable time in this crucial debate reinventing the wheel.Grab your copies of "Civilization and Its Enemies" by Lee Harris (which I'm sure you all rushed out and bought on my recommendation last week)turn to The End of Classical Sovereignty (page 28) and follow along to yourselves as I read aloud: "We must first begin by realizing that both the "liberal" concept of national self-determination and the "conservative" one of realpolitik are no longer adequate to the historical actuality that is unfolding before our eyes. They are obsolete for the same reason: the epoch of history governed by the principle of classical sovereignty is in the process of dissolution."
Harris goes on to explain that, among other things, the world hasn't yet successfully "willed" a nation into being...that the Saudis have a nation because (much as hugh points out in one way or another)they are sitting on oil, the Palestinians want to be "recognized" because (rightly or wrongly)they can't form a nation conventionally, and the Israelis have a state because they're willing to do whatever they have to to have one, period. My interpretation is that the Afghanis danced with the devil to throw off the Soviets, and they need to live with the consequences. If that means being a "grim cautionary tail" for other nations tempted to sacrifice freedom for security (and thus deserve neither)and let fundamentalists take over the asylum, so be it. OK, close books and face front.
Hugh makes a nasty but sharp point. This is why foreign aid is such, well, bullshit. Not a cent is given out that someone, somewhere, who lobbyed for the aid in the first place, already has a start-up company and a contractor in the recipent country, waiting to get started It's almost like a form of money laundering...I grease congressmen to pass a spending bill OKing foreign aid for country X to build, say, a power plant.And I happen to be a major construction firm. Weeelll...guess who gets the contract.The money comes right back to the US via my bank accounts.Foreign aid is war profiteering in peacetime.
Oddly enough, we're finding out that the only aid that seems to do any real good for the people of a disadvantaged country is the kind immigrants in this country send home...$80 billion, according to November/December 2003 "Foreign Policy" magazine. This actually outstrips what rich nations gave officially, and here's the best part: because it goes directly to individuals, families, etc., rather than getting eaten up through bureaucratic channels and corrupt governments, the actual return is almost 100%. And it appears they're using it to educate their children, start businesses, and own property (all the things foreign aid is/was supposted to do and failed).
OK, it's 4 in the morning, I've forgotten my point, class dismissed.
Hugh: There are indeed VERY few genuine "moderate" or reformist Muslims. Bassam Tibi springs to mind. He has written most of his books in German, but a couple of the latest ones are available in English. I doubt whether Islam can be reformed, and I think he sometimes engages in wishful thinking (like Irshad Manji), but still, he is about as close as you get.
Huge
You are missing the big Picture we are helping to stop the move of death by mulsums!
When people are free to choose you will find they choose Life this is why they run away from the war zones! Keep the Faith the 3 Ts [things take time] This country the USA was not formed over night and this reform will not either. There were many who died in the Fight for freedom in this country over many hundreds of years do not forget this!
The money we use to fight the war on drugs is a large amount and if we can get the Durg growers to learn to live a rich life for all their people this is a good thing!
We are winning this war you are not seeing all the Battles but there are many fronts! We are not Alone!!!
Part of the American Tribe
God Bless the USA and her Fighting Forces and All who Fight with her give them Strength and Courage to stay the Course to Victory Amen
PS The Sargents do not know the whole battle plan!
People of Afghanistan know tree things :
- Anericans and coalition are crusaders Kaffirs, invadres .
- Taliban are muslims moujahdeens legitimate government under Sharia law.
- Krazai American-Afghan government are puppet traitor government without any islamic legimity
So Afghans will continu their Jihad until the total clean of all crusaders and traitors and the establishment again of islamic government .
Actually, jihadist, the "legitimate" government of Afghanistan would be Hindu, not Muslim. It would be hard to find some locally to install in power, though, since your "religion" killed 70 million of them, and drove out or subjugated the rest.
Don't you remember? The Hindu Kush mountain range in eastern Afghanistan? "Kush" comes form an arab root word for "massacre."
Your "religion" names land forms after your crimes. What a pathetic system of beleifs.
All this came from the misguided notion that Islamic terrorism was due to poverty.
There were these Islamic apologist clowns who came on TV after 9/11 and said that these people are mad at the conditions they’re living.
With no jobs and corrupt leaders, they find delight in “Islamic extremism” (REAL ISLAM).
The Government and the Media actually bought this lame excuse. Mohammed Atta was far from being in poverty.
Mullah Mo is correct - as I've pointed out in another stream, history shows that revolutions are organized and executed by "bored rich kids" who use the disenfranchised poor as their cannon fodder. The romantic notion of a poor individual rising up from obscurity to avenge himself and his people by throwing off his opressors in a bloody coup, is unfortunately, the stuff of B-grade adventure movies and Victorian novelettes.
Despite their (revolutionaries, terrorists, whatever)perennial claim to labor for "the masses", the fact is both Bolshevik and Nazi as well as Jihadist have a vested interest in perpetuating "the masses" - study Germany toward the end of the war, Eastern Europe after the end of the war,the PLO yesterday, the House of Saud today,and Bin Laden (everybody's favorite rich kid) tomorrow.And don't even get me started about Central and South America.