Allawi to France: don't rush to play the dhimmi. From AFP, with thanks to Ali Dashti:
BAGHDAD (AFP) - Iraq's Prime Minister Iyad Allawi warned France against appeasing insurgents in order to secure the release of two of its nationals held hostage in the country as he prepared to travel to Brussels."France is bogged down by the past," said Allawi responding to a question by reporters on France's support for a conference by Iraqi civil society groups to be held in parallel to an official meeting on Iraqi elections scheduled for the end of the month in Egypt.
"France must revise its policies towards Iraq because its actions and statements are driven by the fact two Frenchmen are hold hostage in Iraq."
The French have no sand. The leaders of France are obvioulsly too cowardly to not play the dhimmi.
Count on France to do one thing, which is doing the exact opposite of what they should do.
Count on the French to do nothing, DC?
Au contrare, I'd count on them to continue cozying up to the scum of the earth as they have in the past, whether it was Hitler during the Vichy years, and Central African and middle-Eastern despots as they did under Chiraq's old boss, in the 70s and 80s, and as they have in the present times, subverting the oil-for-food program.
Allow me to rephrase Dragon....Count on the French to do nothing that will be considered stepping on the filthy toes of their Muslim populace.
DC:
Permission granted.
To those who blame Bush and Blair (KJ, etc.) for the unfolding of events, I say what about Chiraq and Putin and the parts they played to subvert the sanctions, propping Saddam up so he could rise again?
Not the least of the disasters narrowly averted in Iraq was the American attempt to foist the Baghdadian Vicar of Bray, Adnan Pachachi, onto the Iraqis, who instead chose Allawi. Pachachi, the Arab League's man in Iraq, has subsequently assured interviewers with a straight face that he "turned the job down" (of course everyone knows that is nonsense, except the BBC interviewer). Allawi has his points. Like Chalabi, like Ambassador Francke, he is one of those Iraqis who spent so many decades in the non-Muslim world, and did so as a refugee from an atrocious regime, not merely as a student cultivating his resentment of the Infidels. All of these people have an understanding, though they will not state it forthrightly, that too much Islam is a bad thing. If they were Iranians (either of the monarchist or Ali-Javadi Communist variety), or if they were Berbers, or Kurds, they might even have a chance to begin to make noises about Islam as a vehicle of Arab imperialism. But as Arabs, the amour-propre of everyone they know is so wrapped up in Islam, the Arabs' gift to the world (as they see it), that they simply have to maneuver without articulating views that they may secretly harbor -- may.
Allawi is certainly a lot better than Pachachi. But this is relative, as his recent blaming of the Americans for the massacre of 49 Iraqis who rushed home from their training in Jordan without proper security shows that there is a limit.
The Americans should not become too enamored of Allawi or any other Iraqi. And after January's elections one hopes that whoever is president will pull the troops out, within the year, and not risk any of them, including those Civil Affairs units (97% of them are Reservists) whose lives are put at risk in the absurd "Light Unto the Muslim Nations" project of thinking that more schools (but what is taught in those schools?) and more hospitals (in order to do what--ensure that Muslim families have 14 children apiece instead of 10 or 12, as at present?), and so on, will somehow cause the Imams in Saudi Arabia to throw down their Qur'ans and run for the office of aldermen? This idee fixe of some in the Bush adminstration must come undone, not in order to appease Muslims, but in order to allocate resources, in what is a world-wide, and continuing, and endless Jihad to spread Islam.
The main thing was to disarm Iraq, of all kinds of weaponry. That has been done, or nearly done. That's it. No more spending of money or risking of lives -- let the Iraqis risk their own lives, and let them do what they can to rebuild, with their fabulous oil wealth, what they can. The sooner the United States is out, the more coherent and focused its use of resources (men, money, materiel, attention) elsewhere -- the better for the counter-Jihad.
Far more important now than building more schools and roads in Iraq -- just why is that in the American interest, rightly understood? Does it help make constraints on Islam more likely? -- is to deal with Iran's nuclear undertaking, not with soldiers on land, but with missiles, and planes from the air. Not a single American should go to Iran, or help to "rebuild" any Muslm country. That is idiotic. And along with Iran, some intelligent effort to create a centrist movement that will articulate, in Europe, the dangers of further islamization, and work in every way to undo the Euro-Arab Dialogue and everything else that serves to split America from Europe, and to promote the unopposed islamization of Europe.
Allawi, you are okay, given the alternatives. And so are a number of others. But we have to leave. We don't have an infiinite amount of resources. And even if there are those at the top who have spent 20, 30, 40 years in exile, and tell us just what we want to hear, and are certainly eager to have us stay and spend all our money, and the lives of our soldiers, sorry -- no can do. Time to go. Try to make the best of it. We've already done more for Iraqis than any other power in the history of the region. That's about it. We'll be moseyin' on now -- git along little dogey (sound of chaps against the horse's flanks, chaps, the whistle of wind whirring the sagebrush, and a hint of a sunset over Monument Valley).
France will only stop with the comments if Allawi gives it a multi-million dollar contract for those who lost the contracts given by Saddam and the Food for Oil scam!
jihan