'We never thought it could happen in NY'

If they think that's worrying, I wonder how they will react when regular New Yorkers start parading with the same signs. That day isn't so far off, I think.

Islam has so many competing "sects", each claiming to the the "one and only TRUE Islam", that it is probable that the faith will end up tearing itself apart, leaving the rest of the world alone. Reminds me of Christianity in the Middle Ages, and the rise of Protestant sects. It too a while, but eventually the Christians learned to live together, and stop killing one another. In the case of the Moslems, given the violence central to their faith, that may not be possible.

Islamic Thinkers Society? That is such a hoot!

It would be nice, for the rest of us, if the Sunnis and Shi'ites, who have tried to infiltrate their simmering religious violence into the U.S., would both take-

The Permanent Hadj to Mecca.

Go back to the source and fight it out there.

Leave Civilization out of your mad quest for earthly theocratic dominion.

Remember the words of the prophet:

"The kingdom of heaven is within you."

As soon as you try to exteriorize it, it becomes like trying to build Paradise out of misconstrued vomit.

Holy Wars are for soul suckers.

They only delight the devil.

When it all comes together, all muslims have one objective whether they be Sunni,Shia,or Sufi. Their full and collective dream is to rule the western world some day, to establish a caliphate, to over power western societies with their own sharia law.

Our biggest weakness is our continuing ignorance about Islam. If we continue on the path of freedom of religion when it comes to Islam we are making a serious mistake. America and the rest of the western world has to RE-CLASSIFY ISLAM as a political movement instead of just a religion. If we continue to foolishly recognize it as only a religion, than we are going to get into serious trouble over the next generation. Islam does not believe in democracy, they do not believe in freedom of expression,and they recognize only their religion as the most perfect one. They will never given in to western Ideals, they will never recognize or respect the soverignty of other religions and they will never assimilate fully into western cultures.

Until we wake up and manage to recognize their never ending objectives, and stop patronizing and appeasing them they will continue to force their beliefs on us until we start to become Amerabia-- there is absolutely no question about it!

What Islam needs is another Jesus Christ! if you look at the Old Testament compared to the New Testament, it had dramatically changed, reformed. so what you need now is some Muslim who has spoken to Allha, and get a New Koran that is compatible with civilized people. But would a "Christ" type Muslim only kill himself to bring about change in the koran?

A "good" Muslim is by definition,a traitor, to any Western country.

From Dubai, to any Bush adviser let's say , on Iraq or on "Homeland Security"

The higher allegiance to Sharia and Mohammed and Jihad - the whole devotion and willingness to lie and deceive and self sacrifice in the name of Allah should have us fire these "good" retards into the offalholes their originating coutries are.

And all the Calormenes banged the flats of their swords on their shields and shouted, "Tash! Tash! The great god Tash! Inexorable Tash! (There was no nonsense about "Tashlan" now.)

Yojimbo - remember how the Calormenes used to say, robotically, "May he live for ever", just as Muslims say, "Peace be upon him"?

Bringing up the rear of this parade I thought I noticed a small, happy dog prancing along with a severed hand in its mouth.

(At least that what I heard the horse tell its boy.)

The "Islamic Thinkers Society" is one of the many front organizations for Hizb ut-Tahrir. HT is one of the main groups that push for a world wide caliphate. They are very dangerous in my opinion.

kenprice

Islam has so many competing "sects", each claiming to the the "one and only TRUE Islam", that it is probable that the faith....

So humorous since they have no true prophet, only a false one who concocted their allah god. I love it when Islamics squabble and make war. This obviously keeps them from channeling their free floating rage toward the infidel. It was Mo' 'toons last week. This week it's Sunni on Shia.

Tough luck on Susan, who didn't make it to paradise just because she liked "nylons and lipstick and invitations".

Yes, some prophetic books, even if they were written for children. Not in the sense that the author was clairvoyant and could see the future. Rather that his reading and thinking was so deep and so extensive that he had a serious view of the world and that couldn't but be reflected in his books - and the books, therefore, can't but illuminate real human situations.

I don't know that one could reduce it to a formula: Tash=Allah. There may be echoes of the Aztec gods there and much else. But, yeah ...

"Tashlan" would be the version of Islam that the "smooth-talking spokesmen of taqiyya" offer to a Christian clergyman. There are versions of "Tashlan" for the left-liberal establishment, too. And there's even one for conservatives:

The truth is that most Muslims are naturally conservative in character and have far more in common with the values for which your newspaper stands than is generally recognised. Certainly, they exemplify many qualities which my grandparents, who were not Muslims and were Telegraph readers all their lives, both possessed and would have wholeheartedly endorsed.

See Abdalhaqq Bewley of Norwich's letter here.

This version of Tashlan is mostly about what Søren Aabye Kierkegaard called "bourgeois morality". He wants a quiet orderly life; he doesn't like teenage pregnancy. He is supposed to send Telegraph readers to sleep.

I'm all for letting the US military finish up critical missions in Iraq and getting out of Dodge. I can't tell the good guys from the bad guys and I'm not even sure that I want to anymore.

Make it very clear to Iran that nuclear weapons development = their destruction and let the Arabs/Muslims sort it out on their own.

If and when any democratic institutions emerge from the chaos we'll help them along.

Europe is also on it own absent a NATO required response.

Yojimbo, the book also says, "In the name of Tash the irresistible, the inexorable forward". I'm surprised Muslims haven't kicked up a fuss about this.

The match isn't exact, as you say. Your point about "Tashlan" as a taqiyya vehicle is well made. We should practise a taqiyya of our own and talk about "jihad" when we really mean "Islam"

Tough luck on Susan, who didn't make it to paradise just because she liked "nylons and lipstick and invitations"

Yeah, well - at the risk of going OT, I'll say: don't sell Lewis short. This reduces his vision to a "rewards and punishments" conception.

Lewis was a serious man, as I say. I don't share his beliefs but I was brought up on this stuff.

He comes from a tradition of thought that saw vanity as a fall from grace. So Susan preferred vanity to caritas ("charity" - i.e., love) - to be a "king or queen in Narnia" is to follow the path of caritas. This is clearly about "vanity" - not "sex" as obsessives like Phillip Pullman assume.

Some theologians might argue that not following that path is its own punishment, and that joy is to be found in being the "king or queen in Narnia". Is this a "punishment" or simply Susan's choice seen from a certain point of view? Susan's choice: but also ask, Is she happier for it? as Lewis says in, I think, the Magician's Nephew: "All get what they want: they don't always like it when they get it."

The Magician's Nephew was the best, in my view. The Silver Chair comes a close second. Scared the bejesus out of me.

Anyway, this is OT, although I don't think it is "breathtakingly" so.

Interested-

C.S. Lewis may be slightly OT.

Jerry Lewis would be breathtakingly so.

(Unless it was some relevant reference to his self-suppressed film about 'a clown in Auschwitz'... which would probably win Holocaust Revisionist awards at the 'Mahmoud the Iranian' film festival, if they could ever get their mitts on a bootlegged copy.)

Jerry Lewis would be breathtakingly so.

How about Jerry Springer?

Well, you could say he was relevant because Muslim reaction to Mo-toons was far more violent than Christian reaction to JS the Opera. But that's pushing it. Gasping for breath here.

The islamic thinkers are the same group who held a protest at ground zero last month. They don't seem to like anyone.

Interested-

Now Springer Spaniels would have to be "breathtakingly" so.

Find some link to the jihad through them and I'll send out a nyla-bone reward to your favorite SPCA.
(Unless it was something to do with the contempt for dogs that seems commonplace in Islam thanks to the 'mahound' Mohammad. Burglars tend not to like dogs... hmmm....)

Profitsbeard - "spaniel" means, or meant "Spanish dog". Spain was very moreish under Muslim rule, if you believe the taqiyyadors.

Word association football. This is a bit like playing Mornington Crescent.

(There's even a link to Islam there. God, they're everywhere.)

PS - I prefer my spaniels cocker.

I say let the Islamic Thinkers talk for now, Their so-called protest at ground zero did more for the ant-Jihad cause in New York then any other event, except 911.

Photo's of their protest have been used by many to show that the ROP is a lie.

I was at ground zero on 911, went to get my grandson from his school as soon as I saw the first plane hit. We both saw the second tower fall....

Tremendous crashing sound, like an earthquake, innocents jumping from 100 floors up to escape burning, falling like rag dolls to the ground with a regular thumping sound, It was raining bodies and body parts... choking dust devastation and fear. Legions of ash covered office workers heading uptown with sullen defeated faces..

My grandson age 10 saw it all and that was the day that I woke up to the threat of Islam and Jihad. And on that day I swore to myself, yes holding back the tears of rage.

THEY WILL BE STOPED! THEY WILL BE DEFEATED!

So let them protest, it will only awake the same feelings in millions of my fellow New Yorkers.

Rest in peace the fallen at ground zero.

Crescent?

Like Croissants with marmelade?

Now, "marmelade", which you might think comes from something like "Mamelukes"- (from the Arabic for "possessed slave of the king", a military contingent of Causasian prisons) is really Portugeuse for quince apple jelly.

And now, with thoughts of filo dough in mind, I'm off for lunch!

Wow.

I've just visited their manical website.

I'm seriously wondering if those guys are in need of medical treatment -- hate is one thing, but that is just out of this world.

I'm not joking or trying to have a cheap laugh, but they seem to be totally detached from reality, even for jihadi fan standards.

Imli

"We never thought it could happen in New York," said Naqvi, president of a Shah E Najaf Islamic Center in Brentwood. "In other countries, yes. But not here. We've had this procession for 20 years without any problems. It is very worrying."

And Muslims still truculently demand that we non-Muslims sit by and display the patience of Job, that we not judge Islam, and certainly never blame Islam for what our eyes see plainly.

Are they completely non-rational? Even the "moderate" appearing -- or the Muslim for identification purposes only must see the impossible situtation Islam places the non-Muslim world in -- Yet they continue to blame our supposed mis-understanding of Islam for the "bad image of Islam" -- NOT ugliness such as this in NYC.

How can they continue imagine we'll tolerate this dynamicon our non-Muslim soil when we all know where it will lead? How can they fathom the idea that we would ever sit by waiting patiently with folded hands and closed mouths (lest we appear "Islamophobic" or "against them" or reveal the extent to which we "misunderstand" Islam) while we watch the meltdowns -- suffer the outrageous insults of their Muslims lashings out...

NO!

'We never thought it could happen in NY' -- If by "WE" you meant non-Muslim Americans 'never thought it could happen in NY' -- you'd be right -- until that heinous morning on 9/11 -- then we were rudely disabused of our pleasant little idyll...

We've already seen how this movie ends, Muslim!

If this Shiite 'never thought it could happen in NY', then he is either so deluded about his putrid religion, or such a liar that he's not part of the American "WE". I am increasingly convinced that Muslims aren't part of the American "WE", that they never were part of the American "WE", and that they will never will be part of the American "WE".

From today's DW thread:

"I'm not some Jew to be treated this way by Arabs. I'm just a Shiite[.]"

And from the source of this thread:

"Just assume that if these groups hate Shias, then they're also anti-Christian, anti-Semite and anti-Hindu as well."

They're all Muslims.

And the rest of us are all infidels.

Sorry. No pity for the Shi'a plight.

What's next? Sunni-Shia gun battles in Central Park?

We need to stop Islamic immigration before it's too late.

"Two weeks later, the golden-domed al-Askari Mosque in Iraq, one of the HOLIEST SITES in Shia Islam,"

"Syed Meesam Razvi of Richmond Hill, Queens, who said he CRIED when he told his family about the mosque bombing. "

Remember Afgansitan:

"The statues had stood guard over the Bamiyan valley for centuries Afghanistan's ruling Taleban have blown up two giant Buddha statues in defiance of international efforts to save them, according to independent reports."

Now.....the Taleban in Afghansitan considered the Buddha statues as IDOLS and so the Taleban considered it very un-islamic. The Taleban had no problem blowing the Buddha's up.........even though people around the world pleaded for them to leave the ancient Buddhas alone.

So, when I hear a Muslim cry over a Mosque being destroyed by another fellow Muslim.....who has a different twist to their religious teachings...........I think of the Buddahs..........I think of Christian Churches.........I think of all the various Temples of worship around the world.

Then.... I started to wonder........why couldn't these non-idol worshipping muslims understand that their Mosque is just man made........and that a muslim should not get upset over this......to do so.......seems.........would you say...........like IDOL Worshipping?

"my concern [as a Shi'a] is that it [Sunni dismissal of Shi'a as "Infidels," as "Rafidite dogs"] might become larger. Because I've seen how they grew in Pakistan."
-- from the article above

Why is this statement important? It reminds everyone that the Americans did not "cause" the Sunni-Shi'a split, that that split goes back to the first century of Islam, back to 661 A.D., that the United States did not exist then, that the American government was not behind the massacre at Karbala, that the American government was not around to promote Sunni persecution of Shi'a which led the latter to find a weapon in the religiously-sanctioned dissimulation known as "taqiyya" -- a weapon of deception ("War is deception" said Muhammad, and deception comes naturally to those conducting Jihad and trying, as long as they can, to keep the Infidels unwary so that both Da'wa and demographic conquest can proceed without effective opposition). It was not the Americans who over the entire life of modern Saudi Arabia have caused the Wahhabi (Sunni) Muslims to persecute and humiliate the Shi'a, now living in the oil-bearing eastern province of al-Hasa. It was not the Americans who forced the Sunni Arab rulers of Bahrain, to lord it over the more than 70% of the population which is both Shii'a and Persian in origin. It was not the American government that over the entire life of momdern Pakistan has convinced the Sunni members of Jaish-e-Jangvi and Sepaha-e-Sapir to attack Shi'a mosques, to find and execute Shi'a professionals, to make war, in the name of the "real" Sunni Islam, on the Shi'a of Pakistan. It was not the American government that persuaded the Taliban to persecute and kill the Hazaras of Afghanistan because they were Shi'a.

And in Iraq, for the past three years,the Americans have done nothing to encourage Shi'a and Sunni hostlity. They have done everything they could to prevent such hostility -- except one thing, the one thing that made the open expression of that hostility inevitable. And that one thing was the initial act of invading and destroying the mureerous regime of Saddam Hussein. Behind a facade of Ba'athism, and even some Christians (Tariq Aziz, under his islamized alias) to declare their allegiance to Ba'thiasm which was also a way, for some, to ally themselves with the secular impulse that Saddam Hussein first supported, and then jettisoned as he himself made the full "return to Islam" for reasons of political calculation.

The charge will be made (for all I know, is already being made by assorted imams, muftis, qadis, ayatollahs, or for that matter assorted presidents-for-life and kings-for-a-day, beglerbegs and princes and local pashas) that everything was wonderful between Shi'a and Sunnis until those bad Americans arrived.

And when will this charge be raised the loudest, in the most hysterical voice? It will be raised precisely when the Americans finally -- not a moment too soon -- leave Iraq, leave hopelesss Iraq, leave tarbaby Iraq, leave drain-on-our-men-money-materiel Iraq, to dissolve, slowly, into its own vilayets of violence. And of course it is only when the Americans leave that the full force of Shi'a desire to even the score against the Sunnis, and not take it anymore, will be unleashed -- without worrying about the reaction of Geneva-Convention-sticklers among the American forces.

American policy should not depend upon the ability, or willingness, of "Iraqis" (i.e. Sunni and Shi'a Arabs, and Kurds) to be "Iraqis." They won't be. Or if they will be, it will only be because we are no longer there, to favor the "other side" (for Shi'a think we are favoring the Sunnis, and the Sunnis think we are favoring the Shi'a). As currently presented, American policy appears to be in the hands not of Americans, but of Iraqis. We have assured them, so Presient Talebani says, that the Americans will stay for just as long as the Iraqis want and need them. Really? Is that how we are deciding our policy -- letting the "Iraqis" (which Iraqis? and for what reasons having everything to do with personal and sectarian or ethnic group advantage, and very little, if anything, to do with the perceived good of something called "Iraq") decide what American soldiers and Marines, what Reservists and National Guard troops, what vast expenditures of money, still to be misallocated and squandered, because "the Iraqis" are "not ready" and apparently it is their "readiness" (for what, exactly? For a nation-state that is bounnd to be riven by hostility that will not end?) that will determine the fate of our men, the use of our money, the positioning of our equipment -- all because this Administration has, from the start, misidentified the war of self-defense against the Jihad as a "war on terror," has failed to understand or to make efforts to learn about, Islam, has failed to learn about the origin, duration, and depth of the sectarian and ethnic hatreds that are not a matter of bad luck or bad post-war planning and mismandagement, but inevitable -- inevitable given the histoirc treatment of Shi'a by Sunnis, and of non-Arab Muslims (in this case, the Kurds) by Arab Muslims.

All that money being squandered, still, because the Administration remains so inflexible, so obstinate, so fearful of admitting to its own ignorance about Islam and about Iraq, and so sentimental withal -- sentimental about the idea of a "religion" (and we are all supposed to salaam-salaam whenever we hear that some belief-system calls itself a "religion" no matter what the contents of that particular belief-system may be), and sentimental about the idea of "democracy," imperfectly understood by those who presume to be able to transplant it into the stoniest soil, without the centuries of work required to intellectualy prepare its would-be recipients to water it, to feed it, to tend to it appropriately. That will not be done in Iraq. In the only Muslim state where democracy has, for a while, existed - Turkey -- it existed after, not before, the systematic and sustained government policy, under Ataturk (a war hero and Strongman who did as he wished, and suppressed all opposition, daring even to attack mosques and destroy clerics who opposed him), of limiting the political and social power of Islam and, only then, gently introducing elements of "one-party democracy" (a model akin to that of Bourguiba and the Destour Party in Tunisia) that suppressed, when it had to, any Islamic opposition. And Turkey's relapse into Islam and retreat from Kemalism (the outward and visible signs of which are antisemitism and anti-Americanism, both very much on the rise in Turkey).

The American government squandres, on an idea, an idea that is false, an idea that suggests that the sentimental belief that "religion" is a good thing, and Islam is a "religion," and a billion people are "Muslims" so therefore -- therefore there must be a lot said for that "religion" and we must never hint that we worry about the clear, unambiguous teachings of that "relgiion" but rather we will pretend there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. But then, if there is absolutely nothing wrong with it, and it is all so wonderful, why do we keep looking for, and reassurring ourselves about the existence of, "moderate" Muslims. If Islam is so wonderful, why would we wish that Believers be "moderate" in their beliefs? If the beliefs are fine, shouldn't we wish people to truly put those beliefs -- all of them -- into practice, and be "immoderate" rather than "moderate" Muslims? Once upon a time, didn't we all offer as praise the comment that someone was a "true Christian" -- meaning that person took his Christianity, his faith, hope, and especially his charity, seriously? Of course we did, and do. It is the fake Christian, the fakely pious, who alarms, not the one who quietly behaves as Christians, if they followed the model of Christ, would behave. But a "true" Muslim, a "good" Muslim, an "immoderate" Muslim, would follow not the example of Christ but of Muhammad. And therein lies all the diffrence -- the warrior Muhammad, who had his enemies killed, who set down rules for the sharing of Infidel loot, both property and women, who watched as prisoners were decapitated, who preached, and practiced, his own famous hadith that "war is deception," and who insisted that "Islam is to dominate and is not to be dominated" which is hardly a prescription that makes those who follow Muhammad conceivably capable of permanently accepting the idea of pluralism, and not work for that day when indeed "Islam is to dominate."

The money squandered, by the hundreds of billions, in Iraq (and to a much lesser extent, in Afgnhanistan), is money that might have been put to far more effective use in the war of self-defense against the Jihad. But this war is not mainly one against "terror" (for that matter, in Iraq now the American forces are risking their lives, using up their equipment, and expending vast sums in preventing the very thing that all Infidels should welcome -- an enlargement of Sunni-Shi'a hostilities that will continue for a long time, and if Infidels are lucky, will be thought to threaten, and thererfore require the intervention, direct or indirect, of the two great beneficiaries of the removal of Saddam Hussein -- Sunni (in its Wahhabi variant) Saudi Arabia, and the Shi'a Islamic Republic of Iran.

The hundreds of billions spent in Iraq might have gone to energy projects -- solar, wind, nuclear, and conservation. Nothing matters more than diminishing the total reveneus of Muslim oil states, for it is from those revenues that mosques around the Western world are paid for, that Da'wa campaigns are paid for, that propaganda of every kind is paid for, and Western hirelings of every kind -- ex-diplomats, ex-intelligence agents, "international business consultants," "foreign policy experts," "Centers for the Study of Islam/Arabs/Muslim-Christian Understanding" are paid for, public-relations flacks are paid for, lawyers to press Muslim claims at every level, in every way, are paid for.

And some of that money squandered on bringing a shaky, primitively conceived and executed, "democracy" to Iraq, a "democracy" which has already brought more Islam back into social and political life in southern Iraq, and promises to do so in even in the Sunni-dominated regions, and which, in any case, shows no signs of giving rise to some lessening of hostility to Infidels, which is the only legitimate justification for the expenditure of those American lives, that American money, that American effort, spent on the whole business, apart from the toppling of Saddam Hussein and the seizure and destruction of weapons, and disruption of major weapons projects.

Even the Administration implicitly admits that the Iraq business has been a failure. No one now talks about bringing "democracy" to the supposedly waiting millions in Iran, a place that for years, we have been told, is full of people so completely disenchanted with the Islamic Republic that they are waiting to greet the Americans. Nonsense. The only thing that the Americans should be planning for Iran is the destruction of its nuclear weapons project. That will, in the end, to more (after a brief flare-up of nationalist rally-round-the-Iranian-flag fervor) trouble for that regime, both from the Kurds, the Azeris, the Baluchis, and the Ahwaz, or rather Khuzistanian, Arabs (the local Arabs having just as much a right to demand the made-up "legitimate rights of the Khuzistanian people" as the local Arabs elsewhere do to demand "the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people."

The money that continues to be squandered, while we wait for Mission Impossible to be accomplished -- the mission of "we will stand down as the Iraqis stand up" in sufficient numbers to "allow us (!) to leave" would be better spent not only on diminishing the "wealth" weapon of the Jihad, but on efforts at mass pedagogy, on supporting apostates from Islam, on publishing, in several dozen relevant langugages, the works of Ibn Warraq and Ali Sina and Anwar Shaikh and others, in making sure that by every means the word gets out that at least among Infidels, the real nature of Islam is being understood, and that the taqiyya-and-tu-quoque possiblities become more limited as Infdiels learn which Qur'anic passages are ignored and which selectively quoted, and learn more as well about the contents of Hadith and Sira, learn exactly what disabilities non-Muslims (dhimmis) had to endure, and begin to figure out the actions that can be taken, in both domestic and foreign policy, to shore up the Western world, and to make sure that after such knowledge, sentimentality no longer will be quite so welcome, and realism, based on detailed knowledge, will take its place.

Everyone should be attacking this idiotic "as the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down" policy. It makes no sense. It cannot work. There are not a sufficient number of people in Iraq who think of themselves solely, or mainly, as "Iraqis." And that cannot be accomplished by General Petraeus or whatever combination of generals have succeeded him in the hopeless task of creating a sufficient number of units (oh, they might manage to create one or two) of soldiers who are willing to go out on missions entrusting their safety, if they are Shi'a, to Sunni fellow-soldiers, if Sunnis, to Shi'a fellow-soldiers, if Kurds to Arab fellow-soldiers). This will never happen on anything but a very small scale. The failure to be fully infomred about the origin and depth of Sunni-shi'a hostility is not a minor matter -- American lives and American money are both being squandered because this is not a subject that has been given its due. It has not been given its due because it does not fit, did not fit, with the other assumptions made by the Big Planners who planned all this, from the remarkably ignorant "weapons systems analyst" (iognorant of Islam, ignorant about the effects of culture and history, ignorant even of what that phrase "Oriental fatalism" means) Paul Wolfowitz, to Bernard Lewis whose influence has been made so much of (grateful former students, or rather acolytes, in the Pentagon, for whom Lewis is the Final Authority on everything), to Bush, a sentimentalist, a confused but obstinate man, whose obstinate confusion is forcing others to unnecessarily risk their lives in what is not a mission, but a mirage in the desert, or if we were to trade that desert-dwelling metaphor for something marshier to accommodate the Shatt al-Arab, then a will-o'-the-wisp that flickers, flickers, flickers, as you trudge towards it and as you seem to approach it, disappears.

There are very few "Iraqis" as we would like that word to be understood. There are many Sunni Arabs, and Shi'a Arabs, and Kurds (who are mostly Sunni, but for them, at this point, that is irrelevant). And the Kurds do not feel "Iraqi." And the Shi'a feel that they make up 60-65% of the population, and most of the oil is in the south, and the Sunnis lorded it over them for so long, and why should the Shi'a not lord it over the Sunnis, as they have the votes, and this is a "democracy" -- or if they do not lord it over, then to take the south and whatever else they can grab, and all the oil save what the Kurds may possess in the north (and if the Shi'a were sensible, they would support the Kurdish demands in Kirkuk and even Mosul, in order to weaken the Sunni Arabs), and leave for their former masters the Western Desert, and that Sunni isosceles triangle, while Baghdad would remain a place of permanent contention, where if the Iranians were to supply basiji and money, might be seized for the greater glory of Shi'a Islam, a permanent affront to the Sunnis that the seat of Haroun al-Rashid should be in Shi'a, semi-Persian hands.

When the Administration uses the word "Iraqi" as in such phrases as "we are training the Iraqis" or "the Iraqi army" or "the Iraqi police," one wonders about the continued indifference to reality. Few "Iraqis" (though perhaps most of those "Iraqis-in-exile" whom the Amdinistration relied on) would call themselves "Iraqis" and by that use, mean to include, as equal in their claims and rights, the other sectarian or ethnic groups in Iraq. Kurds do not use the word "Iraqi" very much now; their sights are set elsewhere. When the Shi'a use the word "Iraq" they mean an "Iraq" where the Shi'a will rule,their power obtained through the ballot box, because they constitute between 60-65% of the population, and their notion of "democracy" is close to winner-take-all, and the American attempt to make them see things differently will run up against the resentments that have built up, not in the last few years, not in the last ten years, not in the last 30 years, not since 1932, when the British left, but over centuries in which the Sunnis have oppressed Shi'a, sometimes less and sometimes more (just as in India, the Hindus were oppressed by Muslim masters, sometimes less -- as under Akbar, an sometimes more, as under Aurangzeb).

When the phrase "when the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down" is used, one immediately should ask: "Which Iraqis"? Would it be the "Iraqis" in the Badr Militia of SCIRI (Al-Hakim, Managing Director)? Would it be the Sadr militia, that is to say the Mahdi army of the los-de-abajo urban poor who listen to that obvious demagogue and ABD (all-but-[Islamic]-dissertation} Moqtada al-Sadr, so resentful of the Islamic book-learning of those high-falutin' ayatollahs ("what does the Ayatollah Sistani have that I don't have? I'll show him." thinks, or tries to think, Moqtada al-Sadr). Would it be the Kurdish pesh merga, or would it be the former pesh merga, now in the "Iraqi army" units that alone have performed well enough to earn the praise of American officers? Would it be whatever Sunni militias have been formed out of the former Sunni officers-and-men from the Iraqi army that was dissolved?

How can, with a straight face, anyone involved in Iraqi policy continue to talk about the "Iraqi army" and the "Iraqis" standing up, while "we stand down"? It makes no sense. It ignores a reality that goes back to the history of Islam.

Go back to the original article. In New York City, Shi'a are being threatened by Sunnis.

From the viewpoint of Infidels, this is not a bad thing. Every sign of division within Islam, everything that shows up, to Infidels, the violence and aggression within Islam, everything that weakens the faith of those who consider themselves Muslims, everything that uses up men, money, materiel, attention of Muslims, is for Infidels a good thing.

And if Sunnis can threaten Shi'a in New York, and suppress Shi'a in Saudi Arabia's eastern province, in Bahrain, in Kuwait, in Yemen (where the two sects are nearly evenly divided), who have largely made up those "Iraqi army" units, and murder them in Pakistan, is that -- from the viewpoint of Infidels -- bad, or good? Would it be bad, or good, if Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran were to fight a sectarian war in Iraq. Was the Iran-Iraq War, that used up the energies and money and military equipment for eight critical years (1980-1988), of both the Islamic Republic of Iran, and of that would-be successor to Nasser as "King-of-the-Arabs" Saddam Hussein, fighting Qadassiya all over again, a good thing, or a bad thing?

It was a very good thing. For eight years, the Iranians and the Iraqis (whose effort was derailed by the) might have developed major weapons It put off , praised bythe pesh merga, the Sunni insurgency, the Zarqawi adherents who may be volunteering for that "Iraqi" army so as to receive access to American military techniques, plans, and equipment?)the Americans of having taken a wonderful, pluralist Iraq (why, to hear that "elder statesman" Adnan Pachachi tell it, there was never a problem between Sunnis and Shi'a in the good old days -- of course, he's talking about the good old days of the Sunni ascendancy, that lasted for the entire history of modern Iraq).

The Iran-Iraq War was undeniably a Good Thing for Infidels. The removal of all American troops, as fast as they can be removed, would lead to a situation that can only be a Good Thing for Infidels. Were there to be low-level hostililities between Shi'a and Sunni, or open warfare, it will be a Good Thing. Were that warfare to attract support on the Sunni side from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arabs, supplying mainly money and weapons, and men from Egypt and Syria and Jordan, and on the Shi'a side attract men, money, equipment and attention from the Islamic Republic of Iran (just as the Americans, their soldiers having left Iraq no longer being potential targets of Iranian retaliation, can now more easily plan for dealing with Iran's nuclear project). And how wonderful it would be for the Christians of Lebanon (and even the Druse and the old-line Sunnis would be pleased) if Hezbollah bezonians were drawn off to fight, and disappear into, the conceivable cauldron of Sunni-Shi'a fighting in Iraq).

Meanwhile, the Western world, which apparently needs lesson after lesson in the nature of Islam, in the violence and aggression of Islam, will watch -- it will watch not with the "Americans" present to blame, but without the Americans who, in fact, were the only force intent, for so long, on keeping the sectarian and ethnic peace (and just look at the way that Condoleeza Rice has continually discouraged the Kurds, possibly out of the inability of the Americans to comprehend why a free Kurdistan would weaken that Islamic state which presently is the most dangerous, Iran, by attracting the support of Kurds in Iran, and by serving as a model for other non-Persian minorities, such as the Azeris and Baluchis, to demand autonomy or more from the Persians who run things from Tehran. And a free Kurdistan, it has been suggested here more than a hundred times, would also inspire other non-Arab Muslims, such as the Berbers, to make their own demands, or even where Berbers may be found in the West (as in France), to begin to view Islam as what it always was: the Arab religion, the vehicle for Arab supremacism. And that perception can do much among the 80% of the world's Muslims who are not Arab, to begin to see Islam itself in a new way.

Tell you what, Pentagon. I need money. I need a better car. I need a better computer. I need to pay medical insurance. I've been reading that you have a lot of money to spend, hundreds of billions, on this "war on terror." Send me a little. And by return mail, I will send you a Complete Guide to Countering the Instruments of Jihad. Qital, or Combat. The Wealth Weapon. Da'wa. Demographic Conquest. And everything else With specific and realistic policy prescriptions for every continent. Only $9.95 while supplies last.

Of course, there is P & H. And Postage and Handling, I'm afraid, will come to one million dollars. Not much postage, I admit, but a lot of handling. Can you swing it, Pentagon, ole buddy? Possibly you don't yet know how to turn on a dime in Iraq, but if you spare that dime for me, I'll tell you.

Offer available only in the continental United States.

Indeed rumoret -- The whole point of not depicting their execrable prophet was to supposedly forestall Muslims from beginning to worship idolatrous manifestations rather than God... They have shown themselves to be idolators of Muhammad by getting so upset at febrile little cartoons. Their worship of that meteorite and the Kaba'a and Mekkah and the Koran show they are idolators -- that they have no clue about true godliness.

This from an agnostic. I believe in evil though. And I know it when I see it.

Seriously:

1. Climb down from ivory tower.
2. Heave to...!

Start making calls to the CIA or NSA -- Apply at various War Colleges -- no need to cut ponytail, own wing tips, vote Republican...

Hugh-

One good thing came from the mess in Iraq:

our troops have had first-hand contact with, and gained an intimate understanding of, the Islamic fighters' mindset, through all of the various kinds of "insurgents" (snipers, IED placers, spies, etc.). To 'know thy enemy', face-to-face, can only help the next generation of military planners. There will be fewer illusions, both positive and negative.

And one bad thing:

we trained the civil guard/Iraqi military (and a percentage of them will inevitably become jihadis in the future) in our methods, which will enable them to fight us more effectively. (I can only hope we kept our best methods in reserve.)

Whatever the timeline the phase-out of Iraq involves, there is
little likelihood that the country will do anything but revert to Sunni-Shi'ite tribal warfare ...for as long as it takes for Islam to purge itself of the blood vendetta... and no one can prevent it but themselves. So, we need to look as if we are leaving with dignity, "at the request of the elected government", at least.

Fully aware that nothing different will occur in this land of massacres for millennia, whether we wait a month, a year, or five.

But secure in two things, at least:

1) That there are no current WMD in Iraq.

Now, this may seem flippant at this point, but I am dead serious. It was a worthy gamble to fight Saddam's government of terror in order to make sure no WMD's could get loose to destroy one of our cities and kill hundreds of thousands or millions of our fellow citizens. That it turned out that there were NO WMD's is a good thing, isn't it? Now we know. And knowing beats years of anxious uncertainty, trying to prevent a possible strike, and wasting hundreds billions in counter-measures for a non-existent threat.

And:

2) We did our best for a people who do not appear to be able to appreciate the help.

Nothing wrong with an honest effort.