Tancredo: We Need To Disengage From Iraq

I am certainly not saying- that for years, but I am beginning to change my mind NOT because I agree with "THEIR VIEWS!" BUTT because it is those who have endangered and ruined our accomplishment!

I am not talking about Hugh either or Stephen!! I wonder if the Chief in Commander knows all this information about islam? What would happen? I love what you guys do! I want the TRUTH! Everything just takes so long! How can you win a war like that? They have no restrictions!

Tancredo is a really great guy, but I don't think he has the national profile that Rudy does; though he'd be a good veep.
I just wish he'd have mentioned the need to keep the oil fields away from the Islamists, but I'm sure he thinks it.
Rudy and Tancredo combined would make the sort of tough and realistic team we need. Then Mitt's shown some awareness, too.
Keep up the pedagogy - it's starting to sink in.

Thank You!

"Military tactics are like unto water; for water in its natural course runs away from high places and hastens downwards... Water shapes its course according to the nature of the ground over which it flows; the soldier works out his victory in relation to the foe whom he is facing. Therefore, just as water retains no constant shape, so in warfare there are no constant conditions. He who can modify his tactics in relation to his opponent and thereby succeed in winning, may be called a heaven-born captain." Sun Tzu

It appears Mr. Tancredo is on the right path. However I will not be happy until some one like Mr. Spencer and Mr. Fitzgerald sit in the oval office. Only then can true victory be obtained!

Senator Mitch McConnell is for amnesty and supports war in Iraq. The Senate is working out a deal this weekend for amnesty. Call your Senator Monday.

Mitch McConnell wiki

"McConnell remains one of the strongest supporters of the American invasion of Iraq, which he considers a central part of the "War on Terrorism.""

"Fundraising, contributors, and influence

In October 2006, the Lexington Herald Leader published a series of articles based on a six-month examination of McConnell's fundraising.[6] The paper reported that McConnell had raised nearly $220 million during his Senate career. Most of the money went to the campaigns of his GOP colleagues; in return, the paper said, those colleagues "have rewarded him with power." "He's completely dogged in his pursuit of money. That's his great love, above everything else," said Marshall Wittmann, a former aide to Senator John McCain, R-Ariz., and a Christian Coalition lobbyist in Washington.

The paper found a significant correlation between McConnnell's actions and his donors' agendas. He supported government action to help cigarette makers, Las Vegas casinos, the pharmaceutical industry, credit card lenders, coal mine owners, and others who gave large amounts of money. McConnell has responded that he never allows money to influence him. His donors support him because they like his pro-business, conservative philosophy, he said, so it's hardly proof of corruption when he does what they want, he maintains.[7]"

McConnell Statement at Senate.gov on Immigration Deal going on this weekend

"
McConnell: ‘The only chance to get an immigration bill is on a bipartisan basis’
from the Office of Senator Mitch McConnell

Friday, May 11, 2007

Senate gives bipartisan working group more time to forge an agreement

Washington, D.C. – Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell made the following statement Friday on the Senate floor regarding the decision to give the immigration bipartisan working group more time to complete their work:

“Let me say with regard to immigration, the only chance to get a bill is on a bipartisan basis. I agree with the decision of the Majority Leader to accept the recommendation of those who have been involved in that discussion. That gives us the maximum opportunity to piece back together the bipartisan agreement that we thought we almost had a week or so ago on this most important legislation.”
"

Call Your Senator No Amnesty: Talking Points HUTCHISON-PENCE PLAN

I have a really great idea for a project for Condi after she is out of a job. You all know there is a problem with sharks attacking swimmers at beaches, right? Well, let's eliminate that by teaching sharks DEMOCRACY! Once they get a democratically elected representative government, they will not be eating anymore people! Let's see how many billions we can spend on this, and let's get the US Navy involved!

Call it like it is.
In a sense it is too bad most people's level of vocabulary is so low. Thinking of the immigration problem.

The Senate is supposed to be taking on the issue in these next two weeks. I hope everyone with strong feelings on the issue does everything in their power to get this issue resolved.

Tight borders-preventing easy ingress.
Allocating Money resources to:

Hiring and Training more border security personal to apprehend incoming illegal aliens.
Getting Attorney Generals to focus on finding and proscuting employers who use illegal aliens.

Define and Impliment a process to identify and allow a more effective legal way of entering this country to work or study.

Define and impliment in 4 years a credible effective method of tracking all incoming people on work or educational visas.

I know there are others who know more than me, about how to solve this. NET NET. Get out and be heard!!!

"In other words, as Hugh has said here so many times, we need to fight the jihad, not engage in Quixotic Wilsonian adventures that have only enshrined Sharia constitutions in both Iraq and Afghanistan."

Try to reconcile that with the previous posting;

"Taliban chief's death a big U.S. victory"
"Good news from Afghanistan."

We are fighting Jihad because we are engaged in Afghanistan and Iraq. Killing the Taliban chief is proof.

*

"The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on."

Yes we must fight them here , and in the UK France Germany the netherlands sweden Norway Oz so we don't have to fight them there, once they know we know the name of the enemy , we will have won.

Let us hope that Tancredo has arrived at the right pov for the right reasons; probably so, but who really knows.

The resistance to hearing about jihad and its provenance, a resistance practiced by so many, for so many reasons, is the sort of thing which seems intractable atm, but again who knows.

The folks in my life who know what is going on, "know" because of their particular experience in life, and the judgment they have as a result: someone who spent a couple years in Iraq, saw muslims up close and personal, and who works for INS; someone who has been a prosecutor and understands the criminal mentality underlying jihad; someone whose mind was open to hear because of a biblical belief in the supposed consequences of Isaac and Ishmael. None of those three folks have made a specific study of islam and jihad. They simply have been blessed with a background which gave them an open mind and a ready, intuitive understanding.

And lets face it, to the vast majority of folks, the study of islam and jihad seems like a great bore, precisely because islam and jihad truly is so much complicated nonsense, and most folks perceive their time to be wasted if spent looking at nonsense, let alone trying to grasp it. To them, we all may as well study Esperanto, or actually pig Latin.

Really, what is the sexy part about islam and jihad? It really, truly, is a bore, with nothing intrinsically interesting to it.

But it has forced itself into relevance, and can not be ignored anymore than the local crack gang which is murdering so many innocent citizens, or the drunk who is ruining everyone's evening at the local restaurant by being so obnoxious. jihad and islam has come first to the inevitable role of superintending the intersection of barbarism and technological advancement.

Before 9-11, I would have thought that role would go to some organization spawned out of Ian Fleming's imagination. Now I know better.

There is a first level and a deeper level to the war we are in. We have barely approached the first level. The first level is where most of the fighting will be done. It requires a sturdy coterie operating at the deeper level.

Given the cluelessness and, far worse, the utter lack of integrity of the political classes in the West, it is hard to see much progres in the near future.

Jesse

"We are fighting Jihad because we are engaged in Afghanistan and Iraq. Killing the Taliban chief is proof."

There are easier ways to kill the enemy then 7-10 guys on foot patrol winding there way through a back ally in Bagdad.

You do realize that correct?

It is called modern air power? Used in a correct and aggressive manor you can destroy the base of jihad by killing those who could join. Killing one stupid tribal chief in Afganistan changes nothing. I don't care how high in the chain he was. You must break the will of civilians who support jihad and common foot soldier will to go on.

We have not even come close to doing that.

To figure out how to cure a problem, the first step is an accurate diagnosis of the problem. That's true in medicine, and it's true in geopolitics as well.

Our involvement in Iraq (and, to a lesser extent, in Afghanistan) was based on a fundamental misdiagnosis of the threat to Western civilization. The neo-cons of the Bush Administration assumed that state sponsorship, specifically Saddam's Iraq, both enabled and even funded the terrorist attacks on America. Laurie Mylroie, who is IMHO one of the unsung villains in this drama, claimed that all terrorist attacks from the first WTC bombing in 1993 up thru the U.S.S. Cole bombing in October 2000 were all caused by--Saddam Hussein. Not by al-Qaeda, which she dismissed as a bunch of illiterate savages in caves whom the Clinton Administration had hyped as a "fake" threat to take Americans' minds off the "real" threat of Saddam.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0312.bergen.html

And she sold her wacko upside-down ideas to Wolfowitz and Perle, who in turn sold them to Bush and Cheney--and the rest is history.

Now until we rid ourselves of this delusion once and for all and start realizing that we face not a conspiracy of a few ambitious enemy governments, but the true transnational movement called Islamist jihad, we won't have an accurate diagnosis and we won't ever fix the problem.

The neo-cons won't let go of the notion that we have to root out terrorism at the state sponsorship level. Now they think "if only" we had regime change in Iran we would have peace. No we won't. There will still be Saudi Arabia. And Pakistan. And Indonesia. And (as we saw with the Fort Dix case) Bosnia.

So unless we're prepared to conquer all these nations, we had better find a smarter way to deal with radical Islam than this.

Since the neo-cons won't rid themselves of the delusions in which they've already invested so much, America must rid itself of the neo-cons.

Laurie Mylroie, William Kristol and the Weekly Standard, David Horowitz and FrontPage Magazine, must all be put out to pasture. No American leaders should take direction from their ilk anymore. Period.

"I take satisfaction that we went to war with Iraq and got rid of Saddam Hussein. The rest is details."
-- Laurie Mylroie, late 2003

What are you talking about, mass killing Muslims like we killed civilians in Japan in WW2?

Looks like it.

You really think that is politically possible in today's world?

I don't.

Read this; Anbar Rising and tell me how right it would be to just bomb these tribes to dust. Those civilians have had their will broke by AQ and have come over to our side. Note that this has been going on for over a year now. Did you know that??

The situation isn't static.

"The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on."

My post was to greatcomet.

Ok Steven, who's the solution?

Pelosi?

Murtha?

Moore?

Crow?

I get sick of all those who just whine and bash and criticise and NEVER offer any coherent solutions.

*

"The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on."

"We are fighting Jihad because we are engaged in Afghanistan and Iraq. Killing the Taliban chief is proof."
-- from a poster above

The poster above seems to think it is more important and useful to be killing a "Taliban chief" in Afghanistan, than in getting off oil, as fast as we can, in order to diminish the potency of the money weapon that funds mosques, madrasas, propaganda, Da'wa campaigns, and armies of Western hirelings, and more important than educating Western publics and the ruling elites about Islam, and more important than dealing with Iran's nuclear project, or for that matter tying the Pakistani government in knots, and threatening to destroy the Pakistani economy, until such time as its nuclear weapons are somehow put into Western control (no need to tell all the Pakistani generals, or the Pakistani public -- it can be our little secret. We won't tell a soul.).

So what if this or that Taliban big-shot is killed. He's replaceable, just as Bin Laden, Al-Zawahiri, the current heads of Gemaa Islamiyya, and Laskar Jihad, and Lashkar Jihad, and Ansar al-Sunna, and Hezbollah, and Hamas, and a hundred other groups, can have their heads, indeed their entire current membership, decimated and more can come up from the endlessly replenishable reservoices of True Islamic Faith -- out of the 1.2 billon Muslims in the world, a great many of whom, unfortunately for us, do and will continue to take the duty of Jihad, central in Islam, seriously, and work to spread Islam, through terrorism, or combat, or economic warfare, or propaganda, or campaigns of Infidel conversions which are also campaigns of subversion against all Infidels.

Note for this particular poster: so far the American government has spent, in past, in present, and in committed future costs (for such things as lifetime care for tens of thousands of wounded, and interest payments on new debt incurred, and on replacement of desert-degraded weaponry and materiel used up in Iraq and Afghanistan), in Iraq alone, $880 billion (round that figure off to a cool trillion dollars if you include Afghanistan).

Do you think this has been a clever use of money? An intelligent deployment of resources? Do you? Do you think having spent an amount that is larger than the total costs of all the wars America has ever fought, save for World War II, has been wise, has been effective? Do you think in Iraq we have done more to weaken the Camp of Islam than might be achieved if we let Sunnis and Shi'a go at it, and on the side, wish the Kurds well (and perhaps do a bit more) in their effort to control Kirkuk (which may soon explode) and to create an indpendent Kurdistan which, if properly exploited, will do much to weaken Iran and Syria, and be an inspiration even further away, among the disaffected Berbers of North Africa, and other non-Arab Muslims?

How are you at math? Any good? Well, the American army thinks that it has killed, in Iraq, about 20,000 "Jihadis." Shall we go with their figure? Fine. Now divide 880 billion - the total cost so far of the war in Iraq, by 20,000.

Here, let me write it out for you:

Total cost of war in Iraq:

880,000,000,000 (1)

Total number of "Jihadis" killed (that includes Al Qaeda in Iraq, non-Al-Qaeda insurgents in Iraq, and even some Shi'a, especially in the Jaish-e-Mahdi of Moqtada al-Sadr, and even a few Kurds in the Ansar al-Sunna in Iraq):

20,000 (2)

Now divide (1) by (2).

The correct answer gives us the cost, per Jihadi killed, in 2007 American dollars:

$44,000,000

That's it: $44,000,000 per Jihadi killed.

Impressed? Think that's been a clever use of our money? Better than putting, say, $200 billion or $300 billion into nuclear reactors, wind and solar energy, energy conservation projects? And having plenty left over for a world-wide propaganda campaign to educate Infidels about Islam, and to force Muslims themselves to start to confront, as they must be forced to, the link between the political, economic, social, moral, and intellectual failures of their own societes, and Islam itself?

No?

You prefer to keep spending $44 million dollars for each Jihadi killed, even one who is, as you proudly describe him, a "head" of the Taliban?

How many people at this website agree with Jesse's view of warfare, and the efficacy of the effort to bring "freedom" to "ordinary moms and dads" in Iraq, and how many here at this website -- not known as a hotbed of admirers of the cindy-sheehans of this world -- find this a colossal squandering, and want to concentrate efforts on ending (and even reversing) Muslim migration to the West, educating Western publics about Islam so that they cannot be fooled and will cling more stoutly to defending their own civilizational legacy, rediscovered and reappreciated, and on cutting the Muslim Arab oil states down to size, and therefore agree with me?

Let's take a vote.

It is one less butt f' from heaven-how's that?!
NeXXXXTttttttt!!!!!

I wrote two essays - here and here on the subject of engaging jihadists globally, rather than, except on extreme occasions, exclusively focusing our energy on keeping jihad from crossing our borders. Withdrawing from Iraq would not be defeat. We must recognize that we are not fighting the jihadists, we are fighting Allah; the jihadists are merely his ammunition. Fighting against jihadists is like aiming your weapons at bullets and artillery, ignoring the people firing them. Unless we endeavor to wipe out the Islamic world completely - something we would never do obviously, it makes no sense to keep killing jihadists a few dozen a day, out of an army of tens or maybe hundreds of millions.

Meant that post for the chief taliban we killed!
Got to go fix it! that will still work!-sorry

Hugh, all that is beside the point.

Robert's comment about killing the taliban Chief was "Good news from Afghanistan."

I'm asking why it would be called good news when the next blog entry advocates disengaging in Iraq and Afghanistan.

That's wishy-washy.

If we were disengaged in Afghanistan the "good news" wouldn't have happened.

*

"The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on."

Jesse

"What are you talking about, mass killing Muslims like we killed civilians in Japan in WW2?"

No, but if you want to accomplish anything useful you have two options:

(1) Divide the House of Islam (The Hugh Plan)

(2) Bomb them into submission (The Curtis LeMay Plan)

The Bush plan has proven itself a waste of time.

"You really think that is politically possible in today's world?"

That is why I support the Hugh Fitzgerald plan. Great minds think a like.

"Read this; Anbar Rising and tell me how right it would be to just bomb these tribes to dust. Those civilians have had their will broke by AQ and have come over to our side. Note that this has been going on for over a year now. Did you know that??"

The B-52 mass bombings on Taliban postitions put them to flight in short order. I however have stated it is better to create disorder within the house of Islam by leaving Iraq and helping along a good old fashion civil war. Arm the hell out of the Kurds and do strategic bombing campaigns on Iran. Then let the rest sort itself out. In the mean time launch a few slash burn invasions into Western Pakistan. Kill who we want to kill then leave. Repeat if we wish. Sort of like washing ones hair. Also arm every non-muslim group and nation on the planet who are engaged in fighting the house of Islam. Stop all arm shippment and cash payments to muslim countries that support Islamic aggression.

Muslims never come over to anyones side unless a gun is at the back of their head. Stop living in fantasy land and live with the reality of the 1400 year old war of Islamic aggression.

"The situation isn't static."

True. That is why I feel it is time for a strategic re-deployment of our armed forces. The goal is defeating Islamic aggression over the long haul and the Bush plan cannot work because no army can stay for ever in a constant state of heavy battle without strategic gain. We have done all we can do in Iraq.

"The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on."

Nice quote. It really does not matter because we will leave Iraq anyway. You can do our way or the liberal way. :)

Hugh, it is also very interesting to me that you set up a strawman about what "the poster above" thinks about topics unrelated to the point.

I haven't done that to you, have I?

What's next, kill the messenger, and name calling?

*

"The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on."

Jesse says..

"If we were disengaged in Afghanistan the "good news" wouldn't have happened"

But Mr. Spencer said after posting...

"Yes, because the jihad is driven not by personalities, but by ideology"

Beautifully put as per usual:

" We need to fight the jihad, not engage in Quixotic Wilsonian adventures that have only enshrined Sharia constitutions in both Iraq and Afghanistan"

Quixotic Wilsonian adventures

What a great phrase for such terrible strategy.

Both the Iraq and Afghanistan fiascos come from the same kind of source as this bit of hilarious are-you-serious-?-let's give-em-demAAAAAcracy-? nonsense

http://zope06.v.servelocity.net/hjs/latest_articles

The article is titled "We must support the struggle for a democratic Turkey"

From the same geniuses who thought that by giving them freedom they'd all give us a big hug and invite us for tea and biscuits.

Thx, Hugh. Since our government won't be spending any money on education re the jihadist threat, we have to rely on sites like this and private contributions. It's only via dedicated individuals like yourself and others at JW and Faith Freedom International that we can make progress. Quite a slog, but don't get discouraged. The pen is mightier than the Sword of Islam.

greatcomet, think.

You can't advocate our disengagement and say "good news" about an event that happened because of our engagement.

That is a logical short circut.

*

"The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on."

"Read this; Anbar Rising and tell me how right it would be to just bomb these tribes to dust. Those civilians have had their will broke by AQ and have come over to our side. Note that this has been going on for over a year now. Did you know that??"
-- posted by one "Jesse" above

This "Jesse" is the same poster I have already dispatched in a reply above, in a posting about the $880 billion that the Iraq misadventure has cost. He added yet another posting about the wonderful fighting, as he presents it, between the Sunni tribes in Anbar Province that, with characteristic miscomrepehension, he describes as having "come over to our side." He thinks that when thieves fall out, it means there will be no more robbing of banks or muggings on the stret.

Not surprisingly, he exaggerates the significance of the supposed new support being offered the Americans by the "Sunni tribes" (that very phrase evokes a chill down the spine, and Lawrence-of-Arabia scenes of fierce desert warriors, their leathery, weathered, gaunt beared faces, the quickness with which they make war on their enemies, and are true to their friends, etcetera in time-honored David-Lean tradition) that have had a falling out with Al Qaeda.

Sure they are now fighting -- some, not all of them -- the few thousand members of Al Qaeda. So what? That does not make them, as "Jesse" seems to think, permanent friends of the Americans, whose military equipment and other aid they are now happy to receive, just as the Shi'a have been happy to pocket American aid and military equipment, but don't exaggerate or misread this. They may hate Al Qaeda, but they are not our friends.

But in one sense the poster "Jesse" is right. Yes, it is always good to have one group of Sunni Arabs fighting another group of Sunni Arabs. "Jesse" can understand that, and that is why he tells us to look at what is happening, in this respect, in Anbar Province.

But for some reason he cannot generalize or enlarge upon that recognition. For some reason he can see why it is a Good Thing for us if the "Sunni tribes" fight Al Qaeda in Anbar Province, but simply can't for the life of him figure out why it might be a good thing for Sunni Arabs wherever they are in Iraq to fight, and be fought by, Shi'a Arabs in Iraq -- and what's more, for co-religionists on both sides, in countries nearby, to be affected by such fighting, and to find themselves using up their own money, men, and war materiel in aiding opposite sides.

Strange, isn't it, about the "Jesses" of this world? They dimly perceive that it is good to divide, and demoralize, one's enemies -- but only when they wish to, only here and there. They do not see how the same principle that they get so excited about when it occurs among some Sunnis in Anbar Province can be exploited on a much larger scale, to weaken the Camp of Islam.

Jesse

So what. Good news can occur out of flawed strategy. We would have even better news if we left Iraq to its own fate. A wonderous civil war that would take lives of many jihadis and we would not have to spend much to do it either. Sadr forces figting jihadis trucked up from Arabia. Kurdish forces moving from the south with U.S. military equipment (and some special forces)causing all sorts of trouble for both (also causing problems for Iran within Iran).

Always take the path of least resistance in warfare to obtain your objectives. In this divide and someday in the far future....conquer!

north = south

The President of the United States is really only as effective as the people around him.
So much of what he finds out is filtered through other people. He can't possibly keep up with everything that is being tossed on his plate every day,
Bush is probably a very GOOD person
It is sad that there are so few people left in this country who believe in the values I grew up with. Who aren't so involved with their own little power grab that they don't care what really happens to the country as long as the get their little piece of the pie.
Most of the time it comes out in the wash. I am not so sure this time.
Sometimes it seems like the poor soldiers are out there in the front line getting taken down by the enemy's first salvos. Wow that's terrible. (weep, squeek, PC etc.)

Or we could remember that that is what being in the military is about. Ask a lifer, they will tell you it is their job. And it is NEVER pleasant.

This war has stopped making any sense, but then no one should be MORE aware that ANY dealings with this enemy don't make any sense than the well educated (In Islam) people on this site.
But believe me, suggesting that our brave soldiers should be home hiding behind their Mama's apron on Mother's day is not something they need to hear.
Be careful what you say in this public forum because you don't know who is reading it. I am not in the least concerned about some Muslim victim's sensitivities either.

Hugh: "How many people at this website agree with Jesse's view of warfare, and the efficacy of the effort to bring "freedom" to "ordinary moms and dads" in Iraq"

HF: I agree 100% with you, but have one thing to say.

Just as with Vietnam and, somewhat relatedly and somewhat not, with Richard Nixon, the issue is thoroughly spoiled with politics, so even those who ought to know better, and who would otherwise have the minds receptive to hearing, get caught up primarily with the nastiness, unfairness and hatred of the academic/ media/ Hollywood/ quasi-Marxist elite.

There is very little intellectual curiosity in this country among the movers and shakers. That includes the "Islam is a religion of peace/ let's bring democracy to the moms and pops" crowd.

For political reasons, as well as reasons of limited intellectual curiosity, a segment of this society which ought to know better, and who ordinarily would know better, are fighting the last war. Who knew the Berlin wall would turn out to be so diminished compared to the burqua?

Who knew how risibly primitive the real mortal enemy would be, and how powerful in his barbarism?

Many many cannot grasp that it is so, and cannot bring themselves to understand that the sophistication of dialectical materialism was nothing but child's play compared to the example of one, real human life, just one human being's life? We have the example of Hitler recently, and yet so many cannot see.

The mis-understanders (the ones on our side) think they know the value of our civilization, and are too sophisticated to see, they do not.

i have a question. a group actually.
whats happens if we "disengage", leave, redeploy, surrender, or whatever you want to call it?
do we keep the 5th fleet in the straits for 10 or 20 years? and what happens if the iranians flip us the bird and bomb iraqs oil fields? will iran pres. ackmed johnny go all out and invade iraq and possibly S.A.?
and in our perceived weakened state, will syria, the palestinians and hezbo invade and destroy israel? and if any or all of this happens, who will stop them? the great america that couldn't or wouldn't defeat a bunch of ragtag jihadist's?
and of course, our loss will embolden thousands of "wannabe" jihadist in this country, who, with a simple 9mm. pistol, could close entire school systems.will we be under a state of martial law?
i hear alot of talk about disengaging, but not much about what "may" happen if we do. anyone?

It really is a shame that the staff of this educational website alloweda slur against its sponsors to pass by unchallenged. There is a post above concerning the baneful effects of the dreaded neo-cons, including David Horowitz and Front Page Magazine. The poster ought to have been reminded by the staff (if not by reading the upper-left corner of this very page) that JihadWatch is part of the Horowitz-FrontPageMag family, all members of which deem the defeat of militant Islam to be one of America's highest priorities. That staff owes Mr. Horowitz a debt of gratitude for helping to sustain and promote JihadWatch.

Given the example of Germany and Japan after World War 2, it was not unreasonable to for some to expect that a similar transformation would be possible in the Muslim world as well. Of course, those occupations involved the imposition, at gunpoint, of Western culture and values. In hindsight (and everyone is an expert in hindsight), President Bush is likely to be faulted by history, ultimately, for having underexplained the costs, burdens, magnitude and duration of this War Against Militant Islam. He told us to go shopping, while two splendid little wars were to be completed effortlessly. FDR mobilized America for a horrendous sacrifice of hundreds of thousands to defeat three nations. Good God, what will it take to defeat the entire dar-al-Islam? Anyone?

How many people at this website agree with Jesse's view of warfare, and the efficacy of the effort to bring "freedom" to "ordinary moms and dads" in Iraq, and how many here at this website -- not known as a hotbed of admirers of the cindy-sheehans of this world -- find this a colossal squandering, and want to concentrate efforts on ending (and even reversing) Muslim migration to the West, educating Western publics about Islam so that they cannot be fooled and will cling more stoutly to defending their own civilizational legacy, rediscovered and reappreciated, and on cutting the Muslim Arab oil states down to size, and therefore agree with me?

Let's take a vote.

Damn, i'd love to see moslem 'immigration' to our lands stopped! Reversed - even BETTER!

With this immigration amnesty bill they are working on and Hitlery looming as President.. HOW exactly can this be accomplished?

Right now it looks as if I'll be eating lots of Freedom-French fries. Since France is the only country of ours where the voters have elected someone who is really willing to take on the problem.

John Howard is OK but he talks more than he does.

Let's hope that Sarko can make a difference.

Years ago, at one time I believed in this war. Sadam's refusal to continue with the demands of the u.n. sealed his fate. So he should have been removed and most of Bagdad and any city or province that put up any restinance should have been destroyed, period. No ands, if's, or but's. Good American men and women have paid the ultimate price for a people whon seem not to grasp the beacon of freedom. Maybe that's the way it is with freedom, if you've never had it why risk anything for it. At most times now in this world it would seem only America and true Americans understand what is at risk. I for one believe that mexico and all other muslim countries seek to destroy America any way possible and all politicans be them republican or democrat are only for the dollar, arm yourselves true Americans. This is gonna be a bumpy ride!

Remember thinking as Bush was shown at children's
school & told 9/11 had happened-'Jeez,what a slow
reaction and this guy is supposed to be a World Leader!'Nor did his panicked flight to safety under a mountain impress me-it was Rudy who showed the courage & ability to think on his feet
in New York WHO WAS THE REAL HERO & LEADER.
Let's face it George Junior would have never been elected to anything-maybe a PTA meeting-if his Pappy hadn't millions of Petro dollars amassed through close association with Saudi
buddies.This is very serious flaw in getting capable,intelligent leaders of U.S-unless candidate can cough up huge sums of dosh,doesn't
matter if he or she has the brains of Einstein,they can't run for President...
For what's is worth from someone living in another country RUDY IS THE PICK OF THE BUNCH!!
Have always agreed with Hugh's views about Iraq and HE IS BEING PROVED RIGHT MORE EVERY DAY.
Only a fool throws good money after bad-you'll reap nothing from Iraq but TEARS,BLOOD& ABJECT
HUMILIATION WHICH IS ALREADY INSPIRING GLOBAL
JIHAD AGAINST THE WEST.Don't worry about'fighting
them over there'-Jihadis are everywhere including
our home countries.
Message to Leonthepigfarmer-there is NO HIDING PLACE FOR ANY OF US-in remotest Pacific Island there is a sleeper Al Quaeda cell-might be safe on an ice floe in Antarctica but doubt it...

A poster: "It really is a shame that the staff of this educational website allowed a slur against its sponsors to pass by unchallenged."

Yes, you are right. For example, David Horowitz is a treasure.

To go on a tangent, tho, let me refer to Victor Davis Hansen.

There is an brilliant man, a superb writer, a man whose heart is in the right place. VDH is a man who ought to be doing much better than he is. For us, Western Civilization, I mean.

Yet he apparently is bereft of knowledge about jihad and islam, or he is too full of political correctness. It is not possible to tell which.

How can VDH (and many others like him) be so close to the truth, and yet so far, far away from it?

The Western public needs to be propagandized with the most basic facts of life.

But VDH and others like him need to focus on the meaning of words, and their significance. VDH (and I cite him as an example only) is the perfect illustration of our critical weakness, the underlying inability to see what the heck is REALLY happening, because of ... words, words, words.

WWIII is right around the corner.

A ticket of Tancredo and Guiliani just might save this country.

Surak, I noticed that slur passed unchallenged by every one but me and you.

Maybe Hugh is too busy "dispatching" his imaginary strawman called "Jesse" with off topic circumlocution?

Guys like Steven L see the Bush-bashing taking root here and feel like they are surrounded with kindred spirits. He would vote with Hugh.

I think the bashing is taking away from the credibility of Jihadwatch.

Time will tell.

*

"The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on."

My God. No comments on the fundamental incongruity of Tancredo's take? His paragraph is one gigantic contradiction....insisting we deny Al Qaeda a base of operations at the same time he advocates disengagement from Iraq.

I agree. We need to pull out of the middle east entirely, except for the gulf region and Afgahnistan. Maybe even beef it up a little. Tighten our borders, put homeland security on the highest alert and with each failed al-queda attack we make an example. Such as beheading suspects without a trial and heavy missile strikes from warships in the gulf. Striking by air wherever there is even a rumor of a planned attack originating. I realize how unrealistic this is, but I can dream can't I?

Cornelius, that is amazing.

Oh but they are givin' it to me, a nobody.

Have you noticed a change in Jihadwatch, a little more irrational than it used to be?

*

"The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on."

The link given by the poster at 9 p.m., to an article by an American medic most disgruntled -- and how -- with the Afghans and Afghanistan, is worth reading. For the strong-stomached alone.

The devil's in the details - and there is one gigantic detail that we've all overlooked.

I listen to Michael Savage daily vent his - our - frustration at the drip, drip, drip non-victory slog in Iraq. Posters at this site feel the same way. Savage and most posters here suggest a willingness to be more destructive in the lands of our enemies, but cooler heads say that's unreasonable. Why?

Hint - America and Israel have not won any major war with a potent enemy since World War 2. Again - why?

Let me propose a theory. The problem is the Geneva Conventions, or our interpretation of them. The idea is that you have two signatory, sovereign nations which field uniformed soldiers, and when any soldier is captured by the enemy, the POW is treated nicely. Both sides play fair, and at the end of the war, we pick up our marbles and go home. Along the way, we promise not to commit genocide.

What happens when your enemy is not a signatory to the Geneva Conventions, is not a sovereign nation, does not field uniformed soldiers, and wantonly commits genocide and other atrocities - and your side is a law-abiding nation with dozens of NGOs and thousands of lawyers willing to tie you up in knots?

Under such circumstances, the effect of the Geneva Conventions is to say that we must not do what it takes to win. Heck, had the Geneva Conventions been in force during World War 2, we probably couldn't have won. (Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki...)

Don't blame Bush. No one else in the White House would prosecute this war differently, not Michael Savage or anyone posting above. Despite your best intents, the Congress would impeach you before you could say "Vaporize Natanz".

Conclusion: withdraw from the Geneva Conventions completely. Will our soldiers, when captured, lose any of the tender treatment they've been afforded by the jihadists? (sarcasm) But if we get into a shooting war with Canada, then of course we'll be gentlemen.

If that article is for real, then it certainly is an "eye-opener". I'd prefer not to believe it, but can anyone disprove its validity? The profanity is not something you'll run into everyday on a blog, but certainly this almost makes it believable because it is all so outrageous, the language and the content of the story.

The link given by the poster at 9 p.m is a .ru address, that's Russia.

The site is a "Moscow based alt.newspaper".

Home page; http://www.exile.ru/

Pick that cherry at your own risk - it might be rotten.

*

"The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on."

For those who like rotten cherries here is another by the same author;

An Afghanistan Whore-r Story
http://www.exile.ru/2007-April-20/an_afghanistan_whore-r_story.html

*

"The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on."

I think I see why Jesse is so squarely behind bush's iraq strategy, whatever it is. they both share a passion for catchy, ultimately meaningless phrases; to wit:

"stay the course"
"we'll stand down when they stand up"
"the dogs bark, but the caravan moves on"

by the way, Jesse, what exactly is bush's strategy in iraq, and on what factual basis do you think it stands more than a snowball's chance in hell of succeeding?

foehammer:

Simple scrutiny & cross-check of the backgrounds say this is a red flag waiting to happen.
I wouldn't give it the time of day as to validity.
It may as well have come from pravda. lol

Cornelius,

Where does Tancredo insist that we “deny Al Qaeda a base of operations” in this story?

sheik yer booty,

You like imaginary strawmen too huh?

Well then have the argument with with a sockpuppet and leave me out of it.

------------------------------------

butterfly

I think it might be the part in bold??

*

"The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on."

Greatcomet,

I just don't get the Hugh plan. Getting off of oil is fine and dandy (we should have begun in earnest more than three decades ago, after the oil embargo) but that will take a decade and what do we do in the meantime? We still have al qaeda to kill, governments to deal with, people and countries to neutralize, to say nothing of Islamberg and whatever clones it has elsewhere in the US.

"Arm the hell out of the Kurds and do strategic bombing campaigns on Iran."

Let's hope they can withstand the combined opposition of Turkey, Syria and Iran.

"In the mean time launch a few slash burn invasions into Western Pakistan. Kill who we want to kill then leave. Repeat if we wish. Sort of like washing ones hair."

Sounds like some more targeted killings, unless you mean wiping out any village which doesn't do what we want it to. If it's the latter then you're advocating the Curtis LeMay plan. Are you?
We have soldiers in the brig for killing Iraqi civilians in a gunfight with insurgents. Won't that fate await anyone who does a slash and burn in Pakistan, killing people and destroying villages?
If Israel isn't allowed to attack villages in Lebanon from which rockets are being sent over its border then how do you expect the US to be allowed to kill people at random? We would also need bases from which to operate. East Africa and western Asia is Islamic territory. Who will give us air bases or flyover rights? If we use aircraft carriers they need servicing. Will they be able to find friendly bases? The captain of the Cole thought he was pulling into friendly territory.

"Also arm every non-muslim group and nation on the planet who are engaged in fighting the house of Islam. Stop all arm shippment and cash payments to muslim countries that support Islamic aggression."

We're not the only country selling weapons to Muslim countries. They have many suppliers. We've seen our allies willing to put their and our future in jeopardy in the cause of capitalism. Should we expect them to suddenly see the light?
What about the Egyptians and Saudis? They'll say they're fighting aggression, that they are just as much a target as the US. That their societies are rife with terrorism sympathizers and financiers won't matter. The governments will pose as the victims and the arms manufacturers who would lose out on business would take their side. Their many employees will call for the sales to take place in the name of jobs.
Would we be able to secure any alliances with people who believe we will renege on our own agreements? That's what we keep hearing from Iraqis: they know we're going to leave and so they're hedging their bets and going over to what they perceive as the ultimate winner.

I would rather we read the riot act to the entire Muslim world and let them know that the next terrorist attack on the US (includes all embassies, since international law says they are sovereign US territory) would mean the destruction of Mecca and Medina.
Withdraw from Iraq - our job is done. They have a government that was elected. It's time to sink or swim.
Withdraw from Bosnia and Kosovo - our job is done.
Concentrate on protecting the US and put an immediate ban on all Muslim travel to the US, even from reliable allies like Britain. Then let those who want to be our allies and / or seek our help in defeating Islamic terrorism show us what THEY will contribute to the effort before we give THEM anything. Ten soldiers to our 150,000 just won't cut it anymore.

I think it might be the part in bold??

Your mean this, “There is absolutely a role to play for the United States - to make sure al-Qaida does not create a source for terrorist activity.”

Nope, still don’t see it. Please explain.

What this says to me is, us being there creates a tool to recruit Jihadists. Nothing more.

...and flies cause garbage, too.

Flies do cause garbage. If I find something with flies on it I throw it in the garbage.

butterfly, surely you know about the Z letters and AQ's pre IOF plan to have Iraq as a base of operations after we kicked out Saddam and left like we did in Vietnam? They said it just like that - they thought they could cause enough trouble and spread enough propaganda that we would leave Iraq and they could establish a caliphate in Iraq. They knew they could not overthrow Saddam but saw it coming and prepositioned in Iraq with that plan in mind.

I'm not making this up - read the Z letters.

That's that's the "source of terrorist activity" that the quote is talking about, a base of operations.

Now you see how walking away would fulfill their plan?

I can't believe how little people remember from just a few years ago.

*

"The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on."

Re exile.ru. This has been a good site over the years and has a good archive for Russia in the 1990's.

Look at the field guide, then the trading cards. Then look at the archive on Jeffrey Sachs, Harvard, IMF, etc.

"Have you noticed a change in Jihadwatch, a little more irrational than it used to be?"
*
"The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on."
Posted by: Jesse

If by these posts and opinions, I would say no.

Compared to Islam and it's followers, nothing can show itself to be "irrational", even based on a common frame of thought.

Outlaw islam, it's the proper step for this modern times.

The US is a junkie for oil. Whatever philosophy, foreign policy, idealism is generated is negated by the need of the next "fix" and the dirty, slum like, fascist, fanatical countries where it comes from never seems to be "effectively" defeated militarily. Bush weilds a warped foreign policy because his devotion to preserving America's ideals is compromised by his need to attend to his corporate puppetmasters whose profits are channeled through the dealings with these Islamic thugs and racketeers. I do not see any others in the circus that is American politics doing any different.

If the Islamists want to beleive that they can exist in their 7th century fantasy guided by a narcissist theology, they will eventually swim in the blood of their own hatred as we see in Gaza and Iraq and even Afghanistan where they devour each other. And what kind of culture or economics do these putrid islamists offer to humankind. They have nothing but oil, oil shooting through the viens of the Freeworld and leaders motivated to continue the flow by conspiring with the Satanic enemies.

Do not gray the lines. Make it black and white. Freedom from the Arab oil pushers is the primary step to defeat the Supremist Islamic enemies.

Also on the article linked to, I've been wondering how DoD was hiding this stuff. I expected troops to come back and literally blow out the PC police, at least those who got out. I thought there would be blogs like that and a lot "worse" (in PC terms).

In fact, if you look at exile.ru the trading cards and field guide, I expected that this would be done for Iraq and Afghanistan in a very un PC way just like exile.ru.

For those thinking of calling their Senators tomorrow, some talking points.

Talking Points Against: H.R. 1645 Flake-Gutierrez Amnesty STRIVE Act

An exile.ru version of the amnesty plan would be pretty good, but I don't think Robert would stand for it at this site.

The exile.ru archive search is not working for me, but google does. Try

Jeffrey Sachs site:exile.ru

Try Shleifer, Larry Summers, Harvard, etc.

Jesse:

just as I thought: you can't articulate a strategy. Neither can bush. That's 2 things you two have in common. by any chance, do you also like to cut down perfectly healthy trees with chain saws?

PMK:

we've exchanged points of view before. you wrote above:

"We're not the only country selling weapons to Muslim countries. They have many suppliers. We've seen our allies willing to put their and our future in jeopardy in the cause of capitalism. Should we expect them to suddenly see the light?"

one way of getting them to see the light is to tell any European company that it, together with its parent company, sister companies & subsidiaries will not be allowed to bid on any American contract, whether military or non-military, if it is caught selling arms or anything with a military use to iran etc. that policy would apply to that Austrian gun mfger that sold sniper rifles to iran for the ostensible purpose of drug interdiction. right.

Never Trust A Real-Estate Agent

"
The book's back cover features blurbs by Jeffrey Sachs, Richard Pipes, and Zbigniew Brzezinski. Sachs is, of course, the paradigm of the incompetent, sleazy Western consultant who did so much to destroy Russia in the 90s. "

At its best, exile.ru is genius.

Also try

Matt Taibbi site:exile.ru

This is like the Mad Magazine version of Russia in the 1990's. As time has gone on, its lost something.

...its mind.

Cornelius, Jesse,

There is much more Da'wa, Demographic conquest and Jihad, worldwide, from the camp of islam, than that from al-qaeda. Our "allies", the sauds, oppose al-qaeda (sincerely) in its goal to replace the saud regime, but they agree with and support (separately) the a-q goal of spreading islam.

Perhaps you are too fixated on al-qaeda (as president Bush seems to be, and Hugh is not).

Iraq provides a fine example of fissures within islam. Arab...Kurd...Turkmen; Shia...Sunni; Arabs...Iranians.

The far more efficient way to fight the war (the defense against supremacist-triumphalist islam) is to let the enemy stumble and trip over their fissures.

Even if you are only interested in al-qaeda, it is more efficient to allow and assist (in small ways -- not by spending a trillion dollars or more, and not by setting up a sharia based state, as we have, perversely) other muslims in iraq to do most of the fighting against a-q, all the while remembering that none of them are our friends. At most we and they may have a temporary alignment of interests. Hugh has discussed this in the past.

Your position that Tancredo is illogical in his call to disengage from iraq, combined with his statement that al-qaeda not be allowed to create a terrorist infrastructure in iraq, would be true if the only way to prevent al-qaeda from reconstituting an offensive infrastructure were for us to remain in Iraq, militarily on the ground.

However, that is not the only way. Part of Hugh's argument, all along, has been, that it is far more efficient to allow the Shia (or the Sunni tribes) to fight their own battles, for their own interests, with al-qaeda. If necessary, we could send over some B-52s to obliterate a-q facilities.

I agree with Hugh.

Jeffrey Sachs consultant site:exile.ru

is a more specific search that has 4 hits.

Converted into a PG rated title, the next story
is very good.

The Exile's 40 Most Wanted List

Obviously, the opinions of the exile are its own, no endorsement from me one way or the other.

Andrey Shleifer -- he's smart, smart enough to now be moving in on the Next Big Thing --"Economics With a Human Face" -- while there is still time, but he has one fatal flaw, which is his unfortunate need for constant self-aggrandizement -- so many do, don't they, among our "world-class stars" at "world-class universities" ---to make sure all of his graduate students give him top billing, lots of credit where credit isn't due at all, for the self-promotion never stops. He's not the only one. I'd be suspicious of anyone whose every graduate student was forced to thank for this idea or that idea, when so often it is the students themselves who do all the work, and even have the ideas. Enough of the academic plantation, either the lab or the lecture-room, where the graduate student and post-doctoral house hands, do the work, and Massa keeps taking the largest share, a quite undeserved share so often, of the credit.

Surely this is a scandal different in kind, but not in significance, with the kind of financial defalcation that took place in an unhinged wild-west advice-receiving Russia, as Anders Aslund and Igor Birman and Janine Wedel, who wrote the book on the whole subject of all those Western "advisers" and NGOs doing their usual thing, not excepting the comical Jeffery Sachs, have all noted.

Think of Russia, 1990-2007, but especially Russia 2001 to date.

What a chance. What a series of colossal errors by the Bush Administration, madly fixated on Iraq. What a loss.

Wasn't it the problem of Mesopotamia, with British forces preoccupied with holding it throughout the 1920s until they finally and intelligently but belatedly left in 1932, that prevented Great Britain from focussing on Weimar Germany, and ways to ameliorate its problems, and also to study up on a certain Mr. Hitler? Had Mesopotamia not used up energies and money and men, there might have been different policies by the British government, policies designed to weaken the Nazis (and the Communists). But Mesopotamia called, right up until 1932, and then there was that German election in 1933. The rest is history.

Churchill was right: an "ungrateful volcano." Spewing lava steadily, and soon to erupt. I'm betting on the explosion first in Kirkuk. How about you?

I did not forget. It is a pipe dream, this Caliph you speak of. Iraq will never be a base for anything and neither will any other Islamic shithole unless some despot can wrestle the minions en masse. The "source of terrorist activity" is anywhere Infidels run afoul of Islam. Iraq is just one of many and we can deny a base of operations anywhere in the world if we feel like it. We don’t boots on ground, not in this day of military weapons. I’m with Tancredo and Hugh. I think Iraq just a gigantic waste. No good is served by staying there because there is no hope in Islam, anywhere.

“Now you see how walking away would fulfill their plan?”

No, I don’t. I think Islam is a self destructive belief. Those nations that follow Islam will either self destruct, that is, return to their medieval state, or be destroyed physically by their “enemies.” Saddam ruled Iraq with an iron hand. Now that he’s gone Islam is free to wallow in its own crapulence. Why would we want our brave young men and women to stay over there and live in that stench, fight for people that hate us, or defend a “nation” whose laws are based on a belief that ordinary people find repulsive. I think it’s not only wasteful, it’s incredibly stupid.

Is logic just out of style or what?

And now a trial ballon from Senator McConnell:

"I want to assure you, if they vote to ask us to leave, we'll be glad to comply with their request,"

http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN1325114220070513?feedType=RSS&rpc=22&pageNumber=1

To all the pro-Guiliani posters.
Why not just vote for the Dems? The outcome will be the same.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1832629/posts
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=1886
http://www.redstate.com/blogs/ashbrook/2007/apr/10/its_not_just_social_conservatives_that_have_a_rudy_problem

Cornelius, Jesse, PMK and others...

(Everyone else sorry for the long post but I needed to get this off my chest…)

Is Iraq critical for victory in the War of Islamic Aggression? I say no.

There have been two theories that are equally flawed for staying in Iraq.

(1) One is democracy which any good Jihadwatch reader now knows is hopeless. Faithful Muslims just cannot accept it. The only way that can be successful is if you eliminate the ideology behind the enemy which is Islam and its relation to government. So unless you are willing to kill the majority of imams and clerics in Iraq and install secular rules in the constitution of Iraq (like no state religion and all humans no matter their faith are equal) then you are just wasting time.

(2) The other is the “honey pot” strategy. If we stay there the jihadist will come there and fight us and we can kill them. The flaws with that are twofold. One it is an expensive way to fight enemy when other methods are superior at dispatching them to paradise. The other is no battle can be sustained forever. History has proven that there must be some finial outcome. No matter how good our troops are they cannot forever fight without some kind of victory. Endless battles are not good for the health of a military.

Sun Tzu stated…

“He who wishes to fight must first count the cost. When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, then men's weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be dampened. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength. Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources of the State will not be equal to the strain. Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor dampened, your strength exhausted and your treasure spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of your extremity. Then no man, however wise, will be able to avert the consequences that must ensue... In war, then, let your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns.”

And just as important…

“If our soldiers are not overburdened with money, it is not because they have distaste for riches; if their lives are not unduly long, it is not because they are disinclined to longevity.”

Both of these quotes despite being from 500 BC still ring true today. I could find many more throughout history from Napoleon to Sherman to support me on this. Long campaigns wear an army down. That is a fact. The men will begin to question the purpose of their lives at some point. No amount of cute quotes about caravans and dogs will change that.

The problem with Iraq is even greater then that however and it goes to the very heart of what this war is about. Who is our enemy? What should be our finial objectives? If the enemy is violent jihad then you could fairly argue that Islam itself is the enemy. After all violent jihad is integral to Islam. You also can make the argument that Islam being more then a faith is also an enemy. The concepts of Sharia and Islamic government are also the enemies of our civilization. Once again therefore a fair argument is Islam is the enemy because of violent jihad and the outcome of jihad (violent or passive) which is Islamic law and government. Now that we have defined the enemy we must set objectives and goals for victory. In order to win however you must first secure yourself from defeat.

Once again let’s look at what Sun Tzu says:

“The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy. To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself. Thus the good fighter is able to secure himself against defeat, but cannot make certain of defeating the enemy.”

How can we secure ourselves from defeat against Islamic civilization? First we must stop all Muslim immigration into the west. Second we must secure our own energy supplies that do not rely on Muslim majority countries (this can be done easier then you think). Third we must prevent advanced weapon technologies from falling into the hands of majority Muslim countries. Fourth we must secure non-Muslim majority lands from invasion. Examples are in the 3rd world such as the horn of Africa.

By staying in Iraq however we do not secure ourselves from defeat. We continue to allow Muslim immigration. We are not preventing advanced weapon technology from falling into the hands of majority Muslim countries. We are not securing non-Muslim lands but in fact are losing them in Thailand, the horn of Africa, Balkans, Lebanon and others. We are not securing our energy future but instead are hoping for Muslims to see the light of civilization. You are depending on the enemy to be nice and play nice and keep the oil cheap. Then those very same nations use the oil money to continue jihad against us creating cycle of dependence and lost lands. That is beyond dangerous and keeps the door open for defeat. Iraq is a trap folks and an illusion. It traps us because Americans by nature are fighters and want to win and it is an illusion for we so wish to have Muslim friends yet it will never happen. So we buy into the concept of a semi-friend. We in essence are selling out the future generation of Americans (your children and grand children) for this illusion that we don’t need real friends just those that smile and sell us oil and if a few 9-11s happen every so often so what. They hate us but we can live with it because it is the price for cheap oil. That is not securing us from defeat but is true defeat.

So we must pull out of Iraq. Thus we must lose the battle to win the war because the goals of victory in the battle for Iraq cannot be achieved and if they are it will be a pyrrhic victory of endless struggle in the honey pot of death. As I have said however this dose not matter because we will pull out of Iraq anyway. The American public will support a prolonged struggle there and I can see why (see above). However this can still be turned into an advantage. This is why Hugh Fitzgerald is correct. Islam is not unified. It has faults lines based on many things. Some are related to religion (Shia and Sunni) and some are related to ethnic strife such as the Kurdish, Arab and Persian faults. Iraq is the epicenter of these faults which is why the place has been ungovernable for thousands of years. Now that we have removed Saddam the only thing that kept the place together we withdraw and let nature take its course. The conflict between Shia and Sunni will draw Iran and the Sunni Arabian states into the fight. With so many religious sites in play it will draw off jihadist of both stripes from the world-wide jihad to defend and possibly take various holy sites in the region. They are a religious people thus it is only logical that would hold those sites above anything else.

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” Sun Tzu

Use their faith against them. By us leaving the trap called Iraq we draw in the Iranians and Arabians into the trap. A trap that will be hard to escape and thousands of jihadists on both sides will die killing each other. We can further this along by exploiting the ethnic and tribal hatreds. We should support the Kurds with military (weapons) and monetary aide. Now that may sound like a bad idea at first for are they not Muslim but Kurds hatred for the Arabs and Persians is greater then their hatred for non-Muslims. Once again use it to our advantage. A well armed Kurdistan could menace both Iran and the Arabs. We will have to work out some deal with Turkey and the new Kurdish government. Perhaps conditioning the aide for to the Kurds on the grounds they not attack Turkey but instead find lands in Iran and in Iraq. The Turks need our military aide also so we can pull string there as well. Even if Turkey gets involved how can that be bad? In fact it will increase the body count of dead jihadist which is good for us.

Remember as Sun Tzu stated…” opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.”

Iraq is the opportunity for defeating our enemies. By creating a void that they must fill themselves or risk losing. Once we are free of Iraq we need not appease the Shia anymore which gives a free hand to bomb Iranians military and nuclear facilities. We can coordinate it with other uprisings in Iran and possible Kurdish insurgency in Iran. It should weaken Iran and keep it very busy. It also frees up troops for a much needed clear out of western Pakistan. It would be a slash burn campaign wasting as many Taliban fighters as possible and destroying the villages that support them. The goal is to weaken their power in Pakistan but we should not involve ourselves in nation building or democracy projects. Maybe we can then avoid having to take out Pakistani nuclear facilities for a few years if successful. In the end however we will have to take out Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal and facilities so I am willing to change my mind on this. Now or then either way will suit me.

The finial outcome…

Who knows…but at least we secure ourselves from defeat and give ourselves more chances for victory. Maybe Islamic civilization will reform or the people will leave the faith sick of fighting. Perhaps we will have to crush or convert them ourselves but at least now we are free to make good choices for our nation and for the west. We will not need to be dependent on our enemy.

So there are my views. So much more detail could be said but I can only write so much now. Two rules however must be applied to any choice we make in this conflict.

(1) Does it weaken the House of Islam?
(2) Does it help secure ourselves from defeat?

Mr. Fitzgerald has already put all this better then I could so please re-read his many writings on this subject. And Learn…

Here's the thing though, even the people who favor staying in Iraq, realistically, what are the chances of being able to deploy forces in Iraq past the next election cycle? Cause the Shiite-Sunni muslim violence will not be anywhere near resolution, the government will still be the same incompetent Iranian infiltrated Islamic fundamentalists, and al Qaeda forces in Iraq will definitely have a "surge" of their own leading up to the Prseidential elections. Will the American electorate have the guts to take a spike in US casualties, or will we end up with a President Obama or President Hillary as a result?
If the last elections are any indication, the latter. I'd rather not sacrifice democracy here at home trying to establish democracy in Iraq. I think the best thing to do is declare victory, and let the Sunnis and Shiites get it on. Bush is better off letting the primitives slaughter themselves, and letting the Republicans focus on the essential things, preventing a President Obama or Hilary. Because, folks, they will immediately not only withdraw troops from Iraq, but screw us in the war on jihad (and at home) in a myriad other ways....the US army got rid of Hussein, killed thousands of jihadis, but I don't really see the benefits of continued miltary presence there outweighing essentially handing the Democrats the White House over the issue...

Regarding engaging the Islamic world. To Donald Trump, Tiger Woods, and those who have bought into Dubai land developments: HA HA HA.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a cheering Dubai crowd Sunday that America was to blame for creating instability and robbing the region of its wealth.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3399491,00.html

I like GreatComments1577's objectives brought about by pulling our Military out of Iraq.

How can we secure ourselves from defeat against Islamic civilization?
First we must stop all Muslim immigration into the west.

Second we must secure our own energy supplies that do not rely on Muslim majority countries (this can be done easier then you think).

Third we must prevent advanced weapon technologies from falling into the hands of majority Muslim countries.

Fourth we must secure non-Muslim majority lands from invasion. Examples are in the 3rd world such as the horn of Africa.

I want to add a 5th. What little military theory I read is to fight an Enemy on your own terms. Our terms are technology, intelligence and resources.

Thus a competant strategy is to allow an aggressive Caliphate to come into existance,(my guess is its going to happen anyway) Iran is a nice place to allow it's Jihad hate to become a national entity, upon which Western nations can actually engage. To allow it to actually become a State. Upon attaining that status, it can then be engaged since the purity of it's hate will be concentrated and do the most damage when eliminated. You have to remember that any despotic regime will always consider itself stronger than what it really is. And seek to really believe it can conquer the world. It's motives and operations will be easy to figure out.

This allows all these great minds on this list to focus on our internal problems, build up our military, do productive prepatory work, like develope a war culture that can speak Arabic, and define the ideological struggle that we face to the populace..

It is a rough idea, but the point is to think out of the box. What is the big goal? Take a breather, get ready for the big one toeliminate an ideology doesn't believe in free choice.
For what its worth.

"We are fighting Jihad because we are engaged in Afghanistan and Iraq. Killing the Taliban chief is proof."
-- from a poster above

Total cost of war in Iraq:

$880,000,000,000 (1)

Total number of "Jihadis" killed

20,000 (2)

Now divide (1) by (2).

The correct answer gives us the cost, per Jihadi killed, in 2007 American dollars:

$44,000,000

That's it: $44,000,000 per Jihadi killed.

Let's take a vote.

Posted by: Hugh at May 13, 2007 05:56 PM

+++++++++++++++++

have stated multiple times that we need to pull out of iraq to kurdish lands and to kuwait and let the muslims fight it out and when over clean up the mess.

we have wasted nealry a Trillion $1,000,000,000,000 dollars and over 3,000 American lives on iraq and afghan for what???

This trillion dollars could have rebuilt America and made us energy independent and kept us on top of the world............

it is not to late to start....call your Congressman and Senator.

The Texican.

Jesse said

We are fighting Jihad because we are engaged in Afghanistan and Iraq. Killing the Taliban chief is proof.

Others have responded to this, but let me add another point. The current expensive (in every way) hot war in Iraq and Afghanistan killed one very replaceable Taliban leader. But what are we not doing in the meantime:

How many jihadists did we let into our borders today? How many components of WMD's were smuggled into our borders? How many technical secrets (about our bridges, reservoirs, electrical grid) were smuggled out of the country? How many clandestine meetings took place in mosques, cafes, or wherever, to plan the next big martyrdom operation? How many jihadists were hired as airline baggage handlers, security screeners, FBI agents, or hazmat truckers? How many Saudi petrodollars were spent opening new mosques here? How many people were converted to Islam in those mosques or in our prisons?

How many infidels were taught today about the true beliefs of Islam? How many "charitable organizations" being funded through mosque donations were shut down? How many meetings did those who believe that Islam is not the RoP have with anyone of power in the government? How much effort was put into finding alternatives to Arab oil? How many clerics were deported for their weekly outright exhortations to violence?

There are so many things we should be doing that we're not. Things that could be so much more effective than that expensive hot war (assuming that our goal is to protect the American people from jihadists, and not to bless our "good friends" the Afghanis and Iraqis with democracy and freedom, and not to protect our "staunch allies" the Saudis and Emirates and Kuwaitis from their enemies the Iraqis and Iranians).

We're leaving ourselves wide open to the next massive terrorist attack, but we killed one Taliban leader in Afghanistan. Yippee.

Oh yeah. If Hugh wants my vote, he's got it.

Hugh has my vote as well. However, on the original story about Tancredo, he seems to have dropped the ball on this. I saw him in the first debate, and was singularly unimpressed. In response to a question about whether the US should attack Iran if Israel is attacked, he balked at that question. These days, his #1 issue seems to be abortion. Tom, important as that may be, there are more important things to worry about - like the survival of this country.

I'm still open to the candidates, but so far, Romney is the only one consistently talking about the threat of Jihad, and at least open to cracking down on Jihadi activity in the US. I'm disappointed that he hasn't been able to be on the right side on Iraq, but I also don't believe that the US can stay in Iraq beyond September, one way or the other.

There is the other school of thought in the GOP who believes that we should have simply levelled the place and withdrawn. They aren't following the same tactics as Hugh, but the strategy is the same - go in, kill them, get out. Even this would have avoided wasting $880b on this war. If any of the GOP candidates stopped short of advocating civil war, but simply pointed out that our job is done, and it's time to leave, they'd get my vote.

Jesse, in responding to this article, did not address the content of what the author said, but instead pointed us to this article by the same author.

Was there something in the second article that was false, that would cause us to doubt the truthfulness of the author? Similarly, it is pointed out that the site is hosted in Russia; are we to assume that if it's printed in Russia, it must be false?

Is the fact that the author had sex (more's the horror, sex outside of marriage) somehow relevant to his honesty? Is Jesse unaware that some servicemen, away in hostile foreign countries for months or years at a time, with no assurance of ever seeing home again, may at times turn to the world's oldest profession?

Or is this an attempt to show how Jesse's moral superiority to that soldier allows him to dismissively ignore whatever he has written?

Infidel Pride said

There is the other school of thought in the GOP who believes that we should have simply levelled the place and withdrawn.

I (a lifelong Democrat) would agree with that, if "the place" is Afghanistan. And Waziristan in our "staunch ally" Pakistan. But Iraq? Saddam was busy killing his fellow Muslims, not Americans. He was a threat to his own people and the Iranians and the Saudis and Kuwaitis and Emirates. If we got rid of him, that would have been exceptionally generous of us, but I wouldn't have suggested leveling Iraq because of Saddam.

I wouldn't have argued strongly for keeping him in power as a secular strong-man, and I wouldn't have argued strongly for getting rid of him because he was so evil. He was just another ME leader. Saddam, and Iraq, were never the locus of jihad in my mind.

Special Guest

On Saddam, I agree with you, except that he was also a threat to Israel - no wonder that in the 80's, Israel wasn't too enthusiastic about the support the US was giving Iraq against Iran. With his scuds launched at Israel in 1991, and his financing of Fatah suicide bombers, his was a regime that had to be taken out: I don't buy the argument that because he was secular (something proved wrong by various acts of his, such as getting the Quran written in his blood, adding allahu akbar to the Iraqi flag), he was worth leaving in place. Also, since we did have to oust him, we should have treated this opportunity as a war with Iraq, and after the bombing that was followed 2 days later by his statue being pulled down, that was when the war could have simply ended, and once the WMD's were proved to be absent, just pull troops out.

If that anti-Israeli part of his foreign policy wasn't there, then yes, the US would have had no business taking him out. Instead, they could have bribed him, just like the Russians and the French, and bought his oil - Iraq, KSA, Kuwait and other GCC states. In this case, you are right - instead of going towards funding the Jihad and dawa activities worldwide, they could have simply gone into his palaces, as well as his war preparations against Iran.

Having said that, in the event of him taking over Mecca and Medina, there is a good likelihood that he wouldn't have remained a Baathist. After all, the reason for the Baath party is the fact that he was a member of a minority sect - Sunni Arabs being just 20% of Iraq. But had Iraq overrun KSA, Kuwait, Qatar, UAE, Oman (leave out Shia Bahrein and half Shia Yemen), as well as Jordan and Syria, the new Arabian empire headed by Saddam would have had a Sunni majority, and there would have been no reason for him to cobble together an alliance to just stay in power. Also, had he overrun Syria, and ended Alawite occupation of Damascus, he would have been seen by the entire Sunni populace as the liberator of the medeaval Umayyad capital. And as has been noted about him, never a dull moment. Sure, he could have followed it up by relaunching his war against Iran, this time well financed by all the Mid Eastern oil, but it's just as possible that he could have tried conquering Israel and Lebanon. So that's a gamble that may well not have worked.

It would, however, have been a surefire way of ensuring a Shia Sunni civil war throughout the Mid East, excluding Egypt, Iran and Turkey.

You out there Natasha ?
Cooled down yet ?
Sure as hell hope not !
Last time I saw that much balls I was at a dog show.

What was it hugh and spencer said about Tancredo when he said we should nuke mecca I forgot??

Part of the American Tribe
Squirrel Hunter
Spider Killer
GOD BLESS THE USA AND HER FIGHTING FORCES AND ALL WHO FIGHT WITH HER GIVE THEM STRENGTH, WISDOM, SIGHT, AND COURAGE TO DESTROY ALL ISLAMIC TERRORIST AND ALL WHO SUPPORT THEM AMEN

Robert, please sit down with Hugh and watch this the first of these three CSPAN videos of Pamela Hess. Then you will understand my comment below:
http://www.c-span.org/Search/advanced.asp?AdvancedQueryText=Pamela+Hess&StartDateMonth=&StartDateYear=&EndDateMonth=&EndDateYear=&Series=&ProgramIssue=&QueryType=&QueryTextOptions=&ResultCount=10&SortBy=bestmatch

Regardless of how and why we got there at this point in time "it's about the humanity of the thing." If we leave we become instant monsters abandoning such moderate Mohammedans as may exist, such Mohammedans as simply want to get through a day, earn some money on a job, and get home without the threat of thugs or Jihadis weighing heavily on their mind. We must give them a chnace as a way of preserving our own humanity.

If we simply bail out now we might as well take up our nukes and take out any Mohammedan population center of more than 10,000. (Even if that means Londonistan and Dearbornistan as well.) It might work and would not make is GREATER monsters except by raw numbers than a simple pull out from Iraq would make us.

If we bail we will have admitted we are ethically and morally bankrupt. If we stick it out until the jihadis can be reduced and the police and military enhanced to the point that jihadi activities can be contained and not make a mess of all Iraqi lives. If we do that, no matter what happens, we will have retained OUR humanity. If Iraq backslides into being a Jihadi Center Of The Universe, we can "do it again", probably more messily because we've used up our stocks of precision munitions. But we get to do it again without already being moral and ethical monsters.

I do NOT want to be part of a country that finds it must unleash its nuclear might on 1.3 gigapersons around the world in order to try to preserve our way of life. I do not want to have to be a monster. We should work NOW to prevent that potential requirement in the future.

It's about humanity, theirs and ours.

{^_^}

Please excuse me - the third video is the really good one about the humanity of the issue. The first one gives a flavor of how Pamela Hess thinks. The third one recounts her most recent trip to Iraq.

{^_^}

"Have you noticed a change in Jihadwatch, a little more irrational than it used to be?"
*
"The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on."
Posted by: Jesse

YES

(1) Divide the House of Islam (The Hugh Plan)

That is why I support the Hugh Fitzgerald plan. Great minds think a like.

Posted by: greatcometof1577 at May 13, 2007 06:28 PM

WELL THAT WAS THE CIA PLAN for years and what did it bring us??

9/11/2001?

I'd say it wasn't working very well would you
Remember the iran iraq war yea to give the mulsums the Balkens was another great Idea?

So hugh's plan is for everybody to walk cause no gas for your cars well the people who are afriad to fly won't have that problem being afriad to fly anyway?

OF course Hugh's plan would have to intell all mulsums must leave the USA and that if you like fish well not so fast all them boats which use gas?

Yes to feed the people well it's to the fields to pick those potatos because not any gas for the Tractors?

Hell even the lib's are now saying wind power doesn't produce enough?

So Hugh's plan is to srcew Europe and hide in his hiddy hole?

SORRY NOT FOR ME!

Saddom had a chance to comply and he wasted time and refused to cooperate. After 9-11 I had a dream of B.O.B-except he was in the form of the devil. I dreamnt we went to Iraq and when we got there, they had changed out of their uniforms and blended in. I won't say the rest. I called Larry King show and talked to Sen.McCain and asked him the possible connection between sodom and bin-laden? are they buddies? We need to go there! We exposed the U.N. saving billions plus we found out who was bought off! The deals with sodom and France and Koffi which we do not hear about either anymore! All the money saved, payed for the war. Since the U.N. NATO all of them do not do a damn thing but serve their own needs! We found lots of weapons. We killed lots of bad guys! Syria gave up their WMDS's only problem-we have them alright! Could it just be the WMD's sodom had and we think they were cooperating? Gee, where could they be? Like in Tennesee-it's no secret they said it on Fox!
People I know, blame Bush for everything! They do not know what this is all about though! They do not understand how their lifes is not going to improve with a different president! We have the illegal problem and we must pay for them to live here! Between that and islam! We have a real danger here and the dhimmicrats are not going to fix it. Sure you can say well you voted these people in but how are you suppose to know you voted to let them to start changing everything like -accept the use of the Koran as a swearing in? Not punishing child molesters to the fullest! A woman's protection act! Maybe the swearing in on the hands down approach! Anyone will swear on the Bible but you swear on those-things could change. Sodom had WMD's! On National GEO, before we went there, they showed them, we gave them to him! It is unexceptable they get to come here and go to college and live here have mosque here! I didn't vote for that either! I do not want this. We cannot go there and I do not want to submiss to their laws! .

jdow, the humanist.

Nothing is ever worth even one person dying, right jdow.

According to your logic, our forebears, a much better generation in my opinion, were just as bad as the Nazis, because they fought evil with violence.
Somehow, I don't think Hitler's storm troopers would have responded kindly to flowers, an invitations to peace, and love.

Much better to not resist, right jdow?
Just bend over and think of humanity.

What utter nonsense.

Tancredo the new leader for Hugh? well run and hid is not what Tancredo is really for if you listen to all his speech, he wanted to Nuke Mecca. islamist only know brute force, and its us or them. l will be so glad when the big mouths in DC beltway from the era of Vietnam lose and surrender crowd are too old to do more damage and are wetting in their bed in the old age home! l have more confidence in the the generation joing the military and actually fighting for our way of life.

Hughs comments on Russia, and the life of grad students, are very good.

Wasn't it the problem of Mesopotamia, with British forces preoccupied with holding it throughout the 1920s until they finally and intelligently but belatedly left in 1932, that prevented Great Britain from focussing on Weimar Germany, and ways to ameliorate its problems, and also to study up on a certain Mr. Hitler? Had Mesopotamia not used up energies and money and men, there might have been different policies by the British government, policies designed to weaken the Nazis (and the Communists). But Mesopotamia called, right up until 1932, and then there was that German election in 1933. The rest is history.

Churchill was right: an "ungrateful volcano." Spewing lava steadily, and soon to erupt. I'm betting on the explosion first in Kirkuk. How about you?

Posted by: Hugh at May 13, 2007 11:41 PM

Hugh
Very surprized about your recall? You used to be so good about things like that?
It was after Chamberlin said we have Peace in our time. that things changed Remember it was he who was Prime Minster?

Wasn't after war wa declared that Churchill became Prime Minster?

Yes it is not good to fool the kiddies??

And it was the British after WW2 was won that the British threw overboard Churchill??

Jesse
You said….
“ Have you noticed a change in Jihadwatch, a little more irrational than it used to be? “
I can’t answer that one, I’m still a JW neophyte
But I have noticed how the increased incidents of butchery and barbarity perpetrated upon non muslims globally is directly proportional to the justifiably angered posts seen on this site and similar sites.
If this counts as irrational then call me Curly and hit me on the head with a hammer.
And for Christ sake shut those frigging dogs up !

Foehammer
I'd prefer not to believe it, about the linked article.
I only had to read the first line to question the validity. If this person is in our military it is "in name only" or maybe they are like Goldie Hawn in that movie who was looking for going out to lunch Army.
Anyone who has known members of our military are aware that they don't consider it a JOB. It is much more than that. in fact, last night on Hannity's America on Fox, he played a video of soldiers saying just that. This is not a job, it is a lifestyle.

Catherine

It is not as hard as you think to become energy independent. Of course there will be short term disruptions.

Liquefy coal to oil is great example! We have large coal reserves and it has been possible since WWII to do so. Just do internat search and you will see. China, Japan and many others are already going in this direction. In fact many American industrialist are already putting plans on the table. There are some current problems in terms of how efficient it is but with current technology and R & D all of these problems can be reduced rather quick.

Stop thinking about liberals for once and their stupid plans for biomass fuel and wind. There are some very pratical solutions tomiddle east oil consumption and they are very rational if you would just care to learn about it.

To Old Atlantic, awake, et al regarding the rotten cherry at the exile.ru site.

That article by a supposed American "sailor" (Joe Sailor?? come on people if that isn't rot I don't know what is) reads very much like an article rated false by Snopes;

An expletive-filled letter from "Saucy Jack" detailing conditions in Afghanistan

No wonder there are so many barking dogs here, I'd howl and bark like a dog too if I had a hugh gut ache from eating rotten cherries like that.

Good Grief people, slow down, take a few seconds and a deep breath, CHECK THE CHERRY FOR ROT BEFORE YOU GOBBLE IT UP AND SMACK YOUR LIPS WITH THUNDEROUSLY LOUD MASTICATIONS!!!!

Catherine, do you think the increasing irrationality might be caused by the rotten cherry diet?

Oh well you pick your own cherries, and you live with the result.

*

"The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on."

I submitted that article to snopes.

-----------------------------------

BTW to all you who insist on saying what you think I think - I'm not going to respond, haven't got even one minute to waste on it.

What you think I think is *your* imaginary strawman and with that being the case you can carry on the conversation with yourselves.

Have fun with it!

*

"The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on."

From an earlier post
(1) One is democracy which any good Jihadwatch reader now knows is hopeless. Faithful Muslims just cannot accept it.

Okay, just for argument sake we accept this. We all know it's is true.
How does the USA and the coalition make this assertion and continue to insist that the Islam practicing people within our own countries are able to accept and practice Democracy within our borders.
This would be a very hard sell.

(2) The other is the “honey pot” strategy. If we stay there the jihadist will come there and fight us and we can kill them. The flaws with that are twofold. One it is an expensive way to fight enemy when other methods are superior at dispatching them to paradise.

What are these other methods? I would like to see some real answers to the question of Iraq and a little less spittle flying from peoples mouths with rabid rantings about G W Bush.

Although the above quotes are from another poster here the spittle comment IS NOT about him/her.

It is about the people I hear from who say ridiculous things like 'this war is all about oil' and then say 'We should just TAKE the Iraqi Oil' My answer is 'as opposed to letting the Iraqi people have it?'
The point is that I would like to hear some real and concrete HOW answers and less Bush bashing. Which yields no answers and simply undermines the morale of this great country.

The one or two barking dogs here, who can easily be identified, ought long ago have been taken away by the dogcatcher to the pound. They have admittedly some value, for their arguments are so dead-on-arrival that in dismembering their corpses in public, one is engaged in Dr. Tulp's Anatomy Lesson, and there is pedagogic usefulness in this (not to mention a nice painting or two -- who will be first to "paint" an imagined Jihad Watch?).

Still, their usefulness, like that of certain annoying Muslim posters, has not an endless but a limited shelf-life, and the sell-by date or scadenza for several of them passed long ago.

I've never been as programmatically tolerant, as much of a believer in the "free marketplace of ideas" as Robert insists on being. I take a much dimmer view of humanity. A little Holmesian tartness, it seems to me, should unsweeten to taste the bake-sale (as in "funeral baked meats" to continue the metaphor first adumbrated or foreshadowed in the first paragraph)of life. Tart, tart, tart, Horatio.

"A trap that will be hard to escape and thousands of jihadists on both sides will die killing each other."

greatcomet,

I just want to say this one more time.

WHO WILL THE JIHADISTS KILL BEFORE THEY KILL ONE ANOTHER?

Nothing you want can be accomplished without a total quarantine of the Muslim world (Africa and Asia primarily).

We thought we could leave Afghanistan and let both sides fight it out. We ignored the buildup of al Qaeda bases because they were on the other side of the world and they were just having fun trying out new weapons and making bold statements. We ended up with 9/11.

You and Hugh state very eloquently what needs to be done but should Americans have to put up with the possibility that the Sears Tower or the Golden Gate Bridge might come down before we're done with our slash and burn?

You want to secure non-Muslim countries, but how do you do that when almost every country in Asia has pockets of Muslims throughout? Unless we do what was attempted on the Indian subcontinent and move all Muslims behind a certain line, the many policy prescriptions you lay out will be meaningless. We still have Islamberg right here in the US and they're in ten states and counting. Barring Muslim immigration won't stop the people training on that hillside from waging jihad and doing serious damage. We shouldn't write them off as troublemakers. You don't know if there are nuclear engineers in the group, for instance. Are we going to do what was done to the Jews in Europe and bar American Muslims from certain occupations?

I agree with almost everything you say, but those policies require global coordination because the US is incapable of doing them on its own. What do we do in the meantime?

We know the enemy. We have met the enemy and it is us. Our international organizations are being used to hamstring us. The human rights movement has all but said that borders are invalid because they restrict the freedom of humans to travel from one point to another. We have set up the many tools that will be used to bring us down.
Our own soldiers are being accused of MURDER. You really think we can institute a slash and burn policy everyehere terrorists lurk when they are being accorded more rights than our own military?

"Are we going to do what was done to the Jews in Europe and bar American Muslims from certain occupations?"
-- from a posting above

What a strange remark, and how easily it fits into Musliim propaganda, of such as "Professor" Adil Najam (now teaching subjects which, if you examine his own history, he has no business teaching, but perhaps by being a Muslim one is endowed automatically with great knowledge about subjects connected to Islam, in the new, identity-based "knowledge" industry that is corporate higher education), who likes to convince non-Muslims of how put-upon poor Muslims are today (I've read the detailed reports about his appearance at a mosque two years ago, during one such little loveday outing).

As far as I know, the least of the problems of Jews, in Western Christendom, was barring them from certain occupations. There was certainly a connection between the kind of occupations open to them, and the ease of the hysteria against them whipped-up, but those occupational constrictions were neither necessary, nor sufficient, to explain the mass hatreds expressed in pogroms,, whether of the Hugh-of-Lincoln type based on accusations of ritual murder or of the We're-on-our-way-to-the-Holy-Land-and-we-might-as-well-kill-any-Jews-we run-across-while-we-are-at-it (as in the Rhineland), mass expulsions with appropriation by the local king, or merely by the locals, of all Jewish-owned property (England 1297, France 1396, Spain 1492), and so on and so grimly, horribly, forth.

But let's not get into this business of pretending that the inoffensiveness of the Jews, and their horrible treatment, is just like the situatuion with Muslims in the West today, whose ideology itself prevents them from regarding Infidel nation-states -- except insofar as they abandon or ignore the teachings of Islam, i.e. are "bad Muslims" and not merely "moderate" Muslims -- as anything other than temporary structures, to which they owe no loyalty and, in fact, are perfectly justified in working to undo, to undo their perfidious, because man-made, and still worse, Infidel-man-made, legal and political institutions.

There is a real, not imaginary, threat from an ideology that uncompromisingly divides the world between Believer and Infidel, and mandates a permanent state of war (though not necessarily of open warfare) between them. We have the evidence of the animating passages -- more than just a few -- about the necessity of Jihad, and about inclulcated attitudes toward all Infidels -- in Qur'an, Hadith, and sira. We have the historical evidence of what Muslims, prompted by texts that promote and justify endless conqueset of non-Muslim lands and peoples, have in fact done, whenever they have been strong enough to do so, from Spain to East Asia, over a 1350-year period.

There is simply no comparison, and even to suggest that others will think there is, or that we must be inhibited in taking perfectly sensible measures to protect ourselves, is nonsense.

Tell me: would you fly on a plane if you knew the pilot, once a seemingly indifferent Christian, had become an enthusiastic born-again Christian, reading the Bible in every spare minute, or would you hesitate? I wouldn't hesitate.

Now, as the second part of this hypothetical, if you knew that the pilot had been an indifferent Jew, but had recently become very religious, reading the Torah in every spare minute, would you hesitate to fly with him? I wouldn't hesitate.

The third part: if you knew that the pilot had been an indifferent Muslim (like "Mike" Hawash, or so many others) but in the last year had "returned to his religion," and had been intently reading the Qur'an, and the Hadith, and the sira, would you hesitate to fly with him?

I would.

Hugh,
I had the same answers to all three questions you asked. I'm not saying there's no danger. You are exactly right. The question is WHAT CAN BE DONE WITH MUSLIMS IN THE US ALREADY?

Would we even be allowed to ask the name of the pilot on that plane? He could be blonde with blue eyes and still be a Muslim.

We have rule of law. We have anti-discrimination laws. We have an EEOC. CAN we pass legislation that makes Muslims ineligible to work in certain areas? CAN IT BE DONE?

What is so odd about that question?

I'm sorry if you were offended by it, but I in no way meant to minimize the danger. The danger is here.

Can we pass laws that define individuals from certain groups as a security risk and will it pass muster?

WE ARE OUR OWN ENEMY.

We have created this international system where borders aren't being observed and where the UN is trying to run the world. The US military can't even fight insurgents (terrorists, whatever) in Iraq without marines being accused of murder. Our soldiers are fighting people who dress in civilian clothes and then being arrested for killing "innocent civilians". Why shouldn't the same thing happen here? Why shouldn't police have to worry about being sued for "targeting" Muslims? Just look at the flying imams trying to silence citizens.

HOW do we protect ourselves without first throwing each and every Muslim out of the country?
As I recall, at least one member of the first plot to bomb the WTC was an engineer employed by an American company.

What's so odd about asking: what are we supposed to do to protect key industries or installations? Barring Muslim immigration today will not make us safe. People who support Osama bin Laden are being taught at American schools. Many more are just waiting for their opportunity. We can't do anything about it because people who haven't done anything wrong are presumed innocent.

The Islamberg group has people working for NEW YORK STATE. They might be in positions to look the other way when terrorists are going about their business. There are nuclear engineers. Do we let them work in our facilities and hope no one does something to sabotage a reactor? Can we do it? That's all I asked.

WHAT ARE WE SUPPOSED TO DO?

Infidel Pride said

On Saddam, I agree with you, except that he was also a threat to Israel

Yes, you're right about Israel, that's true. But he didn't seem an imminent threat to Israel when we invaded. With all due respect (and I have a great deal of respect for Infidel Pride), I don't think the Administration's priority in attacking Saddam was to ensure the safety of Israel. I think they had other "allies" in mind, other agendas. If Israel's safety had been the goal, Lebanon (or, going up the food chain, Syria or Iran) would have been the target, not Iraq.

Jesse,

I've been away for days, yet you decide to take a pot-shot at me in a thread I have not yet posted in?

Your stance of refusing to answer questions in support of your indefensible position, speaks volumes.

If that is your way of getting in the last word, so be it. Take solace in that, for your position about Iraq should provide no comfort to you.

Your continued silence when asked to support your "stay indefinately in Iraq because it's the morally correct thing to do" makes two things perfectly clear. The first, a thankful acknowledgement that you have absolutely no influence whatsoever in American foreign policy. I take solace in that. The second, the unavoidable realization that you are not even qualified to work at 7-11, let alone discuss important, adult matters such as these.

Allow me to offer in advance a "good riddance" to you.

PMK said

HOW do we protect ourselves without first throwing each and every Muslim out of the country?

I find that an odd question, I'd prefer to turn it around:

Why should we allow a group of people, whose core beliefs include the following, to live among us:

- that overthrowing governments led by non-believers is mandatory;
- that using violence to subdue non-believers is justified;
- that the very detailed rules of the group must be applied not only to all believers' lives, but to all people, everywhere, for all time;
- that dishonesty (including in solemn oaths and treaties) in dealing with non-believers is justified;
- that loyalty to the group trumps loyalty to the nation of residence;

Furthermore, besides having these theoretical beliefs, this group of people has throughout time and geographical places actually practiced all these problematic beliefs; it's not just some arcane bits of outdated belief, it's what they have actually carried out in the past right up to the present.

How can a free and open society let a group with these characteristics live amongst them?

THAT is the question that I'd like to see debated.

"How can a free and open society let a group with these characteristics live amongst them?"

special_guest,

Isn't it a little late to ask that question? They're already here. Many were born here. If you don't want people with these characteristics living amongst us, what do you propose we do about it?

Everyone talks about barring immigration, but it does nothing to address the danger posed by Islamic extremism. It's already here.

awake, I did not talk any pot shots at you, quit imagining things that are not true.

Jesse wrote:

"To Old Atlantic, awake, et al regarding the rotten cherry at the exile.ru site."

and

"No wonder there are so many barking dogs here, I'd howl and bark like a dog too if I had a hugh gut ache from eating rotten cherries like that."

Posted by: Jesse at May 14, 2007 10:37 AM

Since this post was made prior to my participation in this thread, it is indeed a pot-shot, and I might add, an odd way to re-engage in our initial discussion, thread enders, I believe, with your convenient talent for revisionist history and your disregard of obvious facts, aside.

Do you really need or want me to provide those links again?

Just say the word.

A ticket of Tancredo and Guiliani just might save this country.

Posted by: LoneRanger at May 13, 2007 09:14 PM

Tancredo is a true patriot who loves America and is trying to save what's left of it but I'm not so sure about Guiliani. I doubt that these two men have similar priorities or agendas; they aren't likely to unite because their interests are entirely different.

Guiliani's leadership after 9-11 was magnificent and he cleaned up NYC while he was mayor, a daunting task for which he deserves endless accolades. But it appears that Mr. Guiliani has joined the internationalist, NWO crowd as well as the stealth NAU project. He admittedly supports amnesty and open borders and his law firm represents the foreign company poised to operate the proposed NAFTA superhighway. I find this strange for a man who was putatively opposed to NAFTA. He was instrumental in making NYC a sanctuary city for illegal aliens and passed his legacy on to the current mayor. He criticized welfare reform during the Clinton administration and even tried to circumvent the new law so that illegal aliens in NYC could receive welfare benefits. I could overlook his liberal stance on social issues like abortion and gay marriage if he was strong on the issues that matter the most to me---immigration, border security, and the war against jihad. But I cannot support anyone who advocates a North American Union, open borders, amnesty, and unlimited immigration.

As long as our borders are wide open with no control over who comes through them, we will never be safe. We can fight wars all over the globe but what good is that when we are allowing millions of muslims to immigrate to America and do not defend our borders?! Immigration, legal and illegal, is destroying this country and for some cryptic, illogical reason, many leading Republicans are as amenable to unlimited, third-world immigration as Democrats. Although Guiliani claims he would make national security a top priority, I have enough sense to know that national security begins with defending our borders. Guiliani has made it clear that every Mexican who can get here is more than welcome as long as he pays taxes. Sorry, but that sounds like national suicide to me.

Our traitor-in-chief, Mr. Bush, is pushing Congress to revive the hideous U.N. Law of the Sea Treaty, which would put 70% of the earth's surface under the control of an international bureaucracy. We were signed up for commie UN Sustainable Development with no voice in the matter; now the corrupt, despicable Marxists in the United Nothing will own all the fish in the sea and the natural resources buried beneath the water. The only reason the democrats wouldn't cede the rest of our sovereignty to the UN would be to 'diss GWB and I'm not counting on that. Two or three more "treaties" and America is history.

Hugh, I had the same answers to all three questions you asked. I'm not saying there's no danger. You are exactly right. The question is WHAT CAN BE DONE WITH MUSLIMS IN THE US ALREADY?
Posted by: PMK at May 14, 2007 06:52 PM
++++++++++++++++++

two choices......leave now with the clothes on their backs or prison camp in Alaska until the war is over.

is a third option????

PMK said

If you don't want people with these characteristics living amongst us, what do you propose we do about it?

Hmm, that's a hard one. We'll have to assign some of our top scientists to figure out a solution to that one. It'll have to remain an unanswered question, for now.

""No wonder there are so many barking dogs here, I'd howl and bark like a dog too if I had a hugh gut ache from eating rotten cherries like that."

Posted by: Jesse at May 14, 2007 10:37 AM

Since this post was made prior to my participation in this thread, it is indeed a pot-shot, and I might add, an odd way to re-engage in our initial discussion, thread enders, I believe, with your convenient talent for revisionist history and your disregard of obvious facts, aside.

Do you really need or want me to provide those links again?

Just say the word."

awake, you are right and I am sorry for doing that.

I was aiming that comment at those who were cobbing on to the exile article and I see now you didn't.

Again, I am sorry for including you in that group.

Jesse

jesse wrote:
"awake, you are right and I am sorry for doing that."

No problem. It is obvious we disagree on Iraq and will continue to debate the matter, but I will be as fair as possible, if you will.

Regards,

awake