Sunni-Shi'ite Jihad Update, and more Eid violence. "Attacks aimed at Iraqi Shiite pilgrims kill at least 24," from CNN:
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Insurgents in Iraq targeted Shiite Muslims on Sunday -- the second day of the Eid al-Fitr festival -- in separate attacks that left at least 24 dead, Iraqi officials said.
The deadliest attack happened in Samarra, north of Baghdad, where a car bomb detonated near a mosque in the city's center. The explosion was followed by clashes between gunmen and Iraqi security forces, according to Samarra police.
At least 18 were killed -- 10 civilians and eight security officers -- and 37 were wounded in the blast and gunfight in Samarra, police said.
Insurgents on Sunday also bombed a minibus in Baghdad as it carried pilgrims to one of Shiite Islam's holiest shrines, killing at least six and wounding nine others -- including women and children -- Iraqi officials said.
It was unclear where the bomb was placed. An Iraqi Interior Ministry official said the device was planted on the bus heading to the Imam Musa al-Kadhim shrine in Baghdad's Kadhimiya district. But the Ministry of Defense said car bomb parked near the bus was behind the blast.
Sunday is the second day of Eid al-Fitr for Shiites, the feast marking the end of fasting during the holy month of Ramadan.
The Baghdad bombing happened near Aden Square, where Iraqi security forces had dismantled another parked car bomb earlier Sunday.
Iraqi police found and defused an explosive device in a van parked near an air base in central Baghdad.
The deadly bombing in Samarra was the second this weekend in the Shiite holy city, about 75 miles (120 kilometers) north of Baghdad in Salaheddin province.
The two attacks happened less than a mile (about a kilometer) apart.
More "Death in Samarra". And this to mark Islam's holiest day. Sickening.
Was this to protest that the Empire State Building is green?
And over whether is was to honor the Sunnis or kowtow to the Shi'ites?
Can't wait for the annual EID suicide-vest sale!
Half off.
(The customers, that is.)
Does anyone else have a care-less feeling about the murder and mayhem that goes on all around us?
I read about this and feel nothing. It is as if one goes into a room and detects a foul odor, after several minutes, the olfactory nerves no longer transmit that particular smell. I'm getting desensitized. Is it a natural response or should I see a shrink?
Pelayo:
Yes, I think I am suffering from the same numbing of sensibilities as well.
BTW, I posted something on the other LONG thread regarding the Islamic letter to the Christians for you which I think you missed:
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/018436.php#c461925
I am interested to hear your response.
How do you tell a Islamic holiday from any other day of the week in Iraq?
I guess you can't.
Atheling, I saw that and got onto other things. Sure there is good and evil, but I don't think that proves or disproves the existence of God or the devil. I do not view evil as an entity creeping around infecting people with the desire to do bad things. Sometimes a bank robber just wants some money. Serial killers are evil but I don't attribute their evil to a devil or a demon. The human mind is a very complicated thing, that complexity in itself does not mean that since we cannot understand it that it must have been designed or created. People can be evil, but I do not think it is contagious.
Here we have an article about 24 more dead people. Islam is an evil thing, but I do not attribute that evil to Satan. Some people who cannot possibly understand how someone can be so perverted see something else at work. Me I just see a mind that does not work properly, just like sometimes a liver or a pancreas does not work properly.
Hmmm, Pelayo...
I don't know what you're talking about.
I'm referring to Aquinas' 5 Proofs for the Existence of God...?
Atheling, I was replying to your 4:21 am comments.
What I said previously applies to Aquinas. Something is so complicated that it defies our understanding, does not mean that a creator made it happen. Aquinas cannot understand why man has compssion, so, therefore it is from God.
In my opinion, those are not proofs in God; they are justifications for believing in God.
Did you ever hear of phlogiston, it was a theory put forth in the mid 1600s to explain combustion. It was thought to be a substance that all material had in varying quantities and was released when something burned. Wood and paper had a lot, and rocks and metal had very little. Phlogiston was an explanation for something that could not be understood at the time. We now know what combustion is all about. Phlogiston does not exist, and God is Aquinas' phlogiston.
"How do you tell a Islamic holiday from any other day of the week in Iraq?"
Body count?
Okay, Pelayo:
I see that you didn't read the Aquinas piece I set forth.
Fine.
Do you think that since I believe that Aquinas was wrong that I did not read it. Was I supposed to suddenly be converted by his reasoning? Did you expect me to reply point by point?
Yes, I did expect you to at least address it with some reason and logic. The fact that you claim to have read it and did not even bother to respond until I asked you about it demonstrates evasion on your part.
Instead you obfuscate avoid the issue, which is intellectually dishonest.
Frankly, I have always suspected many atheists to be intellectually dishonest, proud and spiritually lazy.
You have proven my suspicion in your case.
Nevertheless, it's your choice. I won't pursue this matter with you anymore. I know full well that it's futile.
BTW, Aquinas is not "wrong". His 5 points are quite irrefutable. It's only "wrong" to illogical people.
I see what you expected, I think. The last paragraph about disorder, I did not comment about it on purpose. Aquinas did not understand gravity and natural forces that cause things to move as influenced by other planets. The thought that nature requires a creative hand to cause order is bogus. They were bogus in 1274 when Aquinas died, and they are bogus now.
A clock pendulum does not oscilate in a predictable frequency because of God; it oscilates because of gravity, and it stops because of friction. Oh,I forgot; God created gravity and friction.
They are irrefutable, I cannot refute magic.
Pelayo:
You make no sense.
I'll leave you alone now. I can see this is making you unhinged.
Atheling, I will reply somewhere and redirect you back here. If you want a detailed response it will take more time than I usually devote to a thread.
Pelayo:
Ho-hum. That's my reaction every time I see a story about Muslims killing Muslims. Who cares?
If they attack their own shrines, that's icing on the cake.
Desensitization is the word. Terrorists have lost their ability to shock. Soon I won't care if there is a natural disaster in the Muslim world. Typhoon? Flood? Earthquake? Tsunami? Let Allah help them.
Pelayo:
Sure. I have a blog. If you wish you can respond there, so that we don't go off topic here at JW.
Pelayo-
When madness becomes routine, you either go mad, go numb, or become a psychologist.
Becoming "rationally desensitized" is self-defense.
Islam's followers are in the Superstitious Age, somewhere between the Neolithic and the late Bronze Age.
(On Aquinas: I did a paper on him in college and found his "proofs" to be as intellectual meaningless as St. Anselm's. Tautologies or Apologias that would convince only those who already believed in them. If God gave us Reason, and not enough evidence for reasonable Belief, it is more reasonable to be skeptical, since the mind is too prone to flaws, as "created", -and God could only respect one's honesty about the inability to decide such a profound issue, given the weak instrument [the fallible human mind] and the evidence [conflicting faiths everywhere], if God were honest.)
Now I know the significance of the "Feast of Eid": I'd like to kill you.
Atheling, there is an e-mail coming you way.
To be repeated, again and again:
No matter what further sacrifices the American soldiers make, no matter how many more billiions are distributed around Iraq like confetti to win the most temporary "friendship," Iraq will not, and should not, be held together. The Shi'a have won (see the triumphant article by Fouad Ajami, who flies triumphantly his Shi'a colors, while making all kinds of revealing and disturbing remarks about how the Shi'a have won, and the Sunnis will have to get used to it, and it is up to the Americans to stay there for an "indefinite" but not "infinite" time (that's big of him, to concede that the American soldiers need not stay forever to protect the Shi'a from vengeful Sunnis), in order to persuade or bribe the Sunnis to accept their diminished lot.
The Shi'a will never give the Sunnis what they want. The Sunnis inside and outside Iraq will never accept the loss of most of Iraq, and of all of fabled Baghdad, to those "Persian" Shi'a. And why will they be unable to compromise? Why will they not behave as Bush and company are sure that they ought, sensibly, to behave?
Because of Islam. In Islam one does not make compromises. One may sign a "hudna" or "truce treaty" but that is only to bide one's time, in order to attack the enemy with whom one has made such a truce treaty, when one becomes powerful enough. In Islam there is only victor and vanquished, Believer and Infidel. The same categories, the same worldview, carries over when the quarrel or fight is between two sects of Islam, as with the Shi'a and Sunnis, or between Arab and non-Arab Muslims.
How long will it take the military to recognize this? How long will it take civilian leaders to comprehend? How much more time, how much more squandering of men, money, materiel, until it is understood that we have far more to gain, in what may be called the war of self-defense against the Jihad, or the counter-Jihad, by leaving Iraq, not slowly, but very quickly, just as quickly as all that equipment and men can safely be removed?
How much longer?
I wonder Hugh, what the reaction of Iraq would be, if they went to bed one night, and when they got up, all Americans, and equipment were gone? I know it can't be done that fast, but it might be a good plot for a movie...
Anxiety and despair up and down the Sunni sheikdoms and in Saudi Arabia. Confusion and anxiety in Tehran. Horror in Egypt and Jordan. Wonderment in much of the rest of the world. From Bin Laden, crowing about a fantastic "victory" which crowing will be taken seriously, and solemnly discussed by kristols and kagans, and many others, some of whom will bewail, this tragic error.
Meanwhile, after a month, or two, or three, it will become clear that the anxiety and despair in the Camp of Islam will not go away, and there will be cries of outrage, demands that the Americans "Do Something" to rescue Iraq, and save the "whole Middle East from chaos." I hope all such cries are ignored, and it would be nice to think that some will actually take a grim pleasure in the new world disorder that we are determined not to stop, but to exploit, by doing nothing to stop, and here and there encouraging, fissures within the Camp of Islam - mostly by focussing on the linguistic and cultural imperialism of the Arabs, which non-Arab Muslims will have a hard time denying, and now that the matter has been noisily raised, a hard time ignoring.
We have things to remedy at home. The Jihad does not require Infidels, or American Infidels alone, to spend a trillion dollars in further expense. We can do things far more cheaply, and effectively. It requires intelligence and low cunning. It requires a Pentagon, and a State Department, and a Congress, and an Executive Branch, that will begin to think of all the ways the American government can conceivably demoralize and divide the Camp of Islam. Boots on the ground unnecessary. Intermittent bombing of WMD sites perfectly appropriate. Halting and then reversing the Muslim migration to the Western world can be accomplished, and is completely justifiable, but requires an intelligent and convincing presentation.
And then the Long War -- that has no end, so it is silly to talk about "victory" -- should be conducted so as to force Muslims not to offer phony promises of "reform" or still phonier appeals to "what unites us" (nothing unites Believers and Infidels) but to confront something else: that the source of their own unhinging, the source of their own aggression, the source of their own unhappiness, the source of their own political, economic, social, moral, and intellectual failures can be located not in what Infidels do, but of Islam itself. Hard for many to grasp. But that's okay, as long as Infidels grasp it, and show, on every occasion, that they do so -- eventually, some Muslims are going to have to start seeing the truth of that proposition. And they too will echo it -- just as the apostates, those former Muslims, so eloquently do today. That's what is wanted. Not "freedom" for "ordinary moms and dads in the Middle East," in Bush's comical expression, embodying terminal ignorance and an insufferably busybody world-view.
Hugh, that was a comprehensive answer, to a complicated matter. Thanks. I have a few ideas about how things may go, but they are basically similar to yours. It looks to me like the oil fields are the wild cards in all this. While all this chaos is going on, who is providing security for the fields, and oil flow? Who ever it is will probably be attacked by someone. Maybe Iraqi soldiers on the ground and American planes can protect them. Or maybe we should not protect them at all, and let the chips fall where they may.