Fitzgerald: Oriana would have laughed

Thanks for helping us hear again that Cassandra-Voice. I had almost forgotten.

"people must conquer freedom by themselves. Democracy must come from their will, and in both cases a country must know what they consist of. In Europe the Second World War was a liberation war not because it brought novelties called freedom and democracy but because it re-established them. Because Europeans knew what they consisted of" --By Oriana Fallaci

This point that Oriana Fallaci makes is the unfortunate rub that makes this a different war then liberating Europe and Italy from Nazism, and facsism. Europe knew democracy,Italy knew democracy before the rise of the fuhrer and Mussolini. They understood what they lost, and missed and thus they could struggle to reclaim it. Iraq and Afghanistan and many other Islamic countries do not know what they lost because they never had it to began with. They are to deeply programmed to be led by political Islam that is always vulnerable to despots,dictators, and demogogues. They simply do not understand the values of the kind of democracy western societies live within. To allow for the full implementation of Sharia is to allow for political Islam.

Hugh, is there any way at either Jihad Watch or Dhimmi Watch you can create and sell a t-shirt (a long-sleeved one, too) with the immortal face of brilliant Oriana on it?

A fine lady, deeply missed.

And one who understood, as too few Europeans seem to, that you don't spit in the face of the fireman carrying you down the ladder from a burning building.

It's self-defeating. And uncouth.

As is their fixation on villifying America as the dangerous "hyper-power".

As if anyone else is going to defend their (and our root) Civilization against the rising depredations of Resugent Islamic Imperialism.

In the words of one of their own sons:

"Lord, what fools these mortals be."

Candy-coating Mohammadism and tarring the U.S.

Maybe when the Arabic bilingual road signs hit the EU they'll begin to catch the Sharia scent of what is happening around them?

Thank you.

While no arab nation is worth one ounce of Christian blood, and the war to liberated arabs is a useless war, the fact remains that if America were to leave, Iran would move in.

They have the power and the will. While the shia and sunnis can nickel and dime each other to death, and while we may enjoy this, the Iranian regime will not be nickeled and dimed. They are not in danger of any civil war. Indeed, they have the influence and material to swallow up Iraq and increase the size and scope of Iran. This is no doubt the plan of Khamenei

Going into Iraq may have been a mistake. Saddam kept the jihadists at bay. But once you remove the plug that kept the slime back, you have to keep your finger in there lest it flood everywhere.

Iraq will descend into civil war. In fact, it is already in civil war, as civil as muslims can fight it. We may not recognize it, because unlike the west, muslims do not fight with canons and generals on battlefields, they just run into cafes and start shooting - like the cosa nostra Sicilians they so spiritually inspired.

But this civil war will not "weaken the camp of islam". That is impossible. Islam may bicker amongst its murderers, but about the west, it has no debate. The infiltration of muslims to the west will, if anything, accelerate with civil war in Iraq. Indeed, talk has already surfaced in government of allowing Iraqis to migrate to the US to flee such a civil war.

The camp of islam, whatever that means, has always had these divisions, has always fought internally, but it has always been united against the west. Even if all of Iraq was in flames, Al-qaeda would continue to operate as before, maybe with renewed vigor in the west, immigration, both legal and illegal, will continue to America from war-torn Iraq and other areas that might be involved, infusing America and the west will hundreds of thousands or even millions more muslim refugee-seekers, and the islamic worldwide menace would not be daunted one iota. Whatever differences exist between sunni and shia, they in no way prevent, or even diminish the will, and the capability of islam, overt, or covert, from presenting itself to the west to do jihad.

What pulling out of Iraq will do, rather than hurt islam, will be to geographically join Iran with Syria and embolden both on their way to what they will interpret as the first huge step toward a caliphate. And that will not hurt the cause of worldwide jihad one bit.

"She found, in the main, lies and nonsense, hate and hysteria."

Ding Ding Ding Ding!

Ladies and Gentlemen I believe we have a winner in the "Describe Islam in one sentence" contest.

Thanks Hugh for a good article. And people, get and read her books if you haven't already done so.
They will certainly give you a sense of where we, the civilized, need to be mentally if we are to defeat the barbarism now upon us

"WHAT ME WORRY?"

"...what if instead of learning freedom Iraq becomes a second Talibani Afghanistan? What if instead of becoming democratized by the Pax Americana the whole Middle East blows up and the cancer multiplies?"

I put myself in Dubya's shoes back in 2003 and asked myself the same question. I concluded that as a conservative, as a Republican President with a disputed election victory, it would be wiser to err on the side of caution.

FrontPageMag.com By Robert Spencer By Hugh Fitzgerald Books Jihad Watch Robert Spencer Islam 101

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April 09, 2007
Fitzgerald: Oriana would have laughed

Oriana Fallaci was not a fan of useless warfare. She was someone who had grown up in civilized Florence (fighting uncivilized Fascists and Nazis), in civilized Italy, and then made a profession that often took her to the Muslim world, where she interviewed -- and came to detest -- such people as Arafat and Khomeini and their world-views. And it did not come naturally to her at first because she certainly started life with certain left-wing views. Her Greek lover Panagoulis was murdered by the right-wing Greek regime of the pinochetesque colonels. She was on the side of freedom, however, and also sufficiently well-educated and sure of herself not to be the mindless parroter of anything.

She saw Islam and Muslims up close. She found nothing to admire. She found, in the main, lies and nonsense, hate and hysteria. Beginning with vaguely "pro-Palestinian" views, she came to be a stout defender of Israel -- stouter, I should say, than the Israelis themselves. She became much more appreciative of the United States, and much more enraged at easy European expressions of cheap anti-Americanism, because she knew that Europe owed its freedom, and certainly Italy did, to the United States. In other words, she was full of common sense.

Oriana Fallaci was haunted by the possible loss of Europe, of Italy, of Tuscany. She would go into a rage, on the page and in life, over the mere thought of that mosque that Muslims wanted to put up in the most Tuscan of places, the Col di Val d'Elsa. An equivalent in this country would be Muslims wishing to put up a giant mosque, bristling minarets and all, right by the rude bridge where the embattled farmers stood and fired the shot heard 'round the world, in Concord.

Knowing Islam, knowing Muslims, she would have laughed at the naivete of Bush and his "democracy" project. And she would have been furious, I am sure, at the inattention to Europe, and the ridiculous and sentimental inability of the Administration not to identify and then exploit the points of weakness or of division within the Camp of Islam and Jihad that have been identified and discussed ad nauseam at this website for more than three relentless years. And finally, some of it is filtering out into the Greater Ether. It should have happened long ago.

On March 13, 2003, when 90% of this country supported the war, Oriana Fallaci wrote of her considerable doubts in "The Wall Street Journal." She was particularly harsh on the notion of conducting war for "humanitarian" purposes such as "bringing democracy." Here are some excerpts:

They are also in Europe. They are in Paris where the mellifluous Jacques Chirac does not give a damn for peace but plans to satisfy his vanity with the Nobel Peace Prize. Where there is no wish to remove Saddam Hussein because Saddam Hussein means the oil that the French companies pump from Iraqi wells. And where (forgetting a little flaw named Petain) France chases its Napoleonic desire to dominate the European Union, to establish its hegemony over it. They are in Berlin, where the party of the mediocre Gerhard Schröder won the elections by comparing Mr. Bush to Hitler, where American flags are soiled with the swastika, and where, in the dream of playing the masters again, Germans go arm-in-arm with the French. They are in Rome where the communists left by the door and re-entered through the window like the birds of the Hitchcock movie. And where, pestering the world with his ecumenism, his pietism, his Thirdworldism, Pope Wojtyla receives Tariq Aziz as a dove or a martyr who is about to be eaten by lions. (Then he sends him to Assisi where the friars escort him to the tomb of St. Francis.) In the other European countries, it is more or less the same. In Europe your enemies are everywhere, Mr. Bush. What you quietly call "differences of opinion" are in reality pure hate. Because in Europe pacifism is synonymous with anti-Americanism, sir, and accompanied by the most sinister revival of anti-Semitism the anti-Americanism triumphs as much as in the Islamic world. Haven't your ambassadors informed you? Europe is no longer Europe. It is a province of Islam, as Spain and Portugal were at the time of the Moors. It hosts almost 16 million Muslim immigrants and teems with mullahs, imams, mosques, burqas, chadors. It lodges thousands of Islamic terrorists whom governments don't know how to identify and control. People are afraid, and in waving the flag of pacifism--pacifism synonymous with anti-Americanism--they feel protected.

Besides, Europe does not care for the 221,484 Americans who died for her in the Second World War. Rather than gratitude, their cemeteries give rise to resentment. As a consequence, in Europe nobody will back this war. Not even nations which are officially allied with the U.S., not even the prime ministers who call you "My friend George." (Like Silvio Berlusconi.) In Europe you only have one friend, one ally, sir: Tony Blair. But Mr. Blair too leads a country which is invaded by the Moors. A country that hides that resentment. Even his party opposes him, and by the way: I owe you an apology, Mr Blair. In my book "The Rage and the Pride," I was unfair to you. Because I wrote that you would not persevere with your guts, that you would drop them as soon as it would no longer serve your political interests. With impeccable coherence, instead, you are sacrificing those interests to your convictions. Indeed, I apologize. I also withdraw the phrase I used to comment on your excess of courtesy toward Islamic culture: "If our culture has the same value as the one that imposes the burqa, why do you spend your summers in my Tuscany and not in Saudi Arabia?" Now I say: "My Tuscany is your Tuscany, sir. My home is your home."

The final reason for my dilemma is the definition that Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair and their advisors give of this war: "A Liberation war. A humanitarian war to bring freedom and democracy to Iraq." Oh, no. Humanitarianism has nothing to do with wars. All wars, even just ones, are death and destruction and atrocities and tears. And this is not a liberation war, a war like the Second World War. (By the way: neither is it an "oil war," as the pacifists who never yell against Saddam or bin Laden maintain in their rallies. Americans do not need Iraqi oil.) It is a political war. A war made in cold blood to respond to the Holy War that the enemies of the West declared upon the West on September 11. It is also a prophylactic war. A vaccine, a surgery that hits Saddam because, (Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair believe), among the various focuses of cancer Saddam is the most obvious and dangerous one. Moreover, the obstacle that once removed will permit them to redesign the map of the Middle East as the British and the French did after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. To redesign it and to spread a Pax Romana, pardon, a Pax Americana, in which everybody will prosper through freedom and democracy. Again, no. Freedom cannot be a gift. And democracy cannot be imposed with bombs, with occupation armies. As my father said when he asked the anti-fascists to join the Resistance, and as today I say to those who honestly rely on the Pax Americana, people must conquer freedom by themselves. Democracy must come from their will, and in both cases a country must know what they consist of. In Europe the Second World War was a liberation war not because it brought novelties called freedom and democracy but because it re-established them. Because Europeans knew what they consisted of. The Japanese did not: it is true. In Japan, those two treasures were somehow a gift, a refund for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But Japan had already started its process of modernization, and did not belong to the Islamic world. As I write in my book when I call bin Laden the tip of the iceberg and I define the iceberg as a mountain that has not moved for 1,400 years, that for 1,400 years has not changed, that has not emerged from its blindness, freedom and democracy are totally unrelated to the ideological texture of Islam. To the tyranny of theocratic states. So their people refuse them, and even more they want to erase ours.

Upheld by their stubborn optimism, the same optimism for which at the Alamo they fought so well and all died slaughtered by Santa Anna, Americans think that in Baghdad they will be welcomed as they were in Rome and Florence and Paris. "They'll cheer us, throw us flowers." Maybe. In Baghdad anything can happen. But after that? Nearly two-thirds of the Iraqis are Shiites who have always dreamed of establishing an Islamic Republic of Iraq, and the Soviets too were once cheered in Kabul. They too imposed their peace. They even succeeded in convincing women to take off their burqa, remember? After a while, though, they had to leave. And the Taliban came. Thus, I ask: what if instead of learning freedom Iraq becomes a second Talibani Afghanistan? What if instead of becoming democratized by the Pax Americana the whole Middle East blows up and the cancer multiplies?"

What about those last two sentences? What about someone who wishes to quote them and to use them in defense of remaining in Iraq? What about someone who says see, Oriana Fallaci is with us, she's worried about Iraq becoming a "Talibani Afghanistan" and the "cancer" multiplying? To that I answer: no, I don't think so. I think she would see, once it had been pointed out to her, that the glib phrases about Iraq "being taken over by Al Qaeda" are silly, because no one is going to "take over Iraq," least of all Al Qaeda, which is the sworn mortal enemy of the Shi'a (who are considered to be "Rafidite dogs" not only by the current leaders of Al Qaeda in Iraq, but by the late Al-Zarqawi). Thus Al-Qaeda already has 60-65% of the Iraqi population against it, as well as the Kurds, who regard Al-Qaeda as an "Arab" group -- and they make up another 20% of the population. And the 19% that is Sunni Arab itself consists of many people who -- as the tribal revolt against Al Qaeda suggests -- have their own interests, and refuse to be dictated to by Al-Qaeda, even if they will continue to oppose the Shi'a, and of course the Americans, those permanent Infidels.

She didn't live long enough to see the mess go on and on. But though on the left much of her life, she was also deeply grateful to the Americans for helping rescue Europe.

I have no doubt about which arguments, those made by me or those cobbled together by those who oppose me, Oriana Fallaci would have found more convincing, and more likely, in her own view, to lead to a weakening of the Camp of Islam and above all, to a situation that would give Europe some breathing room to come to its civilizational senses.

Posted by Hugh at April 9, 2007 08:56 AM
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Thanks for helping us hear again that Cassandra-Voice. I had almost forgotten.
Posted by: poetcomic1 [TypeKey Profile Page] at April 9, 2007 09:43 AM

"people must conquer freedom by themselves. Democracy must come from their will, and in both cases a country must know what they consist of. In Europe the Second World War was a liberation war not because it brought novelties called freedom and democracy but because it re-established them. Because Europeans knew what they consisted of" --By Oriana Fallaci

This point that Oriana Fallaci makes is the unfortunate rub that makes this a different war then liberating Europe and Italy from Nazism, and facsism. Europe knew democracy,Italy knew democracy before the rise of the fuhrer and Mussolini. They understood what they lost, and missed and thus they could struggle to reclaim it. Iraq and Afghanistan and many other Islamic countries do not know what they lost because they never had it to began with. They are to deeply programmed to be led by political Islam that is always vulnerable to despots,dictators, and demogogues. They simply do not understand the values of the kind of democracy western societies live within. To allow for the full implementation of Sharia is to allow for political Islam.
Posted by: Mackie [TypeKey Profile Page] at April 9, 2007 10:48 AM

Hugh, is there any way at either Jihad Watch or Dhimmi Watch you can create and sell a t-shirt (a long-sleeved one, too) with the immortal face of brilliant Oriana on it?
Posted by: darcy [TypeKey Profile Page] at April 9, 2007 11:19 AM

A fine lady, deeply missed.

And one who understood, as too few Europeans seem to, that you don't spit in the face of the fireman carrying you down the ladder from a burning building.

It's self-defeating. And uncouth.

As is their fixation on villifying America as the dangerous "hyper-power".

As if anyone else is going to defend their (and our root) Civilization against the rising depredations of Resugent Islamic Imperialism.

In the words of one of their own sons:

"Lord, what fools these mortals be."

Candy-coating Mohammadism and tarring the U.S.

Maybe when the Arabic bilingual road signs hit the EU they'll begin to catch the Sharia scent of what is happening around them?
Posted by: profitsbeard [TypeKey Profile Page] at April 9, 2007 11:40 AM

Thank you.
Posted by: Josephine [TypeKey Profile Page] at April 9, 2007 11:46 AM

While no arab nation is worth one ounce of Christian blood, and the war to liberated arabs is a useless war, the fact remains that if America were to leave, Iran would move in.

They have the power and the will. While the shia and sunnis can nickel and dime each other to death, and while we may enjoy this, the Iranian regime will not be nickeled and dimed. They are not in danger of any civil war. Indeed, they have the influence and material to swallow up Iraq and increase the size and scope of Iran. This is no doubt the plan of Khamenei

Going into Iraq may have been a mistake. Saddam kept the jihadists at bay. But once you remove the plug that kept the slime back, you have to keep your finger in there lest it flood everywhere.

Iraq will descend into civil war. In fact, it is already in civil war, as civil as muslims can fight it. We may not recognize it, because unlike the west, muslims do not fight with canons and generals on battlefields, they just run into cafes and start shooting - like the cosa nostra Sicilians they so spiritually inspired.

But this civil war will not "weaken the camp of islam". That is impossible. Islam may bicker amongst its murderers, but about the west, it has no debate. The infiltration of muslims to the west will, if anything, accelerate with civil war in Iraq. Indeed, talk has already surfaced in government of allowing Iraqis to migrate to the US to flee such a civil war.

The camp of islam, whatever that means, has always had these divisions, has always fought internally, but it has always been united against the west. Even if all of Iraq was in flames, Al-qaeda would continue to operate as before, maybe with renewed vigor in the west, immigration, both legal and illegal, will continue to America from war-torn Iraq and other areas that might be involved, infusing America and the west will hundreds of thousands or even millions more muslim refugee-seekers, and the islamic worldwide menace would not be daunted one iota. Whatever differences exist between sunni and shia, they in no way prevent, or even diminish the will, and the capability of islam, overt, or covert, from presenting itself to the west to do jihad.

What pulling out of Iraq will do, rather than hurt islam, will be to geographically join Iran with Syria and embolden both on their way to what they will interpret as the first huge step toward a caliphate. And that will not hurt the cause of worldwide jihad one bit.
Posted by: jihadwatcher [TypeKey Profile Page] at April 9, 2007 12:53 PM

"She found, in the main, lies and nonsense, hate and hysteria."

Ding Ding Ding Ding!

Ladies and Gentlemen I believe we have a winner in the "Describe Islam in one sentence" contest.

Thanks Hugh for a good article. And people, get and read her books if you haven't already done so.
They will certainly give you a sense of where we, the civilized, need to be mentally if we are to defeat the barbarism now upon us
Posted by: William The Crusader [TypeKey Profile Page] at April 9, 2007 12:55 PM

"WHAT ME WORRY?"

"...what if instead of learning freedom Iraq becomes a second Talibani Afghanistan? What if instead of becoming democratized by the Pax Americana the whole Middle East blows up and the cancer multiplies?"

I put myself in Dubya's shoes back in 2003 and asked myself the same question. I concluded that as a conservative, as a Republican President with a disputed election victory, it would be wiser to err on the side of caution.
Posted by: Ynkedoodl [TypeKey Profile Page] at April 9, 2007 12:58 PM
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"this civil war will not "weaken the camp of islam". That is impossible."
-- from a posting above

This makes no sense. If there is a civil war in Iraq, if it has both sectarian (Sunni-Shi'a Arabs) and an ethnic (Kurds seizing the opportunity to create an independent Kurdistan) dimension, if this leads to co-religionists outside of Iraq to send in volunteers (especially from Iran), money (lots of money, especially from Saudi Arabia), and war materiel (ditto), and if this affects the already-strained relations between Sunni and Shi'a in Pakistan, in Yemen, in Lebanon, in Bahrain, in Saudi Arabia, even in Kuwait, why does that not "weaken the camp of Islam"?

How will this not "weaken the camp of Islam"? Why will Americans remaining in Iraq, spending more than two hundred billion a year on the present and committed future costs (based on the current estimated incurred costs of $880 billion for the first four years of war, and that is without any consideration of macroeconomic costs), using up war materiel (already 40% of that which should be in National Guard armories here is in Iraq, desert-degrading at six times the ordinary rate), using up our military (the Reserves and National Guard are already in a demoralized state, with the members of both components of our civilian army feeling betrayed about what they took to be a government commitment not to send them on second tours to a war zone, and those that have already been, and seen Iraq and the Iraqis, no longer capable of being fooled about "our mission" or the likelihood of accomplishing what to them now makes little sense -- that is no way to fight a war, with troops who overwhelmingly (look at the polling figures for the Reservists and National Guard on their views on the need for a prompt American withdrawal -- and even the much more obedient members of the regular army are, by a growing majority, coming to agree, for unlike the hallicinatory Bush and Cheney and the claque of lecturing and hectoring loyalists, ever more illogical and shrill, are expressing their opposition which merely reflects their own growing understanding, both of Iraq, and of the larger menace of Islam.

Tell me, Poster Above.

Did the Iran-Iraq War "weaken the camp of Islam" or not?

Post your answer here.

"The infiltration of muslims [sic] to the west [sic[ will, if anything, accelerate with civil war in Iraq. Indeed, talk has already surfaced in government of allowing Iraqis to migrate to the US to flee such a civil war."
-- same poster, same post

How is it that the "infiltratrion of Muslims to the West will, if anything, accelerate with civil war in Iraq"? Will it just happen, the way Topsy just grew? Will all those Muslims simply be allowed in, because our government, the same brilliant government that thinks the American army should not be withdrawn from Iraq, is similarly idiotic in its domestic policy, and will simply allow "Iraqis to migrate to the US to flee such a civil war"?

Do we, the outraged Infidels of this country, have no way to prevent this? Have we no say at all in this? Is it for Bush and Rice to decide -- people who have shown no understanding of Islam or of the use of demography as a weapon of Jihad, and who apparently believe that "nice" Muslims,
"good" Muslims -- the ones who don't wear a bomb-vest, or declare that Osama Bin Laden is their beau ideal, are fit for entry into this country, and there should be no problem?

What are you suggesting? That 160,000 American troops, at a cost of between $100-$200 billion a year, should remain in Iraq, because that is the only way that you can think of to prevent them From Following Us Home?

What will they do? Sneak aboard the planes with the returning soldiers? We are free to keep Iraqis out. They can go, they have been going, to other Arab countries. That famous "middle class" can find work all over the Arab states, and especially, if non-Shi'a, in Saudi Arabia and the oil-rich sheiklets.

The failure of Muslims to exhibit the slightest sign of politiical compromise reflects, of course, the victor-vanquished narrative of Islam, and of what is to be found in Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira. It is not our fault, and we have done what we could, however clumsily and ignorantly and naively, to try to bring Sunni and Shi'a together. The Administration failed to understand, as do the Iraqis who now claim "it might have worked" if only the Administration had done this or not done that, that the primitive masses, not Chalabi and Rend al-Rahim and Allawi, will determine the fate of Iraq, and the fate of Iraq is to no longer be a unified state under a Sunni despot (which is the only way such a state could remain unified).

Iraq is over and gone.

And for the United States, contrary to the Poster Above, that is a good thing.

Hugh, you are a treasure. Does your "real" name begin with an I?

Will all those Muslims simply be allowed in, because our government, the same brilliant government that thinks the American army should not be withdrawn from Iraq, is similarly idiotic in its domestic policy, and will simply allow "Iraqis to migrate to the US to flee such a civil war"?

Do we, the outraged Infidels of this country, have no way to prevent this? Have we no say at all in this?

Just a few weeks ago, there was a news item about some 300k Iraqis - not Chaldean or Assyrian, but Iraqi Muslims - being allowed in as refugees in the next few years. Where exactly do you get the idea that we have the power to turn off a policy that allows Muslim immigration, particularly when it's not conventional wisdom that the problems that we have is with Islam, rather than with 'Terror'?

Is it for Bush and Rice to decide -- people who have shown no understanding of Islam or of the use of demography as a weapon of Jihad, and who apparently believe that "nice" Muslims, "good" Muslims -- the ones who don't wear a bomb-vest, or declare that Osama Bin Laden is their beau ideal, are fit for entry into this country, and there should be no problem?

The problem is that it isn't just Bush, Rice or the Dems that show no understanding of the use of demography as a weapon of Jihad. On the GOP side, you don't see an understanding of that by any of the major candidates. Some, like Romney, Gingrich and Tancredo, may be more aware of the fact that the conflict of the West is with 'radical' Islam, but even they are more in line with the Daniel Pipes' school of thinking that 'moderate' Muslims are the solution. Granted that one could challenge them to demonstrate the 'moderate' credentials of all Muslims who seek to come here, but you know how any pol who tries to block any refugees fleeing from a war zone and coming here will be depicted - not just by the Left, but by a good portion of the Right, that sees them as allies.

If this business of encouraging a civil war within Iraq is to be watertight, then we have to plug in any leaks of allowing any Muslims to flee that area to come here!

THANK YOU Hugh, and Robert !!! The world is awakening to the truth day by day because you are not giving up. We are with you.

My "real" name is as you see it. Last I looked, the only "i" was in the embarrassing part of the name, that tell-tale "fitz," with its hallowed but muffled bend-sinister hint. But Shakespeare himself wrote: "Gods, stand up for bastards!" And had Edmund sneer at that "fine word, legitimate."

Oh, Edmund wasn't nice, you say? Well, it's been a long time since I've read "King Lear." But I think it has a lesson for today, doesn't it? Isn't it about a kingdom that is divided into three parts, or is supposed to be? And aren't the Sunni Arabs Regan, and the Shi'a Arabs Goneril, which means that the nearest thing to Cordelia (I don't want to be too flattering here, it's all relative) would be the Kurds?

Why yes indeed.

But we don't have to end up with Shakespeare's ending. We can give it a happy, Colley-Cibberish ending.

C'mon King Lear. Get out of the Kingdom now. Barbados is beautiful this time of year. John Cleese loves the golf course at The Sandy Lane. Maybe you can get in a game.

Orianna was a treasure. I remember reading Playboy interviews she did back her left wing days. But she was kind of jet setter too. She was tres chic back then. It was great to see her resurface and become an ardent critic of Islam. I hope she wised up the Pope in their meeting

Good article, Hugh. But I doubt la Fallaci would have laughed at the Iraq situation, as you suggest in the title. IMO, she'd be very angry.

Reference is often made to the Fallaci/Khomeini interview as reported in excerpts in the NYT Magazine of 7 October 1979.

Her "Interview with History" is a goldmine of interviews but, alas, was published in 1976.

Does anyone have a link to a digital version of the full interview?

I don't remember any mention of establishing a democracy until after the war was won, and we were all milling around looking for "Weapons of Mass Destruction".
It was like an "oh shit", after thought, what are we going to tell them now.
We've made a mess of Iraq, when we should have obliterated Iran, the country we should have attacked in the first place.
On the recent "Hostage" situation. "Royal Marine Commandos", not what they used to be, but that's peace for you.

"I doubt la Fallaci would have laughed at the Iraq situation, as you suggest in the title. IMO, she'd be very angry."
-- from a poster above

The title was taken -- not by me incidentally -- from this phrase in the text: "Knowing Islam, knowing Muslims, she would have laughed at the naivete of Bush and his 'democracy' project."

Laughed mordantly. Or to give it an Arthurian-legendary twist, mordauntly. Laughed bitterly. And then wept. And laughed. And wept again.

The way everyone of sense does, intermittently, as they read or hear the latest news, and as they contemplate the hallucinatory Bush, the hallucinatory Cheney, and the equally-mad people who absolutely positively hate them and their Iraq policy for all the wrong, and never the right, reasons, and think Islam is peachy-keen and all's right, more or less, with the world, save for what the vast Right-Wing Conspiracy has in store for all of us.

Laughing and grief, Lewis Carroll called those important subjects to be taught. Contrary to rumors at burearatic-prosed, poker-faced think-tanks and solemn centers of "International Relations" and "Public Policy" (can you imagine Churchill clutching his Woodrow-Wilson or Kennedy School degree, before heading off to Washington or the E.U. or the U.N.?) Laughing and Grief are not dead languages.

Don't trust someone who hasn't studied Laughing and Grief.

Oriana had common sense seeping from her pores. Thank you for this article

How will this not "weaken the camp of Islam"?

From a poster above.

I already explained how it will not weaken the camp of islam. I have yet to read why it will. Talking points, repeated Ad nauseam, do not make for a convincing argument, or any argument at all. I know this is your own personal crusade on jihadwatch, but it seems it stems more from emotion than an observance of the ugly reality.

And the ugly reality is that regardless of how expensive the war in Iraq has become, regardless of how much better such monies could be allocated, regardless of how insufferable and misguided this crusade may be, it does not change the salient point made that civil war in Iraq does not weaken either the resolve, or the ability, of muslims, from around the world, to set off bombs, to destroy airliners, to behead hostages, or a litany of other violent expressions of their faith, and it certainly does not impede their demographic conquest of the West. The fast jihad continues, the slow jihad continues. Civil war in Iraq, or Darfur, or anywhere else, is a mere sideshow.

Is one to believe that if bullets fly in Iraq that there will be a shortage of knives to decapitate the infidels in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Malyasia? Are we to believe that if bombs detonate at a mosque in Baghdad, that there will follow from that a shortage of bullets for clergymen in Algeria, for school children in Afghanistan, or teachers in Bangledesh? If a sunni militiaman launches an RPG at a Shia militiaman in Iraq, does that then tame that sunni militiaman and make him forget about the Great and Little Satans he so hates with so much passion? Or are we to believe he just runs out of RPGs?

If a car bomb kills 10 Shia at a market in Mosul, does that mean that our airliners are safer for it, that the next Mohammad Atta in Germany, studying city planning, will flee his apartment for Iraq to fight the muslims, totally forgetting about his lifelong ambition to kill the Jews and infidels in New York City? Why should he do allah's bidding in Baghdad against fellow islamists, when he can do allah's bidding in New York against the Jews? And even if such a Mohammad made such a decision predicated, as per your theory, upon his greater hatred for his sectarian rivals than the Jews and Crusaders, an unlikely choice, does that then mean that there are not two more, three more, four more Mohammads, in the same cheap, apartment at the Marien Strasse to take his place? How many muslims are required to fly a plane? From my accounting, there are enough mohammads to kill every man, woman, and child in Iraq, and still have enough fanatics named Mohammad left over to fly every plane in the airlines' fleets into every building in NYC. Such is the ubiquitousness of mohammad.

If muslims in Iraq kill each other at this current rate or greater, are they, as a people, not able to reproduce to replace such losses? Is the birth rate of muslim nations so low that such deaths are a death blow to the "camp of islam"? Hardly. For every 5 killed, another 8 are born. Islam creates children not just out of a need to create cheap labor, but out of a need to create soldiers for allah. And there will never be a shortage of them. Their puny wars over turf and who gets to speak for allah, facilitated as they are by weapons both simple and affordable, are no match for the reproductive machinations of the islamic womb. They can afford to wage civil war and maintain the demographic expansion for which they are famous.

And what of money? If bullets, bombs, RPGS, men and money are expended in these sectarian conflicts, does that, in any way, drain the coffers of islam? Hardly. For as we know, the coffers are filled by our petro dollars, by the Saudis, by Iran, by the UN even by own governments' naive belief that islamic countries need, or deserve, aid, jizya, or outright tribute from the West. Indeed, this naive belief will become more pronounced as CNN and Reuters broadcast images of this hoped-for civil war in Iraq with the all-too-predictable al-Reuters photo montage of poor suffering Iraqi women and children. Oh, yes, if you think, we are giving too much now, just wait until those media violins start to weep. And on cue, Bono and Bob Geldoff will sing to send 20 million more of our dollars there. And that 20 million will buy more Ak-47s. Bono alone, could provide enough cash for 66,000 Ak-47s at $300 a pop. And he is not an oil nation. He's a lead singer for an Irish pop band. There is no shortage of cash to fight islamic sectarian wars.

Hoping that such a conflict, already well under way for awhile now, will get so much larger if America leaves, large enough to drain the pockets of Saudi Arabia and Iran and the rest of the muslim world, so cutely phrased as "The camp of islam" is like hoping for a few pesky mosquitos to drain the blood of an elephant.

Please explain for all here why the unholy crusade of jihad will be attenuated by one in a thousand muslims killing another one in a thousand. In 5 years of this war, if one can call it that, how many of been killed now- 50,000, 60,000? For islam, this is the proverbial drop in the bucket. And in that time frame, how many new muslims boys have come of age as new jihadist fighters? Just as many. Maybe more. Maybe twice as many.

Civil war will not cull the ranks of the "Camp of islam". There are far too many of them for that, they are far too cowardly to fight and die in any large number, and their weapons far too primitive, and pedestrian to kill the 200-300 million or so required to cull their ranks to levels where jihad can arguably be called demographically and/or politically unsustainable, and such weapons are far too inexpensive to drain the coffers of the hundreds of billions of dollars required to bankrupt their petro-dollar machines of their benefactors to achieve this mythical "weakening of the camp of islam".

Naivete such as this, from the poster above, is the biggest obstacle today, next to political correctness, in delineating and achieving a practical solution to the problem of the islamic juggernaut.

Oriana Fallaci clearly deserved all the credit she could get for her understanding the islamic world, defending Israel's existence better than almost everyone, and having more forsight in the middle east than Democrats and Republicans combined.

That said, I do think one problem people may have had with her is that sometimes she inherent used the fear of islamic jihad to assault anyone and everyone from the "islamic world" even if they were not muslim at all or identified as atheist. I've heard critics point to, and seen clipping of it in works like the rage and the pride of her insulting such enemies as "nigerians" "albanians" "algerians" and others without taking factors into consideration. One, the "nigerian" migrants in the West she sometimes insulted were predomianntly christians trying to escape militant muslims. Two, among the albanians she assailed, many were chirstian or essentially athiest or agonistic. Three, the "moroccans" and "Algerians" she assialed likely included such groups as Kabyle and other Amazigh, either secualrist muslim, agonistic or closet Christian, who came to escape the militant Arab-Islamist movements back home.

There are other examples, and I'm not saying it ultimately discredits her hard work in warning the west of the threat of violent jihad. It's just that when analyxing the work of Oriana Fallaci and others there are mistakes made and pitfalls we have to be careful to avoid falling into. Broadbrushing all migrants from a country like Nigeria, Albania or Algeria because that nation is suffering from Islamic movmements, for instance, is not a real effective solution. We already have so many Westenrs convinced resistance to violent jihad acocunts for some kind of white nationalist racism; there's no point in making critics' suspicions stronger when we discuss such terms as mass muslim immigration, how to deal with the current Iraq crisis or how to deal with Iran and other brash, threatning islamic countries.

Yes I miss Oriania
Boy was she fiery!!!
Did not mince her words.
I could kiss her.

I wish she was around.
She would denounce Western Governments for their flaccid responses to Islam. A true defender of freedom.

Been through "The Rage and the Pride"
Currently going through "The Force of Reason"

We have to muddle on without her, trying to fill her shoes, and do what is right.

"I already explained how it will not weaken the camp of islam. I have yet to read why it will. Talking points, repeated Ad nauseam, do not make for a convincing argument, or any argument at all. I know this is your own personal crusade on jihadwatch, but it seems it stems more from emotion than an observance of the ugly reality.

And the ugly reality is that regardless of how expensive the war in Iraq has become, regardless of how much better such monies could be allocated, regardless of how insufferable and misguided this crusade may be, it does not change the salient point made that civil war in Iraq does not weaken either the resolve, or the ability, of muslims, from around the world, to set off bombs, to destroy airliners, to behead hostages, or a litany of other violent expressions of their faith, and it certainly does not impede their demographic conquest of the West. The fast jihad continues, the slow jihad continues. Civil war in Iraq, or Darfur, or anywhere else, is a mere sideshow."
-- from a poster above

You admit that "thw war in Iraq has become" one where "monies could be allocated" much better, that it is an "insufferable and misguised crusade," and then you later admit that the war in Iraq is what you describe as a "sideshow" to the main menace of Islam. We agree. Why then do you think that a "civil war in Iraq" would not at the very least use up Muslim energies, and money, and materiel, and cause all kinds of Shi'a and Sunni to enter the theatre of Iraq to protect their co-religionists? Have you forgotten that during the Iran-Iraq War those two unpleasant regimes had little ability to cause mischief elsewhere? Have you forgotten that during the Iran-Iraq War not only did Iraq use up all of its oil money, but it "borrowed" (never to repay) $60 billion (in 1982 dollars) from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the U.A.E.? Is not the "money weapon" the most important weapon the Muslims have world-wide, and shouild we not welcome any chance to use up some of that discretionary income and piled-up wealth that otherwise goes, with a certainty, to the Muslim missionaries of Tablighi Jamaat and other groups, pays for mosques and madrasas all over the world, pays for Muslim "civil rights" groups (from what foreign lands do you think CAIR and a hundred other groups like CAIR get large donations? From Italy? From Costa Rica? From Iceland?).

Do you not realize that the Sunni Arabs simply cannot permit the "Rashidite dogs" or Shi'a of Iraq to control Mesopotamia (as we redolently like to call it -- see what Jacques Barzun noted of that word, as pleasing as the word "ratiocination")

Are you aware that as almost as soon as the Iran-Iraq War ended in 1988, having time on his hands, Saddam Hussein began to mass-murder the Kurds in his Anfal Operation (named after a Sura). In late 1990 he invaded and occupied Kuwait. In 1991, having been defeated in the Gulf War, with his forces retreating from Kuwait, he soon turned his attention (never a dull moment) to smashing the restless Shi’a in the south, and for the rest of his reign continued tokill Shi’a, send financial support to the “Palestinians,” and do whatever he could to cause trouble.

The same was true of Iran. Khomeini came to power in late 1979. He had a short period of happily condemning to death leaders of the Bahai and Jewish communities along with members of the ancient regime, but then the war came, and the energies of the Islamic Republic, all its hatred and aggression (see statements of Khomeini that can easily be retrieved by searching this site), were devoted to fighting Iraq. It was only afterwards, that the full malevolence of the regime could be turned to doing what it has been doing ever since, with accelerating success, both within Iran, and without.

You appear to believe that because the OPEC revenues are vast, there is no point in trying to make them less vast. You are wrong: it would be wonderful to use up a hundred billion here, a hundred billion there, in a Sunni-Shi’a conflict within Iraq, and one which would or could have effects elsewhere. For example, imagine if Saudi Arabia were sufficiently worried about a spillover effect among the Shi’a of that country, almost all of whom live in the Eastern Province, that is oil-bearing Hasa Province, enough so that they start building huge walls along the border with Iraq, or forcibly removing the Shi’a. And what if such unrest were to inspirte non-Shi’a, such as the quasi-Yemenis in ‘Asir (which was taken over, like much of the rest of what is now southern Saudi Arabia, only in 1934, and has been neglected, relative to the rest of Saudi Arabia, ever since)? What if the “King” of Bahrain (he keeps giving himself a promotion) finds that his scheme to offer citizenship to Iraqi Sunnis, in order to prevent the Shi’a over whom he rules, and who constitute 75% of the population, is opposed by them? What if the Shi’a in Lebanon send Hezbollah volunteers to help out in Iraq, or at the very least, are inspired to make their move in Lebanon. Or what if the reverse happens, and the Sunni Arabs in Lebanon, viewing the attacks by Shi’a on the outnumbered Sunnis in Iraq, decide to attack the Shi’a of Hezbollah? And what will Sipah-e-Sahaba, a Sunni terrorist group that has for years been attacking Shi’a, do when it sees Shi’a attacking Sunnis in Iraq? Or for that matter, what will the Sunnis of the Taliban do when they hear of what is going on? Remember what they did to the Shi’a Hazaras last time they were in power (see Rory Stewart’s “The Places In Between” for more on that).

You would have us believe that it doesn’t matter if the Sunnis and Shi’a go at it. You admit, in your first sentence, that Iraq has been a waste, with the wrong goals, and wrongly executed methods to obtain those wrong goals. But you still, for some reason, just cannot accept the presentation of the evidence, and of the knowledge of Islam, its tenets and the attitudes and atmospherics of societies and peoples suffused with Islam, that give those who make policy a reasonable chance to make sense not only of past and present events, but to be able to make reasonable guesses as to the future.

That Esdrujula Explanation that I have set out here (much to the annoyance of some who find it jejune, as compared to their brilliant grasp of greater matters, while I find the Esdrujula Explanation both correct and mnemonically useful. Let’s see, which shall it be: Timidity, Rigidity, Cupidity...?

None of the above.

But there is one more.

Good piece, yes, Orianna would be seeing the truth, God bless her forever...

absurd thought -
God of the Universe HATES
The Rage & The Pride

angry at Islam problems
because so many truths hurt
.

jihadwatcher:
And the ugly reality is that regardless of how expensive the war in Iraq has become, regardless of how much better such monies could be allocated, regardless of how insufferable and misguided this crusade may be, it does not change the salient point made that civil war in Iraq does not weaken either the resolve, or the ability, of muslims, from around the world, to set off bombs, to destroy airliners, to behead hostages, or a litany of other violent expressions of their faith, and it certainly does not impede their demographic conquest of the West. The fast jihad continues, the slow jihad continues. Civil war in Iraq, or Darfur, or anywhere else, is a mere sideshow.

Oh yes it does.
Right now, Afghanistan + Iraq is a full-time problem for America. America would find itself stretched if it had to do a 3rd (Iran) or 4th (???) Military campaign.

Hugh is right.
Right now, there is a massive potential Sunni versus Shia war in many Middle East countries. There are minor skirmishes in Yemen and Pakistan going on between Sunni and Shia.
And Sunni countries did not like Hizbollah taking over Lebanon - they are fearful of a massive Shia crescent.

If this happened, it would absorb money, energy, attention, bloodshed, murder from the Muslim world. And generally they cannot focus on more than one thing at once. Saudi programs for Mosque building in the West would stand by.
Iran's attention would be on its Muslims neighbours. And Sunni Muslim nations might start appreciating that the last thing they want is a nuclear Iran. Israel would enjoy a rare moment of peace. Islam would visibly weaken.
Anything that causes destruction within the House of Islam is good for the West. And right now, the conditions are right. We should pull out.

And the 2nd desireable effect would be that Western liberal politicians would see this on their doorstep and might start asking non-politically correct questions about Islam.
All the lies about the "religion of peace" would be swept away.

What pulling out of Iraq will do, rather than hurt islam, will be to geographically join Iran with Syria and embolden both on their way to what they will interpret as the first huge step toward a caliphate. And that will not hurt the cause of worldwide jihad one bit.

Maybe Iran will join with Syria (unlikely from Syria's point of view - its rulers are Alawite sect not Sunni or Shia). But Saudi Arabia has already said that it will aid the Iraqi Sunni minority if the USA & UK pull out. And do you think that the rest of the Sunni countries are going idly sit by while Iran takes over?
No way. Saudi Arabia likes us in Iraq as we spend money, not them.
And if Civil War breaks out, who will win?
Well Iran is well equipped, but the Sunni nations are more numerous, it is hard to say.

With all this going on, it is hard to say what effect it will have on the Worldwide Jihadist in Pakistan, Phillipines, Thailand, Sudan. It may be that they feel the urge to join whatever Islamic faction they belong to. It is unlikely to worsen things for the non-Muslims.

So we should pull out straight away.
Let them get on with it.
(Note: I would rather no human died. But if they are going to impose something totalitarian on the West then I would rather they die than we).

Jihadwatcher:
But this civil war will not "weaken the camp of islam". That is impossible.

Why is it impossible?
Have you forgotten the Iran-Iraq war from 1980-1988? That soaked up oil, men, human energy & will, money. While that happened, neither Iran nor Iraq had any time for indulging in terrorism outside their countries.

Jesus once commented on Satan saying
"A house divided against itself wont stand".

Islam may bicker amongst its murderers, but about the west, it has no debate. The infiltration of muslims to the west will, if anything, accelerate with civil war in Iraq.

Maybe, maybe not.
If Muslims indulge in full-scale civil war, I hardly think Western politicians will want some to retreat here in case the problems resurface here.

Indeed, talk has already surfaced in government of allowing Iraqis to migrate to the US to flee such a civil war.

Then lobby hard against :-)

So I guess you didn't really have sex on the brain, after all?

Jihadwatcher,

I commend to you the words of Ayman al-Zawahri, from an interview back around the start of the Iraq war:

"The continual attacks on the American system, has finally pulled the Biggest Satan to the arena of Jihad. This is after it had remained hidden for a long time behind it’s various agents. Once in the arena of war, it will start feeling it’s own losses. Then it will start paying the price for it’s support of Israel and it’s agents in our own countries.

Our weapon in this battle is patience (sabr), perseverance (Musaabara) and reliance upon Allah (Tawakkul) in our fight against America. By the permission of Allah, this war will continue until the bleeding of America will result in it’s collapse.

If America possesses advanced weapons of mass destruction and well-equipped armies, than it should know that we possess, what they cannot. The love of death in the path of Allah."

We've been playing it according to his script for 4 years now...enough!!

Let's take the Iran-Iraq war. What good did that do the West? Was there no terrorism from 1980 to 1988? America got its first real slap in the face in 1983 with the Beirut bombing. Did the Iraq-Iran war weaken the camp of islam then? Did it hinder the spread of islam? Did it slow the jihad? Did Saudi money not flow into our schools, into think tanks, into our government lobbyists during that time?

That war, and I mention it because it was cited as an example of a civil war, an analogy far from accurate, but such a war did consume the militaries of those two nations. But it did not consume the muslim attention. And it certainly did not consume the interests of muslims around the world. There were few if any "Death to Iraq" or "Death to Iran" chants during those 8 bloody years. Around the muslim world, it was still "Death to America" as usual.

As per this theory, muslims worldwide, rally to fight each other, and spend their monies on fighting each other such that jihad is hindered or temporarily halted. But where is the evidence for this? The news archives tell a different story. ( Hopefully, I shall not have to cite 8 years of islamic fundamentalist terror.) Suffice it to say that history shows that kidnappings, hijackings, bombings, shootings, were all the rage during this 8-year period.

And why shouldn't they have been? The efforts of several million muslim conscripts from two countries hardly puts a dent in the depth of material and human resources available for jihad against the west. After all, Islam is not fighting a conventional war when they fight a war of demographic conquest, or one of terrorism. The fast jihad or the slow jihad requires little in the way of resources. It is not a war that requires huge budgets, massive armies, or the troubling logistics consumed by sending tanks and artillery against other tanks and artillery. We know now that jihad is a war of 10 lbs of Semtex in the right spot, a box cutter or two, video tapes and hunting knives, and most importantly, political front men, like CAIR. It is a war of political pressure, a war of lobbying, a war of protesting at the right moment, and backing off at the next. It is a war of deceit, a war of obfuscation, a war of propaganda. That is what jihad is all about.

None of this need be, was, or is, compromised by shia fighting sunni in Iraq. That is a family squabble. It is an old one, and jihad is, and always has been, independent of that.

Of course, for every bullet they fire at each other, that is one more bullet oil revenues have to replace. But as long as we have SUVs, they will have bullets. And one SUV buys a lot of ammo.

So is that then the argument in a nutshell for the US to leave Iraq - to drain a few dollars from their overflowing coffers in that hopes that it will weaken the jihad? If it is, then such an argument pales by comparison to the argument for not leaving Iraq to an ascendant Iran, the most belligerent islamic nation today, led by the craftiest and most virulently anti-western regime.

Then we will have created what the media will deem a "humanitarian crisis" on the scale of Rwanda, which will then mean untold billions flowing in to "the refugees" whom the US will feel pressure to help, because well, "they broke it, they bought it", and we all know where that money will end up. And who knows how many of those "refugees" will happily end up here, bringing their sharia with them, setting up more of their halal meat shops, and sending back home more American dollars to support more anti-western terrorism abroad, and more political jihad here at home. Is making the Saudis spend a few of their dollars on bullets and RPGs, really worth paying that price? Is that a profitable trade for us?

I don't think America should stay to play babysitter, or to help the Iraqis in any way. They are incapable of capitalizing on that help, and incapable of gratitude. But one thing is for sure. Leaving Iraq is a gift to Iran, and it will do not one whit to slow the jihad against us here at home. The argument for leaving Iraq must be made on the grounds that Iraq is not worth it both financially and strategically. It can not be made on the flawed logic that it will weaken the anti-western machinations of islam.

Jihadwatcher

The above model assumes two things:

• All Shia and Sunni forces throughout the Mid East would converge on Iraq to support their brethren - Hizbullah, Basiji and other Shia partisans would go there to support Moqtada al Sadr's death squads, while from Egypt and Syria, Ikhwan, and from the Arabian peninsula, al Qaeda and other Wahabi partisans would be dispatched to Iraq to ensure that their side wins.
  
• This conflict has the potential of spreading to other countries. If Saudi Arabia saw a revolt in al Hasa province, financing CAIR or MCB would be lower on their priority than quelling such an uprising. In the meantime, such upheavals would encourage the majority of Bahreinis - Shia - to try and take over that island, while in Yemen, the Shia, who are above 40% - would try pulling it off there. And now that Col Qaddafi has announced his intentions of reviving the Fatimid sultanate in Cairo, even Egypt can't have undivided attention in supporting the quelling of these Shia revolts. As for Syria, they'll encourage as many Sunnis to leave Syria for Iraq, thereby consolidating their power in Syria.
  

Only thing I agree with you - I don't see the West refusing to accept Muslim refugees fleeing such situations.

Did the Iraq-Iran war weaken the camp of islam then[from 1980-1988]? Did it hinder the spread of islam? Did it slow the jihad?
-- from a posting above

Yes.
Yes.
Yes.

"Then we will have created what the media will deem a 'humanitarian crisis' on the scale of Rwanda, which will then mean untold billions flowing in to "the refugees" whom the US will feel pressure to help, because well, 'they broke it, they bought it.,'"
-- from same poster above

Nonsense. After more than four years, during which everything conceivable was done to help the "Iraqis" establish some kind of democracy, every attempt made to help them to make compromises with each other -- attempts that failed because the hopelessness of the task was not understood, the meretriciousness of the "Iraqis" and their inability to think beyond helping themselves, their family, or their extended family of the tribe (so much so that soldiers who served in Iraq have told me, with amazement, of how some Iraqis would refuse help in their part of a city or village if that help would also go to others whom they did not wish to share in American-supplied benefits), after $880 billion spent, Americans will not be buffaloed into believing that absurd "we broke it, we own it" argument that was worthy of Tom Friedman, and which he apparently was the first to bruit about.

Few, if any, in America now think we owe the "Iraqis" anything. Certainly not those who have relatives who have served in Iraq, and that is by now a great many people. Certainly not those who are clamoring for withdrawal, and who are disgusted with the whole mess. Certainly not those who know that the Sunnis and Shi'a have been hostile to one another since the first century of Islam, and who are perfectly aware that in recent decades, in Pakistan and Yemen and Bahrain and in Hasa Province of Saudi Arabia, and in Lebanon too, and Afghanistan, there have been not only hostility, but also attacks, even murderous ones, by Sunnis and Shi'a, and the reverse, less frequently, as well.

By repeating this "you broke it, you own it" argument it almost appears as if you take such a noton seriously, instead of mocking it at every opportunity. Everyone knows that the history of modern Iraq has been the history of massacres, starting with that of the Assyrians in 1933, and of coups and counter-coups (see "Nuri es-Said"), a history that Elie Kedourie has limned as one of unending violence and aggression. More people know this now than did four years ago -- far more. And they will not stand for the idea of having more Muslims into this country. They have learned that much.

We did not "break it" and we didn't "buy it." If there are people leaving Iraq, they can find places in the rest of the Arabic-speaking world. They have no claim on us.

Hugh believes Iraqi refugees have no claim on us in the U.S., and says they can go to live in other Arab countries if they need to leave Iraq. But if upon U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, a humanitarian disaster unfolds there with hundreds of thousands or millions of deaths due to civil war, and if the civil war becomes a wider regional conflict, what then? So far, U.S. policy, thankfully, has been stingy with regard to Iraqi refugees, but if an Iraqi genocide or the like unfolded, couldn't we find irresistable pressures building up domestically and internationally to take in, over the course of a decade, upwards of a hundred thousand Muslim refugees from the Middle East? I'm glad to see in my country more Indian Hindus, Chinese Confucians, African Christians and animists, what have you, but I consider every additional Muslim here, of whatever race including Caucasian, the gravest threat to my civil liberties and my nation's democracy, so to me another hundred thousand Muslims coming here would be a disaster, not just in itself but also because of the rapid population growth among Muslims, and because Muslims would thus become an even more powerful political lobby holding open the immigration doors to still more Muslims.

I agree with Hugh, against the jihadwatcher, that significant resources would be absorbed in a Sunni-Shia war centered in Iraq. And there is a certain poetic justice in Hugh's strategy. Islam should be permitted to turn its prodigious destructive forces upon itself.

I see several downsides to Hugh's strategy (and every strategy has downsides that do not necessarily disqualify it as the best available strategy): First, jihadists around the world will see American withdrawal as a huge victory, and global jihadist morale will skyrocket. In their minds they will have defeated the greatest power on earth. High morale will be fuel for more aggressive and bolder jihadist adventures.

Second, American withdrawal will presumably do anything but tranquilize the Islamic world. Full-fledged, barbaric civil war and wider regional conflict could, on the contrary, act to sharpen Muslims swords and minds everywhere in a jihadist direction. There will be a price to pay for abandoning the goal of stability: the tranquilizing elements of that stability will be lost.

Third, might not American forces, if they stick around a while, yet establish a relatively moderate and stable system in Iraq? I don't mean a light unto the Muslim nations or Jeffersonian democracy, just something comparatively quiescent, like Jordan, say, or some other more or less benign tumor of a nation.

Hugh believes Americans will refuse to take in many refugees from the region. But won't at least half the country, particularly those on the left, together with those who remain ignorant of Islam's totalitarian bent, follow a wave of compassion for the "victims" of American imperialism or misadventure abroad? Particularly if a brutal Iraqi or regional war with hundreds of thousands of casualties opens up upon American withdrawal? I hope Hugh is right, but I don't know.

Yes, she would have laughed, but she would also screamed of rage.

Thankfully people aren't forgetting her, thankfully people are finally opening their eyes.

I have "Interview with History" but it is in italian, if someone is really interested in an interview from the book, let me know and i'll translate it.

*Yes, La Fallaci would have hated it, didn't want anybody translating her, but this is important, she'd understand.

I think the very fact that worldwide strong financial support for jihad and fundamentalist islam is coming from Saudi wealth demonstrates that it would be good if all islamic wealth and energy was tied up in other things.

Now, I would love it if those other things were peaceful education, the arts, science, establishment of true democracies, reformation of islam etc etc. But if the choice is either jihad on the west or civil war against each other, well...