Former prime minister: Iraq is in a ‘civil war’

Morning all!

OT, but I thought ya'll might appreciate this new cartoon, featuring our favorite Iranian president!

Mahmoud's New Hat:

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/30550501/

Ta!

Meh. The cartoons didn't work for me. I didn't feel the kind of rage I feel when viewing a Herblock or an Oliphant. Back on topic, the other night, I took the movie Voices of Iraq to my Iraqi neighbors' house and we watched in amazement. It was really an amazing piece of film. I think everyone should see it. I don't necessarily think a civil war is a bad thing, anymore than I think keeping Iraq as a single artificial nation is a good thing. I will say this, however, based upon my watching of Voices of Iraq: The women there are more intelligent and articulate about what they want and expect in a new Iraq. Saudi men, weep and tremble at your Iraqi betters.

Abdel Karim Nabil Suliman, an Egyptian Muslim , is expelled from Al Azhar Islamic University for expressing his progressive views

By: Free Copts

Abdel Karim Nabil Suliman [AKA: Kareem Amer] is a 22 year-old Egyptian student of law at the Azhar University (the largest Islamic university), Damanhour Campus, and a women's-rights activist. He also maintains his own blog where he posts articles expressing his views on the need for political reform as well as reforming Islam.

For more on this story go to: http://freecopts.blogspot.com/



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Freedom Now Communications

Fitnah will always be good for the non-Muslim world. I have often wondered why the West has not aggressively fostered a violent conflict over which Muslim faction would control the twin holy cities of Mecca and Medina. Even if the Saudi peninsula devolves into another Somalia, the Americans now have enough military assets in the region to secure reasonable stability in petroleum supply, thus keeping the American, Chinese, Japanese and European economies on their present growth tracks (see Thirty-Year Itch). With a major fitnah in the region, the jihadis will be eminently preoccupied with more important self-directed violence than with imperialistic Islamic expansion, especially if the fates of Mecca and Medina hang in the balance.

Off topic, but I could not help but be amazed by the recent mayhem in France. It seems that French youth are back to their old routine of vandalism, setting fire to automobiles, attacking MacDonalds etc. Hundreds of thousands are demonstrating and rioting in over 160 cities around the country over a labor law. Are we watching the disintigration of French civilization before our very eyes?

Maybe we should question our assumptions of the recent Muslim riots in France. Perhaps the muslim youth really were attempting to indicate that they were in fact part of contemporary French culture, rather than something unique and seperate. Maybe the riots by the French muslims were really an attempt to assimilate and behave like the native French. Why didn't we see this?

A strange place indeed.

If the US had not invaded, and if the Shia and the Kurds had managed to revolt against Saddam, am I wrong in assuming that that version of a civil war would have been more of a disadvantage to our interests than the one we are seeing now?

The riots in France may seem to have nothing to do with the general unpleasantness, unease, and disruption of life that the large-scale presence, and demands, of Muslims has caused.

What, after all, is the proposed law about? It is about giving work to the unemployed. Which unemployed? Oh, all the unemployed, of course. But with special attention to the young Muslims whose failure to enter the work-force, it is claimed and even believed by some, is what prompts their murderous hostility to the circumambient society, to the Infidel nation-state, and to non-Muslims (few dare to look at the texts, the attitudes, the atmospherics of Islam for an alternative explanation). But it is understood that employers will not wish to be saddled with young employees who reveal, as they most likely would, either the kind of unfitness for work, as some young non-Muslims would, or perhaps fitness but a dangerous attitude of hostility toward non-Muslim workers, or give signs of other cause for alarm (perhaps unwillingness to do what an Infidel shop-steward, or employer, demands).

This does not mean that the rioters are Muslim. This does not mean that the law in question is prompted only by considerations of giving Muslims a chance to be hired. But the unstated, but clear connection, of the disruption to general understandings of what France is, what its social and economic covenant is, even the possiblity of retaining the system of entitlements with a large, growing, and unintegrable population that has been completely unscrupulous in its exploitation of the welfare state set up, paid for, administered, and maintained, by Infidels who never thought that the system would be bled of resources by a discrete and hostile population.

Here is what today's, the Sunday edition of The New Duranty Times, reports:

"In Lyon, French youths protesting the law clashed with Turks demonstrating against the construction of a memorial to Armenian victims of a 1915 massacre, Reuters reported. The youths shouted, 'Fascists!' and "Go home!'"

Now that is mere reporting. What should we make of it? Nothing? Something? When French students suddenly shout at Turks "Go home!" is there anything else going on? Is this merely indignation over a Turkish protest at an Armenian memorial? Or is it something else, an as yet confused, not quite comprehended, expression of a "Go home" intended not so much for Turks as for Muslims in general, to whom those students were shouting, or thinking, or not even consciously thinking but feeling -- "Go home!" Leave us in peace.

For that Muslm presence, a presence that consists of a fast-breeding population, supported with free education, free medical care, subsidized housing (I have seen that housing, and it is far beyond what is avaiable as public housing in America), and itself inclined to inshallah-fatalism and to a hostility directed at Infidels that makes many, though not all, Muslims, difficult for employers and co-workers alike, and bring tension to the workplace, is what is responsible for the collapse, in France and elsewhere, of the social compact and the entitlements, that are now leading to economic ruin. That same large-scale presence forces the French state to defend its laicity, to worry about the indiscipline and riotous behavior by Muslims that in so many places, has caused such havoc in French public schools -- once the pride of France. And when, to the physical danger to teachres, and to fellow, but non-Muslim students, one adds the refusal to allow the government-manded curriculum to be followed either becuase it is deemed by Muslims anti-Muslim (reading Voltaire for example), or treats of subjects to which they are indifferent or hostile (the Kings of France, the Holocaust and World War II from any perspective that appears to deplore the former, and celebrate the Allied victory in the latter).

And when one adds to this the mistreatment of women, both Muslim women, and those "brigittes" who are regarded as fair game for every sort of degradation, so that many places are now simply unwalkable by women at night, or during the day, when one realizes that Muslims have been encouraged by their belief-system to regard Infidels as a source for loot, whose property rightly belongs, and can be taken by, the "best of people," the People of Allah, the members of the umma al-Islamiyya, not because "property is theft" as Proudhon said, but because "Infidel property is not really their property at all -- it belongs to Allah and to his people, and taking it whenever possible is licit because it is, essentially, helping oneself to the Jizyah that must be paid (for one example of a Norwegian imam preaching this openly, read Bruce Bawer's "While Europe Slept").

There are events. They are reported. And then there is the signficiance of those events -- their true meaning, or the meaning that is often hidden within. That is the duty of the columnist, the analyst, the person who makes sense of things. The New Duranty Times, and almost all of the major press, fails to report much of the news about Jihad and dhimmitude. And it also fails to connect events that may seem to have nothing to do with Islam, but when looked at more closely, may in fact have a connection.

. . . as for "the Iraqi People," expletive them!

What is worth saving of a brutish culture whose thoughts and actions, no matter how repugnant, are sanctified by a religion invented solely to enable such behaviors? There can be nothing good come from islam.

"The question we must seriously ask ourselves at this juncture is whether a Sunni-Shia civil war would help or harm U.S. interests."

It will certainly harm if the Iranians install their model there after crushing the Sunnis (likely) and beseiging the Kurds in the mountains like Saddam did (also likely).

Btw, crushing the Sunnis would not be difficult if brutal methods are used. The Kurds, on the other hand, would be very difficult to subdue as even Saddam discovered.

The French situation is interesting and worthy of its own headline/discussion but it doesn't belong here.

anyone who argues the war was a waste or is going downhioll is a fool.

we are winning. it is an important battle in the war against jihadofascism and we must do whatever it takes to smash the enemy.

a shia dominated govt which respects civil law run by civil authorities and relegates the mullahs to the religious realm is a powerful antidote to iran.

remeber: we need to steadily pressure the enemies of the West, but never expect too much progress fast.

this is a LONG WAR, and it is to OUR advantage to fight it step by step.

we all know the ULTIMATE result. we don't have to _ NOR SHOULD WE - fight the final battle now.

"a shia dominated govt which respects civil law run by civil authorities and relegates the mullahs to the religious realm is a powerful antidote to iran."

Yes, but how likely is it that the Shia dominated government will be respectful of such civilities? Hasn't Islam already been written into the constitution as the "main source" of law. Granted that's not as bad as the sole source, but it gives a lot of ground to the theocrats who are eagerly champing at the bit to take power and install Sharia Law.

Also, Iran has many, many sympathizers and allies in Shiite Iraq.

"anyone who argues the war was a waste or is going downhioll is a fool."

Ok, we're winning. I wish it were so too.

Re: " . . as for "the Iraqi People," expletive them!"

from a foregoing post.

Needs elaboration.

There is, of course, no such entity as "the Iraqi People." So expletiving them is not as bad as it appears at first impression.

"The Iraqi People" is an invention to justify our (the US's) stay in Iraq--and the American taxpayer money being squandered on that mess there.

There are--as we know so well--Kurds, Shi'ites, Sunnis, and the "insurgents," that allare inhabitants of the geographical entity named "Iraq."

the Kurds are more or less on our ("coalition") side. The Sunni are not. Neither are the Shi'ites.

A pox on those that are against us (US).

RE: Hugh's comments on the riots in France.

"You can't get caught in places you don't visit." The New York Time's portrayal of the French riots conveniently leave out the obvious root cause of the riots. Why? Because then the Times would have to admit that the Islamification of France is causing sectarian violence. This would violate the Time's prime directive which is to "Revere and hold sacred all things French."

If we are to remain in Iraq, the word from the U.S. should be direct and to the point.

You start a war, we will end it.

As long as we remain, control of Iraq is for the U.S, if we allow it to blow apart then it is against everything that can be, or will be.

Loud and clear, or we should indeed leave.

Iraq is not something that the current administration is going to get right. The GOP maybe, but not the Jihadists in the White House.

LONDON - Iraq is in a state of civil war and is nearing the point of no return when the country’s sectarian violence will spill over throughout the Middle East, former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said on Sunday
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The Shia and Sunni have been waring for centuries.

This civil war should be allowed to be fought and brought to a conclusion. We are interfering where we do not belong.

Let the Shia and Sunni war and just maybe many that have immigrated will return to support their beliefs in this civil war.

The Texican.
Freedom, the only choice at any cost.

"Consider that if we retreat now, there is every reason to believe Saddamists and terrorists will fill the vacuum -- and the free world might not have the will to face them again. Turning our backs on postwar Iraq today would be the modern equivalent of handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis. It would be as great a disgrace as if we had asked the liberated nations of Eastern Europe to return to Soviet domination because it was too hard or too tough or we didn't have the patience to work with them as they built free countries..."
-- from the article, quoting Donald Rumsfeld.

Why is there "every reason to believe" that Saddamists (what does this word mean? Does it mean people who were high in the regime? Does it mean Sunnis unhappy with the loss of their own power and wealth that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein necessarily included? And this word "terrorists" -- who are these "terrorists" if not the Sunnis from outside Iraq, who regard the loss of Sunni power to the "Rafidite dogs," the Shi'a, as intolerable just as the Sunni Iraqis, or "Saddamists," do -- but with a different emphasis.

Rumsfeld seems to think that although the Sunnis make up less than 20% of the population, and although the Shi'a and the Kurds together make up 80% or more, and both the Shi'a and the Kurds have been trained and equipped, and are now far readier to do to the Sunni Arabs what the Sunni Arabs have in the past done to them, that somehow these two groups of Sunnis, the one he calls the "Saddamists" and the other the "terrorists" (as if there aren't plenty of would-be "terrorists" among Shi'a Muslims, some in Iraq and most in Iran), will prevail.

Why? Why does he think that? Why does he phrase things in a way that does not encourage thought, but conceals reality? Does he himself any longer understand the balance of forces among the Iraqis? Does he not realize that the Shi'a, with the Americans gone, will no longer be inhibited in the slightest, and will certainly make their own areas in the south free from any Sunni power, and even perhaps of a Sunni presence, and the Sunnis will do the same in their isosceles triangle, and Baghdad itself will be a mess, like Beirut during its Muslim-Christian civil war. And so? We know it may not be welcomed by all Iraqis, though at this point some may prefer getting this civil war over with, and it will come in any case. Why is it bad for us? Why should we wish to move heaven and earth to prevent it? Why should we not step aside, and "let's you and him fight," and even "let's you and him get aid from outside, so as to keep the entire Islamic world riven, and off balance. And let's hope that Shi'a troops (Hezbullah) come pouring in from Lebanon, Shi'a cause disturbances in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain and the Yemen, and in Pakistan, and possiby Afghanistan, Sunnis fight Shi'a and perhaps Shi'a fight back. And meanwhile the world will get a good look at the world of Islam, without the distracting and confusing and debilitating (for the West) presence of Americans.

Note that Rumsfeld says not a word about Iran. He appears not to think that the presence of American troops in Iraq has no effect -- an inhibiting effect -- on a possible American strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. Of course he cannot say it that baldly. But could he not say something like this:

"The American troops in Iraq have come to the end of their usefulness. We think it best for our national interests, and yes, the interests of those living in Iraq, who must learn to live together, to make compromises, and to work for an Iraqi nation, and not to rely on the presence of Americans who, in any case, are sure to be blamed by both sides for showing favoritism to the other. And furthermore, we know that the presence of American soldiers in Iraq has complicated effects on the negotiations with Iran. It may be that the Iranians do not take seriously our pointing out to them the consequences of their failure to comply with certain demands from the united Great Powers, because they may feel that our troops in Iraq are hostage to possible retaliation. It isn't true, of course -- we are not inhibited by that, because our troops in Iraq are more than a match for any problem from Iran. But Iran needs to have made clear that they have no power to inhibit us, and so to be absolutely sure we will remove our troops from the immediate vicinity of Iran. Besides they should understand that an attack would not be by land -- I think they do understand that. Or they will."

Finally, there is this crazy analogy with both World War II and the Cold War. This is the kind of thing Rice likes to do -- refer to Nazi Germany and militarist Japan, and claim that there were those who scoffed at those occupations, and those transformations, as well. This shows that Rice does not understand. The underlying ideology that menaces us is Islam, just as it was once Nazi ideology, and Kodo (Japanese worship of the Emperorer, the Divine Right of Japan to conquer, and so on), and Communism. World War II led to the complete destruction of Germany and Japan. They lay in ruins, with all their major cities smoldering. What similar damage has been inflicted on Iraq, or any Muslim country? How has Islam itself been weakened, divided, demoralized, held up for ridicule? It hasn't. And it won't be for some time, not until the camp of Islam goes through intense internecine strife, between Sunni and Shi'a, Arab and non-Arab Muslim. The opportunity presents itself, almost uniquely, in Iraq.

It would be madness not to seize it.

The forces of Jihad are adept at exploiting the freedoms of the West, the easygoing ways and attitudes of the West, to their own advantage. Tolerance and principles of too-exceeding fairness have been given legal expression all over the Western world. The Western world has chosen to open its borders to all kinds of people, some of them concealing in their mental baggage an ideology or belief-system that makes it impossible for most of them to integrate successfully with the indigneous Infidels (non-Muslims) among whom, within whose lands, they have been permitted to settle in such numbers, with such heedlessness.

Yet the Western world, and especially the United States, seems incapable of exploiting the weaknesses in the enemy camp, or even of hinting at doing so, as if this perfectly obvious strategy, as old as the Romans or even before, were somehow rendered illegitimate. By what, one is never told. Why is it illegitimate to wish for a repetition of a version of the Iran-Iraq War? Was that war a good thing for Infidels or a bad thing? Did it use up men, materiel, energies, both of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, and for eight years, virtually the entire first eight years of its existence, from 1980 to 1988, the energies of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which really began making mischief in a much bigger way, and especially with the development of much bigger weapons, only after the Iran-Iraq War was over.

Why can't any of our political leaders suggest that our removal from Iraq will not result in disaster for the United States, but is far more likely to result in continued strife between Shi'a and Sunni, Arab and Kurd, and have effects beyond Iraq's borders, anywhere that Sunnis and Shi'a live side-by-side or otherwise collide (Yemen, Bahrain, Kuwait, parts of Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan), and anywhere that there are non-Arab Muslim populations (Berbers in Algeria and in France, black Africans in Darfur) who might be inspired by the Kurds throwing off, permanently, the Arab yoke they have had to endure?

This is not complicated. This is the principle of divide et impera: divide (the enemy camp) and conquer. It has been used, or attempted to be used, in every war that was ever fought. Are we in a brand-new age, with brand-new strategies, where enemies remain unidentified and unidentifiable, and the soldiers in Iraq are taught only to talk about the "bad guys" as if they were five-year-olds with their cap guns and Davy Crockett coonskin hats, running around in the backyward with boys from next door, playing the "good guys" and the "bad guys."

A little less niceness, please. A little more solicitousness for American lives, and American economic and militray well-being, and a lot less such interest in the well-being of Muslims in and out of Iraq.

Can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

Moslems make me want to puke. Sewn of bad cloth to an ill fit of human likeness. Those of us in the Unicorn hunting business need to pack plenty shells.

I agree that many of the reasons for 'staying the course' in Iraq don't hold water, but neither do I think we should be cheering for civil war. Yes there would be a tinge of "schadenfreude" to it, but that is not our better side. No one hates seeing our brave soldiers as sitting ducks there between the warring sides than I do, but guess who the whole world will blame for all the ensuing strife and misery, years and years of it, if we pull out abruptly?