Diana West: Sniper shooting Koran hardly 'criminal behavior'

There was plenty of appeasment in the pre-war years too.

It suits wider political aims at the moment to behave this way. While Robert and Diana are right that the Koran is a nasty piece of work, it does not help our people on the ground to further antagonise the comunity they are supposed to be helping. Insulting people doesn't get you too far.

There is a difference between being right and taking the appropriate action given the circumstances. As the circumstances change new tactics will be necessary.

"There was plenty of appeasment in the pre-war years too." --posted above

Aside from the well-known appeasement by Neville Chamberlain, what are some other historical examples of Western appeasement to Hitler and Nazi Germany? I'd like to know, to compare with the Western appeasement of Islamic Barbarians today.
Thanks for the info.

we are winning in many ways...so many ways that the Muslims have now resorted to using heroin addicts, retarded people, women and children to thrown into the fray and to die for Islam..we are winning and they know it.

the more we win the more irrational their behavior becomes, the more desparate their attacks become..

the west is wising up to their lies, their plans, and to the war plans of the Qur'an.

they are pinning their hopes on Irans plan for the big one..when Iran attacks, the final battle will begin...Armaggeddon..

madijihadi said...

While Robert and Diana are right that the Koran is a nasty piece of work, it does not help our people on the ground to further antagonise the comunity they are supposed to be helping. Insulting people doesn't get you too far.

The "communities we're supposed to be helping" have no respect for basic human rights, still put people on trial for their lives for apostacy, allow honor killings to go unpunished and so on. We should have bombed them back to the 7th century which they seem to prefer, left them with no infrastructure and thus no ability to do us further harm and then come home. Who cares after that who is in charge or what kind of laws they have or whether our behavior insults them. Screw the koran and islam. If they're antagonized too bad. Leave now and let them get back to killing each other and themselves, something that they are remarkably better at than killing infadels.

The key phrase is, "assuming this Koran belonged to the soldier..." This is a property case. If it belonged to the soldier, he has committed no crime. If it belonged to someone else, even the U.S. Army, he has. All else is irrelevant.

Diane's piece is great and I don't remember us kissing Buddh's book in Viet Nam nor the sacred texts of Japan during those wars. Rick has some good points.

Abasement is the natural result of our becoming over-involved with the Muslims in our vain attempt to reform their societies. Pandering is what inevitably happens when you're trying to convince people who don't share your values to change how they fundamentally act. We really got into this mess by misunderstanding what Muslims fundamentally believe.
This incident is too trivial to warrant the attention it has gotten from the top brass.
When a group of religious Jews in Israel burned some Christian bibles that missionaries had illegally distributed, there was outraged condemnation in the Jewish press, but there has been no Christian violence or histrionics. That's because Christianity has no concept of Jihad, and most Christians have advanced beyond the terrible twos.

It's often been said that the slave system in the old South corrupted both the slave and the slave master.

I fear that that's exactly what happened to us because of our association with the Islamic world. We become prisoners of the very people we're supposed to be allied with in the war against terror. We find ourselves forsaking our most basic principle, declaring something evil and reprehensible, good, rather than take the chance of offending allies who demand from us, not respect for their beliefs, but subserviance to their beliefs.

For U.S. Generals to kiss the Koran, and declare a soldier a criminal because he exercised his right as an American, is an abominition.

The general was dead wrong -- unless, that is, he was talking about criminal behavior under Sharia, or Islamic law, which isn't, or certainly shouldn't be, the guiding light of the U.S. military.

That's the whole point, Diana. These aren't criminal offenses under the military code or under Western law but neither Iraq nor Afghanistan is guided by our norms. We are guests in their countries and are expected to behave accordingly. They employ sharia. Sharia law criminalizes alcohol consumption, cartoons of Islam's founder, insulting their god. All who live in those societies, including non-Muslims, must adhere to those laws, which mandate standards of behavior that most of us consider a matter of choice. There's no choice in Muslim societies. You have no choice whether or not to accept Islam. If you don't accept Islam then you must accept a lesser status in that society.
We wouldn't treat Mein Kampf like we are expected to treat the Koran for two very important reasons.
First, we didn't respect Nazi views and expected them to be discarded completely in the wake of our military victory. There was no attempt at co-existence with Naziism after Germany surrendered. Denazification was our policy. Deislamization has never been an option, anywhere.
Not only that, no matter what anyone's religious beliefs, Mein Kampf was a book written by a human being, not dictated (according to legend) by a god. Its author had lost a war he started and he had killed himself. The author of the Koran has been deified.
Diana is wrong to blame the general. I don't blame him at all. He wasn't wrong! He is in an impossible situation. Our soldiers have had it drilled into them that they must respect the views and feelings of the Iraqi and Afghan populations. They have to make sure they don't lord it over the Muslims and "humiliate" them. They can't be seen to show the least bit of disrespect for Islamic culture. Otherwise they might be blamed for whatever goes wrong. What are they supposed to do?
The fault lies with the civilian leadership of the US. We nodded as both Afghanistan and Iraq drew up constitutions that made Islam the state religion and required the implementation of sharia. We know full well that this means that portions of the population will be denied equal protection because they are not Muslims. Freedom of religion and an Islamic state are incompatible. Our leaders won't admit that. Don't blame the military. They answer to the civilian leadership.

rational-

Well said.

Contact and collusion with craziness insidiously dements.

PMK-

And kudos to your concise comment as well.

"While Robert and Diana are right that the Koran is a nasty piece of work, it does not help our people on the ground to further antagonise the comunity they are supposed to be helping. Insulting people doesn't get you too far."
-- from a posting above

This is wrong, and wrong in many different ways.

First, the notion that "our people" (i.e., the military in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the civilian most un-strict, quite negligent in fact, reconstructionists)"are supposed to be helping" a "community." That "community" consists, presumably, of Muslims.

But why does this make any sense, even if it happens to be the rushed, and ill-thought out, and clung-too, policy of the current Administration? Why does holding Iraq together, and lavishing tens of billions of dollars in aid on it (Iraq, the country with the second largest, or possibly largest, oil reserves in the world, that is even now reaping huge surpluses that it refuses to spend, and if it liked could certainly borrow against future earnings -- but insists on having the long-suffering American taxpayers pay for everything), help us, help the Camp of Infidels? What conceivable outcome could help make Islam less of a threat, and weaken the Camp of Islam, in Iraq, if not the exact opposite of what the Administration takes as its goals, an Iraq where everyone can ignore or overcome the sectarian and ethnic divides that we should, instead, welcome and do nothing to discourage?

We should be attempting to protect ourselves and other Infidels -- through mass dissemination of material about the texts and tenets and attitudes of Islam, and about the meaning of Jihad, and the various instruments of Jihad, including those that are far more effective and dangerous than terrorism, such as the Money Weapon, Da'wa, and demogrpahic conquest -- the three main weapons that are even now doing such insidious damage to Infidels in the historic West, the countries of Western Europe. It is not our task, it is a silly idea, that we should wish so much not to antagonize that Muslim "community" that some idiotically think we should be helping, that we would wish to do so even at the cost of refraining from educating other Infidels, by stating certain truths, including truths about the immutable contents of the Qur'an.

Finally, what if one truly wished to help Muslims? What if one gave a damn? Surely the best thing one can do is to try to weaken the hold of Islam -- Islam, that is responsible for the political, economic, social, intellectual, and moral failures of their societies, that stunts, and has stunted, and will continue to stunt, their mental growth, their economic advancement, their development from a collectivist cult -- a cult with a billion members, but a cult nonetheless -- into something capable of fostering a sense of the individual and of individual autonomy.

So it is in the real interests of Muslims that we, the Infidels, inform ourselves as much as we can about the nature of Islam, and about the history, over 1`350 years, from Spain to East Asia, of Islamic conquest of many different non-Muslim lands and the subsequent subjugation of many different kinds of non-Muslims. By so doing, we will have armed ourselves, we will be less susceptible to being fooled, as so many have been, and are being, fooled, and we will, in turn, be better able to judge how to conduct the propaganda war to shake the faith of Muslims who need that faith shaken -- for their own ultimate good and, what is far more important, of course, for ours.

Diana is, of course, quite correct. The historians will point to her: dead on.

As Rick points out, however, there are other concerns in this situation. The war in Iraq is a fight in which the United States is attempting to catch, physically, almost, an Arab-Muslim country free-falling from decrepit strongman dictatorship to sharia state. This plummet is a natural evolution, U.S. invasion or not: a similar scenario haunts the dreams of Mubarak, his sons, and their ilk. In their guts, they know they only delay (and probably intensify) the event.

But back to the catch. We have caught Iraq. The enterprise was ill-advised, but in typical, miraculous American fashion, here we are--with a patient something like stabilized. And we say to them--Sunni, Shiite, Kurd-Sunni alike--"Do you want something liveable, or should we let you drop again and have it be finished?"

They have seen the abyss. The know that the sweaty-handed perverts who have flooded their country from the corners of the Umma--stealing daughters, baking toddlers, slaughtering sons--cannot be the future.

And the American generals know. It is easy here, in America or Britain or Australia, to huff and stomp and pretend they are naive, ignorant of this fifteen-century struggle. But the generals have seen the broken boys, have kissed the cool foreheads, have sent the bags home to mothers. And they have read. They know. They know the nature of the fight, they know the savages. Even the snipers, PIGs or HOGs--God bless them all--know about jihad.

So if a general has to make a decision to defuse a news story that Jazeera will trumpet in lazy cafes in Cairo or Damascus or London, let him do it. He and his colonels and their captains and privates all know. And despite knowing, they still do the grimy, miserable work of offering to the benighted Arab-Muslim world the option of something other than the rule of monsters.

War, after all, is deception. I forget who said that.

Here's my Indiana CoJones-style take on Sowdie skullduggery and how they should be dealt with.
PIGMAN: In the Kingdom to Crack Skulls
Once ‘Our friends the Saudis’ are dealt with as the enemies they are, this war is on and victory is ours faster than the enemy can scream ‘Allahu Akbar!’

Darcy

There were many believers/apologists in Hitler, and his policies, in the the UK and the US, including members of the Royal Family and many high-profile US citizens (Lindberg springs to mind).

Hugh,

So you are going to weaken the hold of Islam by directly telling the people who believe in it that it's a cult? And by insulting them? What's next - an inquisition? Convert of die?

As I said on a previous thread, this aggressive and confrontational approach is naive and ill-conceived. There are other aspects to life than religion. When people are uneducated, poor, and without power they will turn to, or support, religious fundamentalism. Improve their conditions and they turn away. Expecting them to turn away now when they have little else is not realistic.

You discredit the armed services who are dealing with the situation on the ground by 1) saying they dont know what they are doing (I suspect they know exactly what they are doing) and 2) not understanding anything about the real-life situation. It's easy to be a critic when you are thousands of miles away.

There is no doubt that this site is doing a valuable service by instructing Westerners that the fundamentalists/extremists are inspired directly by the Koran. But that doesn't mean that we need to ram it down the throats of the people we mean to turn to our side.

I also completely disagree with your naive and dangerous policy of leaving Iraq to civil war. I am sure you are aware that we are actually winning the war. Al Qaeda is almost defeated and violence is at a new low. We are building a valuable ally in the region, which will bolster us against fundamentalist Iran (in the same way we build Japan as our Pacific ally. Think about why we kept the Emperor.) I fail to see how giving Iran more power in the region can be a good thing.

It seems to me that you don't really have any care for the actual people living in Iraq and Afghanistan. You'd rather let them fester in their poverty and let extreme Islam take more hold of their lives so you can blame Islam and pat yourself on the back that you were right all along.

That is fundamentalism of a differnt kind. Islam is part of the problem. Removing Islam is not the only solution.

My great awakening came back in the First Gulf War (which should have been the last Gulf War). I couldn't 'wrap my mind around the fact' (as my nephew phrases it) that our troops saving the Saudis fat asses, our troops were not allowed to pray openly, wear crosses or Jewish stars etc. as it 'offended' them.

A poster above makes a series of statements in attempted rebuttal of my position, long available here, in the "Articles" above, from early 2004 -- a position from which I have not wavered, and which the news that arrives with each passing day convinces me, ever more deeply, that I have nothing to regret or to change.

I will number those statements, and answer them in turn.

#1. "So you are going to weaken the hold of Islam by directly telling the people who believe in it that it's a cult? And by insulting them? What's next - an inquisition? Convert of die?"

Infidels are not, in the West, fully aware of what Islam is all about. We cannot refrain from learning, ourselves or, still worse, refrain from disseminating to others, what Islam is all about for fear that this will offend Muslims -- who in Iraq or Afghanistan or elsewhere will eavesdrop on our own, internal discussions of what Islam is all about.

There are two different audiences. You apparently care more about the sensibilities of Muslims. I care about the understanding of non-Muslims, especially in Western Europe and North America. If one is too solicitous of the former, one does great harm to the latter.

Furthermore, you misunderstood me. I did not say that I think Americans or other Infidels should go out of our way to tell the inhabitants of Dar al-Islam that Islam bears all the hallmarks of what we would consider a cult, with its collectivism, and the fierce punishment it imposes on those who dare to decide for themselves what beliefs they wish to accept, and what reject. We are the ones who should take Islam's measure, and be sure of it. Whether Muslims overhear us or not, as we start to learn more, should not inhibit us in the slightest.

You then write, like a fanatical civil liberatarian who claims that the slightest enlargement of investigative powers will inevitably lead to the Gestapo knocking on all our doors at night, that sort of thing, as if it is an argument, the following:"What's next -- an inquisition? Convert or die?" This is too absurd to warrant a reply. I do hope that others will not have failed to notice it, and will, as I did, draw the appropriate conclusions.

#2.

"There is no doubt that this site is doing a valuable service by instructing Westerners that the fundamentalists/extremists are inspired directly by the Koran. But that doesn't mean that we need to ram it down the throats of the people we mean to turn to our side.

This site is not so much "instructing Westerners that the fundamentalists/extremists are inspired directly by the Koran" as it is "instructing Westerners that Islam itself, orthodox mainstream Islam, inculcates -- on the basis of the contents of the Qur'an, the Hadith, and the Sira -- a world view that makes it impossible for more than a handful of Muslims, the lapsed or unobservant or casual or "bad" ones, to ever be truly friendly with Infidels; this site is about "instructing Westerners" that the Jihad to remove all obstacles to the spread, and then dominance, of Islam is a central, not tangential duty, of Muslims; this site instructs Westerners that the instruments of Jihad include, in addition to "terrorism" which is merely one, and not in the Western world at this time a very effective tactic, there is the Money Weapon (which pays for mosques, madrasas, armies of Western hirelings, and so on), and campaigns of Da'wa, and demogrpahic conquest -- and not one of these instruments of Jihad would be rendered less effective in the slightest why whatever our military does or does not do in Iraq. But an Iraq that establishes a permanent fault-line between Sunni and Shi'a, an Iraq that requires the constant attention and worry of its neighbors, an Iraq to which both Iran and such Sunni states as Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia might feel compelled to send men, money, materiel, an Iraq where the example of a non-Arab Muslim people, the Kurds, achieving independence might appeal to the 80% of the world's Muslims who are not Arabs, and who need to recognize that Islam is, and has always been, a vehicle for Arab imperialism -- yes, that is the only "victory" that I understand could be claimed, if any can at this point be claimed, for the Camp of Infidels. That some, by no means all, military men, suffer from professional deformation, and think of "war" as tanks and planes and boots on the ground, and do not grasp that this war is above all ideological, and that we must ourselves learn what Islam is all about, and not rely on such words as "fundamentalists" and "extremists" (as you do), which in their implications are comforting, no doubt, but inaccurate, and having learned ourselves, must help other Infidels to learn, and only then, will we be able not to squander resources -- as men, money, and materiel have been and are being hideously squandered in Iraq, -- but able, cunningly and ruthlessly, to find ways to shake, in the first place, the loyalty of non-Arab Muslims who may be brought to view Islam as what it is -- a vehicle for Arab imperialism --and, for both Arab and non-Arab Muslims, let them realize that we realize, and now they too must take account of that realization by Infidels, that the political, economic, social, moral and intellectual failures of their societies (covered up, of course, by the many trillions of dollars that they receive because of an accident of geology, which should not, forever, hide those failures) are a result, direct and indirect, of Islam itself.

There are many who have left the service earlier than they intended because they grasp the failure of both the military and the civilian leadership to have fashioned a strategy that makes sense. There are those who, of course, are ill-inclined to see "war" as anything other than military combat, and are missing the main point about the world-wide Jihad (especially in Western Europe), there are those who, having set out on a course, and perhaps worked diligently for certain goals, are unwilling to change course, and are unable to admit to themselves that the goals they have worked so hard for are, for our long-term interests, exactly the wrong goals -- this is too painful to contemplate.

I repeat what I have written here dozens of times before, since early 2004. The only definition of "victory" in Iraq that makes sense is to arrive at a situation that leaves the Camp of Islam, not only in Iraq, but everywhere, more divided and demoralized than it was before. And that can best be achieved, that can only be achieved, in Iraq, not by trying to prevent or to limit but to encourage, or at least to exploit, the pre-existing fissures, sectarian and ethnic, that Iraq so wonderfully presents if we are only unsentimental enough to exploit -- as we would not have hesitated to exploit in any previous war. The spectacle of permanent fissures, and of rich Sunni states in the Gulf having to worry about their Shi'a populations (in Saudi Arabia, in Kuwait, in Bahrain, even in Dubai with its Iranian businessmen and agents), and the kind of sectarian strife that might be triggered by such strife in Iraq -- in Yemen, in Lebanon, in Pakistan -- is not one to deplore but to welcome.

#3.

"You discredit the armed services who are dealing with the situation on the ground by 1) saying they dont know what they are doing (I suspect they know exactly what they are doing) and 2) not understanding anything about the real-life situation. It's easy to be a critic when you are thousands of miles away."

No, I do not "discredit" the armed forces when I criticize, attack, mock the policy fashioned by Bush, Rice, and others -- civilians in Washington. Furthermore, when you write "the armed forces" which members of the armed forces do you mean? General Batiste, who retired? Other generals, and officers who are not nearly as impressed as some with the Counterinsurgency Doctrine -- the one that was offered in a Field Manual, the product of General Petraeus, and Col. Nagl, and others who apparently think such statements as "in general, insurgencies last ten years" is any less ludicrous than writing "in general, civil wars last 4.7 years" or "in general, wars last 12.3 years." And of course, any generalizations -- by generals, or for that matter by colonels -- that do not take account of the nature of the situation in Iraq, where there is not one government and one insurgency but many different groups, within the Sunni and the Shi'a camps, with all kinds of shifting ties and alliances and attitudes, but with one constant: not one of them is a true and unshakable friend of the Infidels who have come to help them, all of them. There are stolid followers of policy, who never question, and there are others who do question, and try to make sense of what they have experienced in Iraq. It is the latter, who are leaving the army, who should stay and command; it is the former who have proven themselves too dumbly loyal to a policy that does not make sense.

And you also question whether I actually know anything about Iraq, about what our military have experience there? You apparently choose to believe I have no connections, know no one, least of all any of those 15,000 captains who have left the service? What makes you think I have not had close relatives serving in Iraq, relatives who before they went knew a good deal about Islam, and who on the spot, have seen the waste, seen the demoralization of the most intelligent officers and men, precisely because they are aware of how meretricious are most of the people, and understand exactly what Islam is all about, and why the policy in Iraq makes no sense? You have made a very big assumption. That assumption is flatly wrong.

Hugh,

Thank you! Again, another essay that should be required reading by our elected and appointed senior leadership in the United States Government!

Bravo!

I second that, boneshack, as always, great words, Hugh, words that must be repeated and will be heeded in the endgame.

Darcy asked " Aside from the well-known appeasement by Neville Chamberlain, what are some other historical examples of Western appeasement to Hitler and Nazi Germany?"

There was a long train of little compromises leading up to the giving away of the fortified part of Czechoslovakia to Hitler.

First was when the Rhineland was reoccupied in defiance of the Versailles treaty, at the time the rearmement of Germany was in its very beginning. It was at that time that Churchill was a very lonely voice against allowing Germany to break their treaty obligations.

The pundits of the day rationalized that to take action would be warmongerring, yet if action had been taken it would have saved much grief later on.

Then there was Germany overstepping limits on manpower for their army, and rebuilding their armed forces beyond what the treaty they had signed had stipulated.

There were so many breeches of the treaty that led up to the big famous peace in our time declaration, that at the time it was almost universally lauded as being a coup for diplomacy.

Madjijihadi said:

It seems to me that you don't really have any care for the actual people living in Iraq and Afghanistan. You'd rather let them fester in their poverty and let extreme Islam take more hold of their lives so you can blame Islam and pat yourself on the back that you were right all along.

That is fundamentalism of a differnt kind. Islam is part of the problem. Removing Islam is not the only solution.
______________________________________________

We did not create the conflicts between sunni and shi'a muslims; they've been killing each other for centuries over a few minor variations in the interpretation of their insidious death cult. Iraq was not ruled by Sharia under Saddam but it is now, likewise Afghanistan.
Our troops are dying not to "spread democracy and freedom", but so these people can live under a totalitarian, brutal, archaic, theocratic legal system that denies equality, subjugates women, stones adulterers, sanctions honor killings, and the list goes on. There is nothing democratic about it except the elections to choose the enforcers of islamic law. Why are muslims the only people on earth who are driven to radicalization and terrorism because they are poor? Muslims are poor because islam is a wholly corrupt and inferior religion/culture/political system. Arabs and muslims never accept responsibility for their own failures; their problems are always the fault of outside forces. If left alone to sort out their differences, they might eventually realize that islam is the problem, not the solution. The moment the last soldier leaves Iraq, whether it's tomorrow or in fifty years, they will resume their endless, senseless slaughter of each other unless another Saddam is waiting in the wings. Then the killing will continue, but on a smaller scale and with no publicity.

Madhijihadi:

There are other aspects to life than religion.

Not for muslims! Everything they do, every thought they think, every move they make is controlled by the dictates of islam. There is absolutely so separation of spiritual and temporal
life in islam, none whatsoever. Any good muslim will tell you that islam is a "total way of life". There are islamic rules for eating, sleeping, using the toilet, bathing, sex between husband and wife, just to name a few of hundreds.

Saddam was a monster but he controlled the Iraqi people. Ataturk modernized Turkey by removing islam from the government and empowering the military to keep it out. Iraq and Afghanistan have regressed and will continue to regress with islamic governments. Fanaticism will thrive and grow with constant demands for "pure" islam, more restrictions, more tyranny and mob enforcement of sharia. It's not poverty that makes muslims fanatics, it's islam. Islam and freedom/democracy are antithetical.

Since I first got a computer in April, 2002, I've learned that there is no such thing as a democratic muslim country. Pakistan might come close since they have "elections". But, recently some of their states/provinces have changed to sharia law.
Having said that, I feel Iraq might not like "being democratic" because of all their different factions.
So, whoever is elected in November, I would say to him, make a plan with the commanding American general in Iraq to plan to downsize our troops there, so that by the end of the term (2012), there would be no American troops whatsoever in Iraq. I would, however, have the current leader in Iraq be told of this plan.
The bottom line is this: if the people want it bad enough, they'll tell their "leaders" what they want. If not, they'll most likely get sharia law.

Churchill was right:

"Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival.

"There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than live as slaves."

Winston Churchill, 1948

When will the American people begin electing leaders who recognize the existential threat posed by Islam?

McCain's "Islamist-fundamentalist-extremist-ists" doesn't really demonstrate an understanding of Islam as Allah and the prophet from hell intended it to be understood.

Madjijihadi said

Insulting people doesn't get you too far.

neither does appeasing muslims

Madjijihadi said

There are other aspects to life than religion

For muslims, the other aspect is death

http://illustratedpig.blogspot.com/2008/03/it-is-war.html

Major General Jeffrey Hammond should learn from Charleton Heston's character in "The Planet of the Apes.

[Taylor ties up Dr. Zaius]
Dr. Zira: Taylor! Don't treat him that way!
George Taylor: Why not?
Dr. Zira: It's humiliating!
George Taylor: The way you humiliated me? All of you? YOU led me around on a LEASH!
Cornelius: That was different. We thought you were inferior.
George Taylor: Now you know better.

[Major General Jeffrey Hammond ties up Radhwaniya tribal leaders and pours pig fat over them]
Maliki: Major General Jeffrey Hammond! Don't treat them that way!
Major General Jeffrey Hammond: Why not?
Maliki: It's humiliating!
Major General Jeffrey Hammond: The way they humiliated me? All of them? THEY made us kiss their God damned filthy book!
Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi: That was different. We thought you were weak.
Major General Jeffrey Hammond: Now you know better.

"There was plenty of appeasment in the pre-war years too." --posted above

Aside from the well-known appeasement by Neville Chamberlain, what are some other historical examples of Western appeasement to Hitler and Nazi Germany? I'd like to know, to compare with the Western appeasement of Islamic Barbarians today.
Thanks for the info.

In March 1936, German troops marched into the Rhineland - a part of Germany that was supposed to be demilitarised according to the Treaty of Versailles - and we did nothing about it. This episode encouraged Hitler to believe the UK, France, America etc were weak. Hitler himself admitted later "Had Britain and France sent troops into the Rhineland, we would have been forced to leave with our tails between our legs".

And in March 1936, Chamberlain had yet to become Prime Minister. Stanley Baldwin was Prime Minister at the time.

Baldwin supported the Munich Agreement and said to Chamberlain on 26 September 1938: "If you can secure peace, you may be cursed by a lot of hotheads but my word you will be blessed in Europe and by future generations". (Wikipedia)

Perhaps by the word 'hotheads' he was referring to a certain Winston Churchill.

@Darcy. On the subject of appeasement part I of mr Churchill's books on WW II is very instructive.

Europe -- Thy Name Is Cowardice

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=2B37D864-4D7F-42DC-87C4-34B1A7388D46

Madhijihadi sez:

I also completely disagree with your naive and dangerous policy of leaving Iraq to civil war. I am sure you are aware that we are actually winning the war. Al Qaeda is almost defeated and violence is at a new low. We are building a valuable ally in the region...

Absurd. Dangerously absurd. We are not 'winning' anything, we are enabling those who hate us and want to destroy us. Our misguided, naive policy of 'nation-building enables them to gain strength by draining our resources.

Al Qaeda? Al Schmaeda... who cares what the hundreds, if not thousands of jihad organizations around the world call themselves? Totally irrelevant! Smoke and mirrors. All or them justify their actions with the Koran & the hadith, they follow the scriptures and the perverted lifestyle of their warlord profit Muhammad, and no Muhammedan can ever be the ally of an infidel, the Koran forbids it. Islam is Islam, ask Erdogan of 'moderate' Turkey. Ask Yuhoyono of Indonesia. Ask Karzai or Mhatir Mohammed of 'moderate' Malaysia.

Your problem is that you don't take our enemies seriously. You don't take their religion seriously, and you don't understand what makes them tick.

Stick around. You might learn something!

Madhijihadi says:

When people are uneducated, poor, and without power they will turn to, or support, religious fundamentalism. Improve their conditions and they turn away.

So what is Osama's excuse? What was Mohammed Atta's excuse? Neither they nor most of those in the US today threatening us can be considered poor or uneducated. Many have gone to universities and have degrees. They have middle class lifestyles, or better.
Al Qaeda's ranks are filled with the educated upper class of Arab societies.
Doctors in the UK killed others in the name of Islam.
So, how poorly paid are doctors in the UK that these men felt it necessary to embrace religious fundamentalism? Which of their conditions should we have improved to dissuade them from killing innocent people?

Hugh:

I am one reader who did notice the absurdities of the poster, and did draw the appropriate conclusions, but your analysis of his tripe was (as usual) perfectly put. A pleasure to read.

I want to repeat two points you made and have kept making, in hopes every reader here keeps making them, too.

First, this is above all a war of ideas. Western governments not only have already surrendered in that war, but they have also become active collaborators against their own people. This war will have to be fought by the people alone.

Part of the reason we are doing so poorly in this war, is that much of the elite in Western society believes in nothing and knows nothing, let alone the values of Western civilization. They are hollow, colored-ribbon men. Or, they have a religious faith consisting of hatred for Western civilization.

Second, the primary audience of this war needs to be our side. They need to become aware of the existential threat, by becoming aware of the sacred texts and history of that threat.

In that respect, contempt and ridicule are absolutely essential. The contempt is important as a pedagogical device for our side. The dozers and insensates on our side need to be awakened. They need to be aroused by the absurd spectacle of an ideology, an invented religion based on the worship of one man, with its ridiculous, mindless and stupid rituals, destroying the ancient patrimony the hollow men take so much for granted.

Moonzoo,

It will take a dozen 9/11 attacks to awaken the insensates and the sleepers. They are too far away in dreamland. Maybe if those attacks had happened with Al Gore in the WH, things would be different. Democrats rediscovered their inner hawks only while Clinton was in office.
If President Barack Obama (perish the thought!) has to deal with a new 9/11, they'll wake up quickly to the threat. Gone will be the talk of warmongers. We'll see a new dawn of patriotism in the Democratic ranks.

PMK:

I was going to write again precisely to say what you said in response to my post. I reluctantly, sadly, agree, to some extent.

It might take a nuclear explosion, or perhaps a Beslan in Kentucky or South Dakota, before the West is sufficiently aroused and pays attention.

In the meantime, though, the war of ideas must continue to be fought by all those presently aware, so as to take advantage of those events tending to open the closed little minds of the insensate, and so as to educate those rare folks who are curious about their existence.

I am not quite as pessimistic as you, perhaps, because my own experience these past number of years has indicated to me that folks are catching on. I am particularly gratified when someone treats with scorn any notion about the purported peacefulness or rationality of mohammed-worship. I am especially pleased when someone talks about jihad with comprehension.

Anecdotal, yes. It still makes me hopeful.

There are many who have left the service earlier than they intended because they grasp the failure of both the military and the civilian leadership to have fashioned a strategy that makes sense. There are those who, of course, are ill-inclined to see "war" as anything other than military combat, and are missing the main point about the world-wide Jihad (especially in Western Europe), there are those who, having set out on a course, and perhaps worked diligently for certain goals, are unwilling to change course, and are unable to admit to themselves that the goals they have worked so hard for are, for our long-term interests, exactly the wrong goals -- this is too painful to contemplate.

There are many that will leave if muzzled, prevented from presenting facts on the ground:

Top-ranking officer warns U.S. military to stay out of politics

It is my observation that of those that have left military service, right here in my very own voter district, there is a growing presense of veterans fulfilling political aspirations.

I have no doubt that these recent veterans, with valuable experience and unmatched comprehension will do everything in their power to preserve the honor of generations who sacrificed all to preserve our freedoms. On this Memorial Day, I salute them all.

"Hugh,

So you are going to weaken the hold of Islam by directly telling the people who believe in it that it's a cult? And by insulting them? What's next - an inquisition? Convert of [sic] die?" --madijihadi

Wow, what a leap! Oh yes, I'll tell Mohammedans that their's is a Cult. As for "inquisition/convert or die," - that's ridiculous! Especially as it's the Mohammedans who operate the "convert or die" machinery, ever since Mohammed. As I said, what a leap!

Yes, I'll tell a Nazi that their belief system is evil, too! I don't care if they are "insulted!" That's beside the whole fricking point. They NEED to be and SHOULD be told that their belief system's are evil! Both Nazi and Islamic. I couldn't care less if they're "insulted," -Please! The belief systems and believers in those systems -Naziism and Islam - DESERVE to be insulted! Mohammed Bear and Mohammed 'Toons ALL THE WAY!

*

On another note, thanks to those who provided me with further "appeasement" info re: WW2. So, what was our rationale for not getting troops into the Rhineland area? Also, Pat Buchanon has got a new book called "Hitler, Churchill, and the Unnecessary War" that is about this very subject matter - Britain's lousy leadership leading up to and during WW2, and concomitant disastrous appeasement of Hitler.

People - this is interesting. When I was typing the WW2's - in each case I first typed WW3. 3. I believe I've got the forthcoming WW3 on my mind - West v Islam.

Madijihadi and Hugh Fitzgerald are debating strategy.

Madijihadi believes in the possibility that a divide and conquer strategy can work. Fitzgerald denies that possibility.

The stakes are high. Why not see if divide and conquer can work?

Islam has been divided for a long time and that division has not helped with conquering. The division we need to foster is that between Islamic supremacists and those Muslims willing to let that go.

Muslims who are convinced that jihad no longer works for them are no threat to us.

We must convince them that all forms of jihad, peaceful and otherwise, will not succeed.

Then they will be just another religion.

PMK: Leaders of any movement are generally more intelligent and well educated. The key is to make the rest of the society more educated so that they don't blindly follow those who would manipulate them through religion.

Hugh: You have fallen into the trap of thinking that because you know what the problem is, that you also know the solution.

"Madijihadi believes in the possibility that a divide and conquer strategy can work. Fitzgerald denies that possibility."
-- from a poster above

You have me not merely wrong, but completely wrong. I think that the way to divide the Camp of Islam is to first identify those pre-existing fissures, large and small, that exist, and to figure out what should, or should not be done, to widen them.

I have written many times about what I think are the three main divisions or fissures:

1) The sectarian divide between Sunnis and Shi'a that may not, world-wide, be of great significance, given that the Shi'a constitute about 15% of the world's Muslims.

However, those 15% are concentrated, are to be found mostly around the Gulf -- in Iran, a Shi'a state, and in Iraq (65-70% Shi'a, especialy in the south where the major oilfields are located), and in the oil-bearing Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, and in various Gulf sheikdoms -- Bahrain (70% of the population), Kuwait (25%), and in two places that do not possess oil but are significant for local stability -- the first is Lebanon, where the overbreeding by Shi'a now makes them the largest group in that country, and in Yemen which, though without oil wealth, is populous and a potential threat to stability in both Saudi Arabia and in the Horn of Africa -- and with a population that is almost evenly divided between Sunnis and Shi'a.

2) The ethnic divide, between the Arab Muslims, and the non-Arab Muslims who constitute 80% of the world's Muslims, is not imaginary, though it takes a while for non-Arab Muslims to think clearly about how the Arabs use Islam -- have always used Islam -- as a vehicle for Arab supremacism.The cultural and linguistic imperialism which the Berbers of North Africa (especially in the Kabyle) have endured, and which some of them are determined not to endure any longer, is not sufficiently discussed. The murderous atittude of Arabs toward the Kurds -- an attitude that Kanan Makiya noted, and puzzled over, but could not bring himself to connect to the very nature of Islam as that "vehicle for Arab supremacism" (thus vitiating the value of his work in "The Republic of Silence" as more than mere reportage)-- is another example. The Arab pressure, or the pressure from Islam itself, to make the Muslims of the subcontinent (Pakistan, Bangladesh, India itself) indifferent to their own pre-Islamic heritage, and the same kind of attitude toward the not-completely-extinguished pre-Islamic or non-Islamic heritage of Muslims in Malaysia and, still more obviously, in syncretistic Indonesia, is something that some Malay intellectuals have noticed, and written about -- but the theme needs to be taken up by Infidels, and pointed out on every possible occasion.

3) The third great divide in the Camp of Islam is that between the oil-and-gas rich, thinly-populated states, such as the sheikdoms (Qatar, U.A.E., Kuwait) and even Saudi Arabia, and the Muslim states that do not have oil, and consequently are much poorer than their fellow, oil-rich members of the Umma. Unfortunately, Western Infidels have been inveigled or self-inveigled into believing that they have some kind of duty to supply large amounts of aid to these oil-poor Muslim countries, such as Egypt (nearly $70 billion from America alone), Jordan, Pakistan, and of course to what is optimistically called "the Palestinian Authority." They do not, and they should cease all such aid, for it is received not as aid, with gratitude, but rather as Jizyah, that is owed, and that must be continued, because the Muslims deserve what becomes, in the attitude of both donor and donee, a disguised Jizyah. Indeed, the classic form of Jizyah, paid by non-Muslims to Muslims in a Muslim-ruled domain, can be seen in Malaysia, with the Bumiputra system that requires Chinese and Indians to transfer wealth to Muslim Malays, simply because they are Muslims.

If the Infidels remove all of their misguided support for Muslims, and force the poorer Muslims to demand a sharing of the oil wealth by the rich members of the Umma, this will put those rich members uncomfortably on the spot. If they deny the poorer Arabs, that will increase mutual hostility. And if they agree to supply aid, that will increase mutual hostility, hostility felt by those Arabs or other Muslims receiving aid, and for whom such aid will never be enough, especially as those poorer Arabs already know something --- and the Infidel intelligence services can help them find out a great deal more --about the unbelievable riches, the limitless luxury, and the nauseating decadence that characterize the lives of these Gulf Arabs.

There are other divisions that can be played upon, such as that division between the "primitive Arabs" of the Gulf, and the more sophisticated and civilized -- as they see themselves, a kind of consolation prize for being much poorer, Arabs of Syria, Lebanon, Iraq,and Egypt (as a special case, because in Egypt there was formerly a sense -- it may be recoverable if deliberately encouraged -- that Egyptian Muslims were different from, superior to, mere "Arabs").

One can find at MEMRI the odd Syrian who expresses his unease with Islam obliguely, as contempt for the "primitive Bedouin of Arabia" -- and who brought Islam to the world, or first spread it, if not those same "primitive Bedouin" whom the urban resident of Damascus, with his leather-bound volumes (oh yes, he's a great reader, he allows himself to believe,of Mutanabbi and Adonis and others in-between, and therefore so very different, he likes to think and make others think, from those Saudi plutocrats in Monte Carlo). And this "northern urban Arab -- southern desert Arab" split can be usefully encouraged, and exploited, by those keen enough, and well-prepared enough, to understand the points of mental purchase.

The envy of the rich Arabs, and the gnawing recognition that Islam simply will not do (but cannot be directly attacked), comes out as this hostility, by the presumably suave denizens of Damascus and Beirut and Cairo, those "Arab intellectuals" and journalists who are a poor substitute for the truth-telling of, say, Wafa Sultan), toward the Gulf Arabs and especially toward the Saudis. Those northern Arabs who lack the yachts, and have to forego the call-girl-and-gambling sprees of the Saudis, and the other Arabs from the Gulf sheikdoms, can offer themselves the consoltation, in history-haunted Islam, that it is they, and not the rich "desert Arabs," who are the intellectual heirs of what is seen as High Islamic Civilization (roughly, 850-1250), and for which such exaggerated claims are made, and the achievements of the many non-Muslims under Muslim rule during that period claimed, quite misleadingly, for Islam.

Of these three major fissures, two present themselves in Iraq: the sectarian and the ethnic divides.

And it is the recognition, and then the exploitation, of these fissures that has been the constant theme of everything I have written about Iraq, since the first few months of 2004, by which time Saddam Hussein had been captured,his sons killed, his regime's major figures killed or captured, and -- most importantly -- the country had been scoured for weapons of mass destruction, and whatever programs to develop such programs that had existed, existed no longer, and the number of locals capable of putting back such a program greatly reduced in numbers.

Your comment is not merely wrong. It is completely backwards.

JanMcdaniel was noting that I was talking about the division between moderate and extremist Islam. In other words those who would use Islam for political ends, and those who would use it for spiritual ends.

As s/he says "Muslims who are convinced that jihad no longer works for them are no threat to us."

Hugh, your analysis of the other divisions between Islam may well be correct, but the solution you derive from it is not appropriate.

And what is the point of comparison here between movie fiction and recent fact? Namely, the contrasting reactions to these two manifestations of contempt for anti-liberty ideologies. Americans in 1940 widely shared Gusto Nash's loathing for Hitler's totalitarian message. In 2008, the superiors of the soldier in question, right on up the chain of command to commander-in-chief George W. Bush, only express their respect for, and, in a very frightening way, submission to the Koran despite its totalitarian message -- and even at the expense of the soldier's Constitutional rights.

Bingo!

The Koran is the Islamic Jihadi's "Mein Kampf". Both are to force the world to their supremacist world domination philosophy of conquering human freedom to their coercive and violent ideology. There can be no tolerance for such vapid intolerance against our human rights of freedom. One is condemned, the other is not. Why not? Is Sharia domination of humanity under threats of violence and retribution beyond reproach if allegedly the word of their god Allah? There evil book should be put under a large light and microscope to examine every coercive passage, and Islam should be made to account for each one. If it calls itself a 'religion of peace' it has a lot of answering to do, without deceit or threats of violence, but with honest and truthful answers to why this book of Allah inspires such pain and grief. Enslavement of humanity to Allah (Mohammad) is not the future course of humanity, and is diametrically opposed to our modern human constitutional laws of freedom, our Constitutional Rights.

Diane West captures that exactly: the Koran is anti-liberty. Islam must answer this charge, or be condemned for the war manual it actually is. So when she says: "Let's play around some more with the story. Imagine if, during the Allied occupation of post-Nazi Germany, a GI had been discovered using "Mein Kampf" for target practice. Would Gen. George S. Patton have kissed a new copy of the Nazi bible as he presented it to a cadre of former Nazis?"

She said it all. We will not surrender our freedoms to slavery. We did not then, and we will not now.

On this Memorial Day, in memory of all the brave men and women who fought and died for our Freedoms, we must never let another Meing Kampf or Koranic Sharia ever be allowed to power over us ever again. We owe it to them in their honor.

IN ANSWER TO DARBY'S POST: IN ADDITION TO BRITAIN'S CHAMBERLAIN, WE HAD OUR OWN APPEASERS, THE PRO-NAZI/ISOLATIONISTS LED BY CHARLES LINDBERG,HENRY FORD, FATHER COUGHLIN, AND SEVERAL US SENATORS AND CONGRESSMEN OF BOTH PARTIES, SUCH AS SENATORS BORAH,NYE,WHEELER,etc. THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THEN AND NOW IS THAT AFTER PEARL HARBOR,THEIR APPEASEMENT EFFORTS WERE ABANDONED; IN OUR TIME ,AFTER 9-11, THE APPEASERS,OVERWHELMINGLY DEMOCRATS OF THE LEFT, PICKED UP AND INCREASED THEIR ONGOING APPEASEMENT!

..we must never let another Meing Kampf or Koranic Sharia ever be allowed to power over us ever again. We owe it to them in their honor.

Posted by: Battle_of_Tours at May 26, 2008 12:22 PM

There is one little problem: http://uk.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUKL2011677820080520?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews

Battle_of_Tours

As much as we have a growing awareness that the Koran is the seed of danger when used or political ends, we should also be aware that desecration of a book that billions think is holy does not suit our overall goals in the region which are 1) in the short term to nullify the terrorist threat to the U.S. and 2) in the long-term to bring political systems that allow freedom and wealth to people so that they don't need to be oppressed by dictators or religion in future.

Rather than unecessarily antagonising billions, it makes much more sense to eliminate the extremist directly with force and work on politically neutralizing the jihadic aspects of Islam for the remainder.

Darcy

It looks like you're already subconsciously welcoming WWIII. Be careful what you wish for...

I would like to see you practice what you preach. Why don't you walk into your local mosque and tell them the Koran is evil and see if that helps the situation. Don't you think that there may be just the slight possibility that people who were using the Koran as a spiritual book would be pretty annoyed at your approach, and that it would actually generate more anger, resentment, defensiveness and extremism?

CHOI,

Your anaolgy is incorrect. After 9/11 the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, which was harboring the terorists, and then invaded Iraq, to create a stronger power base in the region, particularly putting pressure on Iran. Currently, the U.S. is engaged in huge efforts to help the Iraqi security forces remove Islamic extremist groups in Iraq. None of this is "appeasement" and the beneficiaries are moderate Iraqis, Afghanis and the West in general.

--

Hugh's "hands-off" approach is very much like the appeasement practiced by Lindberg et al before WWII. Hugh seems to think that the infighting beween different groups would only create losers. What if it actually created an even more powerful winner?

If this was WWII, he would have left Russia and Germany to fight it out with no help from the Allies. This would have made whoever won more powerful. Either the Nazis or the Communists would have ended up ruling from Europe to Asia. With all the extra resources the winnner would have gained, they would have been an even more dangerous threat to the U.S. Would the U.S have been able to mount the D-Day landings in those conditions?

Presumably he would have just left the Jews, gypsies, catholics, homosexuals to their own devices, just as he presumes to leave the millions of moderate Muslims to enhanced oppression by the extremists too.

Alert,

Not shocked, but surprisingly still disappointed. The man's determination to stay the course with 'Islam means peace' will be the 'Peace in our time' of our time, no matter what his apologizers will say. History will judge him in what he did NOT say and do after 9/11.

Rather than unecessarily antagonising billions, it makes much more sense to eliminate the extremist directly with force and work on politically neutralizing the jihadic aspects of Islam for the remainder. -Posted by: madijihadi

Not if it means we placate the warlike ambitions of a 1400 year old Cult of Allah to subdue the world with its supremacist ideology, something they have thrust on us. It's in the Koran. Read it if you don't believe us. Mohammad and his successor Caliphs cast the die we reap today, a war cult to conquer all the 'infidels' so-called for their Mesopotamian moon god Allah. We did not make this history, nor did we create this Cult. The extremists are gleaning all their justifications for attacking our freedoms from their so-called 'holy' books. It is up to Muslims to set the record straight on this, without threats or silencing criticism, something they have repeatedly failed to do. This is necessary but they have failed to do so.

Don't tell us, tell them! It does not matter if there are a billion followers or 5 billion followers of Mohammad's cult, it is still an anti-liberty cult against our hard earned human freedoms. We will not bring back Sharia Islamic slavery, nor dhimmitude, and if this insults them, then that is grounds for the next great war. Freedom is here to stay. Islamic slavery belongs back in the primitive times of the 7th century, but not today. There is nothing unnecessary about antagonizing billions of people, whether Muslim or otherwise, who wish to see slavery return.

It is necessary, without apologies.

"Hugh's "hands-off" approach is very much like the appeasement practiced by Lindberg et al before WWII."
- -- from a posting above

What are you talking about? Have you actually read the dozens of articles I have put up, offering a whole list of things that should be done, before or during and after withdrawal from Iraq, in the Sudan, in Western Europe, everywhere -- just to make sure that the withdrawal is understood, after a brief period of cawing by various Arab and Muslim groups, for what it would really signify: ending the foolish squandering of men, money, materiel, and morale, in order to go after all the other instruments of Jihad, and to use, to make use of, to exploit, the pre-existing conditions within the Camp of Islam that need no encouragement, need only be left to fester, now that the Sunnis have lost Baghdad and points south, and will never acquiesce, and the Shi'a will never, having at long last attained power, give them what they want.

Go to the "Articles" in the space bar above. Click on those articles, such as "Declaring Victory," that are all about Iraq. Or google, if you will, "Sudan" and "Jihad Watch" and "Hugh Fitzgerald" to see what, even there, could be done with very little military force, to signal that Dar al-Islam would no longer be permitted to expand into black Africa. Or read a few dozen other pieces.

Then come back to inform me that I have a "hands-off" approach.

Good God. Just read before you leap.

The man's determination to stay the course with 'Islam means peace' will be the 'Peace in our time' of our time, no matter what his apologizers will say. History will judge him in what he did NOT say and do after 9/11.

Posted by: Bosch Fawstin at May 26, 2008 4:29 PM

Bosch Fawstin, Sorry you are disappointed, but now that the president/commander-in-chief dances tto wahhabbi tunes.. literally (what else could the son do when the father was bought over by wahhabbies)? All Bush Jr. can do is take treason to a whole new level to please his masters in Riyadh. You are right about "History will judge him in what he did NOT say and do after 9/11/" but why should someone to whom, Cpnstitution is 'Just A Goddamned Piece Of Paper', care about how history will judge him. After all, votes and wealth is all that matters: http://elainemeinelsupkis.typepad.com/money_matters/2008/01/bush-begs-for-o.html

Sorry for the disappointed but the expectations were the fault, if you see what I mean.

By your leave Darcy, but I feel I must answer this too:

madijihadi - May 26, 2008 2:45 PM:
"Darcy
It looks like you're already subconsciously welcoming WWIII. Be careful what you wish for...
I would like to see you practice what you preach. Why don't you walk into your local mosque and tell them the Koran is evil and see if that helps the situation."

The Allah Cult must be undone by any means possible, including WWIII if necessary. It would be best if our leadership would in their wisdom dismantle this Cult without bloodshed, but since this seems to be beyond their capabilities, then their failure to do this will lay the groundwork for the next great war against slavery. It would be even far better if Muslims took this in their hands and ended the Allah Cult, but since they seem both incapable and unwilling to address it, then it will fall back on us to fight for our freedoms.

If you want to join efforts with an Islamic group that already expressed the intent to make changes to Koranic commands to violence and coercions, Muslims against Sharia, then visit this site: http://www.reformislam.org/
It will be a big job, but it's the only way to avoid WWIII. The Allah Cult must be taken down.

Now take that to your local mosque and see how they respond. Aye or nay?

madijihadi,
Those that are preaching religious fundamentalism are not uneducated, poor or without power. So what is THEIR excuse? THEY are the ones stirring up the poor. The poor in Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. can't hurt us because they can't reach us. We're not on their minds. They're too busy trying to survive.
Are you suggesting that those British doctors aren't educated? Every Muslim in the West has a better life than his counterpart in dar-al-Islam. But it's the Muslims whom we welcome who threaten us.

"When people are uneducated, poor, and without power they will turn to, or support, religious fundamentalism. Improve their conditions and they turn away."

You're dodging the question. What was Osama's, Zawahiri's, Zarqawi's or those doctors' excuse for THEIR actions? None of these men were uneducated, poor, or without power. None of them had been mistreated in the West or by the West prior to 9/11. Many, like Mohammed Atta, were welcomed. What made these men embrace religious fundamentalism?
Which of their conditions could we have improved that would have made them turn away from killing?
Those British doctors achieved positions of respect. Look at what they did with their education. If they're what we can expect from "educated" Muslims, why would we want to raise the rest of Muslim society up? We'd only be signing our own death warrant. Unlike Muslims, we in the West are not suicidal.

The Quran amounts to a declaration of war against all of humanity .... seems rediculous that someone like an American soldier shouldn't be able to shoot one up whenever they please.

If this was WWII, he would have left Russia and Germany to fight it out with no help from the Allies. This would have made whoever won more powerful."
-- from the same poster above

Oh no I wouldn't. You seem unable to accept certain propositions about the war in Iraq.

Let me list some of them:

1. The correct definition of "victory" in Iraq should be an outcome that weakens Islam -- the Camp of Islam -- not only in Iraq but elsewhere. There is no other justification for spending two trillion dollars, and enduring 4,300 deaths and tens of thousands of wounded.

2. The Administration -- Bush, Rice, et al. -- and everyone who defends the policy of remaining in Iraq -- never explains exactly how what is being attempted in Iraq, that is the attempt to make the Shi'a government, and the recently-dislodged-from-power Sunnis, come to some accommodation, will make Infidels safer.

3. Those who have called this a "war on terrorism" have done terrible damage, for they have confused a tactic -- terrorism -- with a much larger problem. They have helped to keep Infidels largely unaware of what is going on in Western Europe, and of how the Money Weapon, campaigns of Da'wa, and demographic conquest, are the most effective and dangerous instruments of Jihad.

4. The war in Iraq, similarly, distracts and confuses, because it reinforces the idea that, even though Bush has called this an "ideological war," he still has conducted this war without any attempt at propaganda, or any attempt to exploit the weaknesses of the enemy. Rather, his policy is to repair those very weaknesses, to heal those sectarian and ethnic fissures in Iraq that could, if they were to continue unhealed (as they will, in the long run, in any case), would damage the Camp of Islam.

5. No one has been asked to explain why the two trillion dollars already spent in Iraq (and this includes the committed total future cost of lifetime care for tens of thousands of wounded) could not have been spent better on propaganda to sow discord in Islamic countries, and to pay for an energy policy -- subsidies to trains and busses, and for solar and wind energy, and for the building, by the government (for only the government can do it quickly, and to serve as the insurer) of dozens of nuclear reactors, that will be essential if the Muslim oil weapon is to sufficiently diminished in time to prevent further Muslim advances all over the world.

6. Many of those who have been forced to fight this war or some of them, naturally cannot quite allow themselves to recognize what folly, what an ill-considered venture, it has been ever since early 2004, when the only legitimate goals -- getting rid of the regime and scouring the country for major weaponry (including that known by the shorthad WMD)-- had been met, and the goal of "bringing freedom" to "ordinary moms and dads" -- a goal that ignored how, in Islam, political legitimacy is defined (it is not defined as being justified because it may express the will of the governed) -- had not yet been fixed upon, as a kind of consolation prize for not having found that weaponry that was the original cause, one was told, for the invasion.

7. The continued American presence in Iraq is damaging, and greatly, the American military. Young officers are leaving the regular army. Those joining the Reserves and the National Guard are not of the same level as those who joined ten years ago, or even five. Recruiting standards -- age, moral record, education -- have all changed, in response to the great difficulty in fillinig the army's monthly quotas. Nearly half the equipment that the National Guard relies on is in Iraq. Much of the regular military's equipment has, in Iraq, desert-degraded at a rate scarcely conceived of, and pegged by planners at a rate more suitable for non-desert environments. The morale of officers and men, especially of those who have served several times in Iraq, and are aware of the gap between how Bush and his men present the war, and the splendid "Iraqi people," and the reality -- the mendacious, meretricious, rapacious, Iraqis who are, on the whole, out to use the Americans against their own domestic enemies, and also to acquire whatever weaponry, knowhow, and other aid they can manage to inveigle out of the Americans, but have no intention -- could not possibly be -- permanent and trustworthy allies of the United States. It isn't possible. Muslims do not become allies and friends of Infidels. Occasionally their interests may overlap, and there can be most temporary collaboration, but that's it.

That's a start. I've given it ten minutes, but you can supply the rest yourself. The alacrity with which you make the most absurd charges -- ranging from the one about "what's next -- the inqusition?" in a previous posting, and in the last one, claiming that I would have been for doing absolutely nothing to meet the Nazi threat during World War II --- bespeaks a certain desperation, for you have failed to address, in all this back-and-forthing, a single one of my objections to the war in Iraq, and above all to the failure to carefully define "victory" or to explain how what the soldiers are now being asked to do would in any way contribute to a real, as opposed to an imaginary, victory.

The colossal folly of Tarbaby Iraq is clear to many, including many officers and men. It is folly not because Islam is not a threat, but because it is.

Your answers show you are a prisoner to your own worldview. The problem of every fundamentalist, including yourself, is that the perfect is the enemy of the good. the good work being done in Iraq is not up to your standard of perfection.

Perhaps the solutions you propose would make sense if our aim was to destroy Islam or if we were actually in a war with Islam. But that, despite your hopes, is not the situation, and it's not our goal.

The definition of victory is not to destroy Islam - it never was. It was to neutralise political Islam that manifested itself in terrorism against the U.S.

The benefits of a larger U.S. presence in the Middle East are enormous, and the costs are low. We have almost beaten Al-Quaeda, Iraqi forces have been trained to deal with extremists in their midst, and the rule of law has been restored. There's a long way to go, and political Islam will still be a problem for some time, but it will reduce as people see the benefits of democracy, equal rights, the rule of law and trade. It also keeps most of the conflict far from U.S. shores.

In addition, we have sent a message to other fundamentalist and dictatorial regimes that we will take action to remove extremists where necessary. We have managed to do this with very little cultural damage. If the worst they can complain of is that someone shot at a Koran then we are doing a good job.

I also reject your talk about the morale of forces and the state of the army. If there was such a thing it would be all over the news.

There is a big difference between showing that the seeds of Islamic terrorism are in the Koran, and in advocating amoral solutions based on your research. While I respect Robert's measured tone, your extremism gives a poor impression of this site and is counter productive to your goal. It has put me off this site, and I am certain it puts other readers off this site too.

You have gone beyond educating people that the Koran is the source of political Islam to preaching that there is no such thing as a moderate Muslim and, by extension, that all Muslims are our enemies. Your solutions (let's just leave them to kill each other) naturally follow your fundamentalist thought process. You dont seem to realise that your kind of talk is not much different from the views of the extremists on the other side.

We should be working to remove the extremists on both sides of the debate and to cultivate relationships between moderates.

Thankfully, your solutions will not come to pass and less extreme minds will prevail.

This is my final post on this topic. Thank you for the debate, it has been very useful in clarifying some issues for me.

ethoman, above, remarked that:

"The Quran amounts to a declaration of war against all of humanity".

For the benefit of anyone new to this comments floor, who has only just discovered Mr Spencer and Mr Fitzgerald's virtual Hedge School of the Counter-Jihad, and who may not even have begun to explore the labyrinth of the Quran, I will provide two classic passages from the Quran, Surah 9, in support of Ethoman's contention. The regulars here know them back to front, but it's worth repeating.

Muslims hold that Surah 9: 5, ‘the verse of the sword’, is the final revelation from 'allah', abrogating all other verses – including those that are sometimes quoted to ‘prove’ the peacefulness of Islam.

It reads: “Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them captive, and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush. But if they repent and establish worship and pay the poor-due {i.e. if and only if they become Muslims} then leave their way free. Lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.”

Yeah - whenever I hear those words 'forgiving, merciful' in the Qur'an, and then reflect on the appalling history of jihad conquest, mass murder and enslavement, catalogued by, for example, K S Lal and Andrew Bostom, I am strongly reminded of the fawning, flattering and entirely false epithets that were lavished upon the likes of Pol Pot, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Kim Il Sung of North Korea, and other ruthlessly cruel and violent 'dear leaders'.

Second passage, Quran 9: 29 - the archetypal directive for jihadic world conquest:

‘Fight those who believe not in Allah nor in the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book [i.e. Jews and Christians], until they pay the jizya {aka ‘protection money’} with willing submission and feel themselves subdued”.

And now, two very telling passages from the Sira, the canonical (for Muslims) Life of Mohammed, as translated by A. Guillaume:

Ishaq: 204 - “‘Men, do you know what you are pledging yourselves to in swearing allegiance to this man [Muhammad]?’ ‘Yes. In swearing allegiance to him we are pledging to wage war against all mankind.’”

Ishaq:231 - “Muslims are one ummah (community) to the exclusion of all men. Believers are friends of one another to the exclusion of all outsiders.”

And just to finish off with, the considered judgement of the formidable French social commentator, lay theologian, sociologist, historian of law and institutions, Jacques Ellul, at the very end of his long life, writing about Jihad in his foreword to his dear friend Bat Yeor's book, 'The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude" -

"there is so much talk nowadays about the 'tolerance' and fundamental 'peacefulness' of Islam, that it is necessary to recall its nature, which is fundamentally warlike".

Another clear-headed westerner's assessment of Islam, which is well-known to the the regulars here, but worth repeating.

Worth, indeed, printing out as a pamphlet, and scattering far and wide across the Western world, Johnny-Appleseed-style; indeed, worth translating into languages beyond English, into Spanish, for example, or French, Italian, Chinese, Russian.

"The precept of the Koran is, perpetual war against all who deny, that Mahomet is the prophet of God.

'The vanquished may purchase their lives, by the payment of tribute;

the victorious may be appeased by a false and delusive promise of peace;

and the faithful follower of the prophet, may submit to the imperious necessities of defeat:

but the command to propagate the Moslem creed by the sword is always obligatory, when it can be made effective.

The commands of the prophet may be performed alike, by fraud, or by force.”

John Quincy Adams, famous opponent of slavery, writing in 1829.

When Jacques Ellul in France in 1991 and John Quincy Adams in the USA in 1829 are completely in agreement about Islam, and both of them are in agreement with a little-known Byzantine emperor of the middle ages, who said: “Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached”,

it is a strong recommendation that any wise person should pay attention.

"Perhaps the solutions you propose would make sense if our aim was to destroy Islam or if we were actually in a war with Islam. But that, despite your hopes, is not the situation, and it's not our goal."
-- from a posting above, il solito poster

I don't propose "solutions." The word "solution" is inappropriate, but your use of it, your attribution of it to me, is telling. There is not a "solution" to Islam, for Islam exists and will continue to exist. But the threat of Islam can be diminished. In 1930 the threat was far less than it is today.

I have, again and again, gone over the three developments that have permitted Islam to become a threat to the civilized Infidel world.

Those three developments are:

1) The trillions of dollars received from Muslim, chiefly but not exclusively, Arab oil-states -- with ten trillion dollars having been received since 1973 alone. Not one of these states has managed to build a modern economy; without oil they were nothing, and without oil they will be nothing again. But meanwhile, they have managed to acquire huge sums, and the Western world's leaders have been remiss in not coming up with ways to both reduce the total size of the revenues received by these Muslim oil-states and in figuring out ways to use up their discretionary income, by for example charging them for Western protection (at the moment, the Americans actually are grateful for having been allowed to protect the Saudis, or to now maintain bases in Qatar and Kuwait -- this is the wrong attitude, for it is their ruling elites who should be grateful, and should have to pay for the protection).

2) the millions of Muslims allowed, in a fit of nearly criminal negligence, into the countries of the Western world. Whether it was the Turks who were allowed into West Germany as gastarbeiter (guest workers) beginning with the so-called "economic miracle" of Ludwig Erhard, or the British allowing in Pakistanis because they happened to hold British passports (and then later rescuing "Asians" -- that is, Pakistanis -- from Idi Amin's regime), or the French permitting Algerians and Moroccans in, first males only, and then, insanely, under Giscard d'Estaing, allowing in the "families" (several wives, endless children, with more to come on French soil)of these workers who, in the second generation, lost their enthusiasm for hard work and found they wee more entranced with all the benefits the French state could offer), or the Netherlands with both Turks and Moroccans, or Somalis and Libyans and Egyptians in Italy, or...well, the point is that every Western country, its political and media elites oblivious to the nature of Islam, allowed in these immigrants who brought, in their mental baggage, and undeclared, a Total Belief-System that, to the extent it is adhered to, renders that Believer incapable of true integration into Western societies, and incapable of giving his allegiance to the legal and political institutions of those societies.

3) Advancements in technology in the Western world have been appropriated, and exploited, by Muslims both to disseminate their messages about Islam to Muslims who may live in backwaters, and be illiterate, but who now, thanks to audiocassettes (see how the Ayatolah Khomeini used them from his French exile at Neauphle-le-chateau), videocassettes, satellite television stations (using Western satellites), and the Internet, can spread the full message of Islam to those who, while they considered themselves Muslims, may not have been subject to the full texts, or to the kind of propaganda, that now they cannot escape. And the same technology permits Muslims to spread their message, their Da'wa and also their attempts to threaten and terrorize, throughout the world.

These are the three things -- and all are reversible or at least can be managed.

But that is not offered as a "solution" -- something I have never done, and never would suggest that I had done. It is meant as a way to manage a permanent problem. There is a difference.

Nor have I ever argued that "our aim is to destroy Islam." It is ludicrous for you to lecture me as if I ever had. When you tell me that "[p]erhaps the solutions you propose would make sense if our aim was to destroy Islam or if we were actually in a war with Islam. But that, despite your hopes, is not the situation, and it's not our goal" you misstate, possibly because you have not taken the trouble to read and to understand all that I have posted here -- hundreds and hundreds of articles and thousands of postings -- but presume to know my position and then to argue with what you imagine that position to be.

The very idea that I would ever say or think that "our aim is to destroy Islam" shows that misunderstanding, that failure to be well-prepared. That is not possible, and if it is not poossible, it is not an intelligent goal.

But that does not mean that Islam cannot be weakened, and Muslim states and peoples reduced in the amount of damage they can do to us. They can be prevented, again and again and again, from acquiring weapons of mass destruction. They can see their revenues deliberately diminished -- and in any case, for other, quite distinct reasons (the need to slow down the rate of anthropogenic climate change and mitigate its effects), many who have no understanding of the threat from Islam will, for their own purposes, participate eagerly in a campaign that will result in such a diminishment of Muslim revenues from the sale of oil and gas.

Furthermore, Islam can be made unattractive to those being targetted for Da'wa, and it can be made far less appealing even to many of those born into Islam through no fault of their own. I have noted, for example, that if 80% of the world's Muslims are non-Arab, bringing to their attention all the ways in which Islam is a vehicle for Arab supremacism, and then presenting them with current examples of such Arab supremacism (the linguistic and cultural imperialism felt most keenly by the Berbers, the economic and political imperialism experienced by the Kurds in Iraq, and by the black African Muslims in Darfur), this is one way to weaken the hold of Islam over some among those four-fifths of the world's Muslims who are not Arab.

You continue to talk about terrorism, as if that is the sole or the main problem. It is not. The main problem is the duty of Jihad, that is found in the Qur'an, in more than a hundred verses -- the duty, that is, to remove all obstacles to the spread, and to the dominance, of Islam. If the Qur'an, and if the Sunnah that glosses it (and composed, essentially, of the Hadith and the Sira), are ignored or not understood or insufficiently understood, then the meaning and menace of Islam will not be understood.

Terrorism is not the main threat in western Europe. Campaigns of Da'wa are. The Money Weapon (as the Arabs call it), that pays for ever-increasing numbers of mosques, madrasas, Muslim organizations, Muslim outreach and missionary efforts, Muslim propaganda, Muslim-founded "academic centers of Islamic studies" that are coming, slowly but inexorably, to dominate and even to monopolize teaching and so-called scholarship about Islam, and then all the well-placed fixers, including former ambassadors, intelligence agents, jouralists, businessmen with deals past, present, or promised in the future, in the Arab and Muslim world -- all of this is far more insidious than terrorism.

And finally there is demographic conquest. In 1960 there were about 1,500 Muslims in the Netherlands; in 1970 there were 15,000. Today there are more than a million. In France there are 5-7 million Muslims. In Great Britain, there are nearly 2 million -- and now the out-migration of native British, fleeing the Muslim invasion has grown and grown. In Rotterdam, in Malmo, in many other cities, Muslims are already a majority of those under the age of 20. Demography is destiny. If there is not a halt to Muslim migration, and then a reversal, the fantastic overbreeding by Muslims -- done consciously, by the way, as an act of overpowering the Infidels (see the remarks of the Algerian Boumedienne in 1974 at the U.N.., where he announced publicly that "through our [Muslim women's] wombs" we -- the Arabs and Muslims -- "will conquer you." Similar sentiments have been echoing ever since, in the Muslim world, hardly hidden from you. "We will conquer Rome" is the latest message, "just as we conquered Constantinople."

This may not concern you. It sounds like you are a dutiful believer in everything that explains the colossal and continued squandering in Iraq, for goals that are unattainable, and from the viewpoint of American national interest, make no sense.

You apparently are unwilling to look beyond Iraq to the larger, world-wide Jihad (which is merely the sum of all the local Jihads -- those conducted against states, and those conducted against political and legal institutions in the Infidel lands by Muslims in those countries, , and those conducted against non-Muslims who live in countries where Muslims rule but who are discriminated against, persecuted, even murdered -- see what happens to Christians, for example, in Pakistan and Indonesia).

A pity.

Meanwile, more and more of us wish to become unstuck from Tarbaby Iraq, and while we cannot recover those squandered resources (men, money, materiel, morale), at least we can from now on make sure that resources are husbanded, and used much more cunningly, for what is not "a long war" but, in fact, a war without end, where there is not a final "victory" (though there can be local "victories") but rather, a situation to be permanently, and vigilantly, tended to, so that we Infidels are capable of withstanding, and even pushing back, against those who are making war on us, not for anything we stand for or do, but because we are, you see, Infidels. For Muslims, that is enough. That is more than enough.

"I also reject your talk about the morale of forces and the state of the army. If there was such a thing it would be all over the news."
-- from the same poster above

But it has been written about, even if not everyone is paying attention.

You surely are aware that the requirements for recruits have been lowered. You can now have been convicted of a non-violent crime, not have graduated from high school, and be as old as 42 --so desperate is the army to fulfill its quota.

You surely know that many of the younger officers are leaving the service. You must know that about half of the graduates of West Point have, in the last year or two, been leaving the military.

The war in Iraq is doing great damage to the American military. That is not the only reason for wishing us out of there right now, yesterday, back in early 2004 but it is one more, and a very good and important, reason.

darcy wrote, re. mockery/ critique of Islam:

"Yes, I'll tell a Nazi that their belief system is evil, too! - I don't care if they are "insulted!"

"That's beside the whole fricking point.

"They NEED to be and SHOULD be told that their belief system's are evil!

"Both Nazi and Islamic. I couldn't care less if they're "insulted," -

"Please! The belief systems and believers in those systems -Naziism and Islam - DESERVE to be insulted! Mohammed Bear and Mohammed 'Toons ALL THE WAY!".

Correct. "The Devil is a proud spirit, and cannot abide to be mocked".

Both Nazism and Islam are, at heart, Golden-Rule-denying supremacist creeds puffed up to bursting point with an overweening and entirely baseless idea of their own supposed superiority and 'perfection' which, in their minds, becomes the rationale for their 'right' to enslave and mass murder and ruthlessly degrade the despised Other, who is, in the case of Nazis, all non-Aryans, and in the case of Muslims, all kuffar, that is, those who reject Islam and refuse to lick the boots of Muslims.

Such cruel and soul-destroying attitudes deserve to meet banana skins and rotten eggs.

Nazism, once battle was truly joined, was mocked uphill and down dale - for instance, the famous derisive song, to a music hall tune, popular among Western soldiers, alluding to the supposed sexual inadequacies and/or perversions of Nazi leaders, of which I recall these lines: 'Hitler/ has only got one ball/ Goering/ has two but they are small/ Himmler, is something similar, but Goebbels/ has got no balls at all". (By the way, the song wasn't that far off: much about the personal and private behaviour of the upper echelons of the Third Reich was seriously perverse).

On a rather more intellectual level, we had Charlie Chaplin's satirical "The Great Dictator" .

The modern Infidel world has not yet brought its big guns to bear, in this regard. The 'Danish cartoons', in particular Mr Kurt Westergaard's brilliant caricature as featured on this very site, were merely an opening shot, so to speak.

They require to be followed by a barrage of merciless - and mercilessly accurate, resolutely truthful - mockery.

I should add that the Persian apostate, Ali Sina, on his website Faithfreedom, *recommends* the use of (accurate, sustained, and truthful) mockery of all that is reprehensible and/or ridiculous, within the teachings and practice of Islam.

Mockery is necessary because Islam teaches its most devout followers that all non-Muslims should grovel to them in cringing deference; thus, if we non-Muslims are continually polite and respectful, if we pull our intellectual punches, if we only say (as Rev Dr Mark Durie puts it) 'soft things', the truly brainwashed Muslim will be confirmed in the belief that we are acknowledging his lordly superiority, that we are afraid or cowed. Ruthless, courageous, truth-telling mockery challenges that particular illusion.

Instead of using a Qur'an for target practice, however, it might be more effective to get a theatre troupe together to perform Voltaire's "Mahomet: or, Fanaticism".

As for civilian morale, that too has been a victim of the Iraq folly. And in order to properly meet the domestic threat -- the "Stealth Jihad" -- political capital that has been needlessly squandered in Iraq is not available, and it will take time to build it up again, and that rebuilding -- our very own "Reconstruction Efforts" here, and not in Iraq, will depend oon the speed of an American withdrawal from Tarbaby Iraq. Political capital has been needlessly squandered in Iraq -- capital that needs to be husbanded.

There has been a whole lot of squandering, and very little husbanding, of resources going on. The confusion, the undisguised vagueness ("we have to win in Iraq" is firmly stated, but is never accompanied by a satisfactory definition, of what that "winning" would consist in, or how it would benefit us), the misstatements of opponents' views, the wild charges ("what's next -- the Inquisition?"), all of this is par for the dreary course.

There's two trillion dollars down the drain. There's morale, civilian and military, drained.

Happy with the result? Impressed to hear that the "surge" is working? What next, then, do you expect in Iraq, and just how will whatever happens as a result of American efforts be of use in setting back or checkmating the forces of Jihad in Great Britain, in France, in Thailand, in the Sudan, in Nigeria, in the Philippines, in India, or anywhere else?

Please explain.

And be sure to write on only one side of the bluebook pages.

This is my final post on this topic. Thank you for the debate, it has been very useful in clarifying some issues for me.
Posted by: madijihadi

Take heart madi, not all of us here believe that Hugh’s strategy for Iraq and for that matter Islam, is wise. Thank you for your considered counter arguments and please continue to post – it is how clarity and truth are created.

I wholeheartedly agree with perhaps 90% of what Hugh has to say, maybe 95%. I always read his posts when I come across them, as I have found them almost always profoundly insightful. Some of the things that Hugh advocates that I absolutely agree with and support to the utmost of my ability are:

EDUCATING INFIDELS as to the texts and tenets of Islam and also the life and deeds of Muhammad. This is the single most important task we are charged with in the fight against Islam -
it cannot be overemphasized.

EDUCATING MUSLIMS either directly if possible, but certainly by allowing them to overhear our clear and comprehensive criticism of Islam. We must openly discuss WHY Islam leads societies to failure, with its core values of deceit, revenge, murder of the Infidel and so much more. Such frequent and open conversations amongst ourselves may reduce the attractiveness of Islam to some and weaken its hold on others.

EDUCATING INFIDELS AND MUSLIMS as to the benefits of a free society.

There are undoubtedly many more of the things that Hugh has recommended that I would agree with also.

I PROUFOUNDLY DISAGREE that we should precipitously leave Iraq. I have written at length on this in previous posts but the main points are:

Such an action would be characterized by all as an American defeat and a Jihadi victory – it cannot and will not be painted in any other light, EVER – even though Hugh may wish it so.

A JIHDI VICTORY against the worlds’ only superpower would make militant Islam a hundred times more difficult to defeat than it is now. New Jihadis would flock to the cause by the hundreds of thousands, as they would see Islam as the “strong horse”. Our enemy would gain immense strength and huge natural resources with which to battle us for the next hundred years – if we hold out that long.

AN AMERICAN DEFEAT would be a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions. All national WILL to confront Jihad anywhere, with any strength or determination, will evaporate. America will be cast as the true evil in the world and our actions in Iraq will be ENDLESSLY portrayed as the proof of this. We will indeed become “The Great Satan” and this will be repeated around the world by so many people, so often, that we will begin to believe it ourselves. What confidence we have in ourselves, our values and the justness of our cause will vanish with what’s left of our pride. We will have no ambition to attempt ANY of the things that Hugh suggests to “divide the camp of Islam”

We will have no desire to confront Islam anywhere no matter what the scale of the atrocities they may commit – just as we had no desire to help prevent, in any way. the MURDER OF HUNDRES OF THOUSANDS after Viet Nam.

I ALSO DISAGREE with Hugh that an all out, full throttle campaign to exploit the divisions in Islam is wise. Here and there perhaps and always deniably, but NEVER as our main strategy.

Firstly, we cannot maintain our own morale and belief in our cause by only advocating a negative. The reason we are the world's superpower is because a large percentage of the American population believes that our values are good and our cause just – not just for us but for all mankind. Take away that belief and you remove the incentive to fight for and defend “Western Values”.

Secondly, Jihadis are not stupid. They would sooner or later figure out what we were up to and they would use our strategy against us to unify the ummah – and it would make them stronger, not weaker.

So there you have it, a sharp disagreement with Hugh.

I look forward to the impending avalanche of profundities that will illuminate the folly of my arguments.

“As for civilian morale, that too has been a victim of the Iraq folly”
Posted by: Hugh

Respectfully:
How will “civilian morale” be improved by an American defeat?

Ending the squandering -- of men's lives, of money, of materiel -- in Iraq does not constitute a "defeat" and very few Americans would at this point -- it has taken too long for them to see things clearly -- would consider such a withdrawal a defeat. And if that withdrawal is accompanied by other actions that show the United States has no intention of ceasing to fight a war of self-defense against the Jihad, and will do all kinds of things to limit the ability of Muslims to do damage, such as work to diminish OPEC oil revenues and to use up, at a faster rate, the revenues currently received by free-spending Arab oil states; to curtail the use of such oil revenues by such countries as Saudi Arabia to further Muslim interests in Infidel lands; to halt, and then reverse, Muslim migration to the West; to refuse to give an inch on Muslim demands for changes to the legal, political, and other institutions that have developed over time and been inherited by us as a civilizational legacy; to educate ourselves, so that we are capable of dealing with sly and incessant appeals and attempts, by Muslims, to confuse, distract, to offer nonstop taqiyya-and-tu-quoque, in order to prevent us from connecting the behavior of Muslims with the tenets and texts of Islam. And withdrawal of American forces from Tarbaby Iraq will not prevent other, but more intelligent and focussed, applications of American and Western military power. That should include, or might include, such things as the seizure -- who can oppose an attempt to protect the helpless black Africans against the rampaging Muslim Arabs of the north? -- of southern Sudan and Darfur, those territories to be held until a referendum on independence from the Arabs of the north can be held. And it should include the use of planes and missiles -- no land "invasion" is necessary, so all this scare-talk about "an invasion of Iraq" can be and should be dismissed -- to set back Iran's nuclear project by a decade, to buy time so that those exhibiting common sense in that country can prevail over the mahdi-messianic element that is now destroying Iran, and that, after such an attack, and after a month or two of rally-round-the-Iranian-flag solidarity, will find itself humiliated, mocked, and permanently weakened, its domestic political enemies finally able to go in for the kill.

All of this becomes more, not less, possible when the American military has become unstuck from Tarbaby Iraq, and the United States has left hopeless Iraq to the so-called "Iraqi people" to do with as I am sure they will.

And that result is not my definition of "defeat."

Here's one of dozens of previous pieces on the subject of defeat, and victory, in Iraq:

"The stated goals for "victory in Iraq" make no sense. Should the goal of Americans and other Infidels be to create a functioning state (with cigars passed around for the final birth of a happy, healthy, baby boy, after such a difficult pregnancy)? In any case this is impossible, with Allawi or Jaafari or Maliki or anyone at all, given that Islam itself is what prevents compromises and encourages continued aggression between Sunni and Shi'a. Both have taken from Islam the lesson that there can only be, after any conflict, only two possible conditions: that of Victor and that of Vanquished.

"Victory in Iraq" properly defined means a situation that justifies the expenditure of some $880 billion dollars (including in that figure the lifetime cost of care for the wounded veterans, and other expenses not yet factored in even by those, such as General MacCaffrey, who are critics of the war but inattentive to the real cost). That is more than the cost of all the wars, save World War II, that the United States has ever fought, in 2007 dollars. It must also justify the deaths of 3,700 soldiers and the severe wounding of 25,000. Bush's notion that the outcome of a unified Iraq is a better one for the United States than one in which Sunnis and Shi'a, at one level or another, continue to fight, is unfounded. Who knows? Who can predict exactly how they will or will not handle one another once the Americans leave? What's more, who can say what will happen when co-religionists on both sides line up behind their fellows in Iraq? That means primarily Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and the Sunnis cheerfully waved off by the Alawite rulers of Syria, on the Sunni side, and on the Shi'a side, the grim Islamic Republic of Iran, with its Al Quds Revolutionary Guards, and of course its handmaidens in Hizballah, whom all kinds of sensible people in Lebanon would love to see stream off as volunteers, screaming their devotion to Allah, to Iraq to defend their own faith from those terrible Sunnis.

And in the same way, would not greater Kurdish autonomy, or ideally a Kurdish state, be a threat to Iran? For it would hearten not only Kurds in Iranian-held parts of Kurdistan, but others in the area -- Arabs in Khuzistan, Baluchis to the east, Azeris in the north -- to bethink themselves, to wonder if they too, the non-Persians who make up half the population of present-day Iran, must forever be subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran. And another potential threat is to Syria. As for Turkey, the Americans could make clear that Turkey is no longer regarded as an indispensable ally, or even conceivably a reliable member of NATO, to the extent that it "returns to Islam" (as it is, steadily, day by day, under the guiding hand of Erdogan and many little erdogans), but that, in any case, the Americans will act as guarantors to insure that whatever pressures from this Kurdish state are made on Iran, or Syria, no such pressure will be put on Turkey, for the Americans, as the sole suppliers of military aid to Kurdistan, can guarantee their cooperation. And furthermore, it can hardly have gone unnoticed that economic cooperation between Turkey and Kurdistan is already in the works, and that the Turkish government might take an entirely different view of an independent Kurdistan, as not increasing outside pressure on it, but serving to decrease it -- for if Kurds in Turkey feel that they need an outlet for political expression other than the Turkish state, they are now welcome to move to an independent Kurdistan, and for all we know, some might take up the offer. And I have not even reached here the emulative effect the spectacle of one non-Arab Muslim people, the Kurds, throwing off the Arab yoke, would have on other non-Arab Muslims, such as the Berbers.

Finally, along with the sectarian (Sunni-Shi'a) division inside and outside Iraq, there are possible further unsettlements and sectarian strife in Pakistan, in Saudi Arabia (the oil-bearing Eastern Province), in Lebanon, in Bahrain, even in Yemen. Instead of being welcomed -- since when does one attempt to prevent division and demoralization in the camp of one's enemies? -- these are actively being deplored, in warnings from the Great and Good, that an American withdrawal will bring, could bring, might bring, that deplorable thing called "chaos" to the Middle East. Nonsense. Not "chaos" -- not with those kinds of despotisms willing to use their kind of force with their kind of secret police. Not chaos, really, but perhaps a using up of men, money, and materiel, and attention -- but this time they would all bear the initial adjective "Muslim" rather than "American," and that is a highly desirable change."

[Posted by Hugh at August 28, 2007]