Continuing, utter denial of the ideological roots of "terrorism" (that is, jihad). From AP:
KABUL, Afghanistan - One of America's closest allies says the war on terrorism fails to address its root causes.
Experts agreed with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, saying Friday the major military offensive against the Taliban will not fix Afghanistan's larger crises -- a lack of reconstruction and jobs, a booming drug trade, and a weak government.
"You won't win unless you can convince people that progress is being made," said Marvin Weinbaum, a former State Department analyst now a scholar at the Washington-based Middle East Institute.
Passive voice can be used with great effect to deflect focus from who ought to be making "progress," and at what.
"One of the things we recognize is that we have failed to improve on the development side, especially in the south. In the areas with the greatest need, we have not gotten the reconstruction that was necessary."
On Thursday, a clearly frustrated Karzai criticized the coalition's anti-terror campaign, deploring the deaths of hundreds of Afghans and appealing for more help for his government. The coalition has killed hundreds, mostly Taliban militants, since May.
Karzai spokesman Khaleeq Ahmad said Friday the president wanted the international community to reevaluate its approach.
"We want to fight (terrorism) in a way that we fight the roots of it: where they get trained, where they get equipment, where they get money, where the recruitment centers are," he said.
How we wish that were true.
Problems in afghan is a lack of reconstruction and jobs, a booming drug trade, and a weak government.
"We want to fight (terrorism) in a way that we fight the roots of it: where they get trained, where they get equipment, where they get money, where the recruitment centers are," Karzi said.
++++++++++++++++++++
Solution:
1. Destroy all mosques where terror is created.
2. Does not the koran say that the punishment for drugs is execution??? Execute everyone growing, dealing in, shipping or touching illegal drugs. Kill enough and the drug trade will die.
3. Kick out the weak ones in the government and get individuals in with courage and action.
4. Execute anyone assiting al queda or any other terrorist group.
Does CAIR have a point for once?...
Media Asked Not to Call Miami Terror Suspects 'Muslims'
PRNewswire/ -- A prominent national Islamic civil rights and advocacy group today called on media professionals not to refer
to seven terror suspects arrested in Miami as "Muslims."
The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said
media reports indicate that the suspects are part of a sect called "Seas of David."
When asked by CNN why group members refer to themselves as "soldiers," "Brother Corey" said: "Because we study and we train through the bible, not only physical -- not only physical, but mentally." Group members also worship in a "temple," not in an Islamic mosque.
http://transcripts.c...
The group bears some resemblance to the cult of Yahweh ben Yahweh, which operated in the same part of Miami, Liberty City, in the 1980s.
"Given that the reported beliefs of this bizarre group have nothing to do with Islam, we ask members of the media to refrain from calling them 'Muslims,'" said CAIR spokesperson Ahmed Bedier
Perhaps "nothing to do with Islam" isn't quite correct, I suspect this doesn't really fall under CAIR's jurisdiction. ( ROBERT THIS IS MAKING ITS WAY AROUND LGF..TO ME ITS A CAIR STRAWMAN..DOES ANYONE KNOW ABOUT THIS?)
"We want to fight (terrorism) in a way that we fight the roots of it: where they get trained, where they get equipment, where they get money, where the recruitment centers are," he said.
Is Washington, DC in another dimension?
Aint that why were in afghanistan, to fight the good fight. Sometimes people gotta help themselves.
"You won't win unless you can convince people that progress is being made," said Marvin Weinbaum, a former State Department analyst now a scholar at the Washington-based Middle East Institute."
These are "experts" talking. I am no expert, but , here is a simple example. afghanistan is to the West of India. Towards the East of India lies a small country called Bhutan. I read about it that they were simple people dependent on farming. And they remain so. Fruits and vegetables and jams and sauces are the chief exports of Bhutan. That is what keeps their economy afloat. Bhutan also is one of the most unpolluted countries in the world. There is a special tax levied on tourists since Bhutan gives priority to environment conservation over tourist dollars. Point I want to make is, that you need not "convince" simple people that "progress" is being made. They are not interested in 180 feet wide asphalt roads and all the things that misguided people associate with "progress". A simple country lane does for these people. They are content with their forests and their fields, and they do have all the basic amenities that humans require. And they are happy. Unfortunately, I do not see the afghans being happy or content. Spend billions on them, spend trillions on them. They won't be happy. Virus is never happy. Virus is never content.
Hamid Karzai had quite a run for a while. That green-and-purple robe, those siblings running assorted Afghani restaurants in Cambridge, Mass. and just outside Washington, D.C. (are they both called "Helmand" or just one?). But Karzai was present at Mahathir Mohamed's infamous O.I.C. speech, in which he ranted on about "Jews" and how Muslims had to get serious and develop modern science -- by which it was clear the only kind of science either M.M. or his enthusiastic Muslim audience had in mind was weapons technology, the better to smite the Infidels with. Yet after all this, Karzai announced that he had found the speech "wonderful" and "splendid" and even if that was uttered out of fear of his fellows, that is not an acceptable excuse. He did not have to say anything. Or he might have laconically observed "food for thought." But he said "wonderful" and "splendid." And that showed this was no ataturk, not even close.
Karzai is weak. He appoints the corrupt. He plays footsie with all kinds of former Taliban now sitting happily in Parliament. He does manage, now and again, to denounce meretricious Pakistan (which makes the Afghani regime appear, by comparison, far more sensible than it really is) for being meretricious. But his appointments, including his swelling the ranks with practitioners of the most determend and corrupt soak-the-Infidels fixers, and the inability, it appears, of the Amreicans to realize that real democracy requires many generations, and the absence, or at least firm constraints put upon, Islam. It is nice to see NATO countries working together. But again, what they are doing is endless, sweeping-back-the-tide stuff, for the ranks of the Muslim enemy are endlessly replenishable. Do not build roads that will only be used by enemies. Do not build the infrastructure of Afghanistan on the theory, a theory that has no basis, that increased prosperity will limit the appeal of Islam. The vast oil resources helped turn Iran away from the secularizing Shah to the comforting certainties that Khomeini offered; many Iranians were unhinged by prosperity. As for poverty, the Saudis, the Kuwaitis, the Arabs of the Emirates, have no poverty, and yet they all seem determined to promote Islam everywhere, which is where they have already spent tens of billions. It is far more likely that a hardscrabble existence by Afghanis will leave them without the troubling encounter with the modern world that has a way of leading to more Islam, and right now we Infidels should do nothing to keep Muslims, wherever possible, from suffering from that troubling encounter, and subsistence living will keep minds off Jihad, and will not provide the wherewithal to conduct it even if there were minds so inclined.
Afghanistan is a place for a very limited presence. No more reconstruction -- unless of course the Saudis wish to pay for it, and wish to hire others to do it (say, South Korean companies). But not American soldiers being asked to oversee or protect, not more of this. Morale among the citizien-army recruits is down, and standards therefore must fall to keep the supply up. And the regular army, too, sees that the policies make little sense. After a while, too many people, even fierce loyalists of the Administration, taught not to question, begin to question.
Use the locals. Use them however you wish. Let them do things American soldiers would never be permitted to do. Remember that the Soviet Army stayed in Afghanistan for ten years, and each year it sent, not from thousands of miles away but from right across the border, 100,000 new troops each year. Total killed: official figure is 50,000. Unofficial figure: three or four times that. Result: nothing. Not a change in Afghanistan, even by the most ruthless of non-Muslim armies.
What can Americans do, really, other than waste more lives, and more time, and more Jizyah of foreign aid when we can always, if we need to, simply intervene every few years, from the sky, should there be any sign of a return of terrorist camps. But such terrorist camps can be established anywhere: in a forest in England, in a maquis in France, outside Portland, Oregon, or in British Columbia, or in the Michigan northwoods, an easy commute from Dearborn. Or in Java or Sumatra or Bangladesh, or near Cordoba, or near Turin. It is silly to assume that just because the most famous of the Muslim terror groups, Al-Qaeda, had its main base for a while in Afghanistan, that this forever endows Afghanistan with special significance, and that we must remain to make sure that that never happens again. For god's sake, 23,000 American troops, and many from NATO as well, do not have to shore up the Shari'a-approving regime (just look at who now sits in that Afghan Parliament, or what is happening to the condition of women, and to schools for women) fronted by the outwardly attractive Karzai, who cannot allow himself to recognize, much less admit, that the problem here, as everywhere, is Islam. For Karzai is a Muslim. A nice Muslim. A non-terrorist Muslim. But not a Muslm who will tell the truth about how Islam operates on the minds of many of its adherents, not someone who will enlighten non-Muslims as to the real nature of JIhad and the instruments of Jihad. He wants to obtain as much money, as many goods and services, from the rich Americans and other (European) Infidels, for his own country, as he can. That is his desire. That is his goal.
That should not be the goal of American policy. That goal should be to police, through locals, and with a minimal presence, relying on those locals and unmanned drones and spy satellites, to make sure there is no return of terrorist camps, that is that Afghanistan does not become a sanctuary for terrorists. Afghanistan should not be given undue significance because it happens to be the place where Al Qaeda had its main base. Terrorist groups are everywhere, and can find places to train everywhere. The most important training has always been in the West. The 9/11/2001 attackers received what pilot training they did receive in the United States. The Muslim nuclear bombs in Pakistan, and the aid given to the nuclear project in Iran by the Pakistanis, is a result of A. Q.Khan's "study" and research, that is theft of atomic secrets, in Holland and Germany. The "money weapon" comes from the OPEC revenues, and Western governments continue to allow the free movement of tens of billions by Saudis abroad to buy mosques and madrasas which are more deadly, in the end, more damaging to long-term Western survival, than a few camps in Afghanistan, or the installation of another hopeless and primitive regime which can be bottled up within, to do damage only to fellow Muslims.
We are squandering resources in Muslim countries, and not spending enough thought, time, and money on shoring up the Lands of the Infidels and making them less vulnerable to three things: the money weapon, Da'wa, and demographic conquest. Each of these needs to be dealt with. Soldiers tramping around abroad, to little effect, at great cost, but using up the nation's attention, and giving us the illusion that we are inflicting "defeat" on the enemy and can enjoy a "total victory" over that enemy (as Bush has said), is nonsense and dangerous when the public is lured into belieiving such misleading stuff.
As for what the Pashtun do to the Hazara, or what the Uzbeks or Tadjiks do to the Pashtun, or vice-versa -- this is not important to Infidels.
For Infidels, such intra-Muslim strife, or strife among ethnic groups whose members identify themselves as Muslims, is not their problem. It is not even, for them, a problem.
One does not wish to remain pouring sand through water. The obvious local enemies, Taliban or Talibanesque, are endlessly replenishable. The less obvious enemies consist of those Muslims who do not wish to ban kite-flying and schools for women, and who are happy to take our aid money, always more more more. Any permanent and unfeigned friends for Infidel Americans in that population? A handful. A handful who were mostly educated in the West (often residents of the United States). A few brave souls. Not enought to justify the squandering of resources here, though at least, in Afghanistan, the Americans are not preventing, as they are attempting to do in Iraq, the very things that they should be doing nothing to prevent.
Let local conditions prevail. Monitor. Occasional aid, sent now to this side, and now to that. Occasional appeals for intervention from this or that former Soviet Central Asian republic. Intervention, preferably from above, and deadly in intent (no winning of hearts or minds and other impossible and transitory things like that please), whenever there are signs of a sanctuary for terrorist training being established. There is no particular reason, at this point, for terrorists to choose Afghanistan; it is remote, it is dangerous, and why bother when you have, next door, practically all of Pakistan in whcih to hide, and then there is all of Iran, and so many other places, right smack in the middle of cities in Western Europe, for example, where communications are so much easier.
The Americans exaggerate the present significance of Afghanistan. Yes, that is where the main camps of Al-Qaeda were placed. So what? They need not be placed there again. Yes, that is where, or close to where, Bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri still scheme. So what? Is Al-Qaeda the only or main problem, or merely the name we give to the most mediagenic and so far most successful terrorist group, but by no means the only or in the future necessarily the most deadly one. It may well be that no particular group will be the most deadly, but only cells of this or that group of Muslims. It may well be that in the future terrorism will be abandoned, deliberately, not because Muslims no longer wish to conduct Jihad, but that they may conclude that the instrument of terrorism as a weapon of Jihad is interfering too much, drawing too much vigilant Infidel attention to, and alarm about, the other weapons of Jihad -- the money weapon, Da'wa, and demogrpahic conquest. Perhaps, many Muslims will or have already concluded, we struck too soon at the World Trade Center. What if they had not? What if things had gone on without such a spectacular attack? Perhaps it is time to cool it, for ten years, twenty. Then we will see what the countries of Western Europe, and their secuirty services (full of "integrated" Muslims) will look like. Then we will see what their politicians, eager for Muslim votes, will be willing to do. Then we will see what happens to the advanced armories of Western Europe, of NATO countries, possessing weaponry, and techniques, that no Muslim army could ever obtain on its own.
And meanwhile, will those helmeted-and-booted troops, accompanied by all kinds of eager aid agencies, still be running around Afghanistan, or Iraq, killing 5 terrorists or insurgents here, and 11 over here, and 43 over there, and spending more billions winning the unwinnable hearts and implacable minds (but give us more more more, you owe it to us more more more), and thinking that things are going right, we are not cutting and running, we are here to stay until the job is done. And the muezzin's wail over parts of Paris or London -- still unheard, for some reason, in Washington.
American forces should intervene only at intervals in Afghanistan, and only when there is evidence that something is going on -- a training camp for terrorists -- that needs to be destroyed. Destroy it. And if necessary, return at intervals. But there is need to start getting bogged down, and using money, to lavish aid on Afghanistan, as Karzai so transparently wishes to inveigle the Americans to do, or any aid at all.
Arjun-- well said; excellent example.
Bhutan is a Bhuddist kingdom, and, of course, Buddhism includes the astute observation that root of all suffering is desire/want/craving.
Then, one looks at the self-righteous sense of entitlement in Afghanistan and so many other Islamic countries, and the desire for tribute, the desire for power, the desire for ever more land, etc.
Yeah, that'd make for a frustrated bunch of people, and in a religion where the ends justify the means-- indeed, depraved acts become sanctified-- as long as it's for the sake of feeding Islam's unquenchable wants.
... a Buddhist kingdom, that is. That's the kind of typo that haunts my dreams.
OT
My wife has asked me an interesting question, does anyone here now anything about Mohammed's parents. Specifically what was their religion?
From the description by Arjun above Bhutan sounds nice. Hope the country can keep from being "new" and "improved" by polypragmosynic one-size-fits-all meddlers from outside, for a while longer.
Yathrib = Medina.
The Muslims also worshipped a female pagan idol in addition to Allah with the permission of Muhammad in the earliest days of Islam, but Muhammad later recanted this and that is what is detailed in the "Satanic Verses", something that most Muslims do not want to get to deep into discussion about.
Of course they wish to avoid it, because it is one of the surest ways to prove that Islam is a lie concocted by a charismatic madman who certainly was no prophet of God.
Simple logic can deconstruct most lies, no matter how big or widely believed.
Thanks APF
"Mo grew up angry"....I find that hard to believe!
Sorry for the OT
Rape victim ostracised in Bihar (India)
Excerpt
"Forced by a religious leader, a Muslim-dominated village in Bihar has asked a rape victim to leave the place after calling her 'napak' (impure) for giving birth to a child.
Sabia's parents are facing the ire of the villagers for giving shelter to their "impure" daughter.
"No one talks to us; we have no social life. We are treated like animals for no fault of ours," Samsher Ali lamented.
Maulana Abdul Haleem, a Muslim leader of the village, however said that as per Islamic law Sabia had become impure due to the rape and the "illegitimate" child.
"We have instructed the villagers to boycott her," he said without mincing words.
The villagers are following his instruction. "We are bound by the decision to boycott her," said Pir Mohammad, a villager.
I just wonder why Nepal couldn't be as idyllic as Bhutan? Is it because there were too many polypragmonic (thank you, Hugh) Indian politicians who couldn't tolerate an officially Hindu country on India's borders? The people there are just as simple, just as nice - and that country isn't becoming any more industrialized the way India is. So what gives?
A question that I have asked for awhile now is What did Muhammad worship before receiving God’s revelations at the age of 40?
No muslim even wants to think about it much less talk about it.
Infidel Pride,
Yes, agree with you. Our dhimmi, 'secular' politicians could not tolerate a 'Hindu State' on their border. Even though the border word cannot be applied in the strict sense of the word since no passport or visa is required for Hindus to visit either Nepal or Bhutan.
Arjun
They got their way, since the Nepali parliament voted recently to make Nepal secular. Not dangerous, since Buddhism is their #2 faith, not Islam, but I am a tad disappointed at the fact that there isn't even one officially Hindu nation anymore. Still, I'm willing to wager that none of that will slow down the Maoist insurgency, or make Nepal any more peaceful.
"...Coffi to the left of me, Karzai to the right: Here I am, stuck in the middle with Jihad Watch..."
I've never liked him. It started when he said sharia would be the law of the land, a few years back. Karzai is not a good man: "In the last three to four weeks, 500 to 600 Afghans were killed. [Even] if they are Taliban, they are sons of this land," Karzai said. http://paktribune.com/news/index.php?id=147823
Afghanistan's larger crises -- a lack of reconstruction and jobs, a booming drug trade, and a weak government?
BS
Afghanistan's problems can be summed up: islam, islam, islam, islam..........
Afghanistan is hopeless and always has been hopeless. It is not so much a country as a hole in the map, a void to keep imperial Russia and Britain out of each other's hair. Perhaps the best thing that could have happened to it wuld have been for it to break into its ethnic contituencies, to then go their separate ways or join various neighboring states.
Hamid Karzai = the Ray Nagin of Kabul.
Rules to rule in such domains:
1. Blame the other guy.
2. Demand money and external resources to bolster your position.
3. Be oblique.
4. Don't take a position which will alienate you from your alienated base.
5. Do everything in your power to alienate your base further and cleave them unto yourself.
6. Never identify the alienated base as the reason the place is so g#d damned messed up.
7. Repeat 1-6.
What we need to do, and I'm not trying to be cure, is to ask ourselves,
"What are the root cause of the root causes of terrorism?"
Why do Afghans think that they can end terrorism by getting people from successful parts of the world to build for them some sort of magic-bullet infrastructure from which wealth and prosperity will come forth like a Genie from a lamp?
Why don't they take responsibility for their own mess and quit:
a) Blaming us for interfering and screwing everything up.
b) Blaming us for NOT interfering enough.
I think Karzai has opened a bar and is serving taqqiya specials. A taqiyya mockingbird on the rocks, anyone???
If all the Islamic factions fight it out maybe we won't need the war on Islamic jihadists anymore--they'll wipe themselves out! Well, it's a beautiful thought, isn't it???
I think it is!
A taqqiya sunrise, perhaps?
Baldy posted:
"... It started when he said sharia would be the law of the land, a few years back. Karzai is not a good man.."
He was the best we could get!
He is a Mohammedan. So is everyone else in his Islamic Afghanistan. The US government should have insisted that a secular government be installed, but the underlying realities in Kabul make that 'impossible'...
In Iraq the US should have tried to assert itself by installing a secular government, but here again we see the reality on the ground with all the different tribes and the fanatics for more Islam as a cure for the disease...
It is disheartening to see the lack of thinking going on at these dime-a-dozen think tanks. Too many of them are filled with partisan wimp leaguers. Have we not gotten beyond the simplistic poverty and life conditions explanations for Jihad yet? How many counter examples do we need to continually provide?
This is as asinine as Thomas Friedman and his "political" Islam. Excuse me, but since when has Islam NOT been political?
Apparently there is plenty of easy money to be made pimping these sorts of myths for both journalists and "think tank" people as well.
I hate this crap about the "root causes" of terrorism. In that case, let's turn it around and ask Muslims to deal with the "root causes of anti-Islamic sentiment"
The only thing I'll agree with Karzai on, is his criticism on why we haven't bombed the Pakistani govt, since Pakistan is the wellspring from which stream of terror originates.
Still - it's helpful to stir up the natural hatreds of the native Afghanis for the native Pakistanis, and the hatred of the native Iranians for the native Afghanistanis and the native Pakistanis, and the hatred of the native Iraqis for the native Iranians and the native Afghanistanis and the native Pakistanis, and the hatred of the native Saudis for the native Iraqis and the native Iranians and the native Afghanistanis and the native Pakistanis, and the hatred of the Kurds for the native Saudis and the native Iraqis and the native Iranians and the native Afghanistanis and the native Pakistanis, and to each unto to each and so on and so on ... Nothing but bad can come of it to each, and that would be good for us.
jsla-
On the Nagin/Karzi analogy-
Substitute "chocolate city" with "Islamic country" and the comparison is complete.
Afghanistan: The Big Uneasy.
(That's apparently what Alexander/Iskander called it.)
Right on, profitsbeard. Right on.