The question directed this week to the National Security Council press office was straightforward: "Has the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani met with any American official, either military or civilian, since the U.S. invasion in 2003?" The answer reveals the extent to which the Bush administration is now, and always has been, out of its depth in Iraq. - From this Bandar Beacon (Washington Post) article, October 27, 2006.
What should have been an obvious question about why Sistani never ever met with Bremer or any American official save for Khalilzad (a Sunni but still a Muslim in Shi'a eyes -- the reverse is not always true), was not asked in the so-called Major Media (Bandar Beacon, New Duranty Times, etc.) until a few days ago. No one wanted to puncture the comforting balloon of illusion. No one thought that perhaps the Shi'a Lobby that had been so successful could have been mistaken. No one thought that the claque that had applauded the Great Sistani at My Weekly Standard (Gerecht and Schwartz, especially) and National Review (Lowry) could possibly be leading them astray. (That claque also included certain Shi'a commentators, such as the too-influential Fouad Ajami. In his tellingly mistitled "The Foreigner's Gift" - it should have been "The Infidel's Gift" and Ajami, if he reflects, will admit at least to himself the correctness of that observation - he tells of how deeply impressed he was with Sistani, who of course had no objections to meeting with fellow Shi'a Ajami.)
Now the Shi'a Lobby has had its day, having through a whole series of charming and plausible and of course westernized and secularized and deeply unrepresentative men (Makiya, Chalabi, Allawi, and others) managed to charm and inveigle those making American policy into invading Iraq, as the Shi'a very much wanted. They have also made sure that nothing was done early on to prevent the transfer of power, through whatever means necessary (even that purple-thumbed affair, about which the Shi'a were so enthusiastic, and for such obvious, but apparently not obvious enough, reasons), to the Shi'a. And now, although the Shi'a Lobby -- Taheri, and Rend al-Rahim, and Vali Nasr -- are still in there manfully pitching their woo, it is the time of the Sunni Lobby to step forward.
And it is. It is headed by Turki al-Faisal, ambassador of Saudi Arabia, and ably assisted by James Baker -- whose Commission will offer a face-saving way to get out of Iraq, if only Bush will take it. But it will also offer the same dreary and dangerous mixture as before, complete with doing the bidding of the Saudis, and making sure the Sunnis in Iraq are protected instead of welcoming the natural growth of Sunni-Shni'a hostilities, and not only in Iraq. And, not to be overlooked, it will recommend renewing pressure on Israel by means of that idiotic (because ignorant of Islamic triumphalism) policy of pushing that "two-state solution" -- a policy that squares with the four who make up that infamously windy "Quartet."
Visitors to Jihad Watch knew all about this long ago, and were told serenely the truth about Sistani, even when the likes of Tom Friedman were suggesting that Sistani was just the man to receive the next Nobel Prize for Peace. Remember? Or have you forgotten?
If you have, here is one among many discussions of Sistani that sustained you all along:
MARCH 21, 2005Fitzgerald: Sistani for Nobel?
Everyone will have his own startling encounter with Islam -- the real thing, not what Muslim apologists, hoping to give everyone a carefully-circumscribed "peek into the Koran" (and let's make sure that none of these unwary Infidels manages to read anything beyond the Michael Sells "Approaching the Qur'an" and by all means, keep them from looking into the Hadith or the Sira), have on offer. It is almost always limited to highly selective quotation from the Qur'an. The Hadith, and the Sira -- sorry, off limits for now.
One keeps being surprised at how little people think they need to know before making grand pronouncements. Yesterday, amused by the latest display of vacuity and portentousness by Tom Friedman, nominating -- modestly -- Ali al-Sistani for the Nobel Prize -- I went to www.sistani.org to look around. There, between Sistani's complete banning of chess (and to think that checkmate is merely the Persian "shakh mat"), and his discussions of all the usual subjects that inquiring Muslims wish to know about, from whether it is okay to marry the sister of a man you have sodomized, or who has sodomized you (I forget which) to whether your canonical prayers count if you haven't performed the wudu (ablutions) correctly -- you know, all the stuff that you want to know, was something else, and that something was all about what is considered by Sistani and those who seek his guidance to be "Najis" or "unclean."
If you click on "Muslim Laws" on the left, and then, once a list comes up, click on "najis things," you will get a list -- #84 -- and if you then go a little further, and click on the menu where, among those unclean things, the "kafir" (which is to say, the Unbeliever, that is to say -- You and I, Dear Reader) you will get a further discussion of how, in the wonderful, "moderate" Islam of the al-Sistani variety, the Unbeliever, the Infidel, the Kafir (guilty of "kufr" or "ingratitude" for failing to receive the Revelation of the Last of the Prophets in the right, accepting, submissive way) is viewed.
So here, for everyone out in Ames, Iowa, is just a little sample of what you are missing, and what one suspects that Mohammed Fahmy, and Tariq Ramadan, and Hamid Dabashi, and Zeinab Bahrani, and a cast of hundreds of millions, would prefer that you not inquire into too deeply. And please, whatever you do, in order to accommodate them, at least promise that you will NOT read the websites www.dhimmitude.org and www.faithfreedom.org and www.co-jet.org and www.jihadwatch.org, and certainly do NOT read anything by Bat Ye'or, but especially do not read "Islam and Dhimmitude" or "The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam." And do not read Ibn Warraq's "Why I Am Not a Muslim." And let's not even talk about Robert Spencer. These books will only confuse you. And never pay attention to a man named Ali Sina or any of those ex-Muslims who appear at his website. Never google the name "Habib Malik" to read what he has to say about the historic relationship of Islam to Christianity; never read a similar article by James V. Schall, a professor at Georgetown.
Here is what you can find at www.sistani.org:
"84. The following ten things are essentially najis: 1. Urine 2. Faeces 3. Semen 4. Dead body 5. Blood 6. Dog 7. Pig 8. Kafir 9. Alcoholic liquors 10. The sweat of an animal who persistently eats najasat [i.e., unclean things].
108. The entire body of a Kafir, including his hair and nails, and all liquid substances of his body, are najis.
109. If the parents, paternal grandmother and paternal grandfather of a minor child are all kafir, that child is najis, except when he is intelligent enough, and professes Islam. When, even one person from his parents or grandparents is a Muslim, the child is Pak (The details will be explained in rule 217).
110. A person about whom it is not known whether he is a Muslim or not, and if no signs exist to establish him as a Muslim, he will be considered Pak. But he will not have the privileges of a Muslim, like, he cannot marry a Muslim woman, nor can he be buried in a Muslim cemetery."
So who wants to second the nomination of Al-Sistani for the Nobel Prize? Anyone out there in Ames, Iowa?
It must entertaining if nothing else to have Shiite and then Sunni flunkies show up and ask favor from the Great Satan. "Please do what we ask and favor us. We're the true good guys". What's a guy to do? If the person receiving these distinguished guests comes from this site we know what the answer would be. Why doesn't Washington do the same? Just say "We favor neither side because you both stink. We know you both hate us. Now get the hell out of here and either live in peace together or die". How hard is that? Such language is simple and to the point-even an Islamaniac can understand it.
Hugh great points in your new and old post.
"such as the too-influential Fouad Ajami".
Ajami was once pro PLO or close to it. Then he switched to his current story. He is an opportunist, but he is also an Iranian nationalist. He wants us to fail in Iraq and Iran, and he wants Iran as the dominant nuclear power. He wants it for national pride. Iran's nuclear engineers likely feel the same nationalist pride.
This is why we must invade Iran now while we have bases in Iraq. Maliki will want us out of Iraq just to prevent us using the bases to remove the theocrats from Iran. Maliki realizes that regime chance in Iran means his regime will not last in Iraq.
"108. The entire body of a Kafir, including his hair and nails, and all liquid substances of his body, are najis." Maliki and Sistani are agreed on this. So is Iran.
"Turki al-Faisal, ambassador of Saudi Arabia, "
... "doing the bidding of the Saudis". This is sickeningly true. Prince Bandar had Bush in his pocket. Turki al-Faisal helped fund the Taliban and likely al Qaeda. He was head of their intelligence service.
Bandar started out as an uncle figure, see Woodward's book, and then perhaps Bush partially saw through him as someone who knew compromising things about Bush. There is some falling out that happened for uncle Bandar to have left, not just being ill.
Turki starts out in the role of intelligence man who knows things and they hope he might grow into being accepted.
Boy, you won't believe how najis I am! And loving every minute of it.
"Ajami was once pro PLO or close to it. Then he switched to his current story. He is an opportunist, but he is also an Iranian nationalist. He wants us to fail in Iraq and Iran, and he wants Iran as the dominant nuclear power. He wants it for national pride. Iran's nuclear engineers likely feel the same nationalist pride."
-- from a posting above
No, you are wrong. If Ajami was once, long ago, in Lebanon, an ardent Nasserite -- and he loves to tell these "what it was like to be young and an Arab in Beirut in those days" stories, the personal narrative as a substitute for an amassing of evidence, and the application of intelligence to arrange and make sense of that evidence. One should not be hard on him. He is not a historian of the Carlo Ginzburg-Arnoldo Momigliano or the Joseph Schacht-Snouck Hurgronje level, but who is these days of latter day unsaints, and who could be, given the educational standards everywhere, right up through the graduate level (as compared to the world which produced Panofsky or Momigliano or Snouck Hurgronje) that one sees everywhere (see, for example, "The House of Intellect" by Jacques Barzun, or "Ideas Have Consequences" by Richard Weaver).
What Ajami specializes in is what was started a few decades ago. It is the "personal narrative" that substitutes for sustained history. Patricia Williams got the ball rolling in law schools. To be permitted (i.e., to be accepted as the "tenure article" by law faculties in Williams's case) the "personal narrative" has to offer the "perspective" of the author, a "perspective" that is supposedly valuable because of the special background -- i.e., ethnic or religious -- of that author. In Fouad Ajami's case, he is by now almost a professional "former-Nasserite-Arab-from-Lebanon" who, being very intelligent, and also very clever, found the best people in America with whom to study, is because of his intelligence, moral sensee, and general admirableness, did not end up as one more Khalidi or Massad, or member of MESA Nostra, but became an inteligent appreciator of the West. It helped to come from Lebanon, where the Christian -- and other Western presence -- helped to lift the general tone, even among the Muslim population. He was brilliantly effectivfe in showing up the nonsense and lies of Edward Said, who detested him, and whom he detested.
The problem is that Fouad Ajami still does not see, or cannot say that he sees, that Islam as a belief-system is the problem. He could not see, or could not say, that aside from scouring Iraq for weaponry, there was no point in trying to bring "democracy" to Iraq, that Islam teaches its adherents to locate the source of legitimacy not in the expressed will of the people, but in the will expressed by Allah, as reflected in the Qur'an, as demonstrated in the acts and words of Muhammad. He can't do it, any more than Taheri --another secularized and westernized man (Vali Nasr is much more of a Believer, a troubled one, but a Believer nonetheless, than either Taheri or Ajami)-- could point out that it is more important to destroy Iran's weapons project than to refrain from acting in the hope that a new, less malevolent regime will come to power, because no Muslim state, and certainly not Iran, can from now on be allowed to acquire major weaponry. Why? Well, what if Iran under the Shah had acquired, as he wished to, nuclear weapons? Then where would we be?
The personal narrative that Ajami offers is young-Arab-worshipper-of-Nasser who has to readjust his thinking after the Six-Day War defeat, comes-to-America, gets unreligion (never said, always implicit), and begins to see things from a different, i.e. non-Muslim, perspective.
Ajami has been useful, but his interests and the interests of Infidels differ. Yes, he is good on the "Palestinians." Yes, he was Edward Said's worst nightmare for those talk-show discussions and other debates, but the truly unanswerable replies to Said are given not by Ajami but by Robert Irwin in his new book (see the review by William Grimes in today's Times) and even more by the forthcoming, to-be-waited-for-with-baited-breath study by Ibn Warraq.
And on Islam, the subject about which Ajami is always silent, and has to be -- he may offer up some such formulation for self-identification as Kanan Makiya does, claiming to be an atheist but also a "cultural Muslim" -- i.e., I love my Muslim parents and I won't reject them and therefore out of filial piety, as well as the realization that my career would suffer, and so might I, if I fully declared myself to be a lapsed or former Muslim, so I won't -- he is less and less useful. For he cannot tell us as some of us can, that Islam itself, spread through demographic conquest and Da'wa, is a permanent menace to Infidels, and he cannot conceivably advise the American government to regard with equanimity, or even grim satisfactoin, the ethnic and sectarian fissures within Iraq, and to withdraw in order that they may be exploited for all that they are worth.
As to your other claims about Ajami, they are wrong. He is not Iranian and certainly not an "Iranian nationalist." Why would you think such a thing? Because he likes, and has helped, the charming Ms. Nafisi? For god's sake, I like, I would help, the charming Ms. Nafisi if I could (I doubt if she would do the same for me, for I have expressed a little impatience with the success of her book, for extra-literary reasons, and further suggested she turn over part of her royalties to the Estate of Vladimir Nabokov, for obvious reasons). Why do you say he "wants us to fail in Iran and Iraq"? This is nonsense. He would like to believe that Islam is not Islam, that the tenets of Islam (locating legitimacy in the will of Allah and not the will of mere mortals), and the attitudes of Islam (the attitudes of victor/vanquished, of winner-take-all, of no compromise with the enemy, which is what the Shi'a are showing with the Sunnis, and the Sunnis are showing to the Shi'a as they refuse to acquiesce in their new status in Iraq) are not what they are, and he would vastly prefer not to see the American government take the position, as I argue it must, to weaken and divide and demoralize the Camp of Islam.
You have got Fouad Ajami wrong. He's a good guy. He likes Bernard Lewis (which is, despite Lewis's own failings, born of such things as vanity, a good sign). He has two sons at West Point. He is perfectly content to see Israel survive and thrive. Some of his best friends are...you fill it in.
But he cannot see Islam as the problem -- or at least not in the way that Ibn Warraq, Ali Sina, Walid Shoebat, and a cast of ten thousand former Muslims -- see it. He cannot even quite come to grips with it in the way that Magdi Allam, an Italo-Egyptian who is now a managing editor at the Corriere della Sera and frequently on the RAI, does -- even though Magdi Allam also calls himself, still, a "Muslim" and refers to his kind, humble, loving parents, who were Muslims of the kind that do not wish to focus on, or even know about, much beyond the rituals of individual worship. Unfortunately, the days when people born into Islam could behave in such a manner are gone. OPEC trillions, Saudi-financed mosques and madrasas, audiocassettes and videocassettes, satellite television channels and the Internet, make such things unlikely or impossible.
Time to choose, for those "cultural Muslims" such as Fouad Ajami who have stayed away from the subject of Islam.
But without addressing the nature and menace of Islam, one is no longer quite so useful in the formation of policy, even if one still has one's uses in the defense of what the Americans have tried.
The "personal narrative" stuff one can live with; the "Foreigner's Gift" as the misleading title one can live with. The avoidance of head-on discussion of Islam -- but Fouad Ajami has never studied Islam, nor the history of Islamic conquests, nor the history of the treatment of non-Muslims in the lands subjugated by Muslims. He's a big shot at the Johns Hopkins Center for Thisanedthat. He has Bradley Foundation money, money being flung at him from every which way.
He has the leisure, he has the well-stocked library, he has every opportunity, if he wishes, to find out all about those matters. And not to substitute some fond memories of Muslim parents or grandparents for what has to be treated at a less personal level.
One finds Fouad Ajami altogether attractive and winning. But he has his limits, and the biggest one is the subject of Islam. Can't go there. Not yet. Possibly not ever. Not in the way we will have to go, if we are, in this race, to stop the islamization of Western Europe, and to cease squandering men, money, materiel in vain hopes to win minds, win hearts that cannot be won, and to begin to exploit, often by doing far less than is now being done, the natural fissures -- ethnic, sectarian, and economic -- within the Camp of Islam.
Bush's mistake was to think he had time. After 9-11, he should have realized he was in a multi country war on the scale of WWII and that he had to win it on the time scale of WWII, i.e. in 3 to 4 years, including occupying all main enemy homelands.
This meant occupying Pakistan, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. Bush should not have gone to the UN on Iraq, you don't go to the UN to get authorization for each campaign in a war. That slows you down.
If Bush had to invade Iraq, he should have invaded it in spring 2002 and then invaded Iran in fall 2002, surrounded Pakistan and made it give up its nukes in early 2003. He should have vastly expanded the military in 2001. That would have kept NoKo quiet.
Finally, he had to occupy Saudi Arabia. In all cases, he needed to abolish religious law, courts and police. He should not have set up Islamic Republics, nor even given complete self rule. They should not write their own constitution without supervision.
Bush tried to run a PC war starting with his religion of peace speech. You can't win a war if you are spouting PC, getting UN permission for each new invasion, etc.
If we look at WWII as the model, you move from country to country, island hopping in the Pacific and get to the mainlands of the enemy. The allies went for Germany and Japan, the two main enemies and tried to avoid getting bogged down elsewhere.
Bush never acted as if he had limited time. Not rebuilding the military to the 1991 level and then even higher was a major mistake. It also showed a concept deficit and a lack of awareness of the time dimension.
If you waste time in war, you lose. That's what he did. In the multi-front war we faced, he has wasted time, along with not understanding his opponent.
In his 2 years left, he should invade Iran immediately, surround Pakistan and blockade it to give up its nukes and occupy Saudi Arabia.
Now we have to listen to the Left celebrate our failure to pursue war rapidly in 2001. In 2001, we were at war and had the Pearl Harbor moment. That was wasted on periphery campaigns instead of going for the homelands by island/country hopping to the sources.
Bush now has to act as if he was at war, which he is. That means increase the military and strike hard with what he has where he is, Iran and then Pakistan. He has to achieve total victory that is unambiguous to get popular support. That means total defeat of Iran as a first step, in a ground invasion. Leave Iraq, no one wants to stay and it contributes to deaths.
Iraq had two drivers of deaths not present in Iran for the occupation, foreign Sunni Arab fighters and the rivalry within the country between Shiites and Sunnis.
"Ajami was born on September 19, 1945, in Arnoun, a rocky hamlet in the south of Lebanon. His Shiite family had come to Arnoun from Tabriz, Iran in the 1850s. In Arabic, the word "Ajam" means "non-Arab" or, more specifically, "Persian"."
Fouad_Ajami
Ajami article at US News
"For one Kurdish leader in the north, the moderation of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani is only a pose, an act of taqiyya , dissimulation, permitted by Shiite doctrine. For one Sunni-Arab leader, in Baghdad, Isam al-Rawi, from the Association of Muslim Scholars, the reticence of Sistani and his unwillingness to be seen and heard in public are evidence of a dark scheme to manipulate power. But these are the "normal" suspicions and carpings of communities second-guessing each other in a time of political uncertainty. For the truth remains that the restraint of the Shiites has been remarkable in the face of all the violence hurled at them by the remnants of the old regime and by the Arab jihadists."
Ajami has met with Sistani. He talked about it on Charlie Rose. Ajami praised Sistani as a truly great and wise spiritual leader. Ajami admires Sistani.
Sistani is Iranian at wiki.
"Ali al-Sistani was born in Mashhad, Iran (Persia), to a family of religious scholars. His grandfather, for whom he was named, was a famous scholar who had studied at Najaf. Sistani's family comes from Isfahan. During the Safavid period, his great grandfather Sayyid Mohammad, appointed as "Shaikhul Islam" by King Hussain of the Safavid dynasty in Sistan province, traveled to Sistan where he and his children settled the area of Iran known as Sistan, which accounts for the title "al-Sistani" in his name. Sistani began his religious education as a child, beginning in Mashhad, and moving on to study at the Shi'a holy city of Qom in central Iran in 1949. After spending a few years there, in 1951 he went to Iraq to study in Najaf under the late Grand Ayatollah Abul-Qassim Khoei."
"Once upon a time, Ajami was an articulate and judicious critic both of Arab society and of the West, a defender of Palestinian rights and an advocate of decent government in the Arab world. "
From the Nation
"His once-luminous writing, increasingly a blend of Naipaulean clichés about Muslim pathologies and Churchillian rhetoric about the burdens of empire, is saturated with hostility toward Sunni Arabs in general (save for pro-Western Gulf Arabs, toward whom he is notably indulgent), and to Palestinians in particular."
So Ajami went from pro-Palestinian to less so later.
"(Fouad Ajami is the "Majid Khadduri Professor" of something or other at Johns Hopkins. Does Fouad Ajami know what Majid Khadduri so carefully explained about Muslim views of treaty-making with Infidels? If he doesn't, he should. If he does, and if he is not a fake, then he has an obligation to convey such knowledge to the American officials who are so impressed with him, and to the wider public."
from Hugh Fitzgerald at Jihad Watch.
Since hasn't explained this, and isn't likely to, he can be called an opportunist.
Reference on last post
Last post reference
The big problem is that Bush is fighting the war PC style. you need to carpet bomb specific areas(sunni triangle), then onto iran bomb their nuclear sites and destroy their leaders , and back to iraq, get sistani and the madr loser. When Romans went into Celtic Europe, they took over the Gauls by killing their leaders, ie Druids. you need to do this with islam. but then you have to understand that islam is the ideology that needs to be destroyed.
"The big problem is that Bush is fighting the war PC style."
The bigger problem is that Bush -- and any other President in his shoes -- has to conduct the war PC style, because in our era, PC is more powerful than any politician, Presidents included.
And the bigger problem even than the aforementioned is that there is every indication that Bush himself is deformed by PC. For a President to wage a politically INcorrect war in our present climate, he would have to have extraordinary political audacity and politically incorrect intelligence -- neither of which Bush seems to have.
These chickenhawks who have never even heard the sound of a bullet whizzing past their ear..should be taken out behind the barn and put out of their misery.
But I do notice it is those who sacrifice least and have the most to gain from the sacrifice of others that scream the loudest for war and call those (even those who have real knowledge and experience) foul names and question their patriotism.
A pox on them.
So we have a call to invade or declare war on Iran. With what might I ask, an army that is worn out and broke, a military that has been spent and wasted in Iraq, a national treasury that is bankrupted (yes bankrupted) financing that misadventure called Operation Iraqi Freedom..a misadventure that our children and grandchildren will be paying for.
And invade Iran for whose sake? America's? I don't think so. For Iran to attack America it would need a lot of nukes plus highly reliable and ACCURATE ICBM's, which it doesn't have and won't be able to acquire.
So are we to prove the antisemites, the conspirationalist minded correct, those folk who insist that the only reason we invaded Iraq was to save Israel, that Israel is the dog that wags the
American tail?
Iran is not Iraq, unlike Iraq it's Army is not worn out or of questionable loyalties. The Iranians (even, especially the anti mullahcracy youth who do want to depose the mullahs) will not tolerate an attack on their motherland by foreigners...
The Iraq attack on Iran ground to a halt after initial successes in that 8 year war, because the Iranians volunteered in droves and flung themselves at the Iraqi's in suicide missions.
\
Boys too young to fight, volunteered as walking human mine detectors. The backbone of the Iraniain Army are the fanatic Basiji.. it's a word that means Volunteer and has it's origin in the Iraq Iran war.
If Iraq is a mess which is destroying us (and it is, regardless of denials)...Iran will be a disaster, even strategic bombings of Iran will produced blowback and unimaginable unintended consequences.
But knowing the mentality of chickenhawks, they live in some kind of nether world, a Michael Jackson Never Never land, in which nothing bad ever happens to them, only to others...they are criminally insane and pathological.
The Orwellian world is just around the corner, and it has already seeped under the doorsill..it is a world that is a creature and creation of many forces, actionary and reactionary..Hegellian.
We won't attack Iran simply because WE CAN'T, we lack the resources, the ability to do so, and if we did the entire world would rise up against us, from Russia to Europe to Asia.. and despite your ego and false beliefs America cannot stand against the world, it can isolate itself in it's own Never Never land like the Soviet Union did, but it can't stand against the world.
And why should we attack Iran just to haul Israeli's bones out of the fire? let Israel fight it's own battles, while we supply them the means.
To Nariz
Iran's military is 550,000. But Iran is so large, they can't defend it. The US is on both sides and can come by sea.
If Iran defends forward near Iraq, then we can destroy their military from our bases in Iraq.
If Iran spreads its military out, we can mop it up.
If they try to hold the mountains around Tehran, we can pick the part we want and destroy that and the others.
Once Tehran goes, much of the Iranian army will desert.
One driver of occupation deaths in Iraq are Sunni Arab foreign fighters who won't get a good reception in Iran. The Iranian people find the theocrats unpopular. Both governments were unpopular, but in Iraq we switched from secular unpopular to religious, which is against us. In Iran we switch from unpopular theocrats to secular, who are for us and need us to keep the theocrats at bay.
This depends on us being smart enough to abolish religious law, courts, police and dress instead of praising Islam and having call to prayers blasted 5 times a day.
Another driver of deaths in occupation of Iraq is the Sunni Shiite conflict that is entrenched in that country. This is not the case in Iran.
We should leave Iraq once we establish new supply in Iran and let Iraq get on as best it can. This will weaken Maliki and Sistani and also change hearts and minds when they see the theocrats in Iran succeeded by a popular secular government. Then women in Iraq will ask why not us?
Once we enter Iran, we can establish supply from the sea to Afghanistan. This helps us there. We also can surround Pakistan with India and our forces at sea. This lets us pressure Pakistan to denuke and to abolish religious law, courts, dress and police.
The time to fight wars is when they cost 200 or even 2000 battle deaths, not when its 200,000 or 20 million or more.
The concept that Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia has is that we must die or be slaves. We have to occupy them or surround them to compel them to make the changes. In the case of Iran its easier because the people already hate the theocrats as being far worse than the Shah and Savak.
Its time for the theocrats to go. The people under them have nothing to lose but their chains by supporting us. That is why we have to act now.
Moreover, in Iraq, Maliki realizes all of the above. Maliki knows regime change in Iran means regime change in Iraq. Sistani knows that too.
Finally on the chicken hawk issue. Junior officers in WWI learned the wrong lesson. They didn't unseat Hitler in 1933 when it would have taken 200 battle phase deaths.
Senior German military officers in WWI sent Lenin to Russia and that resulted in the destruction of Germany in WW2 as well as a communist attempt at power after WWI, which itself combined with the fear of the Soviet example led to Hitler. No Lenin sent to Russia in WWI, no Hitler, no problem.
In this war, the betrayal of our men is PC that means we don't speak up about the real enemy or the real need for victory. To let men die or be maimed, or women, for a faux victory in Afghanistan and Iraq, while Saudi Arabia, Iran and Pakistan fund the insurgency and the war against us world wide, including SE Asia, Europe, America, etc. is to betray their sacrifice.
Some are now dead, and believed they fell to save America and the West. Some believed they were fighting to stop WMD or a regime behind 9-11. The way to honor their sacrifice is to go after those who are getting WMD or were behind 9-11.
Finally, it doesn't matter now if Iran, Pakistan or Saudi Arabia were in on 9-11, they are in on supporting the insurgencies against our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Moreover, those 3 countries are determined to defeat us. Until we change that, they will keep on winning by immigration.
The time to fight wars is when we lose 200 killed per war, or even 2000, not later. The time to fight wars is when you win, not later when you lose. The junior officers of WWI learned the opposite lessons. The West was barely able to survive the combined menace of Hitler and the Soviet Union.
We still have China to deal with. We must win now while we can, and before Iran has nukes We must attack now while we lose 200 or even 2000 killed per war. Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have been at war with us since long before 9-11. We have to win now while its easy.
We need to rebuild to the 1991 level and more of our military. But we need to attack Iran now while our army in Iraq is in position and the timing is right. We need to attack when we will win. We need to attack now. We can't risk waiting a year, we must attack now.
When the Arabs were posturing to extort money from Adams and Jefferson over Tripoli, Abdrahaman warned the Americans; A war between Christian and Christian was mild, prisoners were treated with humanity; but, warned His Excellency, a war between Muslim and Christian could be horrible. –McCullough’s words.
The problem with fighting an ideology is that it exists within the minds of the population; men, women, and children. And this one is not going to be changed by building schools. I don’t buy the theory that the Iranian population would choose freedom if given the choice, it sounds too familiar and the people knew what they were getting into when Ahmedinejad won with 60% of the vote. If we attack Iran, Iranians will further rally behind their country.
The reason Saddam acted the way he did probably had a lot to do with the fact that it was an effective way to govern Muslims. Maybe the only way in a Country with a roughly even split of Sunni and Shia. Imagine the force that would be necessary to impose Western will on a galvanized population.
Defeating Iran may have to be done in a manner similar to the 3rd Punic War. And I don’t know if the electorate is ready for that. So we'll kick the can down the road, and wait to get hit.
Isn't it great to be compassionate? Keep sending the food and earthquake aid.
"But we need to attack Iran now while our army in Iraq is in position"
If Iraq were stable, this might be a viable argument. We cannot launch an invasion from Iraq against a larger more sophisticated country nearby, while Muslims are exploding and spinning out of control in Iraq. Most of our resources are currently devoted to trying to maintain control of the psychopathological welter called Iraq.
"If Iraq were stable," Because Iraq is not stable we should attack Iran now in a ground invasion.
Iraq's government will continue to move against us and align itself with Iran. The Iraq military is a greater potential threat to attack us in the rear than the insurgency while we go after Iran.
This probability, even if its small now, may tend to grow larger over time. Maliki's decision to open the checkpoints is hard to interpret as other than an open appeal to anti-Americanism.
The form that instability takes may also be that the people and government bond together in anti-Americanism. The Iraq army would likely join in such a bonding. The time to strike Iran is before that has happened.
"So we have a call to invade or declare war on Iran. With what might I ask, an army that is worn out and broke, a military that has been spent and wasted in Iraq, a national treasury that is bankrupted (yes bankrupted) financing that misadventure called Operation Iraqi Freedom."
-- from a posting above
Who calls for "invading" Iran? Bombs from planes , missiles from afar, are not the same thing as an invasion. The army is not "worn out and broke" though damged. And the Air Force -- is that "worn out and broke"? Those missiles -- all "worn out and broke"?
Note the following comment from Fouad Ajami:
"A terrible condition afflicts the Arabs, and Zarqawi puts it on lethal display: an addiction to failure, and a desire to see this American project in Iraq come to a bloody end."
"Heart of Darkness "
This is what I saw or thought I saw in his appearance on Charlie Rose. It may be that he
fights this within himself and this is why he has this powerful insight. I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that he can control it if this is a temptation at times, and his writings bear that out.
"You have got Fouad Ajami wrong. He's a good guy. "
From Hugh above.
Based on your comments, and reading some of his articles, I take back my words that he wants us to fail in Iraq and Iran, and I too count him as a good guy.