The Secretary of State recently stated that the Middle East will have to “overcome” the tendency to see things in Sunni-Shi’a terms. There are two things wrong with the statement of Condoleeza Rice.
The first is the o'erweening, history-ignoring idea that Sunni-Shi'a rivalries and hostilities can "be overcome." The Sunni-Shi'a split long ago transcended the initial quarrel over succession. Now there are differences in the organization of the Shi'a and Sunni variants of Islam: in organization (the power of the Shi'a ayatollahs and other Shi'a clergy has nothing similar in Sunni Islam); in ritual (the Shi'a Ashoura, with its emphasis on self-flagellation); and practice (the Shi'a shrines and visits to those shrines, so offensive to austere Sunnis, especially to the most austere of all, the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia).
The belief that somehow deeply-held beliefs and attitudes can be "overcome" seems to approach all this as if it were a question of civil rights in the South. One of the silliest and most harmful aspects of American governments is the belief that many things are susceptible of change, or of change that will come quickly. "Let's have self-determination now" or "Let's end poverty the way Jeffery Sachs says we can" or "Let's just get right in there and reform Islam." A blend of naivete, ignorance, and arrogance, which yields a most unappetizing brew.
The second thing wrong with Rice's statement is that apparently she cannot conceive of why this Sunni-Shi'a split is a good thing for Infidels. She cannot conceive of why chaos and confusion and endless hostility between the two main branches or sects of Islam is something to be exploited, not to be deplored. It appears that American governments want always to take the side of this or that plausible group of Muslims. First, it was the Shi'a in exile who managed to woo and win so many in the American government with their tales of WMD (Chalabi and his group), and others who confidently predicted that once the Americans "liberated" Iraq they would be greeted, those Americans, with an outpouring of joy and presumably permanent gratitude that "would make the liberation of Kabul look like a funeral procession." It would cost, according to Wolfowitz and others, nothing like what it cost to maintain those sanctions -- possibly a few tens of billions of dollars. And then it would be over. A "cakewalk," wrote Kenneth Adelman (sometime purveyor of Shakespeare to corporations so that the tycoons and tycoonettes can apply "Shakespeare to the business world).
Many have in this farce, on all sides, in the government, and in the press, been weighted and found wanting.
Meanwhile, there's something just over here, freshly scribbled on this wall, that I'd like to show our rulers and our pundits:
"Mene, mene, tekel upharsin."
Do you think they'll be able to make it out?
Yet Rice is not the worst. She is far superior to others who preceded her. If she invites comparison with two former and still nattering-away National Security Advisers, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft, Condoleeza Rice only gains by the comparison. But that should not be the point of comparison. She, and all others in the government, should be spending their days and nights studying Islam, studying not only the texts -- Qur'an, Hadith, Sira -- but how those texts are naturally received by, not all, but almost all, Muslims, and figure out on what side the textual authority lies. They should learn about taqiyya. They should learn about the history of Islamic conquest and about the subjugation of non-Muslims -- which is not only a matter of history, but can be seen today in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Iraq, Sudan, Saudi Arabia (where the non-Muslims are to found only among the expatriate wage-slaves). They must learn what is so misleading about the phrase "moderate Muslim" -- misleading and unhelpful. They must learn to detect the plausible from the true, to discover the smyler with the knyf under his cloke, as Chaucer emblemized the figure of Treachery he found in Boccaccio, well in advance.
They must learn to understand it all, and to understand not only the texts and the history, but the other attitudes that naturally arise in Islam: aggression, violence, inability to compromise, susceptibility to the most primitive conspiracy theories, blaming of non-Muslims for all the ills that should rightly be attributed to Islam but of course cannot be, and so on.
These are the things she, and so many others, including all of the would-be Presidents now eagerly seeking our support, must learn. Now, not in five or ten years. Now.
The second thing wrong with Rice's statement is that apparently she cannot conceive of why this Sunni-Shi'a split is a good thing for Infidels.
Now wait just a darned minute. Isn't Condi some kinda genius or something? That's what we learned on the TV and in media. Above reproach and to be admired for her correctitude, if not her politics.
Condi's genius ain't of the rock star variety like her colleague Barack, the ex-Moslem, but of the learned profound cerebral Stanfordy kinda genius, a genius who also likes Moslems just like so many other geniuses, if they'd just calm down for a change.
"These are the things she, and so many others, including all of the would-be Presidents now eagerly seeking our support, must learn. Now, not in five or ten years. Now."
Unfortunately it won't happen. Political correctness has to strong of a grip. There could be a dozen 9-11s and nothing would change. It would be the same pc load:
Hijacking a peaceful religion, The Saudis are our friends and allies, we must win their hearts and minds, religion of peace, sensitivity training, roadmap to peace, etc. etc. etc....
"They must learn to understand it all, and to understand not only the texts and the history, but the other attitudes that naturally arise in Islam: aggression, violence, inability to compromise, susceptibility to the most primitive conspiracy theories, blaming of non-Muslims for all the ills that should rightly be attributed to Islam but of course cannot be, and so on".
It's probably too late for the current crop of "experts" to bone up on Islam-these fools will continue to act according to their old mindsets right to the end of Bush's term. However, there will be NO excuse for future policymakers not to be well versed in Islam-by the time the next administration takes over in 2009 it will have been 8 years since 9/11. Those trying for State Dept jobs had better be learning all they can about Islam right now and they can start by checking out this site and reading the works of Robert Spencer, among others. We will need Islamologists from now on just as we needed Kremlinologists during the Cold War.
Agreed Robert, but that will not happen. It is the nature of those in the West to assume the best.
Ask, what is the nature of those defeated in the last "Great War". The Japanese, who are one of those peoples, have learned the lesson of humility and reason, correct? Until you see the sideways glances of disdain, hear the condescending tone. But the PC'er interprets it as their own filter of prejudice being noisy, right? Hmm, but maybe it is not. They may just be waiting for fortunes of history to turn again. And it may be ingrained into the culture and society. Here in Japan, the Land of the Gods, it is not. They truly believe they are superior. And so they wait.
And so it is with the Muslim. They wait.
I'm voting for the next licensed:(pick one) Plumber, Electrician or Carpenter that's running for congress. Maybe Tom Delay wasn't such a bad guy after all. He was a pest exterminator in his former life.
Somewhere we are going to have to find leadership in this country that has some common sense. I'm really tired of the multicultural PC world where two plus two equals five!! I'm tired of talking to our enemies and thinking things would change. The ME inhabitants have been talking to each other since the dawn of man and things bascially haven't changed there.
The answer to the Muslim problem will be the proper application of Knowledge Warfare that defeats their false fixed knowledge base.
If you don't understand this you might try and read my free Ebook: Beyond the Infromation Age that is posted at: www.vias.org
Only through the use of True Knowledge will humans advance beyond our present state.
Good Luck!
Her blandly stating that the Sunni-Shia split must be 'overcome' leads me to believe Condi missed her true calling as a Greeting Card.
AND the idea that filthy infidels could in anyway have anything to do with this 'overcoming' is as ludicrous as our 'mission' to Iraq.
Maybe Secretary Rice has been reading one of Hugh's favorite authors Dinesh D'Sousa.
Here's what D'Sousa had to say yesterday in an attempt to defend his research? on the Sunni/ Sheite conflict>
"But the Shia-Sunni conflict in Iraq is not a religious conflict. How do I know that? Because there are no substantial religious differences between the Shia and the Sunni. And these two groups have not been fighting for centuries. In fact, they haven’t been fighting at all. There are no wars that have been fought between the Shia and the Sunni in the past. Historian Bernard Lewis points out that our notion of Shia-Sunni conflict seems to be an ethnocentric projection of the Catholic-Protestant model onto the Muslim world. As late as the 1980s, Shia and Sunni fought shoulder-to-shoulder to expel the Soviets from Afghanistan.
Then what are the two groups fighting about in Iraq? Not over religion but over power. Saddam ran a big mafia-style operation for 25 years, and he recruited his thugs from his home town of Tikrit, which is to say he recruited from his own tribe, the Sunni. The Shia, although the majority, were under the jackboot of Saddam’s mafia. Now that democracy has installed the majority Shia into power, the Sunni insurgents are waging a desperate war to get back the power they have lost. It’s a ruthless war, to be sure, but it’s not a religious war and there’s no reason to think it will go on and on. One gang will win.
So where do all these myths come from? The benign explanation is the Internet. People get information off websites which get it off other websites, so that idiocy gets passed around frequently enough to become accepted as truth.
But there is a second possibility. The myths are part of the propaganda produced by the cultural left which is rooting for Bush to lose the war in Iraq and the war on terror. If Iraq is lost, the chances are it will be lost not in Baghdad but in the American mind. Bin Laden and the insurgents are completely outmatched in force, but they can still win, courtesy of the lobbying efforts of the enemy at home. "
Dinesh D'Sousa
Like most politicians and appointed officials...they just won't "get it" until they are out of office. Why is that?
"The Japanese, who are one of those peoples, have learned the lesson of humility and reason, correct? Until you see the sideways glances of disdain, hear the condescending tone. But the PC'er interprets it as their own filter of prejudice being noisy, right?"
r u kiddng? R the jpns still like that?tell us more. it sounds interesting.
"Mene, mene, tekel upharsin."
Gee, people are in love with this phrase. Doesn't it give you a chill down the back - to realize it's origin? Was that a hologram?
Do you realize that to validate this phrase you have to recognize the loony fringe that there "Others" with advanced technology in ancient times? Not only that, but it was a giant finger writing on the wall.
I also read D'Souza's column yesterday with utter amazement. However the Middle East sees things, why do WE view everything in terms of the Sunni-Shia split? If nothing else, surely the Iraq war has proven that Sunni and Shia are perfectly capable of putting aside their own internal differences in order to defeat what they see as a greater enemy: the US. Otherwise, we wouldn't see Iran and Syria helping each other out.
How can we expect our leaders to understand the dangers posed by radical jihadists when one of the foremost terrorism experts, Steve Emerson, believes we should make friends with moderates in the Muslim world and empower them? If HE thinks there is such a thing as a moderate Muslim, then why should we blame George Bush or Condi Rice for believing the same thing?
Messrs. Hugh and Roberto:
Of course the moslems do not read, if anything it is the koran (cbui)- if you wre to recommend other readings to moslems, what would it be?
It's an interesting thought; I, myself would begin with
1-New Testament
2-Shakespeake (Minus "The Taming of the Shrew"- of course- I'd be the one taming Petrucchio)
and maybe some joke books, to start them off, to develop a sense of humor.
"which is rooting for Bush to lose the war in Iraq and the war on terror"
Bush is NOT going to lose the war - you know why?
He's not there - nor are his daughters nor any member of his family.
WE
a religious/civil war between the Shia and Sunni has such benefits to the West and the world.
If the mos are killing and attacking each other, then there is less opportunity for the mos attacking and killing others.....
let the civil war get started......
do not forget that alquada has not been defeated.........and still has agents in America that can be released at any time and a civil war in iraq could just be the key.
The Texican.
God, Family, America and Freedom, the only choice at any cost.
"But the Shia-Sunni conflict in Iraq is not a religious conflict. How do I know that? Because there are no substantial religious differences between the Shia and the Sunni. And these two groups have not been fighting for centuries. In fact, they haven’t been fighting at all. There are no wars that have been fought between the Shia and the Sunni in the past. Historian Bernard Lewis points out that our notion of Shia-Sunni conflict seems to be an ethnocentric projection of the Catholic-Protestant model onto the Muslim world. As late as the 1980s, Shia and Sunni fought shoulder-to-shoulder to expel the Soviets from Afghanistan."
-- Dinesh D'Souza, quoted in a posting above
So the Shi'a and the Sunnis have not been fighting for centuries, eh? And of course Islam changes over time, so what was fought over at Karbala and elsewhere in what is present-day Iraq, between Sunnis and Shi'a, was something in a remote and overcome past.
But this is nonsense. And it shows that Dinesh D'Souza does not understand Islam. There is no "past" that is over in Islam. What Muhammad did in the seventh-century, or rather, what someone known as Muhammad is reported to have done, is vividly alive today. Karbala is vividly alive, even if possibly misremembered in its details, by Muslims. The rituals of the Shi'a that Sunnis find so disturbing and distasteful, such as Muharram, and the visits to the shrines of Shi'a saints that so offend the austere worship of the Wahhabis and not only the Wahhabis, have led many Sunnis to consider the Shi'a as nothing more than Infidels, or even, as a very important Saudi cleric said last week, Infidels so bad that they were "even worse than Christians and Jews" -- if such can be imagined.
Perhaps Dinesh D'Souza is unaware of how often Shi'a have been attacked by Sunnis. It is great sport in Karachi, for example, for gangs of Sunni boys to attack Shi'a. Why? Well, just because they are Shi'a. And then there are older people, Sunni terrorists, in such groups as Sipaha-e-Sahaba, who take as their target not Hindus, not Christians, but specifically Shi'a professionals -- the Shi'a mosques, the Shi'a offices, the Shi'a schools. Has Dinesh D'Souza done any research about the attacks on Shi'a in Pakistan?
And has he read anything about the Taliban? Is he aware that the Taliban attacked the Shi'a Hazara, and were determined to wipe them out, completely, when their plans were rudely interrupted by American soldiers arriving to knock them off their murderous pedestal? He doesn't have to seek out works of deep scholarship. He can find the massacres and planned massacres of the Hazara described in that best-seller, that easy-read, with its very three and four-page chapters, "The Places In Between" by Rory Stewart.
Does Dinesh D'Souza know about the treatment of the Shi'a in Al-Hasa Province of Saudi Arabia, there where Dammam and Dhahram are located -- that is, where the oil is located? Does he know of the legal status of the Shi'a in Saudi Arabia?
And does Dinesh D'Souza know why, before Hezbollah, Amal was formed by the Shi'a in Lebanon, who were put upon not so much by the Christians, as by the Sunni Muslims?
It is true that Sunnis and Shi'a can come together, at times, to fight the outside Infidel, or perhaps it is better to put it thus: Sunnis and Shi'a can share the same enemies. In Afghanistan, for example, both Sunnis and Shi'a fought the Soviet Army. But that does not mean that they fought side by side, against the Russians. And much the same thing is now happening in Iraq, where the situation is complicated only by the fact that both sides -- Sunni and Shi'a -- want to manipulate the American forces for their own ends, to fight with greater ferocity, if they are Shi'a, the Sunni insurgents, and if they are Sunnis, the Shi'a militia. And each side would like to leach from the Americans whatever money, whatever weaopnry, they can: the Shi'a-dominated government, for example, insisting that "if only" the Americans give them more weaponry, more of that really good advanced stuff the American soldiers get to use, why then the Americans can go home sooner, because with all that equipment "the Iraqi army" -- i.e., the Shi'a -- can suppress all internal opposition to the "new democratic Iraq" -- by which is meant the Sunni insurgents.
Dinesh D'Souza exhibits such carelessness, such overlooking of the most easily-acquired knowledge about Sunnis and Shi'a, that one can hardly refrain from rubbing one's eyes in disbelief. He was once taken seriously? By whom? Why?
And it is not only the Sunni-Shi'a hostilities and mutual antipathy, dating from the first century of Islam and of course not something that could simply be "overcome" (as Condoleeza Rice likes to put it so as to make it fit her Birmingham civil-rights template), not then, and not now, that Dinesh D'Souza misses.
He is also weak on the facts of recent history, and that is on display in a piece he wrote the other day about Iran. Iran, by the way, is a place full of Islam, the real Islam. And as possibly the most decadent city, in Dinesh D'Souza's sex-and-drugs definition, is the capital of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Teheran. The numbers of drug addicts, the numbers of rural girls lured to the city, there to be prostitutes or, as choice Persian delicacies, sold to the Arabs of the Gulf for their temporary delectation (Arab men, Persian girls -- there's a theme that the American government ought to be playing up in its Farsi broadcasts, instead of beaming stories about how wonderful life is for Muslims in America), is as high as anywhere in the world. And does Dinesh D'Souza not know of the fantastic goings-on among the Arabs in the Gulf, both behind their high palace walls, with those girls and boys of every description, but also in their flats and houses on Avenue Foch, in Belgravia, and in those apartments at Trump Tower and similar topless towers where Arabs like to have a little pied-a-terre with a dozen mirrored bedrooms, for those special guests? He really is an innocent, that Dinesh D'Souza, who presumes to make pronouncements on matters he knows, it is now evident, nothing about.
"The Secretary of State recently stated that the Middle East will have to “overcome” the tendency to see things in Sunni-Shi’a terms."
The Sixities are over.
The Seventies are over.
The Eighties and the Ninties are over.
The days of combating bullets and billy clubs with Love are *over*.
Woman, the Sunni-Shi'a are too busy fightin to bother with singin your out-dated tune.
Give it a rest Condi!!!!
Overcome your blindness.
The ‘elite’ universities have become shells. Honest scholarship has been attacked from many angles. What was strong fifty years ago is now empty.
Admissions are controlled by legacy scholarships on one end and a failed utopian vision of world on the other. The straight A student from an Iowa farm has very little chance of getting into Stanford. The rich kid who spent 2 years handing out condoms in Morocco for the Peace Corps is virtually guaranteed admission.
And once you’re in, you’re in. Harvard has ridiculously low failure rates (a few percent if I remember right). In contrast, an upper Midwest state school I am familiar with fails out a third of its students the first year. They set standards and make judgments that Condelesa Rice and her boss have probably never been subject to.
We have been run by the people within the ‘bubble’ for the last two decades and it has taken a toll on our Country. Fortunately for the greater good, bubbles pop. It will take the collapse of the social safety net to make it pop, but it will. Interesting times.
"The Secretary of State recently stated that the Middle East will have to “overcome” the tendency to see things in Sunni-Shi’a terms."
The Sixities are over.
Posted by: Malinois at January 23, 2007 12:41 PM
Not to the left they aren't, just like the 630's
never ended for the peaceful ones. No wonder this world of 2007 is so screwed up-too many damn crazies living in the past!
Turning Iraq into three new nations will quiet things down—giving the Sunni’s portion to the Sunnis, Kurd’s to the Kurds, and Shias’ to the Shias, which will put us to the next question; that is, who is getting what? When all is settled, we will not be very happy either because we cannot live with seeing the larger, oil rich portions stand contiguously being added to Iran’s coffer, which we know is a crucial asset for the expansion of Islamic theocracy worldwide, which is their main aim since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which is a far worse outcome than a quake mire-- if, that has been so.
Why do I say the failure of the quasi democracy in Iraq is far worse than a ten or twenty-year quake mire in Iraq? Let’s take Lebanon for an example; Huzbullah, the dominating power in sunni Syria and Lebanon, was thought to be more harm to Israel than to us. Not until recently, that America comes to grip with a sudden awareness of the Huzbullah being an extended arm of Iran. Sadly to say, we were aroused from our sleep only after Israel exposed it to us in the recent Israel-Huzbullah war (see Haaretz, December 16, 2006)--though Israel is only a grasshopper in our eyes. It is very obvious: how the shias presently control power in Syrian and Lebanon is how they will carry it out when Iraq finally breaks down into three. When the current Iraqi government falls, Iran will excise its hegemony, through its financing of terrorists, in all the divided, contiguous land, from the west coast of Lebanon to the eastern border of Iran.
In addition to the lost of US influence in the region, there will be a great loss in oil investment—think of your money at Wall Street, and the great burden added to the US in shouldering the outcome of the humanitarian disaster in Iraq; both will be a loss in terms of Trillions of US dollars. Think for a moment: It takes a tremendous corporate investment in searching oil to the time it is pumped out of the ground, which is not to mention all expenses on the fail attempts. As to the humanitarian disaster, it will come in the form of burden in the great influx of new refugees, from providing food stamps to education and many other things for many years until the refugees can stand on their own feet—assuming they finally can. We have not yet made mention of the Saudi’s hand in this rivalry, but I will leave the rest to your imagination.
Not considering the riddle we have tried to solve, since the establishment of the US Navy for combating the Barbary in 1790 up till today, and in spite of the impossibility for the Shia-Sunni sects to reconcile—as Hugh affirmed, after taking all of the above into consideration, will you prefer defeat or quake mire, in case if victory is unattainable?
"We will need Islamologists from now on just as we needed Kremlinologists during the Cold War."
Perhaps some day, after the election of 2012, we will finally get a President who understands the gravity of the Problem of Islam and grasps its relevant dimensions; and who, therefore, would create a new Cabinet position: Islam Czar (along the lines of the "Drug Czar") -- not as a public relations ambassador to Muslims who has been vetted by CAIR, but as an analyst with his own staff working to study our Enemy's ideology, and in turn to brief the Secretaries of State and Defense.
Imagine this scenario (which may sound, unfortunately, like Fantasy Fiction):
In 2008, Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama come to a brilliant rapprochement: instead of competing against each other for the nomination, they decide to join as a team. An entire month of intense discussions ensue, since each one wants top billing on the ticket. Finally, their advisors convince them both that it would be slightly easier for a white woman (particularly a Senator of a major state like New York and the wife of a former President still popular among almost 150 million Americans, the "blue states") to be electable as President than it would be for a black man with, in addition, a vaguely disquieting aura of Islam in his past (which their advisors and handlers agree, of course, is not a bad thing, but may nevertheless prove to have a subliminally detracting effect in a significant portion of the American public's mind on Obama's Presidential aspirations).
The Clinton/Obama ticket works, and they glide into the White House in 2008, partially as a result of the increasingly precipitous decline of Bush's popularity over the preceding year.
The Clinton/Obama White House between the years of 2008 and 2011, aside from pursuing a blatantly pro-Islamic agenda at home and abroad (in league with Nancy Pelosi, and nominating Keith Ellison to a Cabinet post), suffers horrible shocks, along with the American public, when several key cities and locales in the USA are struck by Muslim terrorists (as well as the occurrence of other attacks in Europe) in the summer of 2011 -- notwithstanding the fact that Hillary has already officially signed off on a timetable to completely leave Iraq within six months.
These attacks, coupled with the abysmal performance of the Clinton/Obama White House to deal with them, and the slowly but surely rousing anger and lucidity of more and more of the American public, make the following candidates for the election of 2012 a shoo-in: Tancredo/Giuliani.
President Tancredo immediately nominates Robert Spencer for the Cabinet position of Islam Czar, with Hugh Fitzgerald as his chief scholar and librarian along with a "Dream Team" -- a staff including Ibn Warraq, Ali Sina, Andrew Bostom, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Bat Ye'or, Daniel Pipes, David Horowitz, Christopher Hitchens, and others (with all the non-Americans of the bunch agreeing to make the unprecedented decision of becoming American citizens and moving to Washington for this project of utmost importance.
In consultation with the new Islam Czar and his staff, Tancredo and Giuliani then flesh out the rest of the Cabinet members.
Rebert Spencer and Hugh Fitzgerald,
Will accept a Cabinet position of Islam Czar?
Will you accept a Cabinet position of Islam Czar?
"The rich kid who spent 2 years handing out condoms in Morocco for the Peace Corps is virtually guaranteed admission."
-Whether rich or poor, anyone who passes out condoms in Morocco should be a Jihadwatch hero. What better way of reducing the Umma?
Abu; Very good point. I’ll pat him on the back next time we get together. But, for the record, the Peace Corp project was AIDS prevention. The Moroccans didn’t seem to have much of a need for his offerings in any case. The more kids you have, the more likely it is that you can drop anchor in Spain or France.
For a ‘Muslims are kind to each other’ datapoint, the family he was living with didn’t get along with the neighbors. During one visit, the other mother grabbed the host family’s baby and threw it to the floor.
Why, are you looking to fill your future cabinet? I believe that a cabinet position requires only one person, and what is a Czar? The only ones I know of were murdered by their own people. ssa, if you are truly stating what you believe, I respect you. I am however hard to convince but I do read your posts and it does lead me to suspect that you are a truthful man. Of course I always try to believe in the best of people right up until I don’t.
tgusa,
Ask remote_control, he posted this:
'Robert Spencer for the Cabinet position of Islam Czar, with Hugh Fitzgerald as his chief scholar and librarian along with a "Dream Team"'
Posted by: remote_control
tgusa,
I knew from the beginning that you are not a racist. I am not flettering at all.
You actually made me laugh every time I read your posting. I was just a little up to mischief. I regret now.
Any way, in case you are wondering, I didn't mean to make you mad when I addressed you as "Old man." I meant older man deserves a salutation.
I should have addressed you are "Venerable tgusa, or Sir tgusa the conqueror, or tgusa your excellency.
Just tgusa will do, I’m no better or worse than the average American. I don’t care for titles, actions speak louder than titles or words in my book. I am glad you knew from the beginning that I am not a racist, now that doesn’t mean I don’t look out for people that are like me in thought, and unfortunately my people have been the ones doing most of the thinking, fighting and dying, for others, in the name of freedom. After all we gained what we have by standing up for ourselves so I don’t appreciate any who discredit what we have done throughout history. I challenge any historian to come up with any group that has done more for the advancement of civilized humanity from the beginning of time than us. Am I old? Well I am over Forty but I haven’t changed much since my twenties, maybe a little gray hair, but I am smarter faster and much more cunning today than I was in my youth.
Remote Control,
You are certainly an optimist. You believe we would survive four years of Islamic terrorism under Clinton/Obama and would be allowed to elect a new president?
CNN has debunked the Obama madrassah story, so if New Hampshire voters decide Hillary is unelectable then Obama might be on top of the ticket after all. True to form, the Dems have condemned it as a right wing smear, even though the info came from Hillary's organization.
Next thing you know, we'll hear Keith Ellison nominated for VEEP. Curiouser and curiouser.
tgusa,
I strongly agree with you for all that you have said. There is nothing wrong for what you think in terms of your race. After all it was through your race, the true Christian scripture was discovered hiding in the Papal’s basement; it was your race who gave us Magna Carta; it was your race invented the type settings, through which we become literate all over the world; it was your race that makes up three quarter of America. If it’s not through your race and your horticulture, how does God fill His people’s stomach before they go to sleep at night?
I have no trouble giving credit to those who deserve it. I just don’t want Muslims --whatever race they are, including the whites--to take it from you. I hope you would admit, Christians of other race deserve admiring too, for they will not join in the killing and the lying of the Muslims’. By Christians, I do not mean those who attend churches, but that which He called sheep within His fold.
Above all, what is a race without God? What is the glory, if all good works should go down to the squandering fools or to the devils?
As long as I live, nothing is more important to me than serving Him, who gives me breath, despite what people choose to think. When I ran way from my enemies, killed my enemies, and healed my enemies, I breath Jesus, I eat Jesus, and I drink Jesus.
Have you heard, "Your God is my God, you people, my people?"
Remote_Control, aka Television,
That is a fantasy. Yes, forget about the Founding Documents, throw them out the window. A women along with some guy that I don’t even know, what or who he is will change all that. No more Adams, Jefferson, Ross, Washington, Lincoln and on and on into eternity. All wiped out in 8 years by Abed and his concubine from arkansas? I don’t think so, and any rational person that is familiar with America and Americans shouldn’t either. These are the days of lunatic musings, they will soon come to an end, forced there by the unrelenting attacks by islamists and the apologistics of their stooges.
Don’t get mad TV I’m not calling you a lunatic, I understand and comprehend your posts.
"Your God is my God, your people, my people?"
No, are you part of my people?, You moved here of I presume your own volitio,. so you worship what and who you want but don’t push it on any others. God will judge men according to their deeds or lack there of, I am not going to take his authority away. So that being said are you with me or against me? You are free to choose, isn’t it great?
Well?
So who is reading this thread at this late hour? Does not matter. I am so disappointed that no reader of this blog has rebutted or even commented on, "allat" who said on 1-23-=2007, 11:07am, "...the idiots (our militia/military or National GUard (sic) are going willingly." What a troll. The lefties are using this site to get the anti-jihadists to help elect Democrats. Hugh, what is your plan? Make things so bad that even the thickest American can understand what, "Death to America" means? Does that mean electing a liberal who is selling surrender as a viable option?
"Hugh, what is your plan?"
-- from a posting above
To repeat what has been posted several hundred times, and in several dozen articles:
1) Withdraw completely from Iraq and instead of fearing whatever chaos may result from warfare between Sunni and Shi'a within Iraq, hope that such a fight is fairly even, as I think it would be despite the Shi'a advantage in population, and also hope that men, money, and materiel are sent by the co-religionists in neighboring countries, especially Saudi Arabia and Iran, the two countries that were most threatened by Saddam Hussein's regime and that were, at least initially (the Saudis are horrified at the way the Americans actually let power be transferred to the Shi'a; they never thought that would happen), pleased by his removal, and beneficiaries of it.
2) Accompany such a withdrawal by a series of measures that will show that far from this being some kind of admission of defeat, it will show instead a much harder and harsher response to the Jihad that is a duty of Muslims everywhere.
Among those measures should be the following:
a) Emphasis on the obtaining not of obtain that false goal, "energy independence," but rather the real goal of diminishing the use of oil and gas and so also diminishing the money available for the world-wide Jihad.
For that, the government should impose a constantly rising tax on gasoline and on other uses of oil 2) an energy policy that will have the government spend large sums on the building of nuclear plants and subsidies for mass transit, and that will, through tax benefits, encourage hybrid cars, solar energy for homes, and wind farms.
b) Military intervention in the southern Sudan and Darfur, mainly through the destruction of the Sudanese planes and helicopters, and threats to bring the war to the government in Khartoum, through the use of seveal thousand men and the air force. Black African forces from mainly Christian countries could also be used. The territory taken should be held until such time as a referendum on independence from the Arabs of the north can be held.
c) New measures to end Muslim immigraton.
d) Meetings of NATO to discuss future security threats that may result from a larger Muslim population within NATO countries, and ways to diminish that threat.
e) Widespread study of the texts of Islam -- Qur'an, Hadith, Sira -- by members of the military and in the upper reaches of the government, and all members of the security services (CIA, FBI) to be taught not by apologists but by those who, like some associated with this site, have no stake in making Islam palatable, but only in telling the truth about it. That textual study should be supplemented by a study of the history of Islamic Jihad-conquest, and of the subjugation of non-Muslims under Muslim rule.
f) An end to the aid, which has become nothig more than a disgusied Jizyah to all Muslim polities and peoples, but mainly to Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, and the "Palestinian" territories. None of these is or could ever be, given the tenets of Islam, a true friend to the United States or its people, even if the odd Western-educated leader, such as Abdullah of Jordan, may as an individual harbor pleasant memories of his stay here, but whose country is to be judged not by him and his limited power, but by the masses in that country. Make sure that a great deal of attention is focussed on the fantastic wealth of the rich Arabs, of Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E., Kuwait, Qatar, Libya, and so on, and that the public in this country and elsewhere learns the size of the revenues from OPEC that have gone to Muslim oil states since 1973 -- about ten trillion dollars. Make clear to the former recipients of Infidel aid that they are encouraged to seek aid from those rich Arabs, those fellow members of the Umma, but that the Americans and other Infidels have expenses -- such as much greater security needs and energy projects -- that will require all of our discretionary income, and besides, those fellow members of the Umma surely will come through.
g) Support those in Kurdistan willing to fight for an independent state, offering to intervene diplomatically to ensure that Turkey does not oppose but sees the wisdom of supporting such an independent state. Assurances must be extracted from Kurdish leaders that they will never make territorial demands on Turkey, and those assurances need to be relayed to the Turkish government. In return, the United States will, alone in the area, support a free Kurdistan and will also work with the Kurds to ensure that they can make claims on the Kurdish-populated regions of both Syria and Iran.
h) Use the example of Kurdistan -- well-publicized -- to begin a campaign directed at non-Arab Muslims, such as the Berbers, to encourage them to emulate the Kurds in throwing off the Arab yoke, and make a constant theme the use of Islam as a vehicle for Arab linguistic, cultural, and political impreialism -- which, of course, it is and always has been.
i) With the potential American victims of Iranian retaliation removed from Iraq,make and execute plans to damage or destroy Iran's nuclear project. There is no need to destroy Iran's conventional forces. In fact, they should be left largely intact so as to serve as a continuing threat to the Sunnis in Iraq, and by extension, to Sunnis elsewhere. But the nuclear weapons are a threat to Infidel states and peoples, and it should not be left up to tiny Israel to deal with the matter (even if it could, which is not clear).
Measures a) through i) are just a brief list of somoe of things to be done initially in this war which has no end (and when Blair says it will last "a generation" and Cheney says it will last "30 or 40 years" they are both being silly; this is a war, between Islam and the rest, that has no end, that is containable but will go on forever).
The only "victory" that makes sense in Iraq is that which results in the Camp of Islam being weakened. The only way to do that is to use the pre-existing fissures, ethnic and sectarian, within Iraq, to the advantage of the world's Infidels, and the only way to take such advantage is for American troops to go rather than to stay, for a stated goal (a secure, united, even prosperous Iraq) that is not the right one, that is in fact the opposite of the right one.
Hugh,
Excellent summary of your ideas expressed here at JW over the years. "A time like this demands strong minds, great hearts, true faith and ready hands."
Given all non-muslims are "in this war which has no end", thought I'd add to the list some additional thoughts, an incomplete skeletal plan really, from Jerrold M. Post, M.D. which overlap in some, especially encouraging dissension and withholding aid, your conclusions for readers to discuss. Some of these steps, if developed and implemented, for reasons I hope are obvious, will require no visible infidel footprint:
a.) Inhibit potential terrorists from joining the
group(s) in the first place.
b.) Produce dissension in the group(s).
c.) Facilitate exit from the group(s).
d.) Reduce support for the group(s) and
delegitimize its leader(s).
Robohobo:
Bringing in the Japanese, are you? Whom will they be against? Us? Muslims? Ruskies? You are making me feel even more anxious for the future .. perhaps it is not orange after all, nor brown .. but yellow!