The soldiers being trained in Iraq are unable or unwilling to be members of the “Iraqi” army or “Iraqi” police. They cannot be relied on, cannot be trusted, to fight alongside the American troops who are now doing almost all of the real fighting. (The Iraqis, of various kinds, have been great at kidnapping and torturing people of other various kinds, and then leaving their bodies, dismembered or intact, here and there throughout Baghdad and the rest of the country, but that’s not what one means by fighting.)
Nor can they be relied on, without the Americans being present, to actually behave semi-decently toward civilians or the prisoners they take, and furthermore, to do their fighting for an ideal called “Iraq.” That is an ideal that the American soldiers are imbued with (or at least they were until reality began to set in) far more than are those “Iraqis” who run away, or who fire wildly, or who show up only to pick up their paychecks but never for the real battles – and that takes care of a great many of them, especially of the Arabs rather than the Kurds. No, they are not fighting for “Iraq” but, when they fight at all, almost always for the possibility of inflicting damage on others who are not of the same sectarian or ethnic background. This ineluctable problem has been pointed out in many articles and in hundreds of postings at Jihad Watch for nearly three years. Many have been quite detailed.
Here is just one of the more recent examples – a mere 14 months old:
Iraq's doomed police training Paula Broadwell writes in the Boston Globe, with thanks to Hugh Fitzgerald.IN SEPTEMBER 2003, the Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs constructed the Jordan International Police Training Center outside of Amman to train Iraq law enforcement personnel. Sixteen nations provide a total of 352 police trainers for the center. The camp has a capacity to train 3,000 Iraqi police recruits in an eight-week basic police skills course and graduate 1,500 new police every month. New Iraqi police come away with a coveted paycheck ($150) and sufficiently trained and equipped to counter foreign intelligence operations, pandemic lawlessness in an anarchic society, and insurgents who target US troops or collaborators.
In April 2005 I had the chance to visit the center, the world's largest international police training camp. I am a military officer and have been deployed throughout Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, but this was one of the nicest training posts I have ever seen. However, the comprehensive training I witnessed was disheartening. The Iraq coalition constituency deserves to know why this mission is likely to fail.
There are three main reasons why these forces will never be ready to defend their country: The wary, uncommitted recruits are immature and lackadaisical about the mission; the parsimonious training is inadequate; and accountability once recruits return to Iraq is inconsistent at best and lacks the return on investment that one would expect.
The recruit pool. According to international instructors at the camp, the troops are often recruited from among intimidated teenagers or disillusioned, desperate unemployed men left with few job prospects in their chaotic country. We aren't always getting the highest quality ''volunteers" because many of those have already joined the insurgency. Others are understandably concerned about their life expectancy if they join the police. In spite of most of the high-quality, experienced instructors, I learned that a clan relative of the Jordanian terrorist mastermind Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi was also an employee at the camp, adding an interesting element to operational security.
Return on Investment. Purportedly, about 40 to 60 percent of these graduates never actually join the Iraqi police force when they return from Jordan. They defect, taking their coveted pay and their new skills to the insidious insurgency, according to liaison officers in Iraq. Some are forced to give up the weapons they were issued at this camp to corrupt local police chiefs; these often end up on the black market. Others lose their firearms in insurgent raids on police stations. Sadly, too many are targeted immediately upon return to Iraq. Forty-six newly returned graduates on a bus were executed point-blank by insurgents this spring; more than 1,500 of those who have made it into the police force have died just this year..."
[Posted by Rebecca on August 30, 2005 01:19 PM]
Three subsequent postings under that thread elaborate upon the significance of Bradwell’s observations (I have slightly edited them here, for readability only; you can read the originals here to see that the substance of the analysis remains unchanged):
#1.“This article points out the near-hopelessness of the situation. It is cruel to force the entire weight of the Administration's misunderstanding of both Islam and Iraq onto the soldiers, the officers and men who are supposed to train "Iraqi" police and an "Iraqi" army when there is no such feeling for "Iraq" – not, at least, outside of a handful of people, the very handful of unrepresentative Iraqis whom, outside Iraq and inside, the Americans have met and assumed were the "people of Iraq." But Rend al-Rahim Francke, Ahmad Chalabi, Kanan Makiya and all the rest had spent decades abroad. They were mostly well-off and well-educated and, whether Sunni or Shi'a, largely secular. For their own good and sufficient reasons, they wanted the Americans to depose Saddam Hussein. This the Americans did.
But these completely unrepresentative "Iraqis," and the way they plausibly and pleasingly offered prospects of things to come in a Light-Unto-the-Muslim Nations Iraq, are not Iraq. The real Iraq, the Iraq that the soldiers have to deal with, is much more primitive and much more determinedly hostile to Americans -- except insofar as they can be temporarily bought off, like a tribal leader here or there, by infusions of American cash. Are we to keep transfusing that cash to the endlessly corrupt "Iraqis"? And if so, what will we really be getting in return, save for a temporary cessation of hostilities in this or that small area of a large country?
In her discussion of the treacherous nature of the recruits, the author of the article for some reason does not mention so many of them who take the cash and the weapons and the training all supplied by the Americans, and then promptly join the most violent enemies of those same Americans. Then there is the intractable problem of Kurd mistrust of Arabs, of Shi'a mistrust of Sunnis (and both with good reason, solidly based on experience over a long period). Perhaps she had not been thinking on those lines. If she has the leisure to think at the Kennedy School this year (despite the Kennedy School, not because of it) perhaps she will take a moment to read Bat Ye'or on The Dhimmi, and even more relevant to Iraq, Elie Kedourie's "The Chatham House Version." One needs officers in the army to educate themselves about Islam and about Iraq. It is too bad it has to happen so late in the day.
[Posted by: Hugh at August 30, 2005 03:07 PM]
#2.
"The Iraqis won't forget those who fought for them"
-- from a posting above“No, the Iraqis will be just as grateful, no doubt, as the Egyptians have proven to be over the past 25 years during which they have received $60 billion from the American taxpayers, or as the "Palestinians" have proven to be for the billions they received (“and somehow managed to misplace, so pretty please send us more right away to make Gaza bloom, because otherwise we might have to get nasty and that would be bad for the road-map and the two-state solution and...."). They have already forgotten what the Americans did for them, and are doing for them.
Oh, I'm not saying all Iraqis are like that. There is Kanan Makiya. That's one. There's Rend al-Rahim Francke. That's two. There's Ahmad Chalabi. That's three. Gosh, I could go on all night, and I bet if I put my mind to it I could name all -- what, 20,000 Arabs in Iraq who are genuinely grateful, and seem to understand the West and appreciate its ways. (The Kurds are another matter.) Why, of course they do -- they've all spent at least 25 years in that West. But what about the rest of the Muslim Arabs in Iraq, the 20 million or so (deducting for the Kurds)? Out of those 20 million, let's not stick to 20,000, but make it 50,000. No, let's go wild -- let's say there are 100,000 Muslim Arabs (i.e. not counting the Kurds, and not counting the Christians who worked as the house staff -- cooks, drivers, etc. -- for Saddam Hussein and then did the same for the American generals and high civilians in the Green Zone) who are truly grateful.
Well, that just isn't enough. That just is not enough on which to base a policy. There are some very nice Iraqis, and the Americans in Washington and in Baghdad have met every single last one of them. That's what they have to realize. Emerson wrote something called "Representative Men." Well, the problem with the Iraq policy is partly that it was based, and continues to be based, on "Unrepresentative Men." And women too -- like that girl who hugged the dead Marine's parents at that Washington soiree. Sentimental, a crowd-pleasing, and the most unrepresentative Iraqi you could possibly find. Fun for the crowd, but cruel for the spectators at home, who were being offered the equivalent of a Potemkin-village Iraq.[Posted by: Hugh at August 30, 2005 08:41 PM]
#3.
"After the dust settles we attack the winner...Is that so wrong?"
-- from a posting aboveNot wrong, but not necessary. The dust will not settle. The Sunni-Shi'a split will remain, with the fault line not along the Iran-Iraq border, but within Iraq. Let the Sunnis and the Shi'a receive outside help. The Shi'a help is likely to consist of basijis, True Believers. Those who hate the Islamic Republic of Iran will be glad to see them go, as cannon fodder, making their own task of undoing the Islamic Republic easier. In the mess, the Americans can concentrate on destroying or heavily damaging Iran's science project -- which must take precedence over everything else.
The dust will not settle, and there will be no winner to "attack." But there will be resources of all kinds, and upheaval of all kinds. And we want upheavals. We should welcome upheavals all over the Muslim countries, one damn upheaval after another, until the Infidels or enough of them have taken their crash courses in Islam, and a new understanding of what needs to be done can be shared between North America and Western Europe. The spectacle of intra-Muslim warfare, with the traditional ways of that warfare (no more American kid-gloves, Geneva-convention stuff -- that's for Infidels), will do much to spoil the Da'wa pitch that is being made to vulnerable Infidels in the West who are casting about on a spiritual search, or on a search for some ready-made vehicle to express their alienation, even hatred, of their circumambient society -- and along comes Islam to fit the bill.No, the dust won't settle. It can't. But American troops right now are being asked to move heaven and earth to create an "Iraqi" army, and an "Iraqi" police, and to move heaven and earth to make sure that Sunnis and Shi'a create a democratic Peaceable Kingdom. Why? Why would that help us contain Islam? What is the sense in this? It is machiavellian in reverse. How ignorant of Islam and of Iraq must some of the policymakers be, and how blind to the possibilities (blind because willfully timid) of other, more effective, less profligate, policies?
[Posted by: Hugh at August 30, 2005 10:30 PM]
A good deal, perhaps almost everything, that can or needs to be said about Iraq has already been said at Jihad Watch. This includes: what was rational and justified, and what was not, in both the initial invasion and then in what that invasion and occupation turned into; why the war was won long ago (and “victory” claimed on these pages); why the “Iraqis” do not exist and in any case will never compromise as required with one another, and why this is not a Bad Thing but a Good Thing; and how ethnic and sectarian fissures and economic fissures are already present in Iraq -- they do not have to be created or even encouraged by Infidels (and the third main fissure, that between haves and have-nots, may also turn out to be relevant). These fissures need only be exploited by the merest act: the act of withdrawal and thereby ceasing to prevent such fissures from growing and being acted upon, as they already are.
Press and Pentagon, to find what you want, on any topic you need, just google away. Saves time, saves effort. And just as the evidence suggests that more and more members of the press are not only visiting this site regularly and, not surprisingly, by dint of constant repetition certain themes have been introduced permanently into their consciousnesses, then the same can hold true for the Pentagon, even the State Department. At the Pentagon and State one hopes that those on the European desks will begin to express their anxiety about the islamization of Western Europe, and do battle over the right policy to be adapted toward Islam and the instruments of Jihad with those who, until now, have been in charge of such matters -- that is, those who have been in charge, often disastrously, of the Middle Eastern desks. Why not just put whatever subject you are looking for into the Search Box, click, pull up, read, and then circulate, or crib if you wish, to your heart’s content?
That would cost nothing. It might save one hundred billion dollars. Or two hundred billion. But who’s counting? Who has the time to be so vigilant?
The Iraqis, of various kinds, have been great at kidnapping and torturing people of other various kinds, and then leaving their bodies, dismembered or intact, here and there throughout Baghdad and the rest of the country...
And soldiers and Marines are being charged with 1st degree murder because the likes of Anderson Cooper (he of the big blue eyes and pouty lips) cannot understand how such things could happen if not by the hands of Evil Americans.
so Hugh in your words of wisdom, should the US tuck tail and take off like in Vietnam? Thereby leave a more dangerous country that will allow terrorists more power knowing how the US cut and ran. oh btw, l know you hate that term cut and run, but essentially that is whay you are asking for. but you never mention what you would actually do besides cut and run. There is a big price you pay for those actions, and from the "Vietanm cut and run, there are too many consequences to mention here, but you are still being affected by it right now. am l missing something here Hugh? How many billions did the US and other Western nations spend in saving people during WW2? How many lives were lost in one battle in Europe? Hugh you cannot have it both ways, some things are worth dying for, but then if your dont believe in any God, why even try to fight what you think is right if only when you die you become a lump of dirt.
This is an interesting read:
http://www.dailypioneer.com/indexn12.asp?main_variable=front%5Fpage&file_name=story1%2Etxt&counter_img=1
Is India next battleground?
Swapan Dasgupta
Excerpts:
" The cantonments in Pakistan are already salivating. For five years, Pakistan maintained the fiction of being a partner in the war on terror while simultaneously doing everything to regain its lost "strategic depth" in Afghanistan. With the West overwhelmed by self-doubt, it awaits the grand prize of its duplicity-the recovery of Afghanistan. Just prior to the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, President Musharraf used an analogy from 7th century Arabia to justify a tactical retreat from Afghanistan. The sub-text, which the West wilfully overlooked, was that Pakistan would be playing a double game.
For India, the trends in Afghanistan are life threatening. India was understandably jubilant when the Taliban over-reached itself in 2001 and invited American ire. Afghanistan had become the nursery of the jihad in Kashmir and yet India could do nothing about it. The US undertook the fumigation job and earned our gratitude. Today, the wheel threatens to turn a full circle.
The consequences of a Western defeat in Afghanistan on India will be catastrophic. First, it will be the signal for a no-holds-barred international Islamic jihad in Kashmir. Second, the scope of jihad is certain to be enlarged to the heartland.
It's the domino theory at play. If Iraq goes under, the fallout will engulf Afghanistan. If that happens, India will be the next battleground of a resurgent jihad. We can gloat over the present Anglo-American discomfiture at our own peril".
To a hysterical (in every sense) "warrior princess" above:
La bêtise n’est pas mon fort, as another monsieur said testily.
We have a sizable portion of our military in iraq. All are trained and battle hardened warriors. They are experts in urban warfare and they are right next door should they be needed in iran, or pakistan, saudi arabia or any number of area countries who are one assassination or one coup away from chaos. Now is not the time to bring them home, now is the time to clean weapons, build target intelligence packets and conduct rehearsals.
You wanted a global jihad. Ahmed be careful what you wish for.
"Now is not the time to bring them home, now is the time to clean weapons, build target intelligence packets and conduct rehearsals."
How about moving our troops north and start training a Kurdish army and police force? The Iraqi constitution has a means for the northern provences to have more autonomy than a state of the US. Then the next tiny step would be to name it Kurdistan.
Pelayo, I would hope the SOF guys are doing just that. If not, why not? They are about the only ones in the region who have never turned on us.
Partition, then leave. Whatever happens afterward happens. Why be a sitting duck there for no reason at all?
I watched Obsession on Foxnews and if I wasn’t convinced before that they want the whole world not just their part, I am now. Poll Q= Do you think that America will be in an all out war with muslims in the next 20 years, A=70% yes. Look at Thailand, retreat/appeasement is useless. Someone please outline a world where muslims and non-muslims live in peace. I cannot for the life of me get a mental picture of this(one that isn’t gruesome). Why not? Read their books, listen to their sermons and find the answers. It is too late they have already trained their babies their youths to kill, kill, kill. The new Hitler youth, only 1000 times more monstrous. They list their enemies in order, the Jews (because they hate them) the Christians (they know they are dangerous and abundant) the Buddhists (not sure on this one) the Hindus (they have been taking their **** for centuries so no hurry). If we retreat where does it stop? They want to fight us, enslave us, destroy us. They will follow us.
Why should Americans have the headache of trying to get a peaceful outcome through partition? The fact that Sunnis have persecuted Shi'a, intermittently, when they felt the need and when they could, for the past 1300 years, and that the Shi'a in Iraq have managed to outbread the Sunni Arabs over the past half-century, and the fact that Arab Muslims treat non-Arab Muslms badly, and that bad treatment can range from linguistic and cultural imperialism (as with the Berbers) to outright massacres (as with the Arab soldiers of Saddam Hussein who murdered Kurds), has nothing to do with the United States.
Were the American government to insist upon remaining in Iraq because it for some reason felt it had to, felt it was obligated (it isn't, not at all) to "see through a peaceful transition to partition" the Americans will be there, right in the middle, until hell freezes over, and they will win not the slightest gratitude from any of the parties, for not one of those parties, Sunni Arab, Shi'a Arab, and Kurd, can conceivably be satisfied with the compromises that would be necessary, and would necessarily be pushed by those Americans.
It would squander still more money, men, materiel, morale, attention,and time -- all of which are limited, all of which must be used to address the greater threat posed by Islam, most of all in Western Europe. Still the Americans will be hoping, and wishing, and wishing, and hoping (sound-track available upon request), and not understanding for a good deal longer that what have been called here the "attitudes of Islam"(different from the tenets of Islam) -- the belief that there are the victors and the vanquished, that compromise is unnecessary, that treaties and agreements are made to be broken, that deception and violence are the way to achieve one's ends -- come naturally to many of the poeple of Iraq, and will always do so as long as they remain affected so deeply by Islam.
It is not until the Camp of Islam has been divided and demoralized and deprived of the weapons (not merely, or mainly, weapons of mass destruction, though those of course must be kept out of, or where already possessed taken away from, Muslim hands), including the "money weapon" that comes from the trillions in oil revenues, that Muslims themselves will begin to see that the cause of their own failures, political, economic, social, moral, and intellectual, are the natural result of Islam itself.
The very idea of the United States volunteering to cling a while longer to tarbaby Iraq in order, out of some misplaced feeling of Infidel noblesse oblige to "make things right," make them "right" in an Iraq where the spirit of compromise is non-existent and will never exist as long as the attitudes and atmospherics that prevail and can be observed in many different societies suffused with Islam.
Get out now. The behavior of the Iraqi government, its intolerable countermandering of American orders and refusal even to go through the motions of pretend-compromise, at the same time that Maliki calls for billions more in American aid (remember his predecessor's sly call, in Washington, for a "Marshall Plan" for Iraq which, Al-Jawari said, should be called "the Bush Plan"? You don't. Then google "Jihad Watch" and "Posted by Hugh" and "Iraq" and "Marshall Plan" and "Bush Plan").
We've had enough. We've seen the Iraqis, and Iraq, and learned something. Or rather many soldiers in Iraq have learned something, even if their generals have not. And many civilians in this country have learned something, even if the class of those who in the government and media presume to instruct and to protect us, have not.
Well, We the People want out of this. We do not want to cling to Tarbaby Iraq to save the supposed face of this or any other administration. Besides, within a few months they will be going at it, and the circumjacent states so alarmed and preoccupied, that those "catastrophic consequences that would follow upon an American withdrawal" which all kinds of people solemnly allude to, meaning of course "catastrophic consequences" for the American standing in the world, and in its ability to resist "Islamists" in that "war on terror" -- will turn out, very quickly, to be "catastrophic consequences" for the Sunnis and the Shi'a Arabs or rather more generally for Sunni-Shi'a relatinos, and for the relations between Arab and non-Arab Muslims (if the Kurdish attempt to throw off the Arab yoke is successful, and inspires others such as the Berbers, to fight against Arab imperialism which has always used Islam as its vehicle).
"Catastrophic consquences if there is an American withdrawal"?
Yes. But not for the Americans. For the Camp of Islam.
"La bêtise n’est pas mon fort" means, "stupidity is not my strong point." annoying.
Hugh do you think that any military force is requird to tame muslims? and if so, does iran require some good bombings, military strikes,etc? many on this site do believe iran should of been the intended strike, but without bases, or fly overs not being allowed over turkey etc., having strategic bases in iraq, and surrounding aras is logical. "La bêtise n’est pas mon fort, as another monsieur said testily" can said another way, but l will not lower myself down to that level. you can debate issues, but name calling only points who is the foolish one, as it only illustrates you have no answers Mr.Hugh Fitzerald.
Hugh,
Oh, No!!! You're not getting me to bite on this one again! You already know my position - I support Ronin on this one...
Darn! There you go, getting me to nibble on the bait!! LOL
I'll just keep my mouth shut and watch some football...
http://doctorbulldog.wordpress.com
Doctor Bulldog,
Your webpage proves my point. There is no getting along with rapists and murderers. Who are they to judge us! These filthy animals, attacking our women and children. What are we made of playdough? If we cannot even stand up to those who assaulted that woman, we are nothing.
Zena, idiots should not be making foreign policy.
Iran is not Iraq and ignoramuses who lack knowledge, and who are not personally at risk have no business even suggesting actions of such grave consequence as invading or attacking Iran or any other country.
Hugh is correct, Iraq is a tarbaby which is (has) disrupted and destroyed America, impoverished our posterity, and has indeed created millions of Jihadi's were before there were only handfuls.
And if you, Ronin, Alarmed pig farmer and the rest of the idiot chickenhawks think that you can run into the swarm of Jihadis and vanguish them, then show us the way, lead by example.
Put YOUR money and blood on the line, not mine or others...
Don't forget Iran is not Iraq, in fact it is a very large country, and unlike Iraq it is not mostly flat sandy desert..and Iranians, unlike Iraqi's, are fiercely nationalistic, not just muslims but proud Iranians who perceive themselves as better than, and different than Arabs..
During the Iraq Iran war..hundreds of thousands of young boys and men(Basiji) , not old enough to be fully trained as soldiers, volunteered as cannon fodder and human mine detectors...not one Arab (Sunni or Shi'a) volunteered to fight Saddams war with Iran, much less volunteer as a human mine detector.
Ain't no way America or any other country is going to beat Iran down with force. The young Iranians hate the mullahs, but if Iran is invaded they will act just like Americans would if they were invaded..
The Shi'a and Kurds initially welcomed the Americans as liberators, we wouldn't even get that in Iran..Iranians will not tolerate an invader, regardless of how much they detest their rulers.
And if America tried to bomb Iran, Iran would cut off it's oil supply (or it would be cut off as a consequence of the bombing), and that would reduce the international supply of oil, drive the price of oil up to over $100 a barrel, which would benefit the Saudis and Chavez, but would cause a world wide depression, and starvation, which would
affect, very adversely, you and the rest of the morons who are eager to use the money and blood of others to fulfill your own death wish and ideological designs.
And I'm not name calling here.. I am speaking to facts and truth, you and your kind are craven and stupid..either incapable of long term logical thinking or too eat up with ideology and self righteousness to utilize any gray matter you might have.
But press on without any regard for unintended adverse consequences.. but at least be mature and honest enough to admit error, faulty reasoning and mistakes...unlike your ungodly "President", for the religiously afflicted amongst JW let me remind them that there gospel warns them of the antiChrist who will appear quoting scripture and as a deceiver...lots of them, loads of them, littering the landscape.
Nariz/jihazi propagandist,
That’s right, you are perfectly obvious, always have been. How stupid do you think we are?
Don’t you have a fatwa to issue somewhere?
The anti-Christ, you should talk, your leader is the anti-Christ, read your book!
We know what you are up to and we don’t want any of it.
BTW, Nariz, I did my time and sent many a martyr to hell so they could be rump partners with old mohammed. I even have a bunch of medals around here someplace to look at and bring a smile to my face.
Like it or not violent people require a violent end, no oppressive regime ever changed peacefully. The easy way to kill a wolf is to train one to protect the flock and not eat it. We are that wolf. The flock we protect, doesn't kill children, throw women away or kill followers of other religions, nor do we force people to follow false prophets. Iran will be dealt with if not now, after it nukes something. It doesn’t matter much to me as if they all die tomorrow, I will drink a cold one, smile and wave bye, bye.
Also, you are rewriting history, check your facts, most of those cannon folder were not volunteers. Iran sent children to their death, children, their children. iran is not a world power and is no military threat to us, like it or not, geographic make up, oil none of that matters, they exist because we let them. Also, when you re-read this “And I'm not name calling here. I am speaking to facts and truth, you and your kind are craven and stupid” think about how the not name calling while doing exactly that makes you look.
I don’t mind you disagreeing with me but I can back it all up. Destroying, irans, cities, ports, and oil platforms and infrastructure are within the military capability of the United States. I am not saying it will come to that. They do have a 1% chance they will wake up and smell the coffee actually consider the cost of their actions and vote to change. If I were a betting man I would tell the ones who don’t want to die to move out into the dessert and wait until we are done. When I considered the consequences of letting that madman get a nuke I came to the realization we will be forced to act. Oh we will ask the UN for sanctions and basically do just what we did last time, when we get tired of the UN and its inability to act we will go at them alone or us and a few friends. Iran will probably think it matters which party is in power. Reality is it doesn’t matter the truth is as easy as a history book, both democrats and republicans will and do commit US troops if our international interests are threatened.
Militarily it doesn’t make sense to wait long; we basically already have iran surrounded, why wait? Let’s give them one heck of a Christmas party. The high touted iranian military might last a few weeks longer than iraqs but I doubt it. Say what you want about the iraqis but they never forced children into mine fields by bayonet. I have seen a few films, they were very efficient at cutting persians down to size. Now that they are our allies, maybe they could supply us with advisors on how to fight iran. Strange times we live in.
An idiot screaming into tv cameras claiming to receive messages from God telling him to destroy one of our allies has to be dealt with, if iran wants to remain a muslim paradise he needs to go. We will not let a bunch of old mullahs threaten the world peace, we will martyr them all of we have to, don’t worry we will humbly apologize afterwards. Sorry dude but president prophet ahmadinthehead could cause iran to become a vague memory.
Every free country/man must join in this battle, together. There is no other way to defeat a 1400 year old ideology based on divinely sanctioned murder/rape/slavery/robbery/extortion/intimidation.
As some of our forefathers said, we must all hang together, or we will surely hang separately.
Zena wrote: "How many billions did the US and other Western nations spend in saving people during WW2? How many lives were lost in one battle in Europe? Hugh you cannot have it both ways, some things are worth dying for, but then if your dont believe in any God, why even try to fight what you think is right if only when you die you become a lump of dirt."
This makes no sense.
Hugh is outlining a plan for saving as many lives as possible in the long term, given the facts that (a) Islam is a political plan for totalitarian world domination tethered deeply to religion, (b) we cannot force Muslims to convert away from or reform their belief system, that is up to them; the best we can do is prevent ourselves and our neighbors (critically Europe, at this point) from being conquered, and (c) if they convert us, we become equally doomed to oppression and corruption and, eventually, starvation (Islam enforces a social structure which is only sustainable so long as there is wealth from non-Islamic societies being funneled into it; should non-Islamic socieites cease to exist, the structue of the Islamic societies combined with the totalitarian habits they cultivate in their populations will mean ruin for humanity. Islamic leaders aren't lying when they say they prefer death to life.).
A rational manner in which to disagree with his plan is to point out how his plan incurs costs or sacrifices for which he does not account. You've hinted that you believe such costs exist ("there are too many consequences to mention here" ), but have not bothered to detail them, or to explain why they are worth weakening our position militarily against imperialist Islam, as Hugh argues we are doing by staying in Iraq. Explain your case.
We got into the war because of WMD. We've now got documents showing that Saddam was very close to building the ultimate WMD - an atomic bomb. We destroyed Iraq's capacity to produce any such weapon in the forseeable future. We won. Europe and Islam can spin this victory into a loss if they like (and they will like), but that doesn't change the facts. The implications of such spin may or may not be relevent for how we act next, but it doesn't morally obligate us to stay.
We were also nice folks, and tried to help the people in Iraq build a functioning nation. They mostly chose not to go along with this, and we are not responsible for their murderous tribalism. Their choice, their loss; we tried as best we can, but we are not obligated to help them. We were obligated to take out Iraq's work toward an atomic bomb.
Additionally, your shot at Hugh's religious beliefs or lack thereof is disgustingly cheap, in light of the fact that Hugh is clearly arguing on grounds of what will save the most human lives. If your particular interpretation of your religious beliefs precludes the possibility of people like Hugh genuinely caring about humanity and its future, this reflects poorly on you, and not on Hugh. He's not obligated to treat you like a rational debater after something like this.
That said, though I think Hugh makes good points, I am still not convinced that a US pull out wouldn't be spun by Muslims as a victory of some sort, and then used to unite Sunni and Shi'a in an Islamic coalition against the West. In light of this, I think Ronin's comments make a good deal of sense, giving us the best of both worlds: keep our battle hardened troops in Iraq, refraining from giving Islamic propagandits something to spin for unification purposes, but at the same time shift the vast majority of our troops and resources to helping the genuinely grateful Kurds. Prep for defending ourselves against a wannabe-nuclear Iran. A nuclear Iran certainly musn't be allowed to happen.
Oh, and Nariz, you know very well that to refuse to defend oneself against aggressive, threatening enemies who are **not willing to cooperate in a genuine manner** is to resign oneself to slavery and death. Your comments about us not having a right to defend ourselves agaisnt Iran is merely a reflection of your belief that human beings shouldn't, by some twistedly hollow version of "morality", defend themselves from the death cult into which you wish to force all humanity.
Go mourn for the sake of the horrific fate your traitorous ancestors wrought for their children when they embraced an ideology that denied the possibilty living as real (as opposed to plotting) partners among neighbors. Or better yet, genuinely fight that otherwise-fated future. But stop trying to inflict your horrific fate upon others.
From a statement made yesterday by Joseph Williams, while in Iraq with other families that have lost loved ones in the war on terror:
"I am proud of my son and his service to this nation. He made the ultimate sacrifice so that each of us may live in peace, blessed with freedom. America has carried the torch for freedom, fighting for individual liberties against communism, fascism, totalitarianism and now once more against terrorism. If we cut and run from Iraq, that will deal a devastating blow in the war against terrorism. Will any terrorist group ever fear us again, or will they know that they need only outlast us? We must stand by our heroic military men and women in Iraq and the mission they are serving there."
http://doctorbulldog.wordpress.com
Crows&Cows: Your link doesn't work any more. Here is one that does:
http://tinyurl.com/v3725
It is an interesting article, thanks.
So maybe we have forced them to change their plans i.e. "who’s first". and focus on India. They have awakened us and we are watching. India as far as I know has never threatened the USA. If they stand up we should stand with them. I say any thorn in the side of the enemy is good for us.
The world is a mess folks we all know it. The entire world is needed to control islam, got it, here is the but …traditionally unless the USA leads they way nothing happens. Several practical reasons for this, we spend considerably more to train our military than anyone else. We have the capability to move them quicker over greater distances than anyone else. We are a nation of rugged individualists, with lack of orders our military assess the situation and acts, that is no small feat, most military forces simply wait for a new leader to join them.
Should we let tribal rivalries change our policies? Should we let theses tribal misfits fight for survival? If I could guarantee the shia vs sunni battle would stay in iraq, I’d say let them be. I think it would start there, the sunni minority would quickly crumple, saudi would reinforce them, iran would respond by entering the battle on the shia side, the rest of the middle east would start picking sides, imams and mullahs world wide would declare jihad and ask for soldiers. The battle would continue in Europe, Asia and America, both south and north. In short a muslim WW3, granted I think killing most of them would be a good thing but not on my street. It is probably easier and less costly in the long run to continue the current fight already in progress. The last thing we need is to give up relatively stable operational bases just to have to retake them some time in the near future. After Desert Storm many analysts said we should have gone to Baghdad and finished the job, in hindsight they may have been right, iran was weaker and couldn’t have taken advantage.
The entire world is watching and trying to determine the “winner” so they can choose to follow that side. In reality there is no winner, the jihad continues, all we can do is attempt to contain it. We have them weakened now is not the time to back down, now we step on their necks. Muslims will soon be forced to make a decision, continue to fight or sue for peace. I would rather it be them suing for peace and not us.
I would like to think the younger generation of muslims will decide, to grow and build business and the infrastructure to allow it to prosper but I don’t live in that world, I live in this one. If we surrendered right now, unconditionally the impact would be destruction on a biblical scale. They have no leaders capable of controlling their lust for violence, they couldn’t guarantee safety for muslims of a different flavor and you can forget about safety for non muslims. They are stuck in an endless loop of self-pity, violence, victim hood and denial. Until they grow the ability to govern themselves with in some degree of civilization and stability the jihad will continue.
I see there are 2 distinguished schools of thoughts here regarding America's waging war against Iran.
Nariz vs. many other posters including Zena, Ronin and Alarmed pig farmer
Nariz = "The best defense is not to offend"
Many other posters here = "The best defense is one strong offense."
I think the reality now is somewhere in between these 2 schools of thoughts.
However, one thing for sure is that if America bombs Iran, oil price will certainly skyrocket to over $100 a barrel, which will benefit the Saudis and Chavez, but will also cause a world wide depression like that of early 1970's…. de je vu all over again. Astute investors will profit handsomely from it. The oil price chart tells me that the reality of $100+ a barrel is not very far away.
Good luck in your argument!
Ronin,
Once again you are right.
But. Dammit I hate to say but, but the younger generation has been taught by the generation of the 60s and 70s, remember those radicals? They would not explode themselves personally, they have taught another gen. to do that. Insane, Zombie like animals. Strong words? Yes, but true. The Hitler youth were the most virulent of the Nazis just ask a WWII soldier if you can find one.
A "warrior princess" above wonders why I seem so indifferent to Iran, when virtually the first posting I put up here was about the importance of destroying or damaging Iran's nuclear project and that absolutely nothing should get in the way. She further asks why I advocate a policy of "cut and run" and in her view, have offered not a single constructive suggestion for what else could be done, when I have offered hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of words on this very subject -- all of which seem to have eluded her.
So I'll provide here a sample for that poster, taken from May 2005 on for a few months -- a very small sample.
Article #1.
Fitzgerald: What should we do?
Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald assesses the current scene May 08, 2005
and makes some foreign policy recommendations:
"I would blow myself up if I can't feed my kids." -- from this article
The Egyptian government is corrupt. Egyptian leaders batten on the $2 billion in American aid, not to mention whatever they manage to wheedle out of the Europeans. But the poor, who exist everywhere, or others who are not poor but outraged at the corruption, do not merely say that Mubarak and company are "corrupt." That is what non-Muslims would say. No -- they say that Mubarak and his Family-and-Friends fellow thieves are "infidels" or in the pockets of "infidels" or in league with the "infidels" or un-Islamic. In other words, all discontent, all political life, can be reduced to the categories that Islam so conveniently provides, and the two biggest categories of all are those of the Believer and the Infidel.
It is no different in Saudi Arabia. Are the thousands of "princes" of the Al-Saud family helping themselves to the country's oil wealth? Of course they are. Is it sickening? Of course it is. But the problem is seen, by those sickened by that appropriation, and the decadent pursuits (which are not "decadent" only in Islamic terms) of those princes is seen as demonstrating the "un-Islamic" nature of the Al-Saud.
Muslims view the world through the prism of Islam. It provides a Total Explanation of the Universe, which covers every possible detail of life. It would be impossible to find a category of injustice that cannot be defined in terms of Islam. Corruption is unjust, and therefore, for those who wish to fight it, it must necessarily be un-Islamic. On the other hand, spreading Islam, fighting the Infidels if they resist, and treating them terribly according to the principles of the sharia when and where they submit or are conquered, is also Islamic.
So what should we do? Those now making policy seem to want to believe any number of things, none of them true. Some want to believe that Islam is fundamentally decent, save for the fundamentalists, whose definition keeps changing and expanding -- from a "tiny handful of extremists" to "the Wahhabis" to the "Wahhabis and the Salafists" to “10-15% of all Muslims” to...well, the latest effort is to convince us that there is "war going on within Islam itself" (nonsense -- there are some who are secret or open secularists, but they are hardly making war on the others. They are just trying to survive as best they can, and to stop the further encroachments of Islam where it has temporarily been constrained, as in Turkey under Kemalist rulers, or even in Iraq under the Ba'athists).
There is no "war for the soul of Islam." There is the 1350-year war of Islam against, not the West -- but all the rest. It can die down, when the wherewithal for conducting the war diminishes. It can die down, when there are no triumphs to swell hearts and encourage the troops. It can die down, as money and access to arms diminish, or Muslims lose the freedom to move to Infidel lands to conduct, behind enemy lines, the kind of non-military warfare that undermines Infidel morale and even spreads Islam among the most vulnerable types within Infidel society: the economically marginal; the psychically marginal; the innocent, young and desperate prisoners, with many in both groups searching for An Answer; and the spoiled and confused flotsam and jetsam of Western social collapse, such as John Walker Lindh. There is no "war within Islam." There is only the age-old, and endless war of Islam, using whatever instruments it possesses (and military combat is only one of those instruments).
Unless this is understood, Infidels will no doubt keep transferring the already hideously large sums being given to OPEC (with its oligopolistic pricing, and seeming paralysis by the American government to tax gasoline and to support a crash program to develop all other sources, and supplies, of energy). This not being understood, Infidels will continue to supply aid to Egypt, Pakistan, the "Palestinians" and all other Musim groups or countries that do not have oil revenues (and of course whom the rich oil countries somehow are not expected to support -- that is apparently the job of the so-called "rich" Western world, which means Western taxpayers who, compared to the rich of the Arabian peninsula, are on the brink of starvation).
Those who view the universe through the prism of Islam will always find a way to blame Infidels, or to regard those they resent in their own societies as Infidels. Let us not do anything to encourage that feeling. The Egyptian government is corrupt in every way. Continuing to give it aid is nonsensical -- in every way.
The best strategy remains the same:
1) Limit the ability of Muslim states or groups to acquire major weaponry.
2) Work feverishly to diminish the OPEC revenues of the Muslim countries.
3) Work in Europe and in North America to educate people about the tenets of Islam, the attitudes and atmospherics of Islam, and the history of both Jihad-conquest, and of the imposition of dhimmi status on subjugated non-Muslims, over 1350 years.
4) Support those in the Western world who are keenly aware of what is going on, and able to articulate the problem.
5) Do nothing that would inadvertently dampen the natural fissures within the Islamic world, between Arabs and non-Arabs, between Sunni and Shia. The obvious example is Iraq, where a thousand legitimate excuses for leaving now present themselves -- and should be used to bid adieu, always reserving the right, of course, to supply one side (the Kurds, for example) or another, in order to promote our own interests -- and not those of Islam.
6) By denying further aid, by embarking on a course of action that will ensure not only that the price of oil never goes down (which would preserve OPEC's market share, and delay for too long the move away from fossil fuels), but that self-taxation will take away much of the power of OPEC to collect all the profit for itself (the more we tax the oil, the more the Saudis, the only swing producers, have to worry about raising the price further themselves -- and this has been true and might have been acted on, had we understood Saudi Arabia, back in 1973), and by doing nothing that will hearten or encourage the forces of Jihad anywhere, and finally, by ending Muslim migration to dar al-Harb, and preventing the use of foreign (chiefly but not exclusively Saudi) money to promote Islam by funding mosques and madrasas (but no alternative mosques, funded by Infidel governments, should be supported -- let the locals pay for their own housese of worship, or not have them at all), we can save ourselves.
Again, here is a sentence that needs to be memorized. Its truth cannot be denied. And that sentence is as follows:
"The presence of large numbers of Muslims within the lands of the Infidels has created a situation for the indigenous Infidels that is far more unpleasant, expensive, and physically dangerous than it would be without the presence of large numbers of Muslims."
There are not many people in France, Italy, Spain, England, Germany, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark and other places who could deny the truth of that statement. Even when they do not know quite what to do, even if they are among those who "hope" that they can "integrate" many of the Muslims, they all know that a terrible mistake was made in allowing them to migrate in into their countries in the first place.
Save for the hirelings -- those on the take from Arabs, the band of ex-diplomats, ex-intelligence agents, estate agents selling mansions and messuage to assorted rich Gulf Arabs, journalists, academic recipients of Saudi, U.A.E., and Kuwaiti largesse -- everyone else (save for the wandering tribe of antisemites, who find themselves quite naturally on the side of Islam, even if they don't know a thing about it or give a damn) knows that that sentence is true.
#2. June 24, 2005
Fitzgerald: What to do in Iraq (part 1)
Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald begins a series of reflections on what to do in Iraq now. There will be some unavoidable overlap in the material in each section, as each will provide a look at the problem from different but interlocking perspectives.
Here is part 1:
"It has apparently become Holy Writ that the well-being of Iraq (defined by whom?), or the well-being of "Iraqis" (defined as whom?), or the well-being of Muslims everywhere who must be saved from the consequences of their own Lords of Misrule, their own inshallah-fatalism and love of luxury and idleness that explains their economic disarray (so much more fun to pass the time sitting with hubble-bubble pipes, watching Al-Jazeera, and becoming indignant at those terrible Infidels with their billions in foreign aid that is obviously part of their diabolical colonialism or neo-colonialism or post-colonial colonialism (choose 1) – it has apparently become universally accepted dogma that all this is in the interest of Infidels.
This is one of those unexamined propositions that does not stand up.
The best way to deal with the world of Islam, the Muslims who are in dar al-Islam and those who have managed to settle in the Lands of the Infidels, is not to make them comfortable, not to transfer even further wealth -- beyond the hundreds of billions transferred every year because of a grim accident of geology, money which in turn is used to fund various instruments of the Jihad, including mosques, madrasas, propaganda of every kind, bribes and the allure of business contracts, and so on.
If one believes that Islam represents a permanent menace to the wellbeing of Infidels and to their civilizations, such as they are, with all their faults and stupidities big and little, then one must not be fooled into thinking that either "poverty" (what nonsense: the most sinister and threatening Muslim countries are those like Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. and Iran; the least threatening, the impoverished Mali and Mauritania) or "absence of democracy" is what will do the trick. Many of those so-called "reformers," just like the North African lady who recently published a "daring" account of a muslima's sexual life (i.e., more or less an autobiography), may recognize that their own ruling classes are corrupt and depraved. But then on quite a few matters they immediately demonstrate that defensiveness about Islam that is such a feature of even the most "moderate" and seemingly "reasonable" of Muslims, whose mask comes off the minute Islam is seen to be criticized by Infidels in the mildest of ways. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, for example, in undermining the regime of Mubarak and Son, no longer collaborates with the American Copts -- no, he appears to be collaborating more with the Muslim Brotherhood. And of course Ibrahim's views on Israel, his complete inability to see the claim of Jews to their own homeland, with defensible borders, and their legal, historic, and moral claim to all of the West Bank and to Gaza, is something beyond his capacity. He simply cannot get his mind around it-- that is, he remains, for all of his "reform," neither a vocal supporter of complete equality for the Copts (and perhaps a little apology for their treatment, in their own land, by Arabs who conquered, and subjugated them -- no, that is simply an impossibility in Muslim terms), nor someone who is prepared to end the relentless Arab Jihad against the Infidel sovereign state of Israel.
Islam is the problem. The Administration prates about "democracy being on the march in the Middle East" (it isn't) and then tells us, and asks us to take it on faith that somehow, in some way, "democracy in Iraq" (which would mean an end to Kurdish aspirations for independence, which should in fact be supported, and if carried out, would inevitably lead to Shi'a rule over Sunnis) will lead to a new country, a New Iraq where people think of themselves, magically, as Iraqis (oh, some do - perhaps as many as 5% on a good day) rather than as Kurds or Arabs, and among the Arabs, as Sunni Arabs or Shi'a Arabs. And that New Iraq, in turn, in defiance of Iraq's entire modern history, will become a "Light Unto the Muslim Nations." Nonsense on stilts.
But there are others, outside the Administration, who do not buy this. And what do they say? Some recognize that there is a problem with Islam, but they still insist on a modifying adjective: not Islam, but "Wahhabi" Islam, or "Salafist" Islam or "extremist" Islam. Again, nonsense on stilts.
And they tell us that because there is this "good Islam" and these "good Muslims" whom we must under no circumstances alienate, it is important not to seem to be troubled by Islam itself, to try to weaken Islam itself or at least the hold it possesses over so many of its adherents, for otherwise there is "no hope." But "no hope" of what? Infidels cannot possibly continue to be confused by the idea that "moderate" Muslims (never adequately defined, or rather, when they are properly defined in a way that causes them to be no threat to Infidels, they simply disappear, do not exist except in infinitesimal numbers). It is important for Infidels to get things straight about Islam. The promotion of the idea that "moderate Muslims are the solution" muddies the waters, obscures what should be clear, and holds out a forlorn hope which can be an excuse for further inaction. This is true especially in Europe, where the indigenous Infidels need to be much more informed, and thus much more alarmed, than they are, with their dreams of "integration" of Muslims, and their dreamy belief in those same "moderates" that hardly exist, or if they exist nonetheless mislead about the nature of Islam and the prospects for change, or if they do not mislead, can at any time metamorphose into "immoderate" Muslims -- prompted perhaps by personal difficulties that no Infidel is likely to discern or be able to prevent.
It is only once Islam as an ideology is understood, when its tenets are understood, when the example of Muhammad (and the life of Muhammad, in every detail) is understood, when the history of Muslim conquest and subjugation of Infidels is understood (without the myth of Andalusia, without the exaggerations about the "great achievements" of Islamic culture that, looked at closely, become those mainly of transmission, of borrowing, and of relying on the fructifying presence of considerable numbers of Jews and Christians during the first few centuries after the initial Muslim conquest.
Then we will get somewhere, and the nonsense now coming out of those in the Administration who wish to continue the folly in Iraq, when Iraq presents the perfect place to exploit the two natural fissures within Islam: the ethnic (the resentment of non-Arab Muslim for the supremacist Arab Muslims, which in Iraq has been expressed in the mass murder of Kurds by Arabs, and the overwhelming desire of Kurds for an independent state, which they deserve, and which would serve Infidel interests) and the sectarian (the growing resentment that Shi'a feel for Sunnis, not only in Iraq, but in Pakistan, in the eastern oil-bearing province of Al-Hasa in Saudi Arabia, in Kuwait and in Bahrain, and of course in Iran itself, a Shi'a state that can be expected to aid fellow Shi'a while Sunnis, in turn, can be expected to aid fellow Sunnis).
Iraq presents a splendid opportunity. Let us not mess it up by continuing to remain there. Every single division within Islam should be exploited, and can be by simply leaving the place and its largely unpleasant and irremediably hostile people (yes, I know about the very nice pro-American bloggers in Iraq, all five or six of them, out of 25 million people. They do not move me nearly as much as do the American soldiers whose lives have been disrupted, or changed utterly when they are wounded, or ended forever).
We want not to "stay the course" if the "course" itself is based on a faulty understanding of Islam. We want to "change course" if by so doing we can achieve our real aims -- which are to contain Islam, to buy time in order to let other Infidels come to comprehend, despite the vast army of Arab hirelings and Muslim apologists (or rather, apologists for Islam, many of whom are non-Muslims) abroad in the lands of the Infidels, and to help create the conditions in which, I will repeat for the hundredth time, the political, economic, social, and intellectual failures of the Muslim lands and peoples, over a very wide area, and for a very long time, can be seen to be directly related to the tenets, to the attitudes, to the atmospherics of Islam itself, or that Islam naturally promotes.
Will no one in Congress stand up and relate the desire to end the misallocation of resources -- of men, money, materiel, military morale, and attention -- not to the goals of appeasers and pacifists, but to those who want us out precisely because the Jihad is a menace, and the menace is world-wide, and the menace will not be mitigated in the slightest by creating, over years and years, a preposterous Light Unto the Muslim Nations in the Land Between the Two Rivers?
Will no one in the military, or in the Pentagon spring for a ticket for J. B. Kelly, or Bat Ye'or, or both of them to come to the Pentagon and explain exactly why Bernard Lewis and his acolytes should not be taken as the last word on Grand Strategy in Iraq or, for that matter, anywhere else in the Muslim world, or in dealing with Muslims in Europe? Not enough money in the budget?
Here, we'll take up a collection. Those of us -- the growing numbers – who are appalled by the idiocy and the waste now on display in Iraq, and the failure to recognize the real opportunity for demoralizing, splitting, and containing Islam that Iraq presents, will turn our pockets inside out, if only such people can be given a hearing.
{Posted June 24, 2005 07:30 AM]
Postings under the June 24, 20005 thread:
a.
"Unfortunately, there will be a victor that rises out of this chaos, and it will likely be the most ruthless, most extreme, blood-soaked, head-chopping, mujahideen factory of the al-zarqawi stripe..."
---from a posting above
If American troops are removed, this does not mean that the American government cannot interdict from the sky all sorts of movements by various factions in Iraq. It does not mean that the Kurds cannot be supplied with equipement and aid, in order to help create an independent Kurdistan which will
1) be a much more solid ally, because the Kurds will know they can never rely on any brand of Arabs to support or protect them, nor Turks, or Persians
2) will raise in the world's consciousness, and in the consciousness of non-Arab Muslims, the whole matter of Arab Muslim mistreatment and denial of cultural and linguistic rights, to non-Arab Muslims. This will reverberate, if properly made much of, among Berbers in North Africa (and in France). It will reverberate among those Malaysian Muslim intellectuals who have already been complaining about the "arabization" of Malaysia, the aping of the ways of 7th-century Arabia by 21st-century inhabitants of the Malay peninsula. The same resentments can be found, or fostered, by those who stand to gain (i.e., Infidels and would-be Muslim "reformers" or "moderates" such as they are) in Indonesia.
Finally, in Pakistan, whose benighted inhabitants have Islam, and only Islam, as their identity (with every third Pakistani claiming to be a "Sayeed" or descendant of the Prophet's family -- as if every third American, including immigrants from China and India, were to insist that he, or she, was a direct descendant of people who had been on the Mayflower or the Arbella), there may be some for whom an independent Kurdistan -- and all the discussion that it might engender about Islam as a vehicle for Arab supremacist ideology, will be valuable in dividing, weakening, demoralizing those who work to spread Islam, and to make it superficially palatable, and supposedly "universalist," in its appeal. And even others who have suffered in a different way from their encounter with "the Arabs" -- those Iranians who may need a little help painting Islam as an Arab trojan-horse, the "gift" that Firdowsi resisted linguistically, the "gift" that has helped make the superior civilization of the Persians sink to the level of the "desert Arabs" (a theme that can be exploited, and should be, by Iranians wishing to contain Islam within their own country, once the monstrous Islamic Republic is overthrown or collapses).
So the notion that we should withdraw, and then do nothing, is false. Before the invasion of Iraq, a no-fly zone was enforced over the Kurdish areas. The American military now knows far more about the terrain, the people, the entire area we call, and pretend to believe exists, the nation-state of Iraq.
We are far more likely, as well, to enjoy the spectacle of those in Iraq dealing with the Zarqawi forces with far more ruthlessness than anything the Americans now practice, or ever conceivably could practice. Why not let the Shi'a militia, now straining at the leash, and far more able to deal with Sunni enemies in precisely the way that will hurt (including counter-bombings), to act as they will? We have the power, in the end, to keep whatever side we deem most threatening from taking over -- and that side is probably that of the Sunnis.
It should be akin to the Iran-Iraq War, or the proxy war between Nasser's Egypt and Saudi Arabia in the Yemen. From our point of view, rightly understood, such wars should be allowed to go on, or at least simmer, forever. And the only way that can happen is if we leave. And if we don't leave, the continued misallocation of resources will cause the public to lose heart, and not to wish to continue to fight against the Jihad in other places, with other means -- as to protect Europe from its own folly, and the criminal negligence of a policy that poermitted millions of Muslims to settle in the Lands of the Infidels, in other words behind enemy lines -- in the view of the Muslims themselves, but not, alas, in the view -- as yet -- of the naive, confused, scared Infidels of Europe, who keep hoping that what is staring them in the face somehow just can't be true. But it can. It is.
[Posted by: Hugh at June 24, 2005 10:34 AM]
b.
"Too bad some people think Islam can be defeated by intellectual activities alone."
--- from a posting above
If that is meant to be a comment on the article above, it is misplaced. The article, like others that have appeared here (often as postings) note s that qital, or combat, is but one of the instruments of Jihad, and by far the least effective. The money weapon, Da'wa (the Call to Islam) aimed at discrete and carefully-identified groups of economically or psychically marginal, and demographic conquest from within (which is occurring in Western Europe)are all part of the picture, and need to be dealt with. The belief that what causes Muslim hostility, what explains 9/11 and a thousand other attacks, and attacks on non-Americans, and non-Christians and non-Jews, all over the globe, somehow has to do either with "poverty" or with the misrule within Muslim states, is easily shown to be false. It is a false proposition.
There are important tasks that can only be accomplished by military means. There is no reason to further delay destruction, even part-destruction, of the Iranian nuclear facilities, spread out as they are. And if one or two raids or missile attacks do not work, they should be continued for as long a period, over as wide an area, as possible. And there should be no ridiculous reliance on the idea of "regime change" or fear of causing the Iranians to "rally around the regime." That doesn't matter; some will, some won't. What matters is to destroy Iran's capacity to manufacture nuclear weapons. Their leaders, or some of them, are clearly willing to use those weapons. They may be willing to hand them off to others. And this attack on Iran's weapons facilities should not be put off even if the regime there starts to crumble. Iran will still be a Muslim country. It will, potentially, revert to type -- and Infidels cannot allow any spread of major weaponry to any Muslim state, or by extension, to any Muslim group or groupuscule. So there is no need to wait-and-see what happens to the regime -- that would be too late.
But what about Pakistan, you will say? What about it? They have a small number of weapons. The Americans and Indians together are not without the means, should it be necessary, to rid Pakistan of that arsenal. It might be done through non-military means. It might be done, without the Pakistani population even knowing about it. It might be done by threatening the complete collapse of the Pakistani economy. There are a thousand things that can be attempted, that have not been.
And as far as other uses of military force, repeatedly here it has been suggested that a small American force could reasonably be sent in to protect the black Africans in the Sudan, both in the southern Sudan (as soon as the government reneges on the farcical "treaty" it was forced to sign, and that it will violate whenever it thinks it can) and in Darfur, where non-Arab and hence inferior Muslims, not-quite-Muslims in Arab eyes, are being raped, pillaged, and murdered. The smiling faces of those greeting the American rescuers would be a sharp contrast to the sullen and whining faces of many Iraqis, who are not grateful, but hostile, to the Americans -- and were so, utterly predictably, after the first few days of exhilaration and relief. The inculcated hostility to Infidels promptly set in, and no amount of American generosity, which under the circumstances (Iraq has the second-largest, or perhaps even the largest, oil reserves in the world, and should be able to borrow against future earnings, not take money from the long-suffering American taxpayers who, strange to say, have a few needs of their own, and do not have such oil reserves to rely on, and most of them, in fact, actually have to work for a living).
It is illegitimate to misstate the arguments for leaving Iraq above. It is illegitimate to say that we will not, from outside Iraq, be able to interdict weaponry, to supply weaponry, to otherwise heavily influence the military course of events. But without the huge expenditures, and without the continued loss of morale, as reflected not only in public opinion polls, but in the enlistment rates. There is only so much damage that the army can be expected to inflict on itself, as its officers and men gallantly attempt to make a democratically silk purse out of the sow's ear of triple-vilayetted Iraq. It can't be done, and the attempt is wasting our resources, physical and immaterial, without which the very long, possibly endless, effort to contain Islam cannot be properly conducted.
The language employed by our rulers is a false language, a misleading language. It is not a "war on terror" but a war of self-defense against the Jihad, against all who believe in the Jihad to spread Islam, by whatever means, with whatever instruments, come to hand. The language of "winning the war on terror" is equaly bad, or perhaps even more so. It gets hopes up. It gives people short-term expectations. It frames the situation incorrectly. It deludes even those who have a hint, a glimmer, that they themselves are not stating things correctly -- but in official Washington, who dares even to begin to state things properly?
Those who are loyal to the "mission" and who parrot the official line are not being loyal to the officers and especially the men who may be properly impressed with their own efforts, with the American efforts, but have also taken a good look at how the Iraqis behave, or how those people whom we too lazily call "Iraqis" but are, in the first place, Kurds and Arabs, and Sunni Arabs and Shi'a Arabs (and some Chaldeans, and some Turcomans), and whose interest is in helping themselves, and their families, and their tribes, and then if there is anything left over, to their own ethnic or sectarian group, but not to a phantom called "Iraq" -- whatever largesse, and it has been quite a spectacle, that bonanza, the Americans keep doling out and the ungrateful but occasionally smooth talking Iraqis (see Jaffari's little performance in Washington today) Iraqis keep pocketing, and acting as if it is theirs by right, and has to keep coming.
Not the Seven Percent "Solution" -- but the Somalia Solution. That would be ideal. The Americans came to end the violence, to bring food aid, to clamp down on the warlords. They were attacked; some killed, bodies mutilated and dragged through the streets, to the great delight of so many people in Mogadishu. The Americans retaliated. They killed hundreds. And then they left.
And what happened? Somalia disintegrated into chaos. It is now a hell-hole. It is also no threat to Infidels. It simply is. One need not advocate a descent into chaos, or do anything to encourage it. But nor should American efforts continue to be so skewed in concentrating on helping what has always been a doubtful nation-state, and is far more unlikely a state now, after decades of Sunni persecution of Shi'a (and mass murder in 1991), and Arab persecution and mass murder of Kurds. There are some reasonably good people -- Kanan Makiya comes to mind. But it is a question of how many, and how much power they have, and whether they share the Infidel view that Islam itself helps to explain the despotism which, now using modern technology, has metamorphosed into something far more intrusive and unpleasant for the Muslim subjects of Muslim governments. How many Muslims, even the "moderates," even the quasi-not-quite-ready-to-apostasize Muslims, are willing to connect the absence of free and skeptical inquiry in Islam, the habit of mental submission, the imprimator of approval given to despots as long as they are Muslims, the example of Muhammad, whose own rule, taken as a model, was not that of a parliamentary democrat. For that matter, how many Muslims, even "moderates" or quasi-not-quite-ready-to-apostasize Muslims, are able to see the connection between the inshallah-fatalism that Islam encourages (even the Muslim phrases and allusions that, in every conversation, constantly reinforce the "islamic" nature of everyday life, lest anyone forget) and the failures of Muslim economies, and the grotesque reliance either on oil wealth (for which nothing was done to deserve), or on the amounts of foreign aid that can be extracted fro Infidel countries, and that is regarded by Muslims as their un-interruptable due (and the American government, especially with malevolent Egypt, has internalized this preposterous Egyptian attitude, as if it is simply unthinkable to cut off entirely this aid which should never have been given to Egypt, or to any Muslim country or group, in the first place).
Everything is finite. Money, soldiers, the weapons of war, the morale of those soldiers, and would-be soldiers, and the families of those soldiers. Finite, too, is the attention and understanding of the Infidels throughout the Western world. This is a chance to exploit the situation in Iraq not for the benefit of the locals, but for our own benefit. We have done quite enough, spent quite enough, on those locals. And the smiling Jaafari, uttering a few words about the "blood of Iraqis and Americans" being blent together, possibly a phrase that helpful Americans suggested he say, should be taken with a grain of salt. This is a man who belongs to an Islamic party, who believes firmly in Islam, and who does not have a soft spot at all for Infidels.
But if he can keep those Infidels there, handing out money, fighting the Sunnis for him, taking casualties, wearing down the materiel of the American army (what does Jaafari care?) and the morale of American soldiers (what does Jaafari care about American soldiers, and their well-being? Nothing at all.), he will even utter phrases that sound good, and should be taken with the granary full of salt that they deserve.
Oh, there is one problem. And that problem is this: if and when the American government decides to leave, realizes that what has been suggested here makes sense, it will be able to frame the matter delicately.
Here, let's make it easy. Let's write the speech ourselves:
[here follows a speech to be delivered by Bush]
"My fellow Americans. We can all be proud of what has been accomplished in Iraq. Our soldiers have liberated an entire country. They took out a ruthless regime, that had been in power for 35 years, and that had murdered a large number of the citizens of Iraq. That regime was prepared to stay in power for another 35 years. But it is gone now, and Saddam Hussein sits in a Baghdad jail, waiting for Iraqis themselves to subject him to the rule of law, and the just punishment he deserves.
No one else could have removed the burden of Saddam Hussein from off the backs of those ordinary Iraqis, who want freedom as much as we do. Because everyone in the world wants freedom, the freedom to think the freedom to vote, the freedom to speak out about everything. We have stood by the Iraqis. Our soldiers and civilians have built and rebuilt a hundred hospitals. They have built thousands of schoolrooms. They have outfitted those hospitals with modern equipment, and given those schools not just a fresh coat of paint, but desks and chairs and blackboards, so that little Iraqi children, too, can learn the way our children do, the way all chidlren want to do.
You've seen, I've seen, we've all seen those pictures of American soldiers handing out the candy and the soccer balls to those smiling children. Those smiling faces do not lie. Those smiling faces show that we have millions of young friends made in Iraq, children who will grow up to remember those tall soldiers, with those ready smiles, and the memory of those soccer balls and candy will remain with them always.
And we have done more. We have repaired or rebuilt power grids. We have built roads. 4.5 million Iraqis who never had potable water before, have it now -- thanks to the Amrican soldiers and civilians.
And along with building the physical structure of Iraq, we have helped create a modern society. We have brought democratic ways, ways which are new to the region, ways which some people, some naysayers and nervous nellies keep telling us that Muslims would never accept. Well, there were those naysayers and nervous nellies. And we could have answered them. But we didn’t.
Instead, the good people of Iraq, marching one by one, and in groups, toward those polling places, each person having, in a sense to dodge a bullet in order to cast a ballot – well, that wasn’t our doing. It was theirs. And they showed, those Iraqis, as they bravely cast their ballots, one by one, for their individual choices, that democracy is a yearning in the hearts of everyone, whether they wear shoes or sandals, whether they wear desert robes or business suits, dresses or other garb.
It wasn’t us who created the new rebirth of freedom in Iraq. We just got rid of the dictator, and helped create the conditions for democracy. And it is the Iraqis who’ve done all the rest. No one can fail to be stirred by the sight.
Of course, we helped during those elections. We stood guard. And we helped as a new government was patiently assembled. And we continued to conduct our operations against the terrorists who are so terrified of democracy, because they know that when the good people of Iraq speak, they will speak as one voice against those same terrorists, who do not represent anything but themselves, and certainly not the great religion of Islam.
And as that government was chosen, and deals made, some people here might have gotten a little patient. But anyone who knows how a real democracy works, or even how a political primary works, knows the kind of friendly wheeling and dealing, the kind of horse-trading that people in my part of the country know is part of life. And that’s what the Iraqis did. They learned how to compromise after the election, how to horse-trade. Why, maybe I should have invited Prime Minister Jaafari down to the Crawford ranch, and then we could both have seen some horse-trading in places nearby. I think he’d get as much of a quick out of it as I do.
And we didn’t stay just for that. We decided we should stay until they had written their constitution. Well, it’s not so easy to write a constitution. Ask James Madison. Or Thomas Jefferson. Even our Founding Fathers knew it wasn’t going to be easy. It took them time. So let’s not be critical of those Iraqis, because they took time.
And some people say that the Constitution shouldn’t have recognized the Sharia as the model for legislation. Some people say that the Sharia is just a kind of Islamic law that our soldiers should not have fought and died for. Well, all I can say is – last I looked, Iraq was a Muslim country. Why shouldn’t they want Islamic law as a model for legislation? I mean, wouldn’t it be strange if they didn’t? Let’s not get too anxious right now. Let’s wait and see where this is going.
Well, democracy is on the march. Once it gets going, its hard to stop. Its going gangbusters in Iraq. And so now it is time for Iraq to stand on its own two feet. The Sunni and the Shi’a, the Kurds and the Arabs – those are the two feet, or this two kinds of two feet, which makes four feet, that this new Iraq will stand on.
In a way, I kinda feel like the Marshall in the Old West who comes in to town, and clears out the bad guys, and then straightens things out, and then gets back on his horse, and heads out of town. And the townspeople are grateful, and they set right to work, putting their town – that before the bad guys came, was doing just fine – right on course.
It is now time for the good people of Iraq to be just like those townspeople. We are riding out of town. We have other places where people need help. We have done our bit. And now the good people of Iraq, with their new freedoms, and their new elections, and their new constitution just ready for approval, can take over completely. No guest should outstay his welcome, not even in the famously hospitable Middle East. It is time to go.
So I announce today that American forces will pull out of all cities and villages, and by the fall of 2005, the troop strength will decline to 50,000, and then, by January 1, 2006, a minimal force of 20,000 troops will remain in the Western desert, near Syria – but only with the express agreement to fund such troops by the Iraqi government, borrowing against future oil revenues, and only until May 1, 2006, at which point all troops will be out of Iraq. We have cancelled or transferred to non-American contractors a series of undertakings that the Iraqi government has informed us it does not wish to have, if it has to pay for them itself. But as you can well understand, we have already spent nearly $300 billion on Iraq and Afghanistan, and things have to change. I’m sure the American taxpayers will be glad to hear of this.
There is time to “stay the course” and time to “change the course.” The ship’s captain who doesn’t notice an iceberg, or a blinding sandstorm, isn’t a very good ship’s captain. Well, I want to be the best ship’s captain I can be. I’m staying the real course, the course of the anti-Jihad. And I and Vice-President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condi Rice all agree – it now makes a lot more sense for us to leave Iraq, than to stay.
May God Bless America, and all those who truly wish America well, in Iraq and elsewhere.
Goodnight.”
[Posted by: Hugh at June 24, 2005 01:27 PM]
c.
"Also, have you thought about the long-term ramifications of how the world, including families of Military men and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice in Iraq, will view such a move? Leaving Iraq in a state of chaos will only embolden the Jihad Squad and provide the wahabis with years of propaganda. They will spin this American withdrawal...or more aptly--surrender--as a humiliating defeat for us. Defeat."
--- from a posting above
O no they won't. In fact, when it is clear that the American forces are leaving, and it is clear that they are doing so not in defeat but out of a new realism, a new and far more cunning understanding of what needs to be done, the forces of the Jihad, and all their supporters, will be horrified. Who do you think will be screaming loudest about how the Americans cannot do this, cannot avoid their responsibilities, must stay to help Iraq because, as that idiot Tom Friedman liked to say in one of the memorable examples of his idiotic phrasemaking (so attractive, apparently, to those audiences of businessmen who believe him to have special insight and authority, and think nothing of paying $45,000 -- his horrifying going rate -- to hear his platitudes and shallow plongitudes), "We broke it, we fix it."
No, we did not "break" Iraq. Iraq never really existed. Ask Gertrude Bell, or see her letters. Read Philip Ireland's 1937 book on Iraq, reprinted in 2004, which is still one of the best books on the situation. Read Elie Kedourie. Iraq, pace Bernard Lewis, was always a preposterous concoction, put together out of three Ottoman vilayets (Mosul, Baghdad, Basra), for various reasons. In Mosul there were considerations involving the Assyrians, who had previously fled the Turks (you know how the Turks treated the Christian Assyrians, and Armenians, and Greeks, and other non-Muslims, don't you?); Basra in the south was included becuase the Government of India (that means the British authorities, despite the name) wanted Basra as a bread-basket on the sea route from Blighty to India.
And since modern Iraq was founded, since the 1933 massacre of the Assyrians, since the "Farhud" or pogrom against the Jews in June 1-2, 1941, since the pro-Axis coup and then the counter-coup, and the palace plotters, and that celebrated "strong man" and hero of a thousand would-be coups Nuri es-Said, since the farce of CENTO, and the 1958 coup (where the "strong man" tried to escape dressed as a woman, and his mutilated body was dragged through the streets of Baghdad, to the delight of spectators), the coup in which the young Faisal was killed, and then the latter coup in which Qassem was killed, and then the resistible rise of Saddam Hussein, and the hanging of innocent Jews (and a Christian or two, just to remind them to obey) as "Zionist spies" in the main square of Baghdad, and then the Anfal campaign (named after a Qur'anic sura) of mass murder against the Kurds, which almost no Arabs objected to, and the deliberate arabization of Kurdish cities and lands, and the campaign to wipe out the southern marshes and with them, the Marsh Arabs, and the campaign of mass murder of Shi'a in the south and.... well, you get the idea. There was no Iraq to "break." It was a monstrous place, politically. And all that talk about the "large well-educated Iraqi middle class" -- well, that is only by comparison with other, even more benighted though often less violent, Arab countries. That's the real Iraq as it was, and is, and will be. And it is not our job, and certainly not right now, when all efforts have to be bent to rescue Europe from its own folly (and if we could, Israel from Sharon's folly of withdrawal), to make Infidels aware of what Islam's tenets are all about, and what the history of Islam demonstrates conclusively, and then to create the conditions in which Muslims themselves will have to begin to ponder the unpalatable fact that the political, economic, social, and intellecutal backwardness, and failures, of Muslim countries, are directly attributable to the tenets of Islam, and the habits of mind, including the habit of submission to authority, that encourage despotism, and the inshallah-fatalism that makes indolence so common, and creates a desire to live off of oil wealth or the jizyah of Infidel foreign aid (which is taken for granted, and not the object of gratitude -- the Infidels "owe it to us" as Jaffari's little remark at the press conference today showed in parvo).
"Defeatism"? The surest way to cause real defeatism is to fail to make real use of, to exploit, the fissures that Iraq presents. And that can only be exploited by our withdrawal.
I do not like being told that I do not know the "real situation" in Iraq, when I have close relatives who have served there, friends who have served there, and others who have managed to contact me, and agree with me. I have simply read Bell, Ireland, Kelly, Kedourie, and a hundred others. History matters. Islam matters. These explain behavior. These explain attitudes, that cannot disappear. These explain the real nature of Iraqi society, and what is going on -- which bears little resemblance to the sentimental nonsense about everyone "wanting freedom." Oh no they don't. And where they get it, does not imply that they will hate the Infidels any less, or drop their support for Muslim goals.
There are a hundred things that could be done contemporaneously with an American pull-out. Let the attack on Iran proceed without delay. Let the seizure of southern Sudan and Darfur be considered. Let the bombing of Al-jazeera, and the jamming of all such Der-Stuermer-cum-Tass propaganda outlets, be threatened, or mysterious accidents happen to satellites, if such is possible. There are many things that can be done.
And if they are not done, the Republicans will lose the election, and those who replace them will, in any case, promptly remove those troops but not, as I argue, as part of a considered anti-Jihad strategy (I am still waitiing for a new Henry Jackson to appear -- if you espy him, let me know), but as real defeatism. The presidential primaries are only two years away. Is that what you want? A mess, and real defeatism, or an intelligent exploitation of the situation, based on a knowledge of Iraq, and a knowledge of what the war is -- and it is not, or should not be, a "war on terrorism."
If that isn't clear, you have come to the wrong website.
[Posted by: Hugh at June 24, 2005 03:15 PM]
d.
"I suspect the 'Somali-solution'... would be the same as when the West left Afghanistan to themselves.."
-- from a posting above
No, it would not. What makes you think the entire Western world is incapable of learning from its past mistakes? Never again will we be as lax as we were with Afghanistan, and the Taliban which was, as you know, created by and supported by "friendly" Pakistan (shall we invade Pakistan? No. We have other ways to control or handle the situation in Pakistan, and I merely suggest that those ways, or other ways that do not involve American soldiers directly on the ground, can be employed. Failures of imagination and calculation lead to unnecessary wasting of American lives and American money. Failures to identify the enemy properly lead to wasing of lives and money as well.
We saw what happened in Afghanistan. We now know that we must constantly intervene, but not necessarily with ground troops, or at least with American ground troops, to incessantly disrupt enemies -- and those enemies are more likely to be dangerous to us right smack in Saudi Arabia, or Egypt, with functioning though corrupt governments, then in Somalia or places like that. Have we learned nothing? Are we not to learn that the ideology of Islam is the problem?
The focus cannot be so maniacally on terrorism. For Muslim terrorism will be as strong as Islam. We have to weaken, demoralize, divide the Muslim world. This can be done. We have to educate Infidels, or to create situations where Infidels will educate themselves. Withdrawing from Iraq, even as such withdrawal is couched in terms that seem unexceptionable, and that seemingly have nothing to do with a grand and many-pronged strategy against the forces of Jihad (i.e., of Islam for the real believers, of whom there are many), will promptly lead the real defeatists and appeasers to howl in protest.
How can we, how dare we? We took a perfectly wonderful and solid country, Iraq, and now we are leaving it in shambles. How can we, really?
Crap, all crap. To be dismissed without more. Meanwhile bring the troops home. Start talking and talking, about the Jihad. Deprive Iran of its nuclear weapons. Tell the Iraqis to ask the rich Arabs to cancel those debts they promised Baker they would, but so far appear not to have done so (remarkable silence about those intra-Arab debts, long after the Infidel lands were persuaded by the United States to cancel nearly $100 billion in Iraqi debts - a present from the Infidels to the Muslims of Iraq. How nice. Perhaps fellow Muslims will finally follow -- but if they don't, tell Jaffary and Company to go knocking on their door, not on ours. We've had it.)
Seize the southern Suden if the opportunity presents itself. If a movement of Christian Nigerians to break away from the northern Muslims should arise, this time do not abandon a new Biafra to the fate of the old one (the "Jihad" of which Col. Ojukwu spoke). Everywhere, befriend non-Muslim states, encourage black African Christians, and oppose whatever helps to make Muslim power, the Muslim influence, the Muslim presence in the Lands of the Infidels stronger. Make it weaker. Make it hard to be a Muslim behind enemy lines, not easy. It can be done, and perfectly legally.
In Europe, do what was done in the Cold War. Supply financial support to those who write the truth about Islam. Support radio stations and satellite channels that are run not by "nice" Muslims, but by ex-Muslims, apostates, defectors from Islam. They are the truest informants. They are not bound by filial piety, or inhibited by embarrassment. They will not, in the end, steer us wrong, as even "nice" Muslims in government service (see the "report" such as it is, of Lt. Aboul-Enein -- an exercise rather in ignorance, one suspects, rather than deliberate misinformation, for Aboul-Enein, whose report was sponsored and distributed by the Army War College, makes statements about Islam that are wrong, and if believed, dangerous.
There is so much to be done. Sit down yourself, and you think of things. I can think of a dozen or two dozen more, but I will not publish everything here. Think of all the ways that the Communist threat was parried. Think of all the clever tricks played on the Nazis during World War II. Are we dumber than we used to be? I don't think so. It just takes time to adjust, time to come to the realization that something that we too easily call a religion can also be a mortal threat to our political and social understandings, and to our physical safety. But people are learning. Let's make that learning curve just a bit steeper, shall we?
A free Kurdistan, internecine warfare between Shi'a and Sunni -- both can only help us, and harm thopse who are taught to hate us, and many of whom, it has become apparent, have been very attentive students indeed.
[Posted by: Hugh at June 24, 2005 03:53 PM]
e.
I disagree. While one can ignore any remark, by anyone, from Ward Churchill to Winston Churchill, for which no evidence, logic, or articulate argument is offered (we can all agree that the former never offers the any evidencde, logic or articulate argument, and the latter often did), I think the Muslim poster in fact, if read properly, reveals a kind of fearful bravado, a worry that my sensible suggestions for combattinig the Jihad properly, through both a husbanding and a more intelligent deployment of resources, and that if this misallocation continues, people who should not lose heart, but gain understanding of Islam and gird themselves, will fail to do so, and trivial Iraq may be trivially improved, while Europe steadily islamizes, the chance to create a non-Arab Muslim sovereign state which might inspire other non-Arabs (e.g., the Berbers) toward such moves, will be lost, and the American soldiers would be risking and in some cases losing their lives to narrow the Sunni-Shi'a fissures rather than to withdraw and allow them to widen.
I think the tone, and the contents, of that Muslim poster show someone who doesn't know what to make of my arguments, does not know how to deal with them, actually knows that they are true, and because they are true dangerous to his cause, and he devoutly hopes that no one will take them seriously.
I know, to a certainty, what it is that the war-planners knew about the nature of Iraq and the nature of Islam. I know whom they relied on, and whom they rely on still. I know how little some of them know, and the embarrassed obstinacy, and the cliches, that they keep repeating. They can deal with the appeasement and nonsense from the left. They cannot deal, in any way, with those who point out how ineffective and how wasteful, and how unimaginative, is the current "strategy," and the current refusal to define the threat correctly, nor to consider the many other steps that must be taken.
Would an Administration that thoroughly understood the menace posed to the Western world by the admission of Turkey to the E.U. continue to support, and even apply pressure, to get the members of the E.U. to support such admission? Would an Adminitration that was familiar with Oriana Fallaci, Bat Ye'or, Yvan Rioufol, Anne-Marie Delcambre, Jean-Paul Charney, Magdi Allam, Alain Finkielkraut, Alain Besancon, Charles Moore, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Pavel Kohut, Geert Wilders, and a good many others who should be enrolled in an anti-islamization campaign as well-financed and well-publicized as the anti-Communist campaigns that America financed in the late 1940s and early 1950s in Europe -- would such an Administration continue to press on behalf of a Turkey that is transiently Kemalist and "secular" and permanently Muslim, with all that that implies?
Would an Administration that understoood that though the ideology of Jihad is a permanent and central feature of Islam, that cannot be interpreted away, the wherewithal to conduct Jihad depends very much on OPEC oil money, and that every effort should be made, an effort not left up to the so-called Free Market (did the "free market" produce the Manhattan Project of Fermi? Los Alamos? The bombs dropped from the Enola Gay and the plane over Nagasaki -- all the result of the free market?). Anyone who truly was alarmed by the world-wide onslaught of Islam, and particularly within the Infidel lands, would have an energy policy that would combine conservation, and high taxes on gasoline (had these been imposed, and increased incrementally, from October 1973 on, it is we who could have saved a few trillion dollars in the recapture of oligopolistic rents, but everyone, in both parties, apparently did not understand Saudi oil policy, and kept thinging they would "do us favors" when, as an article in Policy Review by Douglas Feith showed long ago, Saudi Arabia's pricing strategy has always been that of a rational economic actor, at any point in time attemptin g to maximize the total value of current Saudi production and of the reserves that happen to lie under the sand of Saudi Arabia).
Though I have taken care to answer, at great length, every objection made on this thread, there are those who still cannot bear my arguments, and I take that as a tribute. Those objections worry. They alarm. They do not come from the left. They accept the menace of Islam. They argue that the Administration fails to recognize fully that menace, and fails further to recognize the unique opportunities to divide Islam, or the Islamic peoples, through an exploitation of the Iraqi situation that can only be undertaken by leaving, not staying in Iraq. They dislike my refusal to join in urrah shouts about how wonderful it is to "stay on course" when I think the "course" is silly and self-defeating -- and that does not make me a defeatist. They don't like to be reminded that all resources are finite, and that those resources -- whether it is soldiers, or war materiel, or money, or the morale of both soldiers and civilians that must be maintained at a high level for the decades (at least) that will be needed to thoroughly constrain Islam (unless one sees nothing wrong with it, unless all one really worries about is some so-called "war on terror" -- in which case, Jihadwatch is not your cup of tea, and perhaps you will prefer reading some of those Bright Young Conservative Things who swan about Washington, with a blonde on the arm, and the conviction that we must not only "stay the course" but mustn't "cut and run" and besides, we are "winning" (whatever that could conceivably mean, if we do not exploit the fissures in Iraq that will weaken Islam's appeal in the Infidel world, and weaken Islam's strength as a coherent body).
Let me repost the entirety of one Mohideen Abramsha's post above. Apparently another poster, this one who thinks we can "win" in Iraq (what does it mean to win in Iraq? Stay to rebuild a Muslim country for Muslims, and pay for it all? Stay for a few more years to ensure that those who are defeatists and appeasers will win the primaries and then the election, iin 2008? Watch as more Infidel countries rall all over themselves in confusion and despair, and keep hoping that "integration" will work (the equivalent, within Infide Europe, of the American hopes for Iraq, that somehow Islam can be made okay just as long as the Iraqi government can be kept busy "fixing potholes" -- well, the sinister former mayor of Tehran, as islamically fascistic or fascistically Islamic as they come, was a whiz at fixing potholes and Keeping Tehran Clean, and still had time left over to want to impose the full sharia, and destroy the Infidels. For a good Muslim, there is no such thing as not enough hours in the day, when it comes to hating and harming Infidels).
So here is what Mohideen Abramsha posted:
"Dear Hugh,
Thanks a lot for a very sane advice that the Iraqis be left to themselves to kill each other in their Kurd Vs Arab and Sunni Vs Shia divisions.
Only thing that bothers me is that 14 centuries back the land of Arabia was a collection of warring tribes and wonder of wonders Islam united them.
So, be prepared for a surprise: for all we know, once the occupation is over, the Iraqis might as well integrate.
I very eagerly look forward to Bush & Co obeying your sane advice!
Posted by: Mohideen Ibramsha at June 24, 2005 10:36 AM"
Does that sound to you like someone who is genuinely delighted that I have proposed withdrawal from Iraq? That I have answered a Muslim's prayers? Not to me he doesn't. No, he sounds like someone who wants, through a mixture of crazed bravado and nonsense -- going back to Muhammad "uniting" (by attacking and killing) the Arab tribes of the Hijaz in the 7th century -- and predicting that an American withdrawal would somoehow lead the Sunnis and Shi'a to suddenly unite.
But that's nonsense, and we all know it. And for someone above to take this seriously, and solemnly as some kind of indication that, if a Muslim welcomes my plan (but he doesn't -- its the usual Muslim blague, the bluster that ill-conceals a fear, the real fear that my perfectly sensible, rational, historicallly-based, and logcial suggestions, not one of which over the past three years of constant posting do I feel the need to modify or retract in any way -- a record that may be compared with the predictions, the giddy "democracy is on the march" excitement of so many so-called "conservative" commentators whose idea of being "conservative" is to cheer-lead for things which, if they were being proposed or carried out by Democrats, they would roundly deplore.
Islam is a threat. The Jihad is a threat. It has many weapons. The Islamization of Europe proceeds. Last year George Bush called Karamanlis of Greece and put pressure on him to vote for Turkey's admission to the E.U. -- long after Turkey had denied the American army the right to invade Iraq from the north with one division, and long after the Muslim malevolence of the Turkish press, and of sly Erdogan, was clear to many. As it is, three divisions, not four, took all of Iraq in a few weeks. The Cold War is over. Turkey's bases and listening posts to be used against Russia, its historic enemy, are no longer needed. We have truer, non-Muslim friends in Bulgaria and elsewhere -- countries that have suffered from both the Ottomans, and the Soviets. Turkey will not be admitted, not today, not ever, into the E.U., and the Turks now know it, and they had better get busy blaming not "Christian Europe" but the Arabs who have given "Islam such a bad name." They have no place else to go. And that is why they have muted their enmity and invited critics to Ankara and Istanbul, afddfvnd tried to make nice. It will not work. And that is why we can, with this new reality (that Turkey has to rely on us, unless it wishes to throw in its lot with the hated Arabs, and the Turks will get nothing in return, and not even be allowed to divert the headwaters of the Euphrates), allow a free Kurdistan to be created out of the old vilayet of Mosul, and to forget about offending Turksih sensibilities and interests. It's a new world. The Administration has some people in it who repeat mantras about "democracy" and "freedom" that do not fit the case, and that get in the way of clarity.
They need to start reading about Islam, and about Iraq, and stop relying on their "good Muslim" informants and those charming and plausible, and altogether delightful but totally non-representative representatives of Iraq, from tough Allawi and louche Chalabi to Ambassador Francke, and think not about what America can do for these nice Iraqis who speak English so well, and are soft-spoken, and seem to share the hopes and dreams we all share -- and think carefully about the menace of Islam, and the strengths, and the weaknesses, of Islam, and plan very carefully.
Husband those resources. Deploy them carefully. Prodigality in the service of obstinacy and ignorance cannot be condoned.
[Posted by: Hugh at June 24, 2005 08:02 PM]
f.
One more question for those who take issue with me. Just a yes or a no will do.
Was the Iran-Iraq War a good thing from the viewpoint of Infidels, or a bad thing?
Yes, or No?
[Posted by: Hugh at June 24, 2005 08:20 PM]
Apparently there is a limit to the amount of space one is allotted. Well, let that be a start.
Hugh,
Wow! That's a lot of data to process... It will take quite some time to digest all of that, so let me meditate a couple of hours on what you have posted, before you post the second part of that one. Okay? Thanks.
http://doctorbulldog.wordpress.com
“Was the Iran-Iraq War a good thing from the viewpoint of Infidels, or a bad thing?”
I saw that questions original post.
I was dumbfounded by the answers.
Easy,
Yes.
Hugh your last posts as usual is very long, and l have scanned over it and understand that you chose to take away the money from muslim countries, such as Egypt. all those methods are fine, but you are thinking logically like a "Westerner". you need to understand that muslims only respect "force"/ World Net Daily had article last week (according to Rush) and all muslim terrorist want Amer. to vote Democrat, as the Democrats advocate pull out and that equals defeat. now the muslim terrorist are embolden and understand their resistance caused the great satan to retreat. blah blah.. you see my point? its peace through Victory, everything else is window dressing.
Zena,
You and Hugh are on the same side. Tell me if I am wrong, you are around 23 years old, true? You are the smartest 23 year old I have encountered but look, listen and learn, you are the future. Dont bother arguing with us we have seen it all. Tell your friends, the youth of the free world, spread the word, it is up to you!
Hugh,
I have digested your recommendations, and I see some interesting points you have made.
However, is it too hasty right now to put those recommendations into effect???
I have been keeping track of our troops progress in Iraq. And, I think we are still, albiet marginally, on track to achieving the goals set down by the White House in its 2003 and 2005 reports entitled, "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq (NSVI):"
http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/iraq/iraq_strategy_nov2005.html
Also, I regularly read the quarterly, "Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq" reports that are provided to Congress:
http://www.defenselink.mil/home/features/Iraq_Reports/Index.html
In the most recent report dated August 2006, I see some mildly disturbing trends, however, throughout the reports, I see real progress being made towards the goals outlined in the NSVI reports mentioned previously. For example:
"...the Coalition and the Government of Iraq continued to make progress this quarter, improving the security environment in Fallujah and some parts of northern Iraq.
Although sectarian violence threatens the effectiveness of the Government of Iraqi, terrorists have failed to derail Iraq’s political process, or to widen their political support among the Iraqi people. Polling data continue to show the confidence of most segments of the Iraqi people in the Iraqi Army and their rejection of al-Qaeda’s vision of Iraq’s future."
Please let me know what your thoughts are on both of these reports that I have provided links to.
I know that you will have some interesting observations that I may have overlooked. I look forward to your analysis on this matter.
Cheers,
http://doctorbulldog.wordpress.com
Continued:
June 25, 2005
Fitzgerald: What to do in Iraq (part 2)
Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald continues his reflections on what to do in Iraq with this exploration of the prospects for Iraqi nationalism, on which so many place such high hopes:
There are hardly any people in Iraq who think of themselves first as Iraqis, though every single one of those who does has apparently spoken at length to high American officials.
Iraq was spatchcocked together out of three quite different Ottoman vilayets: Mosul (predominately Kurd before the Arabs had a chance to arabize it), Baghdad (where a Sunni elite, and a Jewish merchant and professional class, existed when the British entered in 1920 -- and guess which group subsequently disappeared?), and Basra, which the India Office insisted be included, because it was seen as a potential breadbasket to supply the forces of the Raj.
In the 80 years since that happened, since Gertrude Bell noted the Shi'a unwillingness to be ruled by Sunnis, noted the mutual dislike of Kurd and Arab, what has happened? Have wonderful things happened that have made Kurds happy with Iraq, and created in them a sense of "nationalism"? Not at all. 182,000 Kurds were massacred by the Arabs under Saddam Hussein, and not a single Arab, including the opponents of Saddam Hussein within, and all the Arabs without, objected -- not a single syllable of protest came. After the fact, a handful of Westernized, sophisticated, and altogether unrepresentative people from Iraq -- a handful so tiny I can only offer one name, that of Kanan Makiya -- seemed to deplore the Arab massacre (for Saddam Hussein's orders were gleefully carried out, and enthusiastically supported, by all kinds of Arabs).
Are the Kurds likely, after this experience, to feel a new "nationalism"? All the evidence goes the other way. The same day as the ballyhooed election, when Shi'a trooped off to do what Al-Sistani told them to do, and the Sunnis stayed away, and the Kurds voted, those same Kurds also held a referendum on independence. It was not reported in the United States -- a reference here and there, mention by Peter Galbraith, and that's about it. And in that referendum 98% of the Kurds voted for independence. What does that tell us about the possibilities for the growth of "Iraqi nationalism"?
And the Shi'a? They now may prate about Iraq, and why not? They will rule that new Iraq. They can afford, now, to talk about Iraq, and "Iraqis." Iraq is theirs, if it holds together. They are in the catbird seat, and are ready to dole out to the Sunnis just a little of what was, over the last 80 years (and the percentage of Shi'a in the population has grown -- just as Muslims have far larger families than Infidels, in Iraq as in Lebanon, the Shi'a are simply outbreeding the Sunnis), doled out to them when the Sunnis were in control.
And the Sunnis? They only want an Iraq they can rule, or at the very least, an Iraq where they will not be left without any oil revenues (and the oilfields are in two places -- the Kurdish or formerly Kurdish lands in the north, near Mosul and Kirkuk, and in the south, among the Shi'a). So in a sense the Sunnis must pretend to like the idea of Iraq because, should it split up, they are the ones who will be left with nothing. But this is not real "nationalism." There is no Iraqi nationalism, whatever a handful of nice plausible bloggers from Iraq would have us believe, or would like to believe themselves.
As returning soldiers can tell you, those who worked closely with people in Iraq, those soldiers quickly came to refer to those people as "Kurds and Iraqis," so different were the Kurds in their attitude toward Americans (who are seen as allies, not enemies, not least because while the Arab identity reinforces Islam, the Kurdish identity offers an alternative to Islam, and undercuts the otherwise totalitarian hold of Islam). And what's more, the soldiers -- the discerning ones, the ones who take in their experience and make sense of it -- quickly realized that the Iraqi contractors and others were not out for Iraq, but demonstrated a fantastic "selfishness" (that is the word I have heard from soldiers), interested only in their own well-being, and after that, in that of their family, and after that, in their tribe, and that was the extent of their loyalty and interest. But even if that somehow were to go beyond the family and tribe to the ethnic or sectarian group, it is impossible to believe that a Kurd or a Shi'a or a Sunni Arab will work for something called "Iraq" and fight for "Iraq" (oh, that won't prevent someone from telling the Americans what he knows they want to here -- they want the Americans to stay, to fight for them, to lavish even more aid and of course, more military equipment on them -- of course they will offer the appropriate jabber about "Iraq").
There is no way to build real "nationalism" in Iraq. Instead, we should ruthlessly exploit the absence of such an identity, and take advantage -- by doing nothing to prevent -- of those natural fissures that stand permanently in the way of a stable, strong nation-state. It won't happen. Why fight it, when allowing Iraq's vilayets to re-emerge is in our interest, and not only in Iraq, but as a way to encourage fissures, and problems for Muslim countries, elsewhere.
We have to stop dreaming about the essential rationality and goodness of the whole wide world, and start calculating just a little bit the way we did in the Cold War, and in World War II. Or have we all become permanently stupid, unable to cast the necessary cold eye on men and events, and world-historical trends that can be used, or misused, in order to weaken and demoralize those who wish us only ill.
The ignis fatuus of a politically and morally healthy Iraqi nation-state, where Kurd and Arab, Sunni and Shi'a, all somehow get along in Rodney King-plea fashion, is being pursued at intolerable cost. It may not seem like a large cost, as Victor Davis Hanson keeps attempting to assure us by comparing it with the losses in World War II. But World War II made sense. The losses led to gains.
The losses in Iraq are in pursuit of a policy that does not make geopolitical sense. It is precisely because Islam, not "Wahhabi" Islam but Islam, is a world-wide problem, and that we must work to diminish all the weapons and instruments of Jihad, that we need to get out of Iraq and let nature take its course there. As long as major weaponry is kept out of Muslim hands (and Pakistan's acquisition of nuclear weapons must never be repeated, and somehow must be undone), and Infidels stop all Muslim migration and oppose every demand by Muslims for changes in the political and social arrangements in Infidel lands, and work to make their own countries Islam-hostile rather than falling all over themselves to "integrate" their Muslim populations -- an impossibility for almost all Muslims, except those who jettison Islam altogether, and they no longer count as Muslims) which will merely provide the linguistic and cultural know-how to better infiltrate, and plausibly conduct Da'wa, among those same Infidels who pay for those lessons in Western languages, and how to pick up Infidel girls, and suchlike absurdities. What do we want -- an army of clever Tariq Ramadans, or do we prefer to have our Muslim propagandists a little less suave, a little more foreign-looking, a little easier to detect?
The danger is that the folly in Iraq will keep the American government from beginning to get a glimmer that it has no stake in this "Light Unto the Muslim Nations" Project, but does have a stake in creating the conditions -- okay, here goes, verbatim, for the five hundredth time -- where Muslims themselves can realize that the political, economic, social, and intellectual failures of Muslim countries and peoples (a recognition that of course the $10 trillion that has gone to OPEC countries since 1973 manages to delay, or prevent) are directly attributable not to the hated Infidel, but to Islam itself.
Something like that may be happening to some people (but not enough) in Iran. It doesn't matter -- we still have to destroy Iran's nuclear capacity. That is a thousand times more important than "staying the course" or not "cutting and running" in Iraq. What are we, schoolboys in a schoolyard, showing we're not chicken, or readers of history, students of geopolitics, observers of the real, as opposed to the imaginary brave-new-world rhetoric about "democracy being on the march" and "our brave Iraqi friends" and all the rest of it.
Spare us, please. If you want to continue to fool yourselves, do it. But don't expect people to sign up for the National Guard or Reserves. Don't expect people to be furious that $300 billion has already been committed -- and what would sums like that do for nuclear and solar energy, to put Saudi Arabia back in the position it so richly deserves?
As more and more people learn about Islam, they will be less inclined to accept the nonsense about it from those who, out of ignorance, or fear of what to do next or how to handle it (this is what many call "denial"). The disaffection of people in Europe for their remote leaders who presumed to tell them what to do is obvious. The same thing may happen here. If one wishes to retain support for a very difficult, and varied, and essentially endless policy of confronting the Jihad in all of its instruments (that means counter-Da'wa, that means in Europe contemplating the necessity, as the Czechs once did, of mass expulsions) then the wrong policies must be jettisoned, not clung to, as soon as their wrongness has become evident.
It is evident. Don't cling out of wounded pride to a policy that costs lives and money and equipment and morale and attention. Don't.
Posted at June 25, 2005 09:43 AM
"I believe that nationalism in Iraq can be created. But it must it must be WELL planned, nurtured, and protected, until the roots take hold, and can survive on its own.
Iraq has been planted. Now it must be nurtured and protected…..."
The state of Iraq was created by Sir Percy Cox and the British in 1920. In the 1920s, as the letters of Gertrude Bell make clear, the Shi'a were already furious at being placed by the British under Sunni rule. In the 1920s, the Kurds were already disturbed. The vilayet of Mosul was included in this Iraqi state, rather than allowing Turkey to retain it, partly because of the Christian Assyrians in the north, who had been badly treated by the Turks (as it happened, they would also be massacred, in 1933, by the Arabs). The vilayet of Basra was included because the Government of India (i.e., the British) wanted it as a breadbasket which could help feed the troops. So there they were, the vilayets of Baghdad, Basra, and Mosul, locked in an artifiical arrangement.
But perhaps it would have worked. Perhaps, if the Arabs had not been Arabs, and Iraq one of the most unpleasant and violent places even by Middle Eastern Muslim standars, the Kurds and Arabs could have made a go of it. But what happened? The Kurds were persecuted. The Arab supremacist ideology that is part of Islam, that is carried by Islam (the Arab names, the requirement that the true Qur'an must be read in Arabic, the insistence that the Message was delivered by Allah to the Arabs, the "best of people," and that the model for all mankind, for all time, was a 7th century Arab, and his views, his words, his way of living, remained that model for everyone. The final draw, for the Kurds, was the mass-murder inflicted on them by Arabs (Saddam Hussein didn't do it himself -- he ordered it done, and many Arabs were happy to oblige), the Anfal Campaign ("Anfal" is the name of a Qur'anic sura). 182,000 Kurds were killed, hundreds of Kurdish villages destroyed. And all during this not a single Arab anywhere, in Iraq, or outside Iraq, and certainly not in the Arab League or in the Arab Press, uttered or published a single syllable of protest -- and later, that is exactly what Kanan Makiya wrote about in his own book. And that was not all that happened to the Kurds. Their oil, the oil that lay under their hereditary lands, was for decades stolen from them, and the revenues taken by the Sunni Arabs -- the same Arabs who helped to massacre them. And those Arabs were also moved in by the government, and went willingly, to arabize the Kurdish cities and villages.
And what do you think has been the reaction of the Kurds? Do you think there is single reason why they, who have a distinct culture, language, and history, and who have suffered dispossession, mass murder, and grand theft of their natural resources, should wish to remain, or could be persuaded to remain, as part of Iraq?
They will not. And they should not. The American government did not publicize the results of a referendum held in Kurdistan the same day as the elections last January. In that referendum, 98% of the Kurds voted for independence. That is what they want. They will not give that up. For now, they bide their time. But it would be very much to the advantage of the Infidel world to help them get that state, which would serve as a model for other non-Arab Muslims (as I have written repeatedly), including Berbers, and even those elsewhere who may bristle at the Arabs. The Iranians who now view Islam as an Arab curse, an import from an inferior and more primitive civilization to a higher one, will wish to couch their anti-Islamic feelings in precisely those terms. The Turks, who now realize they will never be allowed into the E.U. (or at least some of them do) have nowhere to turn to, and need America now, and will simply have to adjust to a free Kurdistan. They have nowhere else to go -- for if they side with the Arabs, they will definitely be kept out of the E.U. (some may think there is still a hope), and will get nothing, as no one who has sided with the Arabs ever has. Just ask all those black African countries that broke relations with Israel, that had had such an extensive and successful aid program to black Africa, after 1967. In return, from the Arabs, the black Africans got -- nothing. Nothing at all.
And what about that Sunni-Shi'a split I continually refer to? Why do those who criticize me think it is good to try to end that split, to make Iraq a shining city on a hill, for the Muslim world? What crazed strategy is this, when the oldest rule of warfare is divide et impera, divide and rule. The Muslims have been successful in splitting Western Europe from America, and that must be undone, and we must do more to split the Muslim world, causing the poorer states to resent the richer ones (by ceasing to give them aid, and forcing them to ask for that aid from the Saudis and others, and the intra-Arab resentments, as the sums felt due will not be forthcoming, can only grow), and the Shi'a to resent the Sunnis which may, if we are lucky, occupy and preoccupy the Muslims for some time -- as it happens, there are important Shi'a minorities right smack in the oil-producing regions of Saudi Arabia, in Kuwait, in Bahrain, and elsewhere. Again, I repeat: was the Iran-Iraq War a good thing from our point of view, or not?
When someone says "I believe nationalism in Iraq can be created" one wishes to ask: given the history of the Arab attacks and murders of Kurds, what will persuade the Kurds to stay in Iraq and become "nationalists"? Given the Sunni persecution and murder of Shi'a, especially but not only during the 35 years of Saddam Hussein's rule, what will persuade the Shi'a to become "nationalists" rather than the triumphalists, who now hold all the cards, and would like to do to the Sunni what was done by the Sunni to them? If the Shi'a now pretend to be "Iraqis" it is only because they make up 65% of the population. They voted, dutifully, in the election not because they had become true democrats, and believes in the Bill of Rights, but because Sistani told them to, and told them who to vote for -- and they are getting exactly what they have wanted, but it is not an Iraqi nation-state, but a government that is mostly Shi'a-controlled, and headed by an Iranian-connected Jaafari who has spent his entire life working for an Islamic party, the ideals of which are dear to him.
And if such an "Iraqi nationalism" were to be created because it is deemed "possible," how long would it take? And how much American money? And how many American soldiers? And how much attention that needs to be given to other things, and above all things, to other aspects of the world-wide expressions of a single impulse - the Jihad that is meant to spread Islam, and the rule of Islam and of Muslims, wherever and whenever possible, by weakening the resolve, by confusing the understanding, by undercutting and challenging sensible measures undertaken for security reasons, all over the Infidel lands. The Muslim groups are running circles around the clouded minds of Westerners. This can't go on.
Would it take ten years? Thirty years? Fifty years? Would it take another $300 billion that might be spent on energy projects to deprive the Saudis and others of the wherewithal to fund propaganda, pay for mosques and madrasas, even perhaps buy a few nuclear weapons from someone in Russia or Pakistan, if not to keep, then to hand off to some Islamic groups for their own pleasure and profit? Or would it take $500 billion, or more?
Shall we give Prime Minister Jaafari what he asked for, yesterday -- a "Marshall Plan" for Iraq, just like the one we, in the West, provided to fellow members of the West after World War II? Has it come to that? Have we allowed Jaafari and other Iraqis to believe that we owe them something, that we do not know that as Muslims they do not wish us well, and cannot wish us well, and that we have already spent a bloody fortune rescuing them from a monster, and the phony speeches, crafted in English by someone possibly in our government, that are so easy to utter and have nothing to do either with what Jaafari or most Iraqis think (they are whiners, they are ungrateful, they are altogether unpleasant and quick to pocket whatever they can get out of the all-too-innocent or willing Americans).
Shall Iraq be our collective Summer Project, our great big Americorps Abroad operation, for the next decade or two?
No, it should not.
I think I will simply repost here something I said in the original article, and that happens to have been posted by someone above:
..."There is no way to build real "nationalism" in Iraq. Instead, we should ruthlessly exploit the absence of such an identity, and take advantage -- by doing nothing to prevent -- of those natural fissures that stand permanently in the way of a stable, strong nation-state. It won't happen."
To me, it sounds even better, makes even better sense, the second time.
[Posted by: Hugh at June 25, 2005 07:43 PM]
Postings:
a.
"As the father of an active duty Marine in and out of Iraq and knowledgeable of the state of affairs, I can say that Mr. Fitzgerald is out of touch. His comments smack of political agenda notwithstanding some of the erudite arguments regarding the cultural contradictions between factions and their histories of conflict."
-- from a posting above
Comments:
1. This business of writing "as the father of an active duty Marine" cuts no ice with me, and is an illegitimate form of rhetorical appeal. A relative of mine, a very close relative, served in Iraq in the most unpleasant part of it. So what? Another relative of mine won the Medal of Honor in World War II. Others have been badly wounded. So what? Anyone, you or I or anyone, can discuss policy in Iraq, and our views are not to be judged superior to, or more deserving to be attended to, than those of intelligent people who have no relatives who served in Iraq, or won Medals of Honor in World War II, and for all I know never had a relative serve in the military ever. It doesn't matter. It doesn't convey expert knowledge. What counts is logic, evidence, and some understanding of the nature of the enemy, the tenets of Islam which inculcate hatred of Infidels, the history of Islamic conquest, and the history of those "model" Muslim states -- i.e., Kemalist Turkey -- that keep reverting to type, i.e. to Islam.
2. What is the "mission" in Iraq exactly? Is it to keep the country together? Why, when it may be far more to our advantage to let it split apart, or at least to let the Kurds split apart, and leave the oil-less Sunnis to scramble and try to make up with, or with the aid of Sunnis outside overwhelm, the equally sinister Shi'a who now want to rule the roost.
If that is the "mission" in Iraq-- which requires us to ignore the nature of Islam, and the specifics of modern Iraq and its makeup -- then a great deal else will be ignored or given less attention than such matters deserve. These include the most frightening possibility or even likelihood, of all -- the islamization of Europe. It includes the existence of people within this country who, being taught by their all-inclusive and pervasive belief-system (which is not merely a religion, but a guide and regulation of everything) to owe their sole allegiance to the umma, the Community of Believers, cannot possibly offer true allegiance to an Infidel nation-state and still be believing Muslims, fully aware of, and adhering to, the tenets of Islam. They don't compute.
We would have to spend money in this "generation" that it would take to create this wonderful new (utterly impossible) Iraq, and hundreds of billions have already been spent. I don't know about you, but I'd rather fight my war against the Jihad without giving money to Muslims, and by being just a bit cleverer in my use of what money is available. The main problem are OPEC oil revenues. The Arabs and Muslims do not have real economies. They make, they produce, almost nothing. Inshallah-fatalism, centuries of reliance on economic exploitation of non-Muslims through the payment of jizya, and now the oil bonanza (entirely unmerited) and the updated or disguised jizya of foreign aid given to practically every Muslim country or group that happens not to sit on millions of barrels of oil -- give by Infidels that is, not by fellow Muslims -- well, that money is used, after the prostitutes and the arms salesmen and the builders of palaces have been paid, to buy armaments, to pay for mosques and madrasas in the West, and to hire armies of apologists and propagandists -- politicians, businessmen, ex-intelligence and sometimes present intelligence agents, journalists, academics, the works. We need not to become "energy independent" (an impossiblity) but to actually diminish Saudi and other Muslim oil revenues. That can be done, but it requires a complete change in the mental makeup of our rulers, and requires them to see that this is a war, unlike any other in both its scope, and in the variety of instruments with which that war is conducted by the enemy, and must also be conducted by us. The view that a "war" means only, or mainly, battlefield exploits needs to be changed. It is wrong, and it is expensive, and it is dangerous. And it is self-defeating.
OPEC oil revenues can only be reduced if we apply the vast sums being squandered all over Iraq, not least in being handed out like confetti to Iraqi "contractors" whose work is often shoddy, and often not even checked (these are not "contracts" but bribes, essentially)-- if we are to ignore all that, and a good deal more, including the evidence of the world-wide Jihad in the Philippines, in the Caucasus, in parts of Latin America (and a great effort at converting Mexicans and others south of the border to Islam, as well as targeted groups -- immigrants and prisoners, for example, within this country), in order to, over a "generation" (what -- 10 years, 20 years -- how long does this crazy and obstinate refusal to see what is at stake, and how resources (men, money, materiel, morale, and attention) must be husbanded and applied with far greater intelligence, specific knowledge (I would love to know who, in the whole damn Pentagon, set to school and read Gertrude Bell, Philip Ireland, and Elie Kedourie, and why no one bothered to consult J. B. Kelly or quite a few others in Europe who have special knowledge to convey, and a record -- an unblemished record -- of seeing right through, and long ago, Saudi Arabia and other Arab and Muslim states. Bernard Lewis is not the last word on the subject, and relying only on his acolytes, or on "good" Muslims (e.g., Lt. Aboul-Enein, whose paper put out by the Army War College was an example of the higher taqiyya/kitman, perhaps -- let us be charitable -- unwitting), who will never be able to bring themselves to tell the full truth about Islam -- and may not even know it if they have grown up outside a Muslim society -- is madness.
[Posted by: Hugh at June 25, 2005 09:33 PM]
b. Bush's speech in Washington with Jaafari present:
"As the leader of Iraq's first democratically elected government in more than 50 years, you are helping to lift your country from decades of fear and oppression."
.......
"The Prime Minister is a great Iraqi patriot, he's a friend of liberty, he's a strong partner for peace and freedom. For more than two decades, he served the cause of Iraqi freedom in exile as a fierce opponent of Saddam Hussein's tyranny."
.......
"this medical doctor now serves his people as he works to build a new Iraq."
.......
"I told the Prime Minister that the American people share his democratic vision for Iraq. I told him of our nation's deep and abiding respect for Islam, for the people of Iraq, and for the potential of the nation that now belongs to them."
........
"today we meet at a critical moment in the history of this proud nation."
What "proud nation"? Iraq is not a "proud nation." It is a collection of warring tribes. The Arabs have killed Kurds and now the Kurds want out. The Kurds have killed Turcomans. The Arabs and Kurds have killed Assyrian Christians. The Shi'a have killed Mandeans. The Sunni have killed Shi'a. The Shi'a have killed Sunni. The history of Iraq is the history of coups and counter-coups, of violent overthrows, and plotting in the palaces, and pogroms against Christians here, and Jews there. Nuri es-Said, the arch-plotter, himself dragged through the streets during the 1958 coup that also killed young Feisal. The coup that then overthrew the first coup. The coup that then overthrew that coup, and ultimately brought Saddam Hussein to power, and led to more bloodshed.
"This proud nation" whose Prime Minister comes, to people he despises as Infidels (or does he not believe in the list of the "unclean" that is at his master Sistani's website?), and asks, almost demands, after several hundred billion dollars have already been expended, for a "Marshall Plan" even though Iraq's debts to Infidel countries (but note: not to fellow Muslim countries) have been completely cancelled, and even though Iraq sits on top of the second-largest oil reserves in the world and could certainly borrow against future revenues --nonetheless, he wants American taxpayers to pay for a Marshall Plan because, you see, Iraq stands in precisely the same relation to America does as did England, France, Italy, and so on.
........
"The Iraqis can take credit from [sic] some extraordinary achievements..."
Ask American officers and men what they think of their Iraqi counterparts and their "extraordinary achievements." Ask those who have been handing out the billions what they think of the "extraordinary achievements" of the Iraqis.
........
"Every step of the way so far, the Iraqi people have met their strategic objectives..."
What? Because the Shi'a knew they were in the majority, and marched off on the orders of the clerics to take control through the ballot-box? Which great "strategic objectives" have these people, dawdling over offices, over who is to get control of what power and what loot (i.e., the oil ministry, the ministry for reconstruction, and so on), managed to meet?
........
I'm confident that the Iraqi people will continue to defy the skeptics as they assume greater responsibility for their security and build a new Iraq that represents their diversity."
"Diversity" -- at this point, possibly the most sickening word in the English language, given the purposes for which it is now invoked all over the Western world. Does this mean that the Sunni and the Shi'a and the Kurds will stick together -- even after the Americans stop protecting them from each other's full vengeance, and also stop handing out billions so that they begin to revert to type?
...........
"They know a free Iraq in the heart of the Middle East will deal a severe blow to an ideology that lives on oppression and fear."
What "ideology" is that, pray tell, that lives on "oppression and fear." Is it Wahhabi Islam? Salafist Islam? Or could it be Islam itself, that seems to exist fairly well all over the Muslim world, but has least malevolent effects, apparently, in the poorest and most ignored Muslim countries, not in the richest ones -- in Mali and Mauritania, rather than Iran and Saudi Arabia.
How will a united Iraq, united through our efforts, our soldiers' lives, our money, "deal a severe blow" to the Jihad --- after 80 years of Kemalism, and every sort of aid from the United States, Turkey is both much more openly Muslim than it was, and precisely to that extent, and because of it, more and more hostile to the United States, its great ally and constant benefactor.
Of course Jaafari will read the script prepared for him. Of course he will tell us how much he values the lives of Americans sacrificed for his country. Guess what? He doesn't mean it. He's lying. He wants to use us, and get our money as well, for his own objectives. That's it. In his exile, he was plotting against Saddam Hussein, but he was plotting as a member of an Islamic Party. Remember Moqtada al Sadr? His father also plotted against Saddam Hussein, and was killed by Saddam Hussein, and so were Moqtada al Sadr's uncles. So what? Does that make Moqtada al Sadr a friend to Americans, or simply a thuggish version of the suaver Jaafari, who has learned, as so many Muslims do (let's not forget what Khomeini did the first year he came to power -- he actually sent a Christman message of good will to Infidel Christians, even though he was already long on record on explaining that the Qur'an says "Kill the Unbeliever" (see p. 11 of "Why I Am Not a Muslim" by Ibn Warraq).
,,,,,,,,,,,
"The enemy's goal is to drive us out of Iraq before the Iraqis have established a secure, democratic government."
Are we quite sure that is the enemy's goal? And aren't there any, among that enemy, who share Bin Laden's view that the economic drain on the United States is a very important part of the Iraqi venture -- and Bin Laden has expressly discussed the economic damage he hopes to inflict on America?
And even if it were the enemy's goal to "drive the Americans" out, are we to craft our policy on the assumption that the enemy always knows exactly what it wants, never makes a miscalculation, and so we must never ever do what they seem to want, or claim to want?
Let me make a prediction. The minute the United States government shows that it understands what has been repeatedly argued here, and begins to withdraw from Iraq, and denies Jaafari his "Marshall Plan," and cuts aid to Egypt, and bombs what it can of the Iranian nuclear facilities, and perhaps makes preparations to seize the southern Sudan if the Sudanese government shows the slightest sign of violating the treaty it signed, and cracks down hard on Muslim immigration and begins to have urgent consultations with European countries on the problem of the "islamization of Europe," and increases its military aid and ties to India, and does a hundred other things to educate its own populace about the theory and practice of Islam -- the minute that happens, there will be shrill screams all over the Arab world, and of course from the worst, most hopelss appeasers all over this country, who will promptly exclaim that "we can't just leave them" and "we owe them something" and "having wrecked their country, we have to fix it up."
Just look at the idiotic editorial in The New Duranty Times today, entitled "Three Things About Iraq," not one of which is true.
The first is: "The [Iraq] war had nothing to do with September 11." This is nonsense. However, the failure of the Administration to somehow make clear that it did not matter whether or not Mohammad Atta met in Prague with some Iraqi agent. It did not matter whether this or that Al Qaeda member had been given refuge in Iraq. What really mattered is this: Saddam Hussein was teh aggressive and well-armed Muslim leader of a Muslim country, and it was perfectly justified to assume that he was, in fact, either in possession of certain kinds of advanced weaponry (so-called WMD) or would soon acquire them -- and because he was the Muslim ruler of a Muslim country, we -- the United States -- given what we now know about Islam, and the possibility not only of regimes, but of figures within regimes, or even groups within countries that are given access by dissidents within that country -- we can never allow WMD to be acquired by any Muslim country. Period. That, however, has not been said, and in its place, the Administration continued to argue about the meeting in Prague, and similar irrelevancies and sillinesses. It is prevented from making its case because of its own inhibitions, and inability to "talk about Islam" slightly obliquely, so that it can do in a way that everyone can understand, but which still leaves, as far as aggressive Muslim groups, a little leeway. The obvious way to do this is to talk about "those who support Jihad" world-wide, and then pretend that you have no idea that Jihad is a central duty of Muslims. In other words, a little disingenuousness is called for. And what will Muslims then do -- explain that you are referring to Islam itself because we all believe in Jihad to spread Islam? They couldn't easily do that, could they?
The second point made by The New Duranty Times is that "the war has not made the world, or this nation, safer from terrorism." Yes, it has. And most of that achievement was attained in the first part of the war, when Saddam and henchmen were rounded up, the Iraqi army dissolved, arms projects uncovered, disrupted, destroyed, and weapons dumps seized, or destroyed. Yes, that was valuable. But that does not mean that continuing to stay in Iraq instead of leaving it to become a different kind of "model to the Muslim nations" -- not the one intended by the administration, but one where Kurds will declare their independence from Arabs (and receive covert, or overt, support from the Americans) and where Shia will deal with Sunnis in a way the American soldiers would never permit themselves, and perhaps others will pile on from outside -- using up men, money, materiel, and morale, only this time all of them will be Muslim men, Muslim money, Muslim materiel, and with the disarray and divisions exposed and widened within Islam, Muslim morale that would suffer.
I will not bother with the third point. But I want to direct the attention of everyone to this statement in The New Duranty Times editorial:
"Of all the justifications for invading Iraq that the administration juggled in the beginning, the only one that has held up over time is the desire to create a democratic nation that could help stabilize the MIddle East."
Actually, that is precisely the worst, the most ill-considered, of all the justifications -- and one which is not only false, but actually does the opposite of what we should be trying to do. In fact, we don't have to do a thing. If we withdraw, the Iraqis may -- doubtfully -- come to some agreement, some permanent standoff among themselves. If that happens, then we can say -- we did it. We removed ourselves, and they are doing what those "brave, etc." Iraqis were supposed to do.
Or, in the alternative, they might be at each others throats, and small-scale civil war would probably end in a pullback of Sunnis and Shi a to their respective regions -- or not. In which case, the Sunni-Shi'a split will attract aid from co-sectarians abroad. Fine. Let the fissures widen.
It is amusing to see that some of my most agitated critics in this thread, who seem to find me such a "defeatist" while I find them inattentive to the larger problem, and the need to base policy on a real understanding both of Islam and of the nature of Iraq, and not what Administration officials continually prate and would have us believe by dint of mere repetition (it will not do; we are not fools; we can study, we can observe, and we can draw our own conclusions about whether or not making Iraq a little more pleasant for its inhabitants is a game worth the candle, while Islam is on the march in Europe and elsewhere).
So those of you who find The New Duranty Times echoing you about how important it is to "create a democratic nation that could help stabilize the Middle East" -- those of who, in other words, who want to see the world in the same way as the kind of people who write the editorials for The New Duranty Timies -- well, welcome to it, lock, stock, and cliche-ridden barrel.
............
Let's have just one more quote from that appalling speech [by Bush] quoted in full above:
"Prime Minister Jaafari is a bold man. I've enjoyed my discussions with the Prime Minister. He is a frank, open fellow who is willing to tell me what's on his mind. And what is on his mind is peace and security for the people of Iraq, and what is on his mind is a democratic future that is hopeful."
This has nothing to do with the real, the cunning Islamist and member of the Dawa Party for decades, this Ibrahim Jaafari.
One doesn't know which is worse: if Bush doesn't mean this nonsense, bu thinks he has to say it and try to convince others that it is true, or if Bush actually does mean this nonsense.
We are not fools. We are not sworn to blind loyalty to Bush and to his policies. He happens to be the President, a man untutored in Islam, who has adopted and pushed and defended beyond all reason policies that make no sense. The menace of Islam is just a bit too important a matter for one to stick with this or that political figure or party.
There are fools to the left, and fools to the right. Both miss the point. Both fail to study and to think. Both are prodigal in wasting our resources, and in ignoring the real threat.
Not a plague on both their houses, or at least not a black plague -- but perhaps something else, a little pertussive distress, a sneezing fit, things like that?
[Posted by: Hugh at June 25, 2005 11:17 PM]
June 27, 2005
Fitzgerald: What to do in Iraq (part 3)
Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald continues his series of interlocking reflections on what to do in Iraq with these considerations of what it would take actually to win there.
What would "winning the war" mean? Would it mean ensuring a unified state, so that the Kurds would have to give up the possibility of a free Kurdistan? But a free Kurdistan would give other non-Arab Muslim minorities -- such as the Berbers in North Africa -- ideas, just the kind of ideas we want them to get. A free Kurdistan would hearten them, and hearten other non-Arabs, and cause Infidels to cease to use that inaccurate and dangerous term "the Arab world" which seems to hand over vast swaths of the earth's land mass to one particular ethnic group, as if Kurds, Berbers, Jews, Maronites (who are Arabic-using but not Arabs), Copts, Druse, Armenians, and a hundred smaller groups, including what remain of ancient peoples or sects (Mandeans, Zoroastrians, and so on) or more recent arrivals (Circassians who form the palace guard for the kings of Jordan, who cannot trust their own Arabs, just as the palace guard of the Assad family consist of Alawites, and even a Christian (Armenian) contingent, but never ever of real Muslims (who would destroy the Alawite regime, not because it is corrupt, but because it consists of Alawites).
And what else would constitute "winning in Iraq"? Presumably, having an Iraqi regime where Sunni and Shi'a sit down like the lion with the lamb, and all manner of things are well. Why is that a desideratum for American, or any Infidel government's, policy? Was the Iran-Iraq War a good thing, from our point of view, or a bad thing? It was a good thing. It should have gone on, or at least simmered quietly, forever. And if the Shi'a in Pakistan, intermittently murdered by the circumambient Sunnis, and the Shi'a oppressed by Sunnis in the eastern (Hasa) province of Saudi Arabia, come to feel that they, too, might be inspired by Shi'a power in Iraq, and furthermore, Shi'a in Kuwait and Bahrain have their hearts swell with pride as the o'erweening Sunni get what, after 80 years of lording it over the Iraqi Shi'a, they so richly deserve (and are left with no oil at all, but will have to rely on caravans bringing in oil from outside, on camels supplied by the tribe of the Jabal Shammar), is that a good thing -- from OUR point of view, which is the only point of view that matters, or is it a bad thing?
And what about the "fixing potholes" theory that some in the Administration cling to? You know, if only Iraq can establish a nice stable regime, after a few thousand other Americans die fighting "for Iraq" (not exactly the Battle Green in Lexington, or the rude bridge that arched the flood in Concord, is Ramadi, or Tikrit, or Fallujah), and the military sustains further degradation of the tanks, and the Humvees, and the helicopters, and the planes, and the size and quality of the Reserves, and the National Guard, and the regular army itself as people leave, or are disheartened, and the better potential recruits cannot be recruited, as they might have even two or three years ago.
Saddam Hussein fixed a few potholes in his time. There are no potholes in Saudi Arabia, where the corrupt Al-Saud family, stealing the country's wealth (wealth that neither they, nor the Saudi population, did anything to create, and nothing to deserve), but no one there has any trouble believing in, paying for, engaging in promoting the Jihad -- that is, the spread of Islam worldwide, the deflecting of attention to what Islam teaches and believes about Infidels, and what the history of Islamic conquest and subjugation teaches Infidels about Believers.
Right now, in grim Iran, after the farce of the election, which was followed by the even greater farce of the run-off election, the candidate who was even worse than Rafsanjani, a certain Mr. Ahmadinejad, emerged the winner. By all accounts, he is as fanatical a Muslim as one could wish -- and now that he is in power, will insist that the work on nuclear weapons proceed full speed, a tous azimuths. And Mr. Ahmadinejad won his support as Mayor of Teheran because he was, precisely, a great fixer of potholes, and of everything else. A man who spent his days tirelessly working to make sure that the city ran, taking care of all those little mundane details that big-city mayors must worry about.
And guess what? Mr. Ahmadinejad not only had time for potholes, but he also had time left over in his busy day, and in his fervent brain, for Islam -- not "Wahhabi" Islam (the kind that some people tell us is the only kind that should worry us, including sufferers from Weiss-Schwartz Syndrome), but plain old ordinary Shi'a Islam, the religion of the Ayatollah Khomeini, and his epigones, and of Shah Abbas in the bad old days, which so many charming, and suave people who have come out of Iran, from Ms. Nafisi to Vartan Gregorian, seem not to realize is the real Iran. The Iran of the "Najis" Infidel who cannot even be allowed to go out into the rain (as Jews could not, for if a drop of water landed on a Jew, and then accidentally fell on a Muslim, that Muslim would be "unclean" -- Jews in this century were beaten to death, in rural Iran, for going out when it was raining) is a lot closer to the views of Khomeini than to the Shah and his relatively enlightened, and comparatively benign, regime.
The "pothole" theory won't wash. The Light-Unto-the-Muslims-Project is a farce. The obstinacy with which a few people repeat self-evident nonsense about Islam and about Iraq, simply because they either
1) have not bothered to study Islam or
2) accept the "higher apologetics" and rewriting of history by Bernard Lewis
3) wish to "stand by their man" Mr. Bush, although if the same kind of nonsense about Islam were to be uttered by a Democratic president they would be the first to deride him
4) sensing that the original attack on Iraq was both rational and justified, are fearful that if they admit that this part of the war is wrong and wasteful, the first part will also be called into question, for apparently they are rhetorically and conceptually unable to separate Iraq War #1 from Iraq War #2.
5) have a sentimental belief in "democracy" without understanding the full meaning of that term in the Western world, which goes far beyond mere head-counting, nor how long it took to develop democratic institutions and attitudes, nor in what way Islam not only teaches obedience to a ruler as long as he is a Muslim, that derides the notion that political or any other kind of legitimacy (in Islam, they are all one) can flow from the people rather than from the will of Allah, and that inculcates an attitude of mental submission, of obedience to authority, in every field and in every way, that is inimical to democracy.
Just as Rodney Stark has demonstrated that modern science not only did not develop in Islam, but in the Christian or Judeo-Christian West, not accidentally, but because Islam views Allah as whimsical, rather than as setting the universe going according to laws that could then be discovered by scientific inquiry, we can posit something else that is fairly obvious: democracy is palpably absent everywhere in the Muslim lands except where, as in Lebanon for a time, there was a near-majority of non-Muslims who affected the Muslims, or where Islam had been deliberately and systematically constrained as a political and social force as in Kemalist Turkey, or where both constraints and even attacks on Islam, and the existence of large populations of non-Muslims, at least created the conditions where some kind of democracy might emerge (as in, say, Kazakhstan after Nazarbayev who is, at least, a quasi-enlightened despot in the vein of the late Shah of Iran).
But even if there were to be "democracy" (i.e. elections, head-counting) in Iraq, it would do nothing to help Infidels come to understand the theory and practice of Islam, would do nothing to diminish the two most powerful weapons of Islam -- the money that comes from the oil deposits, and the spread of Islam both through the millions of migrants foolishly, dangerously, rashly, madly, allowed in to Western Europe in the first place, mainly because of the greed for (seemingly) cheap North African labor in France, and Turkish gastarbeiter in Germany. The costs have turned out, especially after all those "family reunions" and those burgeoning families, and then the constant flow of Muslims into both those countries, and elsewhere in Europe, where they have created a situation that is much more unpleasant, expensive, and dangerous, physically and morally, for the indigenous Infidels. How will "democracy" in Iraq help prevent the islamization of Europe?
It won't. It is eating up our money, when every dollar spent in Iraq should be devoted to energy projects to take away not the non-existent "oil weapon" (there isn't one, and there never was: the Saudis and all producers will sell whatever oil they can) but rather, the real "money weapon" that is used to pay for mosques, madrasas, and hirelings all over the Western world. It is eating up our military equipment, for a month in the desert ages that equipment more than a year or two elsewhere. It is eating up our men, who are killed, and wounded, in order that one group of Muslims does not kill another group of Muslims, and American lives are sacrificed so that the very fissures within that three-vilayet "country" of Iraq may be narrowed rather than, as we should sensibly wish them to be, widened.
It is eating up the morale of the present soldiers and preventing others from signing up, and without a draft, the citizen-army cannot be treated as it has been treated. Or rather, it can be so treated, and then no one will sign up, or no one very good, and those now in will never re-enlist, and another generation of the very people who are the ones we rely on, the people who make things run, and protect us, will be disheartened and dismayed, and not quite know why -- but know only that the Iraqis are ungrateful, the Iraqis are meretricious and malingerers and not the wonderful loyal allies the Administration's propaganda machine keeps telling us, despite the evidence (they can't shut up every returning soldier, and the more their story conflicts with the truth, the more they will lose support for necessary, and justifiable undertakings in the future.)
It is a farce. Someone has to tell Bush not only that the invasion was justified, the search for weapons justified, the removal of Saddam Hussein justified, but what has come after is completely unrelated, and not only a waste, but will not, cannot, achieve the ends, rightly understood, of what should be defined not as a "war against terror" (basta con these stupidities -- there is a limit), but a war "against the worldwide Jihad." Iraq is the perfect place to exploit the natural fissures, such as they exist, within Islam.
Instead we are spending money (that should be spent on solar and nuclear and every other kind of energy project, and conservation as well), men, materiel, morale.
Every day shows how stupid this policy is. But reality will only set in once the full malevolence of Islam is understood by a sufficient number of people, and once the inability even of "moderate" Muslims to admit to that malevolence in Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira is recognized. The refusal to give defectors from Islam a major hearing -- who in Congress will invite Ayaan Hirsi Ali to testify, or Ibn Warraq, or Ali Sina? -- is intolerable.
And if the waste and the farce continue, and if the chance to exploit the Iraqi situation in the right way is lost, who will pay for this stupidity? Americans will still not be enlightened as to the nature of Islam. The islamization of Europe will continue, while the Cassandra-cries go unheard (remember that Cassandra turned out to be right).
"Stay the course"? But the "course" at this point is headed toward that iceberg, rather than into the clear waters of lucidity. "Don't cut and run" -- again, a foolish and cheap schoolboy phrase.
Where are the cunning, intelligent, all-knowing people who helped check, all over the chessboard, the agents and propaganda and military might of Soviet Russia? Do such people still exist, or their modern counterparts, or is Islam, with all those difficult Arabic words, and the necessity of learning about it from the very people who are likely to be Muslims and offer sly apologetics (with those liquid brown eyes, and the zarf-and-finjan (nicely wrought in Morocco, no doubt) coffee ceremony along with the verbs, and the nouns.
With C.I.A. agents at the comical intellectual level of Mr. Scheuer, who was actually for a while in charge of the "Bin Laden desk" (the very title expresses the misunderstanding of what is at stake), with an F.B.I. that takes instruction on Islam from sensitivity trainers helpfully provided by C.A.I.R., with a Secretary of State who keeps prating about what a great religion Islam is, and how much we respect it (she need not tell the truth about Islam; she need only remain silent on the matter -- why this insistence? It is intolerable if she thinks this is clever policy, and even more intolerable if she believes it).
We have had it. Up to here. Do gorla. Au ras bord. Non ne possiamo piu.
Will someone, in Congress, in the Administration, anywhere -- someone who can distinguish Iraq War #1 and Iraq War #2 -- please stand up?
[Posted at June 27, 2005 09:42 AM]
Postings:
a.
The comment just above -- especially that last comment by Randall Parker -- makes an excellent point. Soldiers who have witnessed, or pariticipated in, projects to help "Iraqis" have found that in this or that city, or village, or street, have no interest in collaborating with others outside their family or at very most, their tribe or larger clan. The idea of the greater good escapes them altogether. This doesn't mean that they do not learn to mouth certain phrases once they realize that is what "the Americans" want -- oh, they are very good at that -- but it does mean that the reality, the narrow selfishness of Iraq's population, one that has to do with a history of depotism (and the influence of Islam, which conditions people to accept despotism, and to reject -- especially if it comes from Infidels, or is associated with them -- the very idea that legitimacy of a government must come from the will of those governed. This, to Muslims, is a deeply disturbing view; all legitimacy must come from Allah, who may be mercurial, or whimsical, or seemingly unjust. That is what inshallah-fatalism is all about. Allah disposes. As for "Man proposes" -- well, that doesn't even come up.
The inattention to the specifics of Islam and to the history and makeup of Iraq, makes one wonder, yet again, about the quality of those who make policy. They may leave for work at 4 a.m. (one is not impressed); they may be busy all day, with meetings and policy-planning and phone calls, and interviews, and reviews of those 5-page or even 6-page "memoranda" that, with bullets more appropriate for some presentation in a first-year business school class, purport to sum up the situation.
One would dearly like to circulate a memorandum among the top 100 officials dealing with Iraq. List the books on Islam you have read. List the books on Iraq you have read. What -- too busy to read a book, much less books? You rely on your staff. Well, what about that staff? How many experts do you have? Are they all trained by Bernard Lewis, or might there be some who have actually read the scholars of Islam from 1880-1960, whose work does not date because Islam, its tenets and its history, have not changed?
Anybody happen to read Philip Ireland? Elie Kedourie? Anyone look into the Letters of Gertrude Bell, to see what it was like at the beginning, when the Iraqi state was formed, most artificially, from three distinct Ottoman vilayets?
Tell us who you have been relying on, and what they have been studying up on. Degrees don't matter. Having nice Muslim friends -- Fareed Zakaria, or Aboul-Enein, or Fouad Ajami, or nice Ambassador Francke, or Ahmad Chalabi, or Ms. Nafisi, or even learning all about Iran from some of its jeunesse doree, who appear to believe, just the way that some Indian Muslims think it was all Akbar and no Aurangzeb, that the history of Iranian Islam was unexceptional, even mild, and that only bad only Khomeini came along to break the record of uninterrrupted bliss for non-Muslims. They might just start with the chronicler Arakel of Tabriz who records how Shah Abbas forced, overnight, the mass conversion of Jews and Armenians in Tabriz, and go from there. They might investigate how Jews could be killed merely for going out in the rain, as najis, for a drop that fell on such a Jew might then taint a Muslm -- and that would be unendurable. The Shah and his father were the exceptions; those in the line of Khomeini were the rule.
[Posted by: Hugh at June 27, 2005 03:23 PM]
b.
"According to Gen Abisade(sp)(who commands all forces in the ME) his soldiers believe in what they are doing in Iraq. What's affecting "morale" is the idea that the American people do not support their efforts.Gen Abisade(sp) says some soldiers are beginning to ask him if the American people still support them.As long as the soldiers believe the American people are behind them they will succeed in Iraq."
-- from a posting above
I must be talking to all the wrong soldiers. As far as the "morale" problem goes, if everyone believed in the end result, there would be no problem with enlistment in the citizen-army, nor in the regular army. The Marines are different: those who go into the Marines are a special group, by and large, and thank god, for our sakes, that they exist. But the problem remains: why are we there if not to make Iraq whole, to keep it together, to make it flourish so that it will be model for others?
And that result is one that, in any case, would be an improvident use of American money (Wolfowitz, before the war, noted that "$30 billion" -- which he spoke of as a hideously large sum -- containing Saddam Hussein, and that America could not be expected, could it, to endure having to spend another $30 billion? Well, what has it been -- $300 billion or getting close. And what could be done with that $300 billion, if properly spent on energy projects, to diminish the wealth, and hence the power to spread Islam, and hence make our lives as Infidels safer, of Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E., Kuwait, Iran, Libya, Algeria, and so on and so forth.
Everything is finite. If you spend $300 billion on this, you don't spend it on that.
Soldiers -- it makes no sense to keep bringing up the enormous one-day losses in the Pacific, or at the Battle of the Bulge, and to imply that now we are all a bunch of whiners. That is silly. World War II was necessary. The campaign in Iraq was never necessary, though the first part (the invasion, the overthrow, the seizure and destruction of weaponry) was rational, and probably a wise thing. But it is the second movement of this piece that is raucous, discordant, and without form and void. It does not make sense to refuse to exploit the fissures in Iraqi society that have been handed to us on a platter, and which, instead of battening upon, we throw carelessly away.
And why do we do this? For a number of reasons, but first because our leaders or rulers or "those in a leadership role" if one may wax business-schooly for a deplorable minute, keep calling it a "war on terror" and refuse to call it anything that might give the teeniest-tiniest offense to Muslims, such as calling it (nudge nudge wink wink) a "war of self-defense against the Jihad" or "a war to stop the Jihad." I would go with that. It evokes Islam for Infidels, but Muslims cannot deal with it unless they are willing to deal with the unpleasant -- for them -- fact that Jihad is central to Islam, not tangential, and that it means not so much a spiritual struggle (as some keep pretending, using a minor and late interpretation, hardly accepted) but rather aggressive warfare against the Unbeliever, should that Unbeliever in any way put up any obstacle to the spread of Islam.
Without that clarity, the subsequent confusion of goals, follows.
The last phrase from the poster above is this:
"As long as the soldiers believe the American people are behind them they will succeed in Iraq."
But we are behind them. We are so much behind them that we do not wish them to risk their lives unnecessarily, for a stupid and ill-conceived mission that has not been thought out to reflect the real world-wide problem (Jihad, and not "terror" which is merely one, and not the most effective, instrument of Jihad), and which furthermore is based on an almost wilful ignorance both of the reality of "Iraq" (that three-vilayet state, never to become a real nation-state -- not next year, not in five years, never)--and on the perfectly sensible kinds of measures, some of them repeatedly put forth on this website, that could, from cutting Saudi revenues to limitiing Muslims allowed behind enemy (Infidel) lines, to ending the jizya of foreign aid and forcing the poorer Arabs to extort what aid they can, instead, from the richer Arabs -- thereby encouraging intra-Arab resentment, envy, and strife. And again I will repeat: the resentments of the Kurds, based on, among other things, a history of persecution and murder inflicted on those Kurds -- should lead to a free Kurdistan. It is in our interest. It would be a permanent sign that non-Arab Muslims not only exist in the Middle East and North Africa, but deserve their own state. It would point up the Arab supremacist ideology of which Islam is a vehicle. It would inspire other non-Arab Muslims -- including most obviously the Berbers in North Africa, but hardly limited to them (think of the spectacle of the Arab Muslims massacring the non-Arab black African Muslims in Darfur -- that needs to be publicized, to be stressed). Even in Malaysia and Indonesia there are those who do not relish the aping of the customs and manners of 7th century Arabs.
And the other fissure -- that between Shi'a and Sunni -- offers the best hope for weakening Iran (along with the need to destroy whatever elements of Iran's nuclear project can be destroyed -- and the supposed need to "placate the reformers" has just ended forever, with the election of Ahmadejinad, not that the argument ever made real sense. For Infidels, it is disarming Iran that matters, not in worrying about the effect on nationalistic Iranians who might -- might -- be offended just as the mad mullahs would be, and might -- might-- someday come to power and end the nuclear program themselves, or might -- might -- possess those weapons in a responsible fashion. Nonsense. No Muslim state, beyond the one (Pakistan) that managed to steal secrets from the West, can possibly be allowed to acquire such weaponry. Whether that state, or a group within that state, or a group outside that state, gets hold of those weapons, does not matter. It is the same danger, and a great one.
The idea that people should be bullied into supporting a stupid and self-defeating policy -- no, on second thought, let's give Jaafari that "Marshall Plan" he asked for the other day. I mean, he joined the Islamc Da'wa Party back in 1968. And he was so polite, and he read from the scripts more or less correctly, and did you see the picture of him sitting in the Oval Office -- he couldn't believe it. There he was, right next to the American President. He was overjoyed. And you what else overjoys him? The idea that American soldiers will take out the Sunnis, and perhaps even build some nice big bases that can be swiftly taken away from them once they are completed, and used by the Iraqis, and that if Jaafari et al. play their cards right, they can get another few tens of billions in aid not from their "Arab brothers" whose OPEC cups runneth over, and how, but from those willing Infidels. Can you believe it? Aren't those Americans stupid? Isn't it wonderful?
We owe the soldiers support -- individual support. We do not owe, and should not give, support to a policy that recklessly and needlessly endangers them, damages the army, degrades the equipment, wastes gigantic sums, and takes attention away from the world-wide expressions of Jihad, and from the need to sit down, and figure out a few dozen discrete measures that can be undertaken, or at least discussed, which should accompany what one hopes will soon be an announced pullout, but that only makes sense if very obvious measures intended to combat the Jhad (including cutting off aid to Egypt and Jordan and the P.A., and explaining sweetly that "the American government believes that the Arab states should help each other" as a kind of preliminary step to future unity, blah blah, and given the extraordinarily sudden rise in OPEC revenues, we are sure that Egypt, Jordan, the "Palestinains" will be able to receive sufficient help from their fellow members of the Arab League who have so much money, and not merely sympathy, to give."
Phrase it however you want. It's a speech I'd love to write.
[Posted by: Hugh at June 27, 2005 08:04 PM]
What are we, schoolboys in a schoolyard, showing we're not chicken, or readers of history, students of geopolitics, observers of the real, as opposed to the imaginary brave-new-world rhetoric about "democracy being on the march" and "our brave Iraqi friends" and all the rest of it.
Short plan for winning please… there is no short plan? Damn it is more complicated than Bush!
Yet another bit intended to refute the absurd charges made by "warrior princess" above, and I assure her that there are hundreds of articles, and thousands of pages, posted here that would rebut every single charge she has made, and if it comes to that, and to similar charges idiotically made by anyone, I will post every damn one of them:
The poster immediately above wishes to make an argument from authority. She appears to believe that if General Abizaid, "under oath" (I would have trusted him anyway), in testimony before Congress, says that "his soldiers believe in what they are doing" and further "cautioned that 'morale' is affected if those soldiers feel they are not being supported by the American people."
But what does it mean to "believe in what" they "are doing"? Does it mean all of these soldiers are well-versed in Islam, have studied the various instruments of Jihad, understand taqiyya and the amazing way in which Islam retains its hold even over those who are born into it, but scarcely even believe in God, yet feel they must, simply must, defend Islam, protect Islam, lie about Islam to avoid embarrassment or damage to its image. Do the soldiers know what "they are doing" in the sense of the long-term strategy? How many of them have the leisure, or the inclincation, to think it all through? Some do, and apparently it is those some whom I have talked to, and who, once I got going, appeared not to take issue but to agree completely. Perhaps they were just trying to make me feel good. But I doubt it.
The soldiers need not worry about not being "supported" at this forum. They are supported to the hilt. But no matter how many times anyone attempts to make us confuse support for troops with support for the latest phase of not-so-grand strategy, one that is the exact opposite of what now, in Iraq (and outside Iraq) should be done -- moving heaven and earth to weaken Islam, divide Islam, demoralize Islam, take away or diminish or divert (into staples and development of poorer Arab countries by the rich ones that pour their discretionary income into funding the Jihad, when they should be buying bread for Cairene masses, or fixing the sewers in Alexandria, or things to that effect).
One can repeat once or a thousand times words about "morale" and about "supporting our troops" and about "staying the course" and not "cutting and running." It is bullying rhetoric; it gets in the way of thought, of intelligence and imagination and low cunning that need to be applied to the ruthless, though essentially primitive,adherents of a primitive belief-system, that has done a great deal of damage through time and space, and is fully prepared to do much more.
[Posted by: Hugh at June 27, 2005 10:07 PM ]
"insinuate frequent references to the paradigm the West has lost: the paradigm of Western Civilization as superior to all other cultures -- not in a barbaric way like Islam or Genghis Khan, but in a beneficent and humane way, with the aim to civilize the world.."
-- from a posting above
And you don't find that something like this (without the "paradigm" part) is going on, here and there, as postings deliberately remind us that, over there in that corner, in the black trunks, is Islam, and over here, in the white trunks, is Western Civilization....
Surely some of the allusions, some of the reminders of what we have and they do not (not only the Gatling-gun, but Shakespeare, Leonardo, Dennis Potter, Fats Waller, and so on) help remind everyone of that -- or isn't it working?
Posted by: Hugh at June 27, 2005 10:26 PM
"the point of planting a big fat democracy in iraq is to create an IDEOLOGICAL COMPETITOR to islamic fascism, one that, like a computer virus or bio-weapon, will spread on its own."
...........
"btw, re: your assertion that democracy in iraq is pointless, not worth fighting for, would do nothing etc., i'd say you've clearly left planet earth!"
...........
"remember, the problem isn't necessarily the oil money or the immigrants, as you contend, it's the ideology they support ... injecting a competitor to islamic fascism is therefore well within our interests."
--- from the posting above
What is a "big fat democracy"? Would it include guaranteed rights for minorities, such as the Kurds?
And we just had a very nice election in Lebanon, where a great admirer of Saudi Arabia, Saad Hariri, was elected, and where, if the previous confessional arrangement by which the Christians had more power than they are now, by population, entitled to, is done away with, the Christians, especially the Maronites, will be politically crushed -- how does that weaken Islam?
Islam may not be a natural fit with "democracy" even if that "democracy" is interpreted to mean mere head-counting at election time, without all the rest of what our Constitution offers, and what our civilization promotes and justifies, but the adherents of Islam are perfectly capable of conducting political campaigns, and in many ways the more fanatical Muslims are less corrupt than the less fanatical. Hamas consists of mass murderers; they may also be running clinics and so on, and not pocketing all the foreign aid the way that Arafat and his cronies, including the monstrously corrupt Abbas and Qurei, both have.
In Iran, we have elections. And guess who was the People's Favorite a few decades ago, not by election but by popular demand -- it was, returning triumphantly from his exile in Neauphle-le-chateau, the Ayatollah Khomeini. And just this week there was an election in Iran. And who won? Why, a fervent Muslim and former Basiji, Ahmadinejad, who was a kind of good-government mayor of Teheran, but also a fervent Muslim.
And what, aside from half-Christian Lebanon (or at least it was half-Christian before the Muslims multiplied, at which they are very good), where else might there have been an example of "democracy" in the entire Muslim world? In one place: Turkey, after the 80 years of Kemalism, after all those things that Ataturk put in place to systematically constrain Islam within Turkey, and to put in its place a Turkish national myth (the "Sun-People" theory, etc. which Ozal then continued -- see Speros Vryonis, "Clio and the Grey Wolf"), and a cult of personality around -- Ataturk himself.
Did it work? Did Turks give up on Islam? Did Islam disappear, or was it so wounded as to longer be a threat? Not at all. The reverse. Islam keeps coming back. And here it is, again -- with Erdogan, and all the cunning of his associates and followers. Ask a secular Turk -- the real secularists, who do not lamely call themselves "Muslims" as so many people, even those who declare that they are atheists, insist on doing (e.g., Magdi Allam, in his "Lettera aperta a Oriana Fallaci" in "Vincere la paura").
Islam is stronger than, can handle and swallow, the shallow idea of "democracy." It is a false hope.
The ideology of Islam can only be weakened if Muslims themselves begin, in sufficient numbers, to begin to have their doubts. If they can see that their own societies' distempers and disarray and disappointments and despotisms and dismal arrangements of every kind, are the result not of Infidel machinations, but of the mental habits of Islam itself, the inshallah-fatalism, the submission to authority that is part of Islam, and because Islam pervades and influences and affects every part of life, ineluctably flows into every capillary of Islamic life, the life of Muslims.
So let us not be an obstacle to the comprehension of Islam's failures. Let us stop giving aid that is a disguised jizyah. Let us stop trying to make the Muslim states better, and consider that things might ultimately be better if first they are worse.
Of course, the main thing is to deprive these states of the wherewithal to do us physical damage. They cannot be allowed to buy, produce, or otherwise acquire not only weapons of mass destruction, but even arsenals of planes. Anything sold to them by the Western governments should be jimmied so that they may be susceptible of being sabotaged from afar -- like the supercomputers sold to the Russians with the deliberately defective software that, at the appropriate moment, on cue, malfunctioned, with highly desirable results.
And another thing is to diminish their oil revenues, by plowing the sums now being squandered in Iraq, on Egypt, Jordan and the PA, and on all sorts of silly projects which involve still more mixing it up with Muslims, who simply learn skills that may be used against us -- and one of those skills is the art, at which they are past masters, of blending personal charm and dissimulation in the service of their own, or of the Arab, or of the general Muslim agenda. The less we have to do with them, the better -- not for them, but for us.
"i'd say you've clearly left planet earth!"
No. My feet are planted Antaeus-like firmly on the ground. My mind is rooted -- figuratively, it's true -- in the reality of Islam and of Iraq, and not given to flights of wishful fancy, unlike those "realists" who have made policy based on ignoring both Islam and the real nature of Iraq and the right way to encourage division and dissension within Islam -- in fact, the last seems not even to have occurred to anyone in Washington as somethingto work towards, in any and every way.
"remember, the problem isn't necessarily the oil money or the immigrants, as you contend, it's the ideology they support..."
This remark makes no sense. The ideology has existed for a long time, some 1350 years (or a little less, if we wish to date from the time that it hardened into unassailable and immutable dogma, with whatever variations possible dependent not on different texts, or different interpretations of the same texts, but rather on the laxness with which individual Believers observed, or received, or believed in, those texts, and the tenets they inculcated).
The problem is that this ideology now has two unusual supports.
The first is that oil, and the revenues the oil supplies that would not otherwise exist. Imagine Saudi Arabia just as malevolent as ever, but without hundreds of billions of dollars to foster the Jihad through mosque-and-madrasa building, the propaganda spread worldwide, the agents -- both Muslim and non-Muslim, of Saudi Arabia, the newspapers owned, the media companies in which the Saudis have deliberately acquired major holdings, and so on.
The second is that the presence of millions of Muslims behind enemy lines, and their active campaigns of Da'wa (the Call to Islam), and their fantastically large families, often supported by the generous welfare systems that Infidels set up, and almost entirely pay for -- so that they are paying for the "seeds" (in more ways than one) of their own destruction.
You do not answer my suggestions.
I will offer one more. Punctuation is next to godliness. Those who do not punctuate or, in the postings, capitalize correctly, are offending the gods of the copybooks, if not of the copybook headings.
It doesn't look good on bellhooks. It doesn't loook good even on e.e.cummings (yes, the devil and e.e.c. made me do it) whom keen and attentive readers of Jihadwatch will recall, could look out from his window, where he may have typed on an Underwood, to view the house of William James just across the street.
For more on this, google "Underwood" and "jihadwatch" and "Posted by Hugh." A little fun, to take your mind off Islam.
We all deserve that, once in a while -- don't we?
Posted by: Hugh at June 27, 2005 11:29 PM
"Where are the Mandeans?
Where are the Zoroastrians?"
--- from a posting above
Gone with the wind, as Irene Dunne sang in "The Awful Truth" as her skirt fluttered up? No, their numbers have much diminished over time, under the inceesant pressure of dhimmitude, the small and large cruelties, discriminations, persecutions, murders -- all the things that over time have caused much larger populations of non-Muslims, everywhere that Islam has conquered, to gradualy islamize -- and not, as Muslims would have it, because of the sheer wonderfulness and "rightness" of their belief-system, with its totalitarian total regulation of life, total explanation of the universe. There is nothing innately attractive about Islam; it is for the simple-minded, and nowadays, fits the bill for those who feel disaffected from their own societies and want to embrace something that they care little about but know is a vehicle of protest, opposition, and rage. That's what it is, and the economically and psychically marginal are the most likely targets of Da'wa.
There may be 60,000-80,000 Mandeans left in the world, half of them in present-day Iraq. See the link provided on the left to a Mandean website at JW. A year or two ago Muslims (I think Shi'a) took the occasion to burn up one of the last, and most important, Mandean libraries. It did not receive a single bit of attention in the Western world, where everyone was consumed with berating the Americn soldiers with "standing by" etc. as the "Baghdad museum" was "destroyed." As we know, the Baghdad Museum was not "destroyed," the tales of mass theft were greatly exaggerated, much of what was taken (and some of it was an inside job, or done with the help of insiders) has been recovered by the American soldiers (remember Capt. Bogdanus?).
But who cares about the Mandeans?
As for the Zoroastrians, there may be 150,000 people, or double that, still openly calling themselves Zoroastrians in Iran. And there are the hundreds of thousands of Parsees, the Zoroastrians in India (particularly Mumbai), the descendants of those who early fled the Muslim invaders of Sassanid Persia. A few decades ago the well-known historian of Zoroastrianism, Mary Boyce, went to live with them, and described how their Muslim neighbors made their lives miserable. Dogs are important in Zoroastrianism -- is that why, perhaps, Muslims are taught to hate dogs, not to keep them as pets (and in the Western world, have been known not merely to recoil at the sight of dogs, but to kill the dogs of Infidels in order to eliminate what for them is intolerable). Boyce describes how even kindergarten-age Muslim children would come up to Zoroastrians and deliberately beat their dogs, with impunity of course -- no Zoroastrian could possibly react.
The Maronites held out, just, in the mountains of Lebanon (or "The Lebanon" -- i.e. Mont Liban or Mount Lebanon). The Copts, aware -- how could they not be -- that they are the descendants of the original Egptians, that Coptic is the language of Egypt and Arabic the language of invaders, and who have remained sufficiently large a group, and coherent, for some still to exist -- possibly 8-10 million (Muslim figures are of course much lower for all non-Muslims, just as they are always grossly inflated for numbgers abroad -- the other day, in The New Duranty Times, an Arab girl who wrote an idiotic piece of self-pity that told of how she, in a gym at the Kennedy School of Public Adminisration at Harvard, and feeling sorry for herself and all the stares she claimed her hijab caused her to receive, dropped something that was picked up by a sweaty, but gallant -- Al Gore! What a story to waste precious space on in The New Duranty Times. But what was most significant was the way the girl tossed off a line about "10 million Arab and Muslim Americans" -- a gross exaggeration, and one which claims descendants of Lebanese Christians, who make up 70% or more of all those so wrongly lumped together as "Arab-Americans" (a deceptive category), who fled Muslim persecution to go to America, as they did to Australia, Canada, South America, even as traders to West Africa.
You seem to think there is something inevitable about the disappearance of peoples, who must in the end be dissolved in the Arab Muslim flood. No. Nothing is inevitable. The Copts and the Maronites are still there, though under siege. There are still Assyrians in Iraq, though under siege. The Jews managed to hold on, in a few cities in the Land of Israel (as Israelis call it) throughout the years of Arab conquest and then the Turkish overlords, and to resurrect the ancient Jewish commonwealth which, as Indro Montanelli wrote, was possibly the only great thing to come out of the 20th century.
And once this hideous regime in Iran is overthrown or otherwise done away with, what must once have seemed unlikely -- a return, by hundreds of thousands or even more Iranians, to the religion of their ancestors -- now seems possible.
Why? Because even some who started out as revolutionaries and then became "reformists" have had the chance, without intervention from any Infidels, to think about things, to realize that the behavior of those running the Islamic Republic are not some aberration in Islam, and what is most disturbing in Iran flows logically from the texts, taken seriously and applied fully.
There is a Dr. Seuss book, possibly Horton Hears a Who?,in which a tiny creature sits on an elephant and is kept there because "a person's a person, no matter how small."
Well, a group is a group, "no matter how small." Under the onslaught of homogenizing and aggressive Islam, the greatest force for lack of diversity in human history (and don't we all like, not the "diversity" forced down our throats, but real variety in our humans, and doesn't Islam want to make everyone in the whole wide world into, more or less, little imitators of 7th century Arabs, with Arabic names, and sacred texts ideally read and memorized in Arabic, and the whole wide world one vast islamized and arabized place? Yes, they do.
And that is why, because not only Horton Hears that particular Who, but so do I, that I think one should not overlook small groups because they are small, but seek to preserve them. That goes for religions, cultures, and especially, perhaps above all, languages. But don't get me started on Dorothy Pentreach, last speaker of the Cornish language, expired circa 1780. It is too sad.
We should not forget, but remember, and try to preserve, all those indigenous peoples whose lands were conqueed by invading Muslim Arabs, Some of those ancient peoples remain in place, others now live in the civilized countries of the world, and deserve to be heeded, not ignored.
________________________________
Posted by: Hugh at June 28, 2005 08:01 AM
"I am sorry, but you do not know what you are talking about. Most Copts know that they are not Arabs; even the peasants with no education know that as clear as night and day. To them the term Arab means a Muslim. I guess that a very small percentage, less than 0.1% Copts still buys the Arab nationalism crap of Nasser and they are getting fewer everyday."
"The Maronites and other Christians in the Levant (Greater Syria) have believed their own lies about an imaginary Arab nation in their attempt to forge a common identity with their Muslim neighbors in the post Ottoman era. Most Copts, Assyrians, Chaldeians would be furious about being called an Arab. However, some would be tired of explaining that to feeble western minds who do not grasp the rudiments of their history, much less that of others."
AND from the very same posting, this:
"I just want to make a small correction. Arabs are not an an ethnic group, but a linguistic and cultural one. Most of my Maronite, Druze and Coptic friends would be offended by the claim made here that they are non-Arabs.
This confuses. Is the author saying that Maronites, Copts, and Druze are NOT Arabs and "would be furious about being called an Arab" in one paragraph, and then immediately below, suggesting the opposite ("Most of my Maronite, Druze, and Coptic friends would be offended by the claim made here that they are non-Arabs.")
One cannot respond to self-contradictory comments.
But one comment can be added. Islamization carried with it, necessarily, arabization. Older, wealthier, more settled, more advanced, populations of Christians and Jews were conquered. Some converted at once, some converted over time as the pressures of dhimmitude would cause anyone, anywhere, to wonder about clinging to one's traditional or inherited beliefs when the price to be paid was so high.
Arabization proceeded mainly linguistically. It was necessary (until the past century) to read the Qur'an only in Arabic. Even now the Qur'an is supposed to be read and memorized in Arabic, no matter what the native language of those madrasa students studying it. Arabic was the language in which the Qur'an was dictated to the "best of peoples." It was the language of the conqueror.
The "Arabs" (many of whom, of course, are simply the descendants of Christians, and Jews, and no doubt among the Christian ancestors are Copts, Maronites, christianized and pagan Berbers -- just as Pakistanis are merely the islamized descendants of Hindus who converted under intolerable pressure, but Pakistanis do not like to dwell, not even for a minute, on their own pre-islamic pasts -- it would not do) like to consider as "Arab" anyone who uses the Arabic languge.
But this would be as silly, and is as silly, as say the English proclaiming as "English" everyone who uses English as a first language, from Canada, to Nigeria and Uganda and Kenya, to many in India. It seems to be a generous claim -- we grandly extend to you the right of calling yourself an "Arab" with all the rights and benefits appertaining, but in fact it is an act of the worst kind of cultural imperialism, the kind that makes those conquered forget their own pre-islamic and pre-arabized pasts, or what is worse, to despise it, and to despise as well those who clung to the old faith.
Think of how many "Arabs" in North Africa busily suppressing the Berber culture and language of Tamazight are, if the DNA tests were done, would turn out be Berbers themselves? How many of those "Arabs" in Egypt inflicing petty or large cruelties on Christian Copts are in fact of Coptic descent? And so on.
It might be good to make all those quasi-Arabs aware that they are not necesssarily required to continue to think of themselves as Arabs.
They are free to undo what the Arab conquerors imposed. They are even free to slough off Islam.
[Posted by: Hugh at June 28, 2005 08:44 AM]
A posting that does not require an answer:
"My brother happens to be in Fallujah as I type this. He is a Marine. He has told me many times that moral is still pretty high even with the fighting everyday over there. One problem is the soldiers are so confused. Once Iraq fell and the war (part 1) was over, they thought the Iraqis would be so happy..almost like a prisoner who was falsly imprisoned then freed..they would run to the side of the men who sacrificed so much to free them and embrace as friends..maybe brothers....
"...he said alot of guys in his unit were extremely hurt and confused. He said to
me on one occasion that bringing freedom to these people was like force feeding a bulimic. There is so much hate over there. If the Americans were not there they would just slaughter each other instead of listening to what the other has to say. Our soldiers will never get used to it because most of us were raised to respect another mans opinions and learn from each other. We debate and they blow themselves up along with woman and children ON PURPOSE for what..because they disagree? Its sad. He said to me..."you would think that all us soldiers hate it here and just think it is a hopeless wreck, but we dont think that way...we cant think that way. We just pay attention to the only ones who really like us here..the kids."
"The soldiers really fear the day the children dont want to be their friends anymore because of the hate drilled into their heads daily. He said if he could just keep one Iraqi child from turning to hate and commiting vile acts in the name of Islam his life would be worth it. I completely agree with Hugh...I guess I just wrote this to give you guys some insight to whats on one soldiers mind everyday while the people he freed try to blow him up. This has got to be the greatest webpage I have ever been to and I just want to thank "Freakin Batman" and the entire crew for everything. Thanks for backing our boys over there and extra thanks for using common sense and acurate knowledge to try and bring them home. God Bless."
--- from a posting by "pocadon" above
For the stark relief of those remarks, much thanks.
[Posted by: Hugh at June 28, 2005 08:52 AM]
"You think in today's world we can just lock them in the basement and everything will be ok?"
-- from a posting above
Does that reflect, in the slightest, the set of proposals I made? To wit: to diminish oil revenues through a shift of the money being squandered in Iraq entirely to energy projects, including conservation, mass transit, solar and nuclear energy, battery technology, what-have you; until those revenues are sufficiently diminished, to find ways to relieve the rich Arabs of that discretionary income with which they, and especially the Saudis, naturally -- it would be unnatural for them not to -- pay for mosques, madrasas, Western hirelings and "international business consultants" (see Alistair Crooke, Raymond Close, James Akins, the late Fred Dutton, and a cast of tens of thousands, each with his hand in the till, directly or indirectly -- even a consulting "contract" or lecture series will do it -- of Arab largesse), including ending all Infidel foreign aid to Muslim states and pretend-states (the P.A.) and shifting the burden from Infidels, who should not be supporting Muslims at all, anywhere, to the rich Muslim states. That will use up their discretionary income, and since there is no possiblity that they will be anywhere near as generous as Europe and the United Statees have been, resentment among the poorer Arabs for the richer (more primitive) ones, will have the desired effect of splitting rich and poor, and causing all sorts of difficulties within dar al-Islam. A good thing.
And so on, on and on.
And this you choose to sum up, though again and again -- google "Light-Unto-the-Muslim-Nations Project and read how many times, and with how many variants, detailed suggestions have been offered -- to dismiss this as "just locking them up in the basement and everything will be ok."
That is nothing like what I said. It is reductionism run riot. It is unfair. It is untrue. It mocks the effort. It proposes only the unattainable: let us smash, crush, destroy, etc. Islam. Well, that won'thappen, and that won't do. It is hard enough to get people even to begin to learn what Islam is all about.
Posted by: Hugh at June 28, 2005 12:16 PM
Is there no room at this website for the village atheist, who does not believe in the supernatural, nor in much of anything, but would prefer, thank you very much, not to have among that anything something like Islam imposed on him, or on others around him, nor to allow this primitive and unpleasant belief-system to achieve an even greater presence and even greater power in the Western world than it has already achieved? Islam is a menace to art and science and humor and skeptical inquiry. It inculcates, in a thousand ways, hostility, even murderous hostility, to all non-Muslims. It threatens us as nothing else ever has. It has an unbroken record; wherever Islam went, non-Muslims suffered, and so did their own manners and customs, their ways of being and believing, their languages and quiddities, collective and individual.
Isn't that enough?
[Posted by: Hugh at June 28, 2005 02:05 PM]
"...say, if you can criticize me for my lack of proper capitalization & madzionist for saying "word finesse", does that mean i can criticize you for being overly verbose & sounding like one of those "desperate psuedo-intellectuals" who puff up tons of smoke to obscure the fact that there's very little fire to their argument?"
-- from a posting above
No.
[Posted by: Hugh at June 28, 2005 08:42 PM]
Hugh you should be a wealthy man if you ever get paid by the words you write. Your accounts of history of the middle east and beyond is secound to none. l do believe we are on the same side of islam, that is "its destrcution", we just differ on the path.
l have an immense belief in the power of the US military and understand that if ever used to its full power, no other country could ever stop it. l do believe in the goodness of the American people and with Western values, and when we are ever united, l pity anyone saying they are muslim appologists. l have more love for my dog,cat or budgie than a muslim terrorist who uses children and women as shields, kills and maims civilians in ambush. l know you go off when Bush utters stupid words about islam(so do l), but judge him on his actions. That is why the terrorists want Democrats in power. that simple.
tvdog, thanks for the link. Here is another one by the same columnist, same subject:
http://www.newindpress.com/sunday/sundayitems.asp?id=SEC20061027042941&eTitle=Columns&rLink=0
A strategic impasse?
Friday October 27 2006 13:56 IST
Swapan Dasgupta
"After Desert Storm many analysts said we should have gone to Baghdad and finished the job, in hindsight they may have been right, iran was weaker and couldn’t have taken advantage."
This posting above (forgive me, I lost it's poster during the storm) is a reason for some of the issues. We invaded Iraq with the forces ,put into action by and with the U.N. Again, remember, the U.N.
Bush Sr. knew to go all the way into Iraq to remove the (now deposed) leader would have caused a split in the U.N. forces, and decided to move to the cease fire. Again, the U.N. members was the reason we did not remove the Iraq leadership at the end of the Gulf war.
After 9/11, we went to the U.N. to build a last chance for Iraq to comply with the conditions of the cease fire of the U.N.s colalition. After the U.N. stated Iraq did not comply, G.W. gave The U.N. the chance to lead them into Iraq. Having the member states like France, Russia place road blocks on this effort, the U.S. finally went into Iraq to remove it's leadership.
Point is , we are involved in fighting these issues with a non-majority group of countrys from the U.N. Everything we do, from invading, attacking nuclear projects, even supporting factions inside a country can cause trouble within the U.N. body. The U.S.A. is a founding member, a major money player in the actions taken, or allowed to, by the U.N.
We will NOT attack Iran without the U.N. being given a chance first, and this is where we are. The United States is , and has placed it's considerable wealth and power in with the other member states of this world body, and it must be considered with every action we take or consider. This is what has been the way of things for decades.
Step out of Iraq, to let them go at it, will have a impact, from islam, and at the U.N. The U.S. will take the blame for allowing this to happen. Bomb Iran without the U.N. running it's course? Sudan, the U.S. effort is controlled by the U.N. This is where we are.
When we went to Iraq, the world body was not with us on the action, a proper step based on its own statements, but they were not ready to act.
Much of the actions we take in the current "war on terror" are all with the knowledge that it must work as to not be condemed by the U.N.
I, for one, do not like this. I would prefer we would build a new group of countrys, of like minded goals, to find our way forward for a better world.
Don't like leaving Iraq to civil war, is that the best we can do? The best we can think of? Or, just easyer? That action kicks the can down the road, we will revisit it again. Attack Iran? Better have the proof of nuclear weppons, and have support for the action of attack. Russia will not be pleased. Keep nukes away from islam's states? How can you do this, without the label of imperialsts?
Many here bring up the cold war, and that Russia is rational. Who is now building Iran's nuclear project?
Sudan is in kaos, and the world is just watching. Stop muslums from coming to the U.S.? If the Dems get power, it will happen faster, a bit slower with the Republicans.
I am meandering through all this, as Hugh has me in a overload .
Hugh, I would suggest you read the one book you have not, look for" How to get your point across in 30 seconds or less". The hook part may be of interest.
This could be taken as a attack, it is nothing of the sort. I like what you write here, and agree with most of your above post, just on the edges we see things from a diffrent view. I have trouble finding all of them, for responce. Please forgive me, I intend no dis-respect in any way.
ZennaWarrior, you say things many times I think, and say it better then I can think of, please continue to keep the ideas flowing.
We all see the enemy that is Islam, and need to continue forward with this , may all here continue to do so for the sake of the world.