Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald explains why American democratization efforts haven't worked in Iraq:
A commenter on this website recently exclaimed: "I've just about had it with arguments for the war from so-called "conservative" commentators like Mark Steyn."And from the boys in the Democracy-Is-On-the-March grants-getting business all over Washington. And from most at National Review. And from cheerleaders at My Weekly Standard. And from Victor Davis Hanson. And from Amir Taheri. And from all the rest who cannot see that tarbaby Iraq makes sense for Infidels if and only if those ethnic and sectarian divisions in Iraq, and then outside Iraq, are not healed by Infidel troops. In any case, those divisions cannot be healed; once Saddam was gone, all the rest became inevitable. It is only a question of how much more squandering of men, materiel, money, and morale the Administration decides to indulge itself in, because it wants the wit to know how to explain to the world, or to itself, a withdrawal -- but the scripts have been provided here at Jihad Watch many times.
No. So far for the truth about Iraq, one realizes there has been only one place to go to. For two and a half years the same things have been repeated here about Iraq, about Sunni and Shi'a, Arab and Kurd. The obvious good sense of the recommendations has continued to be overlooked. The loyalists of the Administration still can't quite admit that there have been two great failures:1. The failure to understand Islam, and the promptings, scope, instruments, and full menace of the Jihad to what is still the civilization of the West.
2. The failure to understand Iraq, and why conflict between Arab and Kurd and between Sunni Arabs and Shi'a Arabs is inevitable. For the Kurds, having gotten used to their autonomy, have no intention of ever again submitting to an Arab supremacist ideology, and are dead set on obtaining independence as soon as they can. The Sunni Arabs will never recognize that they constitute 19% of Iraq's population, and will never reconcile themselves to the loss of political and economic power to the Shi'a. The Shi'a Arabs were perfectly prepared to embrace "democracy" for one reason: they knew that they constitute 60-65% of the population, and purple-thumbed democracy would insure a transfer of power to them. That is the only reason that they support going through the ballot-box in Iraq.
Those two failures continue to explain the tarbaby of Iraq.
Then there are human failures -- the inability of so-called "conservatives" (whatever that word now means) to quite grasp that support for Bush's policy has been mistaken. That confusion is compounded by the fact that so many are urging withdrawal for the wrong reasons. All this causes some to cling to, and make unconvincing arguments on behalf of, the fiasco of Tarbaby Iraq.
It won't wash.
Robert Spencer published an article before American troops entered Iraq explaining why a democratization effort there was futile. Dated postings here show that ever since Saddam Hussein was captured, Jihad Watch staff members have been urging the Administration to withdraw from Iraq -- because that capture, following upon the killing of his two sons and the successful round-up of his main officials, made inevitable the Sunni-Shi'a fight for power. It is not a matter of "mistakes" made here or there, as some would argue. The basic error lies in thinking that anything other than coercion could ever make the Sunnis accept the loss of power to the Shi'a. Or that anything other than coercion would make the Shi'a be willing to behave as if they hadn't suffered for decades, for the entire history of modern Iraq, from the Sunni rule, sometimes more and sometimes less disguised, sometimes more and sometimes less onerous.
It is long past time to recognize the nature of Jihad, and therefore the utter impossibility of ever winning Muslim "hearts and minds." They can be temporarily bought, by continuing to spend vast sums -- throwing it to Iraqi "contractors" who have been making out like gangbusters and cannot quite believe how easy it is to become the recipients of billions (supplied by American taxpayers who have no way, apparently, to stop the runaway train of the Bush policy of spending hundreds of billions that could so much more effectively have been used in energy programs that would have diminished the money weapon of the worldwide Jihad).
It's a problem, the inability of so many to part with the Administration when it has been capable of grasping this Iraq nonsense. Just don't want to give MoveOn.org a supposed victory. But it would not be a victory. A withdrawal would not be a victory for the soi-disant "left" in America -- not if it causes the camp of Jihad, with which that Left so often identifies, to become divided and demoralized. Not if it allows the spectacle of internecine Muslim warfare to make Infidels everywhere aware of the real nature of Islamic societies, where only the iron fist can control the aggression that adherents of the belief-system of Islam naturally exhibit. Better to have them put on a display of that aggression in Dar al-Islam against one another -- to use up their money, their men, their materiel, so that the Infidels can realize that not Chalabi and Allawi, not Prince Hassan or Saad Eddin Ibrahim, not Prince Bandar with his port and his cigars, not any of these smooth, plausible, entirely unrepresentative representatives of Islam, are anything but a misleading facade.
Eventually those who have been so wrong will -- they have already started -- to start making sense. And the sense that they will have to make will consist of them echoing, to one degree or another, what has been steadily presented here, for at Jihad Watch for 2 1/2 years, in great detail. They will never acknowledge that they were ever wrong, but will gradually introduce a greater truth into what they do write. And they will never acknowledge what they learned by coming here, as so many of them do.
Fine. Let them echo.
I must say I don't agree with everything you guys say but given how important the topic is, I check your site every day. The regular media are completely useless, obsolete, and of no use to anyone with half a brain.
The loyalists of the Administration still can't quite admit that there have been two great failures:
1. The failure to understand Islam, and the promptings, scope, instruments, and full menace of the Jihad to what is still the civilization of the West.
___
How can people like Wolfowitz and Perle, with their strong links to the Likud Party, not know their arch-enemy, Islam?
They, and the Israeli experts who were undoubtedly consulted, certainly know as much about Islam as the people running this website, and probably a lot more.
How could they have not predicted the Shia-Sunni conflict, and the post-Saddam Iraq-Iran rapprochement?!
They most likely did.
Actually, if this post:
http://www.counterpunch.com/walsh06032006.html
is to be taken seriously (and I find it hard to agree with most of what I read at that site), even MoveOn does not want to advocate withdrawal. The author does not explain why, but it may be that MoveOn is afraid that this position would not play well in a general election.
I applaud Robert and Hugh for their understanding and foresight. It appears to me that they called it right from before the beginning.
By the way, just in case important people look in on this site, have you gentlemen suggested policy proposals on Iran?
The loyalists of Bush & Co. as well as the media commentators and the majority of the Western public (non-Islamic) are guilty of:
"1. The failure to understand Islam, and the promptings, scope, instruments, and full menace of the Jihad to what is still the civilization of the West." --Hugh Fitzgerald
One can but marvel at the ignorance of the Canadian as well as American commentators wondering why home-grown Moslems, with no apparent connection to al Qaeda, plot to attack their host contries.
"How can people like Wolfowitz and Perle, with their strong links to the Likud Party, not know their arch-enemy, Islam?
They, and the Israeli experts who were undoubtedly consulted, certainly know as much about Islam as the people running this website, and probably a lot more.
How could they have not predicted the Shia-Sunni conflict, and the post-Saddam Iraq-Iran rapprochement?!
They most likely did."
-- from a posting above
Every single one of these statements is flatly untrue, including the notion that Wolfowitz and Perle "know as much about Islam as the people runing this website." When have you ever heard of either one of them exhibiting the slightest understanding or knowledge of Islam? (As for Douglas Feith, whom you do not mention but might easily have put in the same galere, from 9/11/2001 until he left office last summer, he told a friend he did not read a single book aboutIslam --- not one). Perle knew all about the Soviet Union and Communism. As a registered foreign agent for Turkey, he dealt with the Turksih generals who were Kemalists, and who would certainly not have let on that Islam was a permanent fixture in Turkey, and that its future was far more of a sure thing than was Kemalism. Besides, the notion that Perle and Wolfowitz have all along been studying the Qur'an, and the Hadith, and assorted tafsir, and immersing themselves in Arthur Jeffery and Igtnaz Goldziher and Sir William Muir and Joseph Schacht and C. Snouck Hurgronje, is a fantaastic notion. It is as fantastic as those fans of Bush who claim that he "really knows what he is doing, but doesn't let on." No. They didn't. They don't. They still don't (well -- Perle, who is much smarter than Wolfowitz, by now has figured out that he needed to know a lot more about Islam). Wolfowitz remains unacceptably ignorant, not only about Islam, but about the influence of history and ideology on how people behave. He is not quite the Marxist, the economic determinist, that Bush and many very rich people seem to be. But his entire history is that of a weapons-systems analyst, and he has occasionally said very telling things that reveal his ignorance of basic matters.
It is crazy to describe Wolfowitz as having "close ties to the Likud." He never did. His sister lives in Israel and supports the appeasing left in that country, and Wolfowitz apparently shares or possibly merely endorses her view of things, possibly on the mistaken theory that "she's on the spot, she must know." His own views on the Arab siege of Israel are hopelessly naive, and betray, as does so much of what he has said about Iraq, someone who is a real innocent.
There is much more to say, but it will have to wait until later this evening.
O.T.
"Sir" Iqbal Sacranie has been replaced as head of the Muslim Council of Britain. The new head is Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, who presents himself as a "moderate" but is clearly not. Even the BBC lets on that:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5046970.stm
See also Western Resistance's write-up for a very revealing interview with Bari where he is pressed by a Panorama reporter to say whether he agrees with his mosque's "honoured guest" Sheikh Abdur-Rahman Al-Sudais that Jews are "the scum of the human race, offspring of apes and pigs" that Christians are "worshippers of the cross" and Hindus "idol worshippers".
Bari starts by denying that he thinks of Jews and Christians in this manner, then turns evasive, apparently being unable to bring himself to even pretend to respect Hindu beliefs, wanders off into irrelevancies to avoid the questions, and finally turns accusatory and whines that "character assassination of Muslim scholars and leaders are getting very widespread". The Panorama reporter responds that he is only quoting from the Sheikh's sermons which are available in English translation.
http://www.westernresistance.com/blog/archives/002277.html
Unicorns62000 -- The snow drifts of craziness just keep piling up. Even the term al Quaida is now used by media and politicians to avoid discussing Islam's centrality in all of it...
The coming days offer a great opportunity to write to them -- let them know politely but firmly that this topic of Islam must become central, that their unwillingness to learn about Islam and tell the truth about Islam is unsatisfactory.
We need directness -- simple terminology -- accessibility. And we must figure out a way to take this message to a much wider audience -- the anti-Jihad will stay somewhat marginalized and unnoticed if it remains the province only of the most finely attuned intellects who alone can feel the pea underneath all the matresses of obliquity.
The failure to understand Islam
". . . the Israeli experts who . . . certainly know as much about Islam as the people running this website, and probably a lot more."
--from the posting above cited by Hugh Fitzgerald
If they do--and it is not apparent from the policies of the Israeli people in power--they have not educated the Israeli people (Jews) as to why the Arabs hate them to the death.
There are Israelis that recognize Islam, its jihad, and caliphatistic ambitions as the enemy of Israel, of Jews, and of all who do not follow the ideology of the desert brigand (in that order). They are however shouting out that truth into a wilderness bereft of reason.
They, and the Israeli experts who were undoubtedly consulted, certainly know as much about Islam as the people running this website, and probably a lot more.--george_rem
Really? Can you cite any evidence of this? And no, not your feelings or musings on their competence. Please cite or post a link to any statement which would lead one to reasonably believe that the people supposedly leading us in this fight are intellectually fit to shine either Robert or Hugh's shoes in matters concerning Islam.
I'm not claiming such statements don't exist. But if they do, they're damn scarce.
Great post, Yojimbo --
Good to see Sacranie putsched aside, as it were.
Bad to see the UK stumble like this. This MCB looks like a nightmare conception from first inception. Is it now an integral and permanent part of British politics? It should be abolished immediately!
Ugly that it will require more heinousness on the part of Muslims before this barnacle is scraped off and tossed into the briny deep.
Ah, the evil(benign in my view)Israel 'should' have known about Islam. This defies even a brief review of history. Shimon Peres, who owns a patent for the phrase 'The New Middle East,' believes that the brains of Israel(nanotechnology, biotechnology) will cause Jews and Arabs to join hands. Ehud Barak. Despite an entire life experience of being on the frontlines, would give up half of Jerusalem--including rights to the Temple Mount--for Clinton's 11'nth hour insspiration of going down in history as something more than a womanizer. No doubt, Peres and Barak view the conflict as a secular one--with no religious overtones(or religious overtones caused by secular differences instead of the other way around). Item Three: the shock, yep, shock, at the rise of Hamas . . . missed by the Israelis completely. Item Four: the explanation of the rise of Hamas as a response to the failure of the 'secular Fattah' and 'corruption' of Arafat and company. Fifth, sadly, may be mission failure: it's not easy to be killed, attacked, rejected, vilified for 50 years without questioning your own motivations/actions.
But to say, Israel should have known better about Iraq missed the point completely. Why? Based on what? How has Israel demonstrated that it understands Islam? Not by the words of the elected leadership/military leadership. I wouldn't trust their advice on Iran or Iraq. Maybe some of their humanit, but thats about it.
By the way, the Wolfowitz philosophy is Wilsonian in nature. What anybody who is willing to look at the words and actions of W with an open mind, must understand W is the biggest neocon of them all. Every action, thought and speech, almost every word points in his messianic vision of democracy has being a corrective force for what sickens the Muslim world. This is why I laught at the 'Jewphobic' Pat Buchanan as claiming the neocons lead W around by the nose. I'd say they are preaching to the choir. Even today, W is solidly in the Wilsonian, neocon, camp of transforming the world by democracy, and the use of American troops as agents of such a change. He thinks this lack of freedom is the cause of the Islamic menace; correct the freedom issue and no more 19 youths ramming planes into NYC and DC. Problem is, it is Islam and all it represents that is the agent of failure in the Muslim world. He's got the horse before the apple cart. He is, I believe, a good, decent man, but the world is full of good men.
This is the real tragedy of the post 9-11-01 world. 911 was a chance to understand the threat and the problems for what they are; not as how we wish them to be. It's not that Bush squandered American support in the world(as Gore claimed), rather he squandered a chance to address the threat on all fronts: military, energy, political, medical and so on.
But the polls taken in Europe and in the US show a growing change. It's not that Israel's numbers are 'going up.' They're not. It's that the West is taking a much more negative(realistic)view of Islam. We see what are the benign attempts at 'helping' Iraq has gotten us, what the attempts at dhimmitude are getting the French, the English, The Spanish and now the Canadians. You can believe Condi, W and the neocons, or you can believe your lying eyes.
Well, I don't agree.
We have to try. We have to try to introduce Democracy. We have to take this route or it would have been an unopened Pandora's box that we would have always wondered about. Yes we spent treasure.
But you guys seem to believe that human nature is uncontrollable nor redeemable. You seem to think that Muslims cannot be converted.
Please Hugh, answer these questions if you could:
Are they not human who yearn freedom like us?
Are you willing to usher in Armegeddon so fast?
Is it not better to let the Jihadists struggle with the other Iraqis for control while under our noses?
How else will people be converted away from the teachings of Islam if there was not a high struggle that involved mass numbers of muslims in a muslim land?
Do you think that Jihadists would be more in power and control if not for the Iraq war?
I for one, think it is a nobile cause and has proved beyond usefullness in instructiing the heart of Arabia on what it means to live under the Jihadist rule.
Indeed it has instructed the world.
We have tried our damn best and perhaps its all for naught. But better to try something than to ankle-bite forever and damning us all.
What anybody who is willing to look at the words and actions of W with an open mind, must understand W is the biggest neocon of them all. Every action, thought and speech, almost every word points in his messianic vision of democracy has being a corrective force for what sickens the Muslim world.--biorabbi
W and company may also be described as Jacobin in nature. I consider him very conservative, for a socialist.
irradiator99,
Jacobins sound much more like the left to me. With regard to Pres. Bush, I believe he is only a "social" conservative...that is, conservative with regard to social issues only: abortion, gay marriage, etc. Other than that, his tenure has been marked by increased spending and bigger government--qualities that are usually attributed to liberals.
"Well, I don't agree.
We have to try. We have to try to introduce Democracy. We have to take this route or it would have been an unopened Pandora's box that we would have always wondered about. Yes we spent treasure."--Dan
And of what value is democracy in and of itself? Voting doesn't prove anything, by itself. The old saying "Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner" is still accurate. See Palestinian Hamas election for details...
You don't seem to recognize that when given the "right" to vote (via no small sacrifice of Western blood and pain), these folk are voting for...wait for it... That's right! Islamic hardliners. See recent close call in death sentence of Muslim convert to Christianity in Afghanistan. Isn't Sharia great? I'm sure the Christian convert was happy that Sharia had been voted into their new constitution. I sure am glad we tried...
Tolerance for other/non religions should have to be verified over a period of years before allowing these practicioners of The Relgion of Peace™ to vote. And yes, that means it doesn't happen. Doing nothing (other than bombing, that is) is often better than doing the wrong thing.
"Not if it allows the spectacle of internecine Muslim warfare to make Infidels everywhere aware of the real nature of Islamic societies" Posted by Mr. Fitzgerald
So Correct! A Civil War in Iraq is the perfect outcome and one I wish for everyday. If they fight each other then it will benefit us. It will use up their resources. It will use up the limited number of muslims (sunni or shia) who are willing to blow themselves up. It will keep them busy for years. Think of an even wider war and how that would also benefit us with Iran siding with the shia against the Sunni arabians, syrians, and other assorted groups. It will be great! Think about the shia population in Saudi Arabia dreaming of taking over Mecca! Think of the Sunni population going crazy over the idea that Mecca might fall to them. Iran will have nukes soon and watch the body count go over the top. Always arm the side that is about to lose and sit back and enjoy the show!
Lol irradiator.
I don't completely agree, but that's a very clever summation.
You make some good points, Dan. I argue somewhat the same.
Still, America needs to make like Tallyrand and do a better job of managing her affairs. The old boy did an amazing job of parrying every thrust and anticipating all of his enemy's moves.
Rarely before have we faced such perils, or had so little support from our natural allies. Not sure GW fits the bill, but currently, I'd say he's still better than every other alternative.
(BTW -- I'm not a republican -- and never was...)
Jacobins sound much more like the left to me. --IrishEi
Exactly my point. Bush and his dunce comrades are of the left. Other than making conciliatory conservative noises with no effect, what can you point to of a conservative nature that they've done? Tax cuts? I recall reading that even Keynesian socialist economics calls for it in certain circumstances (though I'm no economist).
Judges? He had to be beaten over the head with a 2x4 by actual conservatives (as opposed to compassionate ones) to keep from putting an unqualifed, seemingly affirmative actioned into place, lawyer buddy of his into the highest judical office in the land. Alito is still questionable in my mind, as well. No 1st Ammd. protection for government corruption whisle-blowers? Not off to a very promising start...
(BTW -- I'm not a republican -- and never was...)--jsla
Jorge W? Is that you? You read JW too? Awesome!
Why aren't you learning from it?
"They are however shouting out that truth into a wilderness bereft of reason." from a poster above.
How well said. Unfortunate, but palpably true.
So where do we focus our efforts? How do we save freedom?
If conveying the unambigous truth is not enough, what shall we then do?
"Please Hugh, answer these questions if you could:
Are they not human who yearn freedom like us?"
Humans, yes. Yearning for Western freedoms, NO!
I've been in several islamic hell holes, to include a tour of duty in Afghanistan. These people are programed from birth into islam.
Their societies did NOT evolve the way Western civilization did, and they have different priorities than we do. Plus you factor in the inbreeding factor and it gets even more dismal...
Come on lets sing along....I know not as good as the original but still...
Here's $22,000 on the drum
For those who'll volunteer to come
To list and fight the evil ones today
Over the hills and far away
(Chourus) "Over the hills and over the main
To Iraq, Afganistan and Arabia
King George commands and we obey
Over the hills and far away
Through jihadies and shot and shell
Unto the very walls of Hell
We shall stay for only George Knows why
Over the hills and far away
Chourus
Now though I travel far from Iraq
They keep on sending me back
Crescent moons shall never look the same
*And* over the hills and far away
Chourus
So fall in lads behind the drum
With the colours blazing like the sun
Along the road to a road side bomb
Over the hills and far away
Chours...
When muslims stalk upon this land
I wish to fight them for my land
But Georgie sends me to another land
Over the hills and far away
Chourus...
If I should lose my head please reattach
As many comrades did before
Ask the fife and drums to play
Over the hills and far away
Chourus....
Let Bushes and Clintons come and go
I'll stand ajudged by what I know
Muslims are better far away
Over the hills and far away
Chourus...
I am sure one of you smarter then I can do better....Does not ryme as good..
I especially like the reattach part...
Hugh once again suggests that the U.S. should try to play off the various Muslim factions, Sunni and Shi'a, against each other. And in so doing, he claims that this will cause "the camp of Jihad, with which that Left so often identifies, to become divided and demoralized."
Hugh seems to be arguing for the same kind of geopolitical balance-of-power triangulating that the Nixon Administration did with Red China and Red Russia during the Cold War, playing them off against each other as a way to improve our own strategic position. Unfortunately, that won't work here.
Nixon was able to play Russia and China against one another because the U.S. was not dependent on either one. Nor had either one issued an ultimatum to a valued U.S. ally like Britain or Japan. So the U.S. could stand back from the entire Eurasian continent and play out its little geopolitical chess games.
We cannot play that game with the Muslim world, because we are already too heavily involved in it, and cannot detach from it. Our commitment to defend Israel's security and the West's dependence on Middle East oil imports make the U.S. extremely involved in internal Muslim conflicts to a much greater degree than the U.S. was involved in the conflict between Russia and China.
Right now, the Shi'a in Iran have once again threatened to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. We cannot ignore that threat, nor can we just hope that even a war between Shi'a and Sunni would be a sufficient deterrent to the fanatics in Iran to destroy Israel someday. If Iran issues a final ultimatum to Israel at any time, we will be forced to come to Israel's defense and use military action against the Shi'a in Iran, no matter what Hugh wants. And we certainly can't just pick Israel up and relocate it to a safer place.
Similarly, if the Middle East is wracked by ethnic violence between Shi'a, Sunni and Kurd (among others), the fact that they will become "divided and demoralized" in the long run doesn't help us cope with likely collapse of all oil shipments from the Middle East, due to supertankers being destroyed in the Arabian Gulf, infrastructure being bombed, etc.
Ever since the Carter Administration, the U.S. has had a policy of defending freedom of the seas in the Arabian Gulf, including guaranteeing safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz. If any of the factions--Sunni or Shi'a or whoever--starts blowing up supertankers attempting to transit that waterway, the U.S. will be committed to using military force to defending the oil shipments. And we will be sucked right back into war again. Hugh has not explained what we do about that.
Perhaps Hugh believes that all this would be a whole lot easier if the West wasn't dependent on Middle East oil. I heartily agree. But then achieving that independence becomes the immediate priority--not trying to figure out how we live with a Middle East in flames with Israel being nuked by Iran, oil production fallen to near zero, and the Arabian Gulf closed to oil tanker traffic.
"the fact that they will become 'divided and demoralized' in the long run doesn't help us cope with likely collapse of all oil shipments from the Middle East..."
-- from a posting above
Fear of the loss of oil is deliberately exaggerated by the Gulf Arabs, who use this threat at every opportunity to justify their own acts, and to inveigle the Americans into doing what, for their own reasons, those Arabs wish them to do.
Not a single one of the many wars that have taken place between nations, or within nations, since the famous orchestration of fear among the oil-consuming nations by OPEC after the 1973 war -- which allowed those nations to make their gigantic price rise not only stick, but to be accepted with a whimper -- has interrupted the supply of oil for every long. The Iran-Iraq War, a war between what at the time were the second and third largest producers in the Middle East, did briefly interrupt supply at the very begining, but for the rest of the eight-year-long war, the price of oil actually sank, steadily. Much the same non-effect on the oil market occurred when Lebanon was engulfed in Christan-Muslim civil war, and when the Israelis invaded, and then when the Syrians imposed their Diktat after the Treaty of Taif was forced on the Lebanese. The unending siege of Israel, sometimes involving only the shock troops of that siege, the "Palestinians," sometimes other Arabs and even other Muslims, similarly has, since the excuse of the Yom Kippur War was used to justify a price rise that had been been planned for quite some time(the moving spirit for this rise was not Saudi Arabia, but the Shah of Iran). The same is true of the first Gulf War, of the civil war in Lebanon, of the strife within Syria between the Alawi dictatorship and the Muslim Brotherhood.
What about, going even further back than 1973 -- all the way back to, say, the 1960s, looking at all those examples of "instability" brought about by intra-Arab warfare, which is closer to the kind of Shi'a-Sunni conflict one is talking about. There was the proxy war in the Yemen between Nasser the supposed leftist, and the supposedly rightist forces in Yemen supported by the Saudis. There was the Darfur rebellion in Oman, supported by the Saudis. There was the tension arising from the Saudi demands on Abu Dhabi over the Buraimi Oasis. There was the Syrian incursion into Jordan, repelled by Israeli warnings. There was the clash between Libyan and Egyptian forces. There was the hostility between the more "Muslim" Ba'athist regime of Iraq against the Alawite Ba'athists of Syria. There was the tension between the Turks and the Arabs of Syria over the dam-building plans of the former. There has been the tension between Kurds and Iranians, Kurds and Arabs, Arabs in Khuzistan and the Iranian government. And so on.
Of course the Saudis and others will mutter darkly about the terrible effects of "instability" and danger to oil, in order to get the Americans to prevent that "instability" that we are repeatedly told is so dangerous. It isn't. Constant instability, regimes constantly put on edge by one another, and especially by the fear of Sunni-Shi'a conflict, or as Mubarak put it bluntly, Sunni fears of Shi'a intentions -- that is something that may be bad for Muslims, but it isn't bad for Infidels. Let the local regimes worry. Let them spend more money on internal security. Let them have to be as preoccupied with it as the Western world has, thanks to the presence of Muslims, has had to become -- with all the expense and anxiety entailed. Let them use up men, money, and materiel battling each other. As in the Iran-Iraq War, they will be careful to respect each other's sole source of income -- the oil. And the Saudis, if they cannot hold onto the oilfields, or if those statelets, those little tribes with little flags, that presume to own the oil and gas of Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar, actually do seem as if they might have their oil and gas fields taken over by even worse regimes, even more fanatical promoters or even participants in violent Jihad, it would be nothing at all for the American military to seize those oilfields and gas fields in Qatar, in Kuwait, in the U.A.E., in Saudi Arabia. It would be nothing, as compared to remaining in Iraq, to ensure a "stability" that is not in our interest, but which, we are repeatedly told, we must ensure so that that oil and gas that would be so easy, in case of ultimate need, to seize, can be kept safe for the greater glory of the rulers of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the U.A.E., and so on.
And suppose there were some kind of crisis? A crisis is already here. That crisis is that of the environment, and it is clear that only something is needed to shake up the governments of the Western world, and not only the Western world, to collaborate on efforts at finding other sources of energy, and other ways of living that will not require the expenditure of so much energy for humans to find what they will define as "happiness." A crisis in the Middle East over the access to oil is very unlikely to happen, given what happened during the Iran-Iraq War, But if it were to happen, it could be solved through military intervention in statelets that have no military capacity at all. And finally, such a crisis, if in the end it is controllable, as it would be, might be just what the environmental truth-tellers ordered -- forcing decisions that apparently need to be forced.
Steven L.
Oil is the only thing that keeps us in the middle east. We really are not that involved in the middle east in the grand view (Not like with China ot Taiwon etc) Therefore the only solutions are:
(1) Change from a straight oil based economy
OR
(2) Fight for the next 100 years to bring democracy, freedom and then spend the next 100 years trying to reform Islam.
I say No. 1 is easier in the long run. for several reasons.
(1) Why is it our obligation to defend world oil shipments?? To help who and why?? If we can do No. 1 in a reasonable time why do we need to protect the Strait of Hormuz or the Arabian Gulf?? Let the Chinese fight to defend it. They have been getting a free ride for sometime now. It cost too much in lives and treasure to keep this up forever.
(2) The oil resources of the world will if not already reaching "peak levels". The resource as a realiable source of fuel will only become harder and harder to find and defend. Why fight and spend money on something that will give in return someting that is limited.
(3) In house production of coal conversion methods, nuclear and hydrogen offer not only short term stable energy but will give long term results in the case of hydrogen and nuclear technologies. It will produce jobs in house etc. U.S. Dollars will not end up in the hand of the very men who attempt to kill us.
(4) Israel may have already been lost but fighting in Iraq or the middle east will not give it any extra protection. We have already offered them nuclear protection and weapons. Lets hope they make it. Give their people support and options to leave to the U.S. if things become hopeless.
(5) The advantage of letting them have at it (i.e. civil war) is it will maybe just maybe cause the muslims themselves to re-think Islam. The way the black death and 30 years war did for Christians in europe. I know it will be harder then the Christian example but their is always that hope. They have to want to change...we can't show them the light...we can't make them change. Their religion and their world view makes that impossible for the various reasons posted on this site and others.
(6) A Civil War will keep Sunni groups and Shi'a fighting each other and not us. This is a religious war...it don't make sense in a business sense....logical sense...its about faith and who is right in that faith. You stated how Israel will be in trouble but I think in my view it might help for the same reason it will help us. Religious wars are bad but a religious war between two groups within one faith is even worse. Muslims will not have time to worry about Israel....Allah will be calling on true muslims to defend the faith from the fake muslims. Mecca itself might be in play. Think about what the Iranians would love most....to run Mecca.
With that said it will take some strong measures and it will be a stuggle in the early years to change our economy around but that is the "American way". Saying it can't be done or should not becuase its too hard is not the answer becuase the other plan of fighting for 100s of years to change muslims is really an impossible task.
This is not a justification for Bush's policy based on some simple minded muscular missionary fantasy. But you can't tell me that things will never get better there and it's inevitable that it will devolve into another Saudi Arabia or Iran. Some positive things are coming from all this mess. Or to put it mildly, things can only get better from now on.
1. Muslims/Arabs now believe Islam is on the ascendancy -- this really wasn't the case earlier. What makes you think they'd limit their warfare to their region only? Don't you think their ambition has kept pace with their avarice? Their ability to project well beyond the ME is attested to by their successful encroachments in every corner of the Globe. They are funding a low level Muslim insurgency across the globe --even right here in America.
2. Arabs/Muslims are the beneficiaries of staggering piles of loot since those happier times you pine for. They were paupers in those days. What impact would this have on new wars they might wage? While it's fun to imagine the waves of human zombies, it's pure hubris to imagine their wars would be similar to 20-40 years ago.
3. How might their strategic goals be different from your assumptions? The unrealistic scenario which has them reprising their old wars in modern times just doesn't match the long history of human warfare. Everyone advances -- even the backward Muslims. This isn't just in the methods. Their intentions may have changed.
3. The world is an arms bazaar bristling with modern nastiness. How might their modern attitudes, abilities and aspirations alter the trajectory of a new era of Arab/Muslim conflicts? Despite their stupidity, they are not dummies. What difference do nukes and wmd make in any scenario for Arab/Muslim warfare?
4. Saudis have always been snakes -- but in the '60s and '70s, they never would have dreamed of the possibilities revealed to them in the '80s and '90s. The Saudis, through their client state Pakistan, and with our help, pulled all the strings in Afghanistan and funded the Taliban. They were loath to give up control of this Frankenstein. Do you think they've relinquished this appetite? It appears they're funding the preparations for several other terror havens from Sudan, Afghanistan, Baluchistan (or whatever it's called) their own homeland, the Sunni Triangle etc.
5. Allowing Muslims to war among themselves may lead to more and worse Afghanistans and Irans.
Sure you can posit arguments that wars would drain their coffers -- but those have become nearly limitless fonts of money. Sure you can posit theories that men and materiel would be siphoned off from the global Jihad, but the opposite argument also holds: Such endeavors may enhance the lethality and amplitude of their Global Jihad.
Some of the assertions about the benefits of increased warfare in Arab/Muslim domains need a more substantiation before I'm convinced. Predicting the future is like pushing on a string. It doesn't follow that good sounding ideas unfold in the ways one assumes they will. This is a far more complex issue/problem than revealed in some of the arguments above ...
Remember just before Afghanistan was invaded by Coalition troops, Putin and Russian Generals advised against it in strongest terms-some even citing their personal experiences.
"Nah," says America-"this is only sour grapes.WE CAN TRANSFORM THIS COUNTRY LIVING IN THE STONE AGE INTO A MODERN DEMOCRACY."
Ruskies had already learned the hard way NO CAN DO IN AFGHANISTAN OR ANY MUSLIM LAND.Russians tried to educate'em,give women equal rights with men,abolish religion but in the end Afghanistan was an even worse state when they left it chased out by Taleban. Despite imposing that 'moderate'
leader Hamid Karzai who smiles sweetly for the West [which is about as secular as he gets],Afghanistan is a MESS, puppet government in to corruption up to their eyeballs with nothing changed except missing billions of aid.
Media has been frozen out of reporting the grim truth-a bloody waste of time trying to to make a
democracy or anything else of Afghanistan.
Iraq is already IN THROES OF CIVIL WAR.Daily situation becomes worse-it was never good except for touchy feely stories from the likes of Fox News. I don't how long Bush, Blair etc will keep on lying to us but sooner or later-very soon- they will have to admit the whole FIASCO.Iraq is a lost
cause my friends, what's more they HATE AMERICANS
MORE THAN ANY OTHER INFIDELS. GET TO HELL OUT OF THERE WHILE YOU STILL CAN-MIGHT SAVE A FEW INFIDEL ARMERICAN LIVES.
A series of questions is addressed to me in a posting above. Here they are:
1. "Are they not human [Iraqis, Muslims]who yearn freedom like us?"
2. "Are you willing to usher in Armegeddon [sic] so fast?"
3. "Is it not better to let the Jihadists struggle with the other Iraqis for control while under our noses?"
4. "How else will people be converted away from the teachings of Islam if there was not a high struggle that involved mass numbers of muslims in a muslim land?"
5. "Do you think that Jihadists would be more in power and control if not for the Iraq war?"
This is then followed by an assertion of belief: "it is a nobile [sic] cause" and then a further assertion that something has been "proved" without any proof adduced: "[the venture in Iraq] has proved that one of belief, and that therefore requires no proof
"I for one, think it is a nobile [sic] cause and has proved beyond usefullness in instructiing the heart of Arabia on what it means to live under the Jihadist rule."
Indeed it has instructed the world."
Let's start with the questions, 1-5.
And then the poster ends with the following: on the notion that we are to be proud of having tried, even if the cost of that trying, the real cost in men, money, and materiel, and the opportunity cost in what was not done or now cannot be done instead, has been enormous:
We have tried our damn best and perhaps its all for naught. But better to try something than to ankle-bite forever and damning us all."
-- from a posting above
He appears to believe that merely doing something, even if that something was based on ignorance of Islam and of the nature of Iraqi society, an ignorance at one time understandable but not justifiable by the time Iraq was actually invaded, and intolerable when that ignorance has continued, at the highest levels of both the civilian and apparently militay command, up to the present day.
He further things that whatever is done, if it involves enough effort, even if that effort is, as he admits, can be described as "for naught," that we should not say that it naught availeth, because we tried something. This is nonsense. Governments are judged on the basis of the intelligence and efficacy of their policies, not on the fact that they may have had good intentions. The policy in Iraq will succeed only if and when the Bush Administration, or a later one, withdraws completely. Then, and only then, will the inevitable ethnic and sectarian divisions -- inevitable, and without a despot like Saddam Hussein to crush oppositioin absolutely unsuppressable -- flourish and lead to precisely that division and subsequent demoralization and instability within the camp of Islam that no sane Infidel should deplore, but rather should welcome.
But let's go back first to those five questions that are posed.
#1. 1. "Are they not human [Iraqis, Muslims]who yearn freedom like us?"
No. They are no more like us thabn were the fanatical Nazis, or the Japanese militarists fighting for the Emperor and the belief-system we call Kodo. Not everyone "yearns for freedom."
Ideologies matter -- what is in people's heads matter. The simpleton, whether it is Bush or Rodney King, suggests that everyone should be ab le to get along, everyone "wants the same things." They don't.
Aside from those who have, in the last unappetizing century, been Nazis, or Fascists, or Communists, or Japanese militarists, or any number of other things, there have been, through tiem, those who yearn not for a well-ordered Commonwealth of Free Men, but rather a sinister totalitarian Order or Ordnung, where everyone derives his meaning not from being an individual exercising a certian kinid of freedom, the maximum possible consonant with his duties and responsiblities as a free citizen, but rather only as part of a Collective, whether that collective is a collective farm hailing a visit by Comrade Stalin at which he is presented with flowers by cute schoolgirls in pinafores and braids, or whether he is part of the Collective Hysteris heil-hitlering at this or that Nuremberg Rally or simply in the daily moral idiocy of German life under the Nazis, or will give his all for the Emperor, Banzai Banzai Banzai, or will sit watching as Il Granitico gesticulates from the balcony of the Palazzo Venezia in the Piazza Venezia in Rome, and the sweat pours down the cheeks to the thick neck of the Biggest Balilla of them all, Il Duce. No, lots of people in history have yearned to be part of the Group, the Mob, the Party, the whatever-it-is, and only those devoid of any real knowledge of history, including the history of their own country -- how could Bush dare to compare the ridiculous goings-on in Iraq, by those primitives, with what went on in Philadelphia by the Framers of the Constitution? How could he? -- could think otherwise.
2. "Are you willing to usher in Armegeddon [sic]so fast?"
Oh, not until I figure out how I can stop beating my wife.
For god’s sake, where did you come up with such a question? What have I written that offers even the slightest excuse for asking such an absurd thing? Please supply me with evidence that I hope to "usher in Armageddon"? Everything I have suggested should be done would not only prevent any Aramageddon, but would make large-scale military action less likely, would make any Armageddon notion – the Final Battle – fit only for Hollywood, which is where it belongs. If sensible measures are undertaken to check and reverse certain gains achieved through the instruments of Jihad that are not military in nature – Da’wa and demographic conquest – then military action of a major, World War II kind, will be unnecessary. Indeed, the pity of Iraq is that once Saddam Hussein had been removed, and the Americans had assured themselves that no one else in Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (I can’t bear “WMD” or most acronyms), they should have left, for by their initial removal of the regime the inevitable split between Shi’a and Sunni could only grow, as it has, as one side shows it has no intention of giving up the power it now exercises, and the other side shows no side of acquiescing in the loss of the political, and therefore every other kind of power, that it possessed under Saddam Hussein’s despotism, and under the Sunni-dominated regimes that have always run Iraq.
American goals in Iraq, if rightly defined, are likely to be achieved by the withdrawal of American forcers. The Americans have no stake in Iraq’s stability. They have no stake in making Iraq’s Sunnis and Shi’a getting along swimmingly. They have a stake in dividing and demoralizing the camp of Islam. Iraq presents a perfect opportunity. The excuses to leave are presented every day on a platter – not least by the outrageous remarks of Al-Maliki the other day, claiming that the incident in Hadith was a common occurrence, essentially calling the American soldiers, who have risked their lives to further the wellbeing of the meretricious, treacherous, and irreducibly hostile population (save for the Christians, who want American protection, and most Kurds, who are grateful to the Americans, and also a very few of the most advanced, westernized Arabs, such as the unrepresentative Chalabi. Nothing need be done further by the Americans. They need only to see more clearly the nature of Islam, and the need to weaken, divide, and demoralize the camp of Islam, in and outside Iraq, and the bringing of “democracy” to Iraq (which has Shi’a support only because the Shi’a know that they constitute 60-65% of the population – for them “democractic elections” mean certain power) can somehow promote Infidel interests has never been explained by the Bush Adminstration – because it can’t be. All it can do is to offer pieties about how everyone “wants freedom.” It’s crap.
Warfare in Iraq would not be a defeat for the United States. It would be a victory for Infidels everywhere, especially if the Shi’a outside Iraq, from Iran, from Lebanon, and elsewhere, supply volunteers, and materiel, and money, and if on the other side, not only admirers of Zarqawi and other takfiris step in to help kill Shi’a, but are aided by other Sunni volunteers, and money and arms from Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E., Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait. And if warfare in Iraq between Shi’a and Sunni were to have effects on Sunni-Shi’a relations in Bahrain, in Kuwait, in Yemen, in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia (where all the main oilfields are located), in Lebanon, that would be wonderful.
All of this is by way of saying that there is far less need for American troops, and for military action, than the poster above seems to think I think. I have offered ways to husband resources, to avoid major war. Let local hostilities do the trick. Stop propping up any Arab or Muslim regime, anywhere, with the Jizyah of foreign aid. If some military aid is to be given, give it only to local warlords who, however unpleasant they may be, will be surrogates capable of taking casualties, and inflicting them, in battles with the possibly less corrupt, but certainly more dangerous (to Infidels) local Islamic groups. Keep them steadily under siege, steadily off guard. If, of course, in the end a situation becomes too dire, then air strikes can do a lot. They did in Serbia, where they should not have been used. They did a lot to reduce the will, and ability to fight, of both Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan – look at what happened to the cities of both countries. And that wasn’t Armageddon.
And while they fight, the way that the “Palestinians” may be beginning to fight for power and spoils today, the Infidels of Western Europe will look on, with horror, and this will encourage them to look more deeply into Islam, its tenets, its attitudes, its atmospherics, and precious time will have been bought, time for enough Infidels to come to their senses about Islam, and to undertake measures – beginning with halting all Muslim migration into the Bilad al-kufr, the Land of Unbelief or Lands of the Infidels, and to even reverse it, with measures that might extend up to those undertaken by Czechoslovakia in dealing with its ethnic German population, that had proven its large-scale disloyalty, and its security threat to the Czech state, just before and then during World War II. The Benes Decrees were not criticized in 1946, but understood sympathetically, by everyone who had lived through World War II; they remain uncriticized today, except in German far-right, revanchist circles. The West needs to understand Islam, and the hold it has over Muslims, and the impossibility of integrating people whose belief-system is not only totalitarian in nature, but the extent of the hold of that belief-system over the minds of particular Believers is not possible to be measured with exactness, nor can Infidels predict if a seemingly “moderate” Muslim is merely feigning or, if he is not feigning, if he will change his mind, and something will trigger a return to the full, dangerous Islam. And furthermore, one has every right to worry over what second and third generation Muslims will do, even those who are the children of immigrants who may appear to have little interest in Islam, but only in making prosperous lives for themselves. Even if that is true for some, we cannot deal with that “My Son the Fanatic” phenomenon. We cannot, as Infidels, be expected to endure lives far more unpleasant, expensive, and physically dangerous for ourselves, and dangerous even to the laws, and customs, and art works, of our own civilization, all for some sacrifice on the altar of some silly ideas about “tolerance” and the need to act thus and so as “decent” human beings. The Czechs, Masaryk and Eduard Benes, were civilized Europeans, the finest products of European civilization. And they did not hesitate a minute to expel three million Sudeten Germans, whose ancestors had been living for centuries in the Sudetenland. How much less a claim do the Muslims in Europe and North America, almost all of whom have arrived since 1970, have on the countries they now may live in geographically, but which they have failed en masse either to accept, or to pledge, and mean it, the kind of loyalty that should be minimially demanded of them, to such things as the Constitution in this country, or the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man in Europe, with a clear recognition that Islam should not “dominate” and that pluralism is not merely a weapon to be exploited and turned on its inventors, but must be wholeheartedly, enthusiastically embraced. It is hard to see how anyone who actually believes what is written in the Qu’ran and the Hadith, and who actually takes the figure of Muhammad as that of the Perfect Man, uswa hasana, can conceivably believe in Western democracy, in free speech and full freedom of conscience, and in almost everything that makes the West the West. Once that is understood, other things will follow. And no Armageddon will be part of it. Carefully employing all the instruments that will check Da’wa and demographic conquest will make the need for military intervention less likely.
Of course, some military action will now and again be necessary. Intervention, not by land invasion (never should Infidels invade Muslim countries unless they are on missions of destruction, not of destruction followed by “winning hearts and minds” – a fool’s errand), but by air, and only to destroy the possibility of Muslim states, whatever the current is, or a future regime is likely to be, because no Muslim regime, and no regime that follows it, and no Muslim group that might have friends in high places, can ever be allowed to acquire such weaponry. Why not? Because of what is contained in the Qur’an and Hadith – that’s why. And if government officials all over the Western world want to continue to ignore what is contained in Qur’an and Hadith (and read those texts closely, keeping in mind abrogation in reconciling inconsistencies in the former), they will make more likely the possibility, at some point, of what the poster above calls “Armageddon.” .
It is not hard to draw up plans, for example, to check Da’wa in American and British prisons. Much of the effort is directed at black prisoners, on the assumption that they are alienated from the society, and looking for a belief-system that will justify, even promote, that alienation – a vehicle for violent protest, even a justification for crimes, now redefined, if those crimes have been committed, or will be committed in the future, against those now seen as “Infidels.” To check this systematic campaign that is purused in prisons without authorities lifting a finger to stop it, obvious measures could be undertaken. One could segregate the Muslim prisoners in special prisons, so that they are less likely to be able to conduct Da’wa. After all, their calls to prayer, their special meals, all that can disrupt life for non-Muslims. The argument can be put forth that it would be better for them, too, to lead their Muslim prison existence separated from the Infidels whom, according to their own texts, they cannot “take as friends” and whom, in fact, they are to treat with murderous hostility. Why should prison authorities have to worry about that? Why, for that matter, should non-Muslim prisoners have to worry about that? Better to keep them separate.
And when one is trying to head off the Da’wa directed specifically at black prisoners, conter-Da’wa would enroll black ministers, and black refugees from Arab Muslim mass—murder in the Sudan, or enslavement by Arabs in Mali, or Arab anti-black riots in Libya (a Chadian diplomat was lynched a few years ago, his body left hanging for the delectation of an Arab mob), and of course, as Ayaan Hirsi Ali recently reported, there are still black slaves deep in Saudi Arabia.
And to all the poor, in and out of prison, who have been fooled into believing that Islam is a vehicle for the expression of opposition to economic injustice, that Islam itself pomises and delivers “social justice,” apparently an idea based on a few notions of charity or Zakat (not to one’s fellow man but only to one’s fellow Muslim man) and on the fact that at a mosque the rich and the poor may prostrate themselves at the same time, should be given the grim facts. For nowhere else in the world is political power used to ensure grand theft by the rulers, and there is no Muslim state that delivers “social justice.” The differences between the ruling classes in Saudi Arabia (that is, the Al-Saud princes and princelettes, and their corrupt courtiers), in Egypt (where Mubarak’s family-and-friends plan is still going strong), in Algeria (where generals still have not given up power and siphon off oil wealth as Mubarak siphons off American foreign aid), in Jordan, in Kuwait, in the U.A.E., in Bahrain, in Qatar, in Iraq, in Iran, in Syria, in Pakistan, in Afghanistan, and elsewhere – everywhere it is the rulers, either monarchs or military men or despots such as the Alawites who own Syria, and the Sunni Arabs of Tikrit who held such concentrated power under Saddam Hussein – there is less social justice in the Muslim countries, because they quite clearly locate the source of a government’s legitimacy not in the consent of the governed, not even theoretically, but only in the Shari’a, the Holy Law of Islam. A despot is okay, as long as that despot is a good Muslim. And the fact that in history some Muslim rulers were not complete despots, but did from time to time consult with others (a point that Bernard Lewis has misrepresented as meaning far more than it does), did not make them democrats. Stalin, too, had his late-night sessions in the Kremlin, with those good old boys such as Lavrenti P. Beria, or before him other, equally dangerous consiglieri who, from time to time, would be put out of their misery by the Georgian Godfather.
And if there is little “social justice” within Muslim countries – just look at those zamindars and generals who own and run Pakistan, and have ever since its founding, ever since Jinnah died – there is still less among Muslim polities. Some are fabulously rich, and others very poor. But do the rich of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the U.A.E., help poor Muslims in Egypt or Pakistan or the Yemen? They do not. They contribute nothing, except that which will deliberately buy them (or in the case of the Saudis, Wahhabism) support. That is all. For all the talk of “zakat,” and all the emphasis on the umma, and loyalty to that umma, that loyalty extends only to supprting fellow Muslims in any fight with Infidels, of any kind. It has no other meaning, and certainly does not guarantee the slightest support from the rich Arabs to the poor Arabs, much less any non-Arabs. This has to be publicized. But before it can be publicized, it has to be understood.
This is the kind of thing that, if properly executed, will render all talk—as above – about assorted Armageddons as silly, as irrelevant, as they are. And one hopes they will continue to be.
3. "Is it not better to let the Jihadists struggle with the other Iraqis for control while under our noses?"
No. American forces will, if they remain, be constantly under attack. It will be logistics nightmare. How, in the middle of civil strife, can the Americans possibly guard themselves, and their own military equipment, which Sunnis and Shi’a, and Kurds as well, will all desperately covet, so as to acquire weaponry that their domestic enemies will not have. Everyone will be after the Americans to get their tanks, their Humvees, their everything. And why should Americans remain in the midst of such strife? It makes no sense. Why? In order to see who’s in and who’s out? Let me repeat something I have posted before: We don’t have a dog in this fight. The fight itself is our dog.
Furthermore, not only will American troops be the object of attacks in order to seize their weaponry, by both Sunnis and Shi’a native to Iraq, but the growing Iranian agents will also wish to do what they can to harm the American troops – and may succeed. And if those troops remain, they will be seen by the Iranian government as hostages, subject to easy Iranian retaliation, should the Americans decide to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities. And that very perception by the Iranians is dangerous, and helps to keep them from doing what they must do if they are to avoid such an attack.
You use this word “Jihadist.” I don’t. I am talking about Muslims, Sunni and Shi’a, all of whom, if they are loyal Muslims (and not all are, of course) support the idea of Jihad, that is the struggle to promote and spread Islam, even unto the last redoubt of the Unbelievers, so that everywhere obstacles to Islam may be removed, and Islam can dominate, and Muslims can rule – and they can rule, and have ruled in lands conquered from Infidels, long before they became a majority.
Rephrase that question:
“Is it not better to have Sunni Muslims struggle with Shi’a Muslims for control while under our noses”?
That’s better.
My answer, however, remains exactly the same.
4. "How else will people be converted away from the teachings of Islam if there was not a high struggle that involved mass numbers of muslims in a muslim land?"
I don’t know what you are talking about. What kind of mass conversion do you have in mind? I have never mentioned such a cockamamie thing. And any conversion that might take place is not going to take place with a hostile army, an army of Infidels, trying to push “conversion” down throats. What is more likely to lead Muslims here and there and everywhere to become more disaffected with Islam is the spectacle of constant internal dissension and internecine warfare. The cracks within Islam will begin with the non-Arab Muslims – the Kurds, Berbers, some in Malaysia and especially Indonesia, who may find that they have begun to be aware – made aware by the awareness of Infidels – of the way in which Islam is the Arab national religion, and a vehicle for Arab supremacism. This can be demonstrated in Iraq with the Kurds, and their own fight for independence, and Arab attempts to suppress it, will bring that point home. And the Sunni-Shi’a split can only cause damage to Islam itself, to its self-image at a time when all news is instantly relayed around the world. There will be no mass conversion out of Islam. But a steady pressure on its adherents, a growing questioning of it as a Complete System, brittle and unable to cope or withstand questioning, can do much to weaken its hold. And that hold has to be weakened, or if not, then Infidels will have no choice but, in order to preserve their own laws, customs, ways of life, will have to expel large numbers of Muslims from their midst, painful as that might be for some who think an abstraction, an ideal that no longer fits the case, should prevail over the reality of life as it is actually lived and endured by Infidels. No.
5. "Do you think that Jihadists would be more in power and control if not for the Iraq war?"
I think that the Iraq War has had no important effect on the position of Islam, and on the menace and full scope of the Jihad that is a duty incumbent on all Muslims either to support, or to directly participate in. It has had two effects. One of them has been, at great cost to the Americans, to undo the Sunni despotism that so many Shi’a in exile urged us to end, promising that all sorts of wonderful things would happen, that the Americans would be treated with unfeigned and permanent gratitude as “liberators.” It was nonsense. This does not mean that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was a bad idea. It was certainly rational to conclude that he very likely had major weaponry or was building it, and it was also rational to conclude that he might, if he obtained such weaponry, use it. So it was deemed important to find out. But that was found out by the end of 2004, at the latest – at a time when Uday and Qusay had been killed, the famous fifty-two mostly rounded up, and Saddam Hussein himself captured. There was no justification for remaining, had Iraq, and had Islam, been thoroughly understood.
The war in Iraq has used up resources that will need to be husbanded for what is a war without end. The effort should be to minimize the need for military intervention, and to recognize that other instruments of Jihad, the money weapon, and Da’wa, and demographic conquest, are far more threatening, in the end, to Western Europe and to North America. Perhaps it is hard for the Pentagon, which is used to using the word “war” to mean soldiers, and tanks, and guns, and bombs, and so on, to not recognize that this is a very different kind of war, and the constant cunning displayed by the armies of Muslim apologists, and the unique, nearly fantastic situation, in which one side has allowed to settle deep within its own lines, millions of those whose belief-system makes them regard those among whom they have settled as the permanent enemy, to be converted, or killed, or ultimately subject to a status of humiliation, degradation, and physical insecurity. Because this situation is so amazing, so hard to comprehend or accept, and because comprehending and accepting it would then require certain actions be taken that very few seem capable of rationally and calmly considering, because it is simply too upsetting for them, it is not being done. And the sluggishness of the response in the American government, and the obstinacy with which it clings to restating the messianic, hallucinatory notions that are still apparently operative, in which Iraq is to be given an instant makeover as a Light Unto the Muslim Nations, a model of something has never been made quite clear by anyone in the government (nor have those in Congress saw fit to demand some kind of explanation of just what would constitute, in Bush’s view, a “victory” in Iraq for the only people whose wellbeing we should care about, the Infidels) – all this infuriates any sensible observer, that is anyone not blinded by loyalty to Bush, or so full of distaste for the most crazed of his critics as to make the mistake of sticking by this insensate policy.
I don’t think the war in Iraq has contributed at all to lessening the threat of islamization in Western Europe. I don’t think it has done a thing to reduce the threat in North America. I think remaining to prevent the ethnic and sectarian fissures that we should welcome, and eagerly exploit, not by doing anything but simply by not doing anything, is absolutely crazy.
After asking his five questions, the poster ends with the following:
We have tried our damn best and perhaps its [sic] all for naught. But better to try something than to ankle-bite forever and damning us all."
-- from a posting above
Nonsense. Is this an elementary school, where prizes are awarded for Best Effort. Because we “try something” that makes that “something” immune to criticism, make those who at great cost to all of us engage in trying that “something” able to continue to try it, long after it has become clear that many assumptions about Islam, and the nature of its menace, were not understood in 2001, or in 2003, or apparently still today, and that the nature of Iraq’s society was not understood in 2001, or in 2003, or still, apparently, by some in the Administration today. At one time this could be justified; no one knew much about Islam. But it is no longer justified, not in anyone whose duty it is to instruct or protect us,whether civilian or military. I don’t think “we have tried our damn best”is an acceptable remark. Is the United States government a junior-high school football team, that is to be forgiven a loss because the team, as the coach says after another losing game, “we have tired our damn best.” The infanitilization and sentimentalization of American life, cannot be tolerated. A mad policy, involving hundreds of thousands of troops, army and Reserves and National Guard, and the spending of hundreds of billions of dollars, cannot be justified by a sentence that admits that “perhaps it’s all for naught” but “we have tired our damn best” and then continues with this “better-to-have-tried-and-failed-then-never-to-have-tried-at-all” sentiment worthy of Reader’s Digest: “But better to try something than to ankle-bite forever and damning us all.”
Who’s ankle-biting? Those who suggest that the islmaization of Western Europe is far more worrisome than whatever happens in unpleasant, essentially hopeless Iraq –state in which Believers in a Total System outnumber those who do not so believe, and that Total System, political and religious, encourages despotism (how could it not, because the social-contract theories that locate the legitimacy of governments in the advanced West in the will of the people is lacking in Islam), where inshallah-fatalism hinders economic activity, where the habit of mental submission that Islam encourages prevents the skepticism without which the advancement of science, and even of social science, is impossible, the moral and intellectual failures of Islam – all this could and should have been understood, and then the intolerable waste would not have occurred, and the divisions that will ultimately prevail in any case, would have prevailed without a few quite unnecessary, expensive (in every sense) years were lost on a fool’s errand. Those making policy allowed themselves to believe that there would be all sorts of gratitude felt toward them, and that throwing money and development at these countries would somehow change things, but if anything changed, it was only that Islam itself is more evident than ever. Despite the behavior of the Taliban, they are again finding support in Afghanistan, and the NATO general who claims “we are not naïve” on the radio and then proceeds to discuss plans to “win hearts and minds” in Afghanistan – oh god, will it never end? Can’t he see what it is that prevents those Muslim hearts and Mulsim minds from ever being won? That won’t prevent the clamoring for new roads, and more Jizyah from the Infidels. There may even be a few smiles here and there, and promises of undying friendship, the same kinds that are made by the seller in the souk when “I offer you, effendi, a special price because I love you, effendi, more than I love my father, yes, I love you more than I love my mother, effendi”). And in Iraq, Islam is everywhere in the Arab areas (the Kurds, who have another identity to fall back on – that of being Kurds – are not quite so impressed with Islam): in Basra and Baghdad, in Ramadi and Fallujah. But the Americans, generals and high civilians, just won’t take it in. They can’t. They think they would be left with too much egg on their face. They just can’t. And we suffer.
No one gets a prize for “trying” something based on ignorance of Islam and of Iraq. No one gets a merit badge, much less a medal, for that.
Dhimmisoftheworldunite said
I agree. As wrong as the right (Bush and Co.) have gotten Islam in general, and Iraq in particular, the left has gotten it just as wrong. Everyone got it wrong, and it took someone from outside the system (Robert and Hugh) to speak the truth.
BTW (and unrelated to Dhimmisoftheworldunite) all these tortured arguments to claim that Bush and Cheney (for pete's sake!) are leftists show another truth: that the corporatization of the world is also beyond being a left-right issue. The Administrations' policies look like leftist policies because corporate special-interest-group lawyers wrote the bills; the PAC's don't give a whit which party is in power. Their agendas are going through regardless.
Both political parties are indebted to corporate funding, including petrodollars (see Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah in the Rose Garden).
But y'all just keep complaining about Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter or Woodrow Wilson or Martin Van Buren or other not-in-power historic artifacts, while the ship keeps sinking.
Hugh beats his wife?
Yes and No. Yes, because biologically, it's impossible to classify them as reptiles, fish, amphibians or aves. Going by Karl von Linne's classification system, they do happen to fall under Homo Sapiens.
No, because they are Muslims. Those who can think outside the Quranic (and Sunnite) boxen have abandoned or are abandoning Islam secretly. However, as infidels, we don't know what we don't know, and in the absense of evidence that any particular segment of the Ummah has secretly apostatized, we Infidels have to do what's safe for us, and assume that in the absense of evidence to the contrary, they are our enemies.
As for those who are Muslims, they don't long for freedom. Life has been defined for them - in the Quran, Hadith, Sira, Tafsir and all other cultic "works" compiled over the ages. These have instructions for everything - how to "clean" one's rear-end, to how to treat treaties (al Hudaybiyya). While some of them just keep them developmentally in the 7th century, enough of them are lethal enough to drag the rest of us there as well. Consequently, it's up to us to deal with them just as we would potentially deal with alien invaders from space, without trying to empathize with them (because it's impossible).
To sum it all up - no.
Dan said
There seems to be a quasi-evangelical side to the Iraqi-Light-Upon-The-Muslim-Nations project. All this talk of "saving" the Iraqis, converting them, bringing them all those Judeo-Christian values (that incidentally have no relevance to Iraqi culture or history).
And there seems to be an assumption that acting against Islam will somehow trigger the End Days, the Apocalypse.
jsla asked
I have to assume he beats her quite badly, at Scrabble (tm), based on his vocabulary. With his knowledge of history and literature (see the thread where he riffs on J.D. Salinger), he probably beats her at Trivial Pursuit (tm) as well.
Of course, beating your wife is not a recommended course of action, because the score will always be evened in one way or another.
special_guest
I doubt it. Scrabble doesn't just depend on ones vocabulary; it depends on the letters one draws, and one can't draw > 7. Hugh would have to place his letters such that on his next turn, he could just append the new 7 letters that he has to get all that, plus the extra 50 points.
I think it's Trivia he'd probably excel at, although, there, he'd have to be a whiz at all subjects, including sports.
I was against the Iraq war, for most of the reasons that have been floating around this website. I consider myself to be a centrist.
However, if we are going to stay there, is it not time to up our forces to the 600,000 or so that are really necessary in order to police the land? The way things are running now, El Quaida and company are playing a cat and mouse game with us, and winning, btw.
Not a day goes by without losing 20-30 civilians.
Entire territories are no longer under our control.
The new relationship forming between Iraq and Iran is horrifying.
Is this the new and democratic Iraq that we wanted to build?
If we beef up our forces now, then we will scare the living hell out of the enemy and cut off his escape routes. It will make the war much too expensive for us, which will cause us to pull out, but at least in the meantime, less innocents (and yes, there are innocents in war, regardless of their religion) and less US military will be killed off.
For me, the theory of "we broke it, we bought it" doesn't work. The thing was broke long before we got there, only, good intentions aside, our presence has actually made things much much worse and furthermore, it has emboldened a madman like Achmenidjhad to taunt us and stretch us beyond our limit, like a huge bee stinging a man over and over, a man tied to a tree and currently without the means to cut himself loose.
Your are right. The experiment in Iraq was doomed from the start. However, in the meantime, a massive troop buildup is the only way to keep more from dying. This is going to blow up in the republican party's face (which will not sadden me too much), but I doubt that the dems will have the slightest idea how to even begin to pick up the pieces.
On 9-11, I said to my wife that we would be in Bagdad within 16 months, and 17 months later, we were there. Nobody here in Germany believed me, but it was quite obvious to me that Bush wanted this war starting on January 20, 2001. And I am just as sure that Teheran and most possible Ispahan will not exist anymore by mid 2007, if things continue at this rate. If the neocons launch a devastating war, then in a non-election year, which means 2007. They need 16 months to recover for their election campaigns, which means January or February 2007, just as in Golf War I and Golf War II.
Fasten your seatbelts, it is going to be a rough ride.
Greetings from Bonn.
Removing Saddam and his thugs from power made sense, on international security grounds and on basic humanitarian grounds. (For one thing, it enabled the United States to pull our forces out of Saudi Arabia). Nation building afterwards, as an "exit strategy," also made sense, being consistent with our generous national character and as a conciliatory and unifying effort to enlist post-war support from our European allies (which support, with some few exceptions, we never got) and the domestic left (which leftist support, with some few exceptions, we never got, as the left basically allied itself with fascists in cynical move to try to bring down the government).
Where this nation building approach should have abruptly stopped was the day that the Iraqis declared, in their new constitution, that Iraq would be an Islamic state and that all laws would be consistent with Islam. On that day, the order should have been given to terminate all military and financial assistance within six months. The way I see it, that day was the proper boundary between the approach (generally) of poster Dan (above) and the approach of Hugh Fitzgerald.
Whenever any country declares itself to be an Islamic state, it is declaring war on the rest of humanity, including especially, the infidels of the western countries. Islam does not separate church and state. And the church (mosque) requires perpetual jihad against all others until those others are destroyed or subjugated-- simple as that.
I agree with Hugh's approach--basically to quarantine Islam, with occasional fierce punitive raids, as necessary, to eliminate any doomsday weapons.
A big flaw in Hugh's approach, a flaw that poster Dan hinted at, is that once we leave Iraq we won't know what is going on there. It will be like the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The internecine Islamic slaughter will be hidden from our view, as it was during the Saddam and Stalin era. The west will go back to sleep. The Islamic dawa masters in our university system will go back to business as usual. People will stop reading JW/DW.
I think that one of the main reasons the Islamic imams want out of there so bad is that they don't want the world to see what they are saying and doing. They do not want the world to see the true face of Islamic governance.
Therefore, something more has to come out of the Iraq experience than just a new quarantine strategy. The lesson must be made permanent somehow; otherwise, the cycle of ignorance about Islam, leading to unwise (and bankrupting) nation building adventures, will restart.
Because of this certain danger--the danger of short historical memory--I now believe that we must put through a formal amendment to the United States Constitution, banning Islam forever from our territories. And a Benesh Decree following that would be enforced, as for the Czechs, in the interests of national survival. I used to think that such a rigorous constitutional legal approach was unnecessary. But the Iraq experience, especially the forgetful behavior of the dhimmi western powers throughout, has taught me that this will be the only way to preserve our nation and our freedoms for posterity.
That is, "a main reason the imams want the western military forces out of there. . ."
The USA is in denial about the nature of Islam and that explains why it is so stubborn about the situation in Iraq. Until the US government wakes up and realizes that democracy is NOT in the cards for Iraq or any Islamic nation, America will continue banging its head against the wall. Futility rules!
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that Islam pre-empts any possibility of democracy in all societies that are tethered to the Kuran and its commands. Islam thoroughly appropriates all decisions that any individual can make in his life (no wonder the Kuran is so bloody interminable). And since the Kuran is held by Islam to be a direct pipeline to the Creator there can be no resisting its commands or permitting changes to be made in it. No re-interpretations allowed.
SO..........
Will someone PLEASE explain this to the Pentagon before the US taxpayer is socked for yet ANOTHER 2 TRILLION DOLLARS TO BE WASTED attempting to democratize societies that have been effectively locked out of possible democratic reforms on a permanent basis. Bush and Company don't apparently realize that money does NOT grow on trees...