“’The problem here, however, is that when it comes to Islamic jihadists, virtually anything short of full capitulation is perceived as arrogant, uncaring or insulting. Any resistance to the jihad agenda is immediately cast as a grievous insult that must be redressed’"You are partially right, but the mistake you keep making is that these outreach efforts are targeted at Jihadists. They're not, they're targeted at the Muslim world where America's reputation has taken a hit following such stupidity as destroying a secular state (Iraq) which acted as a buffer against religious extremism.
"And because the Qur'an teaches Muslims to distrust Infidels, as they are the "most vile of created beings" (98:6) and will never be satisfied until the Muslims discard Islam (2:120). One is not take them as friends or protectors (3:28; 5:51)."
Here, your reductionist approach, while convenient for the average jwatcher is off the mark. Look first at Afghan perceptions of America which were quite good following the invasion, these started to dip in 2005 when much that was promised to Afghanistan did not materialize (in part because many resources were diverted to Iraq). Second, the situation in the north is different than in the south. This is because the south is Pashtun while the North is a mix of Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks etc. perceptions of America are different depending on whether you're a pashtun or not. These people have read the same Koran but react differently to Americans because they are not the same as AQ. -- from a poster critical of Robert Spencer’s comments on Admiral Mullen here
The poster begins with an astonishing take on the invasion of Iraq. He claims that “America's reputation has taken a hit following such stupidity as destroying a secular state (Iraq) which acted as a buffer against religious extremism.”
That statement deserves scrutiny. America’s “reputation” among Muslims has not “taken a hit” because the Americans never did, and never could, stand high in the opinion of any Muslims who take Islam seriously -- and whose contempt and hostility, and sometimes murderous hatred, for non-Muslims has its source in the texts and tenets and attitudes of Islam. It is true that Sunni Arabs are enraged that the Americans replaced Saddam Hussein, but that is not, as the poster claims, because Iraq was a “secular state” and they longed for that “secular” state to remain. Why would the likes of Saudi Arabia regret the passing of a “secular state” in the Middle East? I have explained at tedious length before that the soi-disant “secularism” of the only two Ba’athist regimes -- those in Syria and Iraq -- was skin-deep. In fact, it was merely the camouflage used to disguise, and make palatable, in the case of Syria, a despotism run of, by, and for the Alawites (who make up only 12% of the population). In the case of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, it provided cover for a Sunni Arab despotism, when the Sunni Arabs constitute less than 20% of the population.
The real reason the Sunni Arabs were furious with the United States for its invasion of Iraq was that that invasion, and the subsequent toppling of Saddam Hussein and his entire regime, meant that power had been irrevocably transferred from the Sunni to the Shi’a Arabs in Iraq. That, for Sunni Arabs, is intolerable in and of itself. But it becomes still more infuriating at a time when the Islamic Republic of Iran, a Shi’a state, makes claims to be the most aggressive Muslim state in the Lesser Jihad against Israel and the Greater Jihad against the camp of Infidels and in particular the perceived leader of that camp, the Great Satan, the United States. (For Iranians, however, historical resentments will also give pride of place, surprising to those unfamiliar with the Iranian bestiary, to Great Britain.)
But this is hardly the end of the series of misconceptions that underlie the larger criticism of Spencer, a criticism based on the notion, that neither Spencer nor I nor Marisol share, which is that a “Jihadi” must necessarily be someone interested in promoting Jihad only through the use of terrorism. The word “Jihadist” rightly means all those who participate, directly or indirectly, in the “Jihad” or “struggle” to remove, by whatever instruments are available, obstacles to the spread and dominance of Islam. And many were unavailable until recently. The Money Weapon did not exist before OPEC revenues supplied sums of money so vast that much could be spent on building mosques and madrasas and spreading propaganda and employing Western hirelings in the service of Islam, and threatening Western governments with economic reprisals, or holding out the prospect of economic gain (see the latest Lockerbie outrage). Campaigns of Da’wa and demographic conquest in the Western world would have been unthinkable a mere fifty years ago.
There was nothing inevitable about it, no long historical process that was simply impossible to stop, but within a mere 30-40 years, millions of Muslims were allowed to settle in Western Europe, and were permitted to receive every conceivable benefit from generous welfare states set up by, for the benefit of, and still paid entirely by, the non-Muslim indigenous peoples of those besieged-from-within countries. Those countries were betrayed by their own negligent elites, who were so unprepared to deal with or grasp the meaning and menace of Islam, and so willing to console themselves with unexamined and pious sentiments that assume that all people everywhere are the same, want the same things, and that while many come with an alien creed, they can ultimately be integrated.
What those elites did not understand is that not all immigrant groups are the same. Muslims pose a permanent problem that cannot be overcome, for they brought with them, undeclared, in their mental baggage, a Total Belief-System that is the source of their hostility to all non-Muslims. Their creed is not merely alien. It is alien, and permanently hostile, hostile to the view of man, hostile to the solicitude for the individual, hostile to the equal treatment of women, hostile to the many means of artistic expression, hostile to the free and skeptical inquiry that the West encourages and without which the enterprise of science cannot take place, hostile to the legal and political institutions of the advanced Western world or, more accurately, to all the institutions that are the product of non-Muslims, in the West, or among the Rest.
And this is not all that poster shows, by his ill-considered criticism, that he has failed to register. He says, for example, that Al Qaeda (or AQ) should not be understood to stand for every one of the Muslim groups and groupuscules that use terrorism as their form of "qitaal" and see it as an instrument of war legitimized by relative military weakness vis-a-vis the Infidels. By that token, the six million Jews of Israel would be justified in using every weapon on earth, including nuclear ones, against the 300 million Muslim Arabs who have been conducting Jihad against them.
And of course there are differences among Muslims. No one who writes at JW thinks that every Muslim, every group of Muslims, has taken in the Qur'an and the Hadith in exactly the same way. Who would possibly think that of a billion people?
But that's not the main point. The point is: what are the differences among Muslims, in their reception of the message of Islam, particularly as it relates to the attitude toward non-Muslims, and their societies, laws, and rights to continued existence? What are the attitudes that naturally arise in those who claim to be Muslims, and that in order to be suppressed or ignored, take a great effort on the part of the Believer, or the one who at least calls himself, considers himself, a Muslim? What are the differences, for example, if one is an Arab, and can read the Qur'an in Arabic -- even though, as Christoph Luxenberg notes, nearly 20% of the Qur'an is inaccessible even to native speakers of Arabic? How will such a person’s reading of the Qur’an differ from that of those Muslims, some 80% of the total, who read the Qur'an not in Arabic but in Urdu, or Farsi, or one of the Bahasa variants, or, for that matter, in French or English or Spanish? What will be the effect of the ferocity of the Arabic, scarcely conveyed in other languages, and the relentless negativeness of Muhammad's message -- with constant references to the awfulness of doing what is prohibited, and seldom praise of doing what is commanded? For the Qur'an is all hellfire and brimstone; the Bible only very intermittently so.
And even if this or that Muslim population reads the Qur’an differently, either in another country (e.g., Afghanistan as compared to Iraq) or of different ethnic groups within the same country (e.g., within Afghanistan, Pashtuns as compared to Tadjiks) or different Muslim sects (Shi'a, Sunnis, even Ibadi Muslims), it is surely the responsibility of those in charge to note those differences, and to be sufficiently comprehending of Islam to be able to explain them.
But along with explaining why, for example, Afghani Muslims tend to be far less vicious in their attitudes than Arab Muslims, though perhaps even more aggressive in the sense that Afghanistan is a completely tribal society, where fighting is a way of life, not something taken up only when the occasion seems to warrant, one has a perfect right to do as is done at JW, stressing that the texts of Islam, the tenets of Islam, all prepare the mental substratum of Believers so that they will always tend to be hostile to non-Muslims. One has a perfect right to point out that even Good Works by those non-Muslims, no matter how obviously generous (to us) and straightforward they seem to be, will be taken by Muslims to be sly acts designed to undercut them, to make them listen more closely to the whisperings of Shaytan.
The effect of Islam on the minds of men, the ways in which it causes them to acquire, early on, a habit of mental submission, and discourages them from asking questions about Islam itself, in engaging in any form of moral probing, or wondering about the logic of Islam, or the tall tales of the Qur'an, and all of this contributes to fashioning brains that, only in the free West can Muslims really participate fully in the life of an advanced Western society, and then only with difficulty, and only to the extent that the mind-forged manacles of Islam can be thrown off. Otherwise, they are here geographically, but not in any other sense.
Yes, Afghanis were pleased to have the horrible regime of the Taliban thrown off by the invading Americans, but that is not the same thing as thinking that the Americans, as Infidels, could ever be objects of true gratitude and real friendship. The same thing can be observed in Iraq. The Shi'a were delighted -- Shi'a exiles had after all helped inveigle the American government into the invasion of Iraq -- when Saddam Hussein was overthrown by the only power on earth that could do it, and could remove his sons and all of the main figures in his regime so that it would never come back. But did this translate into any sustained support for, gratitude to, the Americans? Of course it didn't. And it couldn't.
And by this time no one should be surprised, and no one should ever expect to win Muslim hearts and minds. It will not happen. It can't, not as long as Muslims take the teachings of Islam deeply to heart.
The poster goes on to say that in Afghanistan the Afghanis lost their faith in the Americans when the "ressources" [sic] that they were promised failed to materialize. What a peculiar remark. What exactly does he think the Afghanis were promised? Haven't tens of billions of dollars been spent on Afghanistan, a country where the constant fighting, and the inshallah-fatalism, and the 90% illiteracy rate, and the hatred of "bida" or innovation, make in impossible to do very much? And in any case, why did the Americans owe the Afghanis anything at all? Didn't they remove the oppressive and murderous Taliban regime? Wasn't that quite enough?
The same poster then mentions the differences between the hostility exhibited by the Pashtuns as compared to the northern tribes (Uzbeks, Tadjiks) -- a point that I have already made above. Arab Muslims are those who, in a sense, are most Muslim, and therefore most deeply and permanently hostile, and also the people who, as a group, have been most scarred intellectually by Islam. Why? Because Islam, and the Arab sense of being Arab, of Arabness, of 'Uruba, is so tied up with Islam, inextricably so, that many Christian Arabs defend Islam, protect Islam from Western criticism, make allowances for Islam -- even promote the Muslim agenda against, for example, the Israelis, even as some of those Arab Christians know perfectly well what they must endure from the Muslims, and know perfectly well that they have nothing to fear from Israel.
There are Middle Eastern Christians, however, who are numerous and cohesive enough to resist this. Above all, they are fully aware that while they use the Arabic language and may even carry Arabic names, they are not Arabs. For their collective existence preceded the arrival of the Arabs bearing Islam -- I am thinking especially of the Maronites of Lebanon, the Copts of Egypt, and the Chaldeans and Assyrians of Iraq. When they can leave the Middle East and are free to think and speak, they show quite clearly that they, unlike for example the "Palestinian" Arab Christians, do not, and will not, promote the agenda of Islam. Instead they will, in the West, often tell the horrific truth about Islam, once they have managed to adapt fully to the mental freedom the West offers, and to see clearly, from afar, their own reality -- which when you live, permanently fearful, in a Muslim sea, sometimes leads to self-deception as well as deception.
Robert Spencer explains, again and again, sometimes with a hint of weariness or frustration (it takes stamina to keep pointing out what should be obvious, but amazingly, is not) that the behavior of Muslims around the world can most intelligently be explained by reference to Islam itself, to its texts and tenets. He points out that the enormous and frequently comical effort that is made by so many in the press, on radio, on television, and in various Western governments, to deny that Islam, a Total Belief-System that offers a Complete Regulation of Life, has anything to do with that behavior is akin, in its totalitarian effect (especially in the Arab countries) to a kind of lifelong brainwashing unlike anything that we, out of mental incapacity, have been able to recognize. And we have failed to make important distinctions, lazily lumping together under the same word "religion" very different kinds of faiths. Islam is a Religion and a Politics, and a Geopolitics, and in its effect, among those groups -- such as the Arabs and Pakistanis (who are the least resistant to it) akin to a totalitarian political system.
Saddam, ever the wily politician, quit being 'secular' about fifteen years ago, signaled by his "Faith Campaign." Saddam also formed the Fedayeen Saddam (martyrs for Saddam) and had a Quran printed with his own blood. Saddam could see the rise of Islam as a political force many years ago. Your commenter is stuck in the Cold War and its ideological postures.
Of course Saddam was using Islam as part of his cult of personality, but his reliance on Islam to such a degree in his later years belies any notion of Saddam as a secular leader. It's disturbing how many people are incapable of seeing the meteoric rise of Islam as a source of political power over the last thirty years. This is especially true in, off all places, Western Europe.
http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Islam/2003/04/Saddam-Plays-The-Faith-Card.aspx
Quote:
"Under his "faith campaign," begun in 1994, government money goes to promote mandatory Qur'an studies in schools. The campaign built training centers for imams (Muslim teachers), including Saddam College (for Iraqis) and Saddam University of Islamic Studies (for foreigners). Radio stations were dedicated to airing Qur'anic lessons, and alcohol was banned in restaurants. Even Baath party officials began taking courses in the Qur'an, and in the ubiquitous murals of the Iraqi leader, Saddam himself was often shown in prayer.
Mosque attendance had begun to increase when the sanctions were first imposed; it continued to rise, and more women began wearing veils. Contests in Qur'an recitation were held, with cash prizes given to the best reciters.
The "faith campaign" also encouraged mosque-building; Hussein himself planned to construct three gigantic mosques, which do as much to commemorate his regime as they do to honor the Prophet. The first one built, the "Mother of All Battles" (see photo), opened in 2001. Its Scud-shaped minarets, 37 meters high (Hussein was born in 1937), surround a central structure where a 605-page Qur'an is encased in glass. According to Iraqi officials, Hussein donated 50 pints of blood over three years to mix with ink for the book."
Mr. Fitzgerald, a few points:
1. If Islam is so omnipresent in the minds of Afghans, why would the Taliban regime (representing and practicing pure Islam) be so soundly rejected by Afghans following the US invasion (which as you acknowledge was welcomed)?
2. Related to this first point, its not, an Afghan is first and foremost loyal to his tribe (sub-tribe or clan would be more accurate). In the case of the Taliban, these are overwhelmingly Pashtun people. This is what I meant by the differences in ethnic groups, Koran or no Koran, the popular opposition to Americans in the South is Pashtun not Islamic.
3. It is exactly for this reason (tribal and cultural affiliation) that AQ failed in Iraq, its also the reason why AQ and the Taliban have tried but failed to appeal to pan-Islamist sentiment to support their war.
4. The Muslim world does not eat, breath and think only of Islam, or rather the caricature of Islam (my opinion) put forth by Jihadists, Mullahs and Jwatch & Co. When you sarcastically talk about "ordinary moms and dads", thats what they are, ordinary moms and dads who practice a traditional form of Islam (think of the difference between ultra-orthodox jews and regular religious jews or of the forms of Islam found in places like niger or senegal).
5. The invasion of Iraq was catastrophic for Americas reputation, not only in the Muslim world but around the world. To say that it helped AQ is an understatement, recruitement went up etc.
6. Muslims do not want AQ's brand of Islam (real Islam for jwatchers) which is why jihadists movements have been unsuccessful in such places as Algeria, Morroco and even currently in Pakistan (Why are the very Muslim Pakistanis rejecting AQ's brand of Islam? Why are they supporting the government's efforts in the Swat valley? Dont they want a pure Islamic state?).
7. The popularity or unpopularity of americans is not due to Koranic injunctions but rather due to foreign policy blunders, real or imagined. This is why Canadians do not report some of the problems SOME americans have reported. At the same time, this is not something restricted to the Muslim world and even in the Muslim World there are major differences between America's reputation say in Tajikistan (good) and its reputation in Kandahar (bad).
Note that I do not deny that there is a growing extremist tendency in the Muslim world and that this is to be fought. I think you're doing it completely wrong.
The idea that we have to bend over backwards too improve our reputation with the Muslims is ridiculous and, all to often, suicidal. It was Muslims that destroyed that World Trade Center, bombed our embassies in East Africa, and blew up trains in Spain and Britain, yet it is some how the Americans, British, and Europeans that are overly concerned with convincing the Muslims that we are nice people and not really interested in challenging Islam's expanding desire for religious and political hegemony. The various Islamic apologists, never satisfied with the various concessions of dhimmi politicians, will always demand that we improve our reputation even more by giving into more and more of their increasing demands.
Very nice Fitz, but it’s way more of a response mp11 deserved, as was evident in his response. Your common sense approach will only work on like minded people, or as you point out, people with the capacity to have it and the ability to express it outside of Dar al-Islam.
Mp11’s “The popularity or unpopularity of americans is not due to Koranic injunctions but rather due to foreign policy blunders, real or imagined. This is why Canadians do not report some of the problems SOME americans have reported.” Other than firing upon a Portuguese fishing boat by one of our Coast Guard vessels and the few fire fights in the former Yugoslavia, ops in Afghanistan has been our only (official) military muscle flexing since the Korean War. Assuming military infusion of personnel and hardware are the only policy blunders he alludes to; comparing Canada’s foreign policy approach to the US’ is apples and oranges. Canada’s influence on the foreign stage has been relatively a joke until Op Athena, mostly due to ineffective political leadership and rudderless defence ministers and white (wash) papers. Given time and a few well placed “events,” I’m certain, given the opportunity, at a cleric’s whim, Canada’s popularity can suffer just as much as the US, the Brits, the French or even the Joooos. Just point out that we’ve had to MSMs print the Motoons in the past, or that the Federal government has pulled funding from the CAF, or that the Harper Gov’t refuses to repatriate Kadr, or that we’ve let more than one muslim immigrant languish in third world countries because they’re not real Canadians after they’ve gotten in trouble or “lost” their passport. BUT, I give mp11 this, the US has really pissed a lot of people off, and not just the muslims, with their foreign policy decisions, but this doesn’t abrogate the convenience of the facts to hide the true reasons muslim consider all non-believers infidels.
I particular like:
“And of course there are differences among Muslims. No one who writes at JW thinks that every Muslim, every group of Muslims, has taken in the Qur'an and the Hadith in exactly the same way. Who would possibly think that of a billion people?”
And I would like to reverse it:
“And of course there are differences among Infidels. No one who writes at IW thinks that every Democracy, every political group in the West, has taken their secular and constitutional laws in exactly the same way. Who would possibly think that of a billion people?”
As the illiterate call to arms by clerics or the oft repeated deflection of responsibility for the poverty and atrocities inflicted on the faithful of Mo by blaming the West, or always conveniently, the Jews, reversing your wonderful little para is applicable in the muslim mind; and of course, a direct result of the totalitarian effect you have once again described.
But I get a sneaking suspicion your little para was meant to mock the closed mindset all along. Well done.
Hey MP11,
1. Historically the Afghans side with whomever gives them the most money.
2. An Afghan is loyal to his tribe unless he/she can sell them out to a higher bidder.
3. I agree with your assessment of aQ in Iraq and Taliban/aQ in Afghanistan in that it will always come back to 'allegiance', but money helps sway that. Both groups resent any outside influence beyond anything else. They are very xenophobic.
4. They may not eat, breathe and think islam, but they will automatically side with a fellow moslem before a kufr.
5. The invasion of Iraq was a U.N. mandated effort. Spread the hate around.
6. I don't see any evidence of moslems rejecting a particular brand of islam, I do see a lot of fence sitting in hopes that a winner becomes obvious so 'they' know who to side with.
7. It is far easier to find a person who views the U.S. in negative terms in that part of the World despite all the good that is done than it is to find a positive voice.
We need to stop being so concerned about winning over heats and minds and crush what is clearly an insidious poison for any democratic society.
"Note that I do not deny that there is a growing extremist tendency in the Muslim world and that this is to be fought. I think you're doing it completely wrong." Posted by: mp11 at August 31, 2009 10:11 AM
What's missing from mp11's analysis is the loud chorus of protest from Islamic groups around the world of AQ and their 'true Islam' tactics. Where are those voices of protest? Where are the anti-AQ riots? There aren't any. Instead the Muslim hordes riot and voice loud protests against the Americans, Israel, the West in general, especially Denmark, against their imagined Great Shaytan, against our acts of self-defense, etc.
This is the blunt irony of the Muslim world, and we do not have it "completely wrong" to focus on them and in what they in their twisted confused minds believe, their Koran, Hadiths, Suras and so on. Their minds had been stunted and to analyze apologetically what these stunted humans have turned out to be is unproductive, even deviously deceitful, as expected by these stunted minds. To focus on and understand the causes of extremism within their 'holy' texts True Islam is the first line of defense against these primitives. On then can we win their 'hearts and minds' when we understand them fully.
My knee-jerk reaction to the post's heading: Does any decent, sane individual really give a shit? Anyway such a bullshit statement deserves an answer and my gratitude goes to Hugh. It sure is tedious to have to continuously point out that there is a six foot 800 pound rabid gorilla standing in the middle of the room while he insists that he's only 5'2" and 150lbs.
mp11, once again, cannot relinquish the baseless victimization tactic he usually employs that somehow, by the writers at JW accurately pointing out that the words and actions of the jihadists are because of Islam and not in spite of it, are commiting a grievous error and smearing all Muslims.
Islam is the horse, not the cart, and the personal views of Muslims individually are irrelevant and ineffectual againt the Islamic ideology as a whole.
"1. Historically the Afghans side with whomever gives them the most money."
Fine, but that means that money trumps Islam, doesnt it?
"2. An Afghan is loyal to his tribe unless he/she can sell them out to a higher bidder."
Again, very little to do with Koranic injunctions and hatred of infidels...unless they pay you.
"3. I agree with your assessment of aQ in Iraq and Taliban/aQ in Afghanistan in that it will always come back to 'allegiance', but money helps sway that. Both groups resent any outside influence beyond anything else. They are very xenophobic."
Absolutely, and they seem to prefer Americans over AQ (not that thats hard to do)
"4. They may not eat, breathe and think islam, but they will automatically side with a fellow moslem before a kufr."
Unless you give them money apparently (not really based on the Koran and Hadith I would surmise) - In any case there are plenty of counter examples such as Iran siding with Armenia against Azerbaijan
"5. The invasion of Iraq was a U.N. mandated effort. Spread the hate around."
Dont think so, mate.
"6. I don't see any evidence of moslems rejecting a particular brand of islam, I do see a lot of fence sitting in hopes that a winner becomes obvious so 'they' know who to side with."
If Muslims didnt reject AQ they would be in government by now - without popular support they fail time and again.
"7. It is far easier to find a person who views the U.S. in negative terms in that part of the World despite all the good that is done than it is to find a positive voice."
This wasn't always the case, the Bush era did much do damage America's reputation but previous blunders (In South America for example) are also part of the reason. Having said that, America doesnt deserve the reputation it currently has.
"We need to stop being so concerned about winning over heats and minds and crush what is clearly an insidious poison for any democratic society."
Dont know what you mean here, mate.
"Given time and a few well placed “events,” I’m certain, given the opportunity, at a cleric’s whim, Canada’s popularity can suffer just as much as the US, the Brits, the French or even the Joooos."
Canada's in Kandahar fighting the Taliban everyday yet Canada's reputation has not taken a hit.
Thats because the war in Afghanistan is a legitimate war.
I think the first thing to do if we really want to win their minds, if not hearts, is to insist it is their turn to try to win OUR hearts and minds. The demand may make their mind register that from now on reciprocity is the most elementary requirement of our relations. Once that principle is agreed upon let's present them with the list of items they must do in order to win our hearts. If they don’t accept it the West should abandon all efforts of winning their hearts and minds and stop winning their stomachs. Let them eat cakes.
Nakal:
Obama may be an idiot, but that’s not the real problem. The real problem is that he was elected by the majority of the American people who literally begged to be screwed by an idiot. 2012 will show if the majority of Americans are bigger idiots than Obama.
Nakal: I understand your position perfectly and agree with all you are saying.
When I said “that’s not the real problem” I wanted to stress that it is the consequence of a greater and deeper problem – not that it is not a problem. Or to put it differently, if not for the idiocy of the American voter you would not have a problem with idiocy of Obama. In other words I am establishing the causal relation between the respective idiocies of Obama and the majority of the American voters.
That the former will for the next four, or God forbid eight, years affect the US much more damagingly than the latter goes without saying.
But perhaps the choice of words (“..that’s not the real problem”) was not very good.
PS.
Have you ever considered the possibility that he is not so much an idiot, as a madman chasing the vision of unified, multikulti, socialist world? Well, being an idiot wouldn’t be a real hindrance...
.., but I am not prepared to say ALL
who voted for him are malevolent, just merely stupid.
Neither am I (prepared to say so).
Thus, there is no causal relationship,
only anecdotal and inferrential...
Well, let's agree to disagree on that.
2012 will show if the majority of Americans are bigger idiots than Obama.
Posted by: Thomas_h
America doesn't have that long. We'll get our first indication this fall, when Congress comes back. Next chance for redemption is 2010 elections. Even if we don't achieve divided government, will Democrats and Speaker Pelosi (barf!) see the writing on the wall? We'll have a better idea next year. We can't wait until 2012 to find out. Too much can happen between now and then.
America's "reputation among Muslims" is something no American should ever again lose sleep over. Surely we have been shown over and over that nothing will change it. There is no reason to worry about something that won't change. It means there is no reason to give a rat's behind what Muslims think - about ANYTHING.
So why didn't these same Afghans (along with Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the UAE) reject this same Taliban so soundly back in 1996 when they first took power? Yet from 1996-2001, the Taliban had ideas and views all these folks bought into (and I doubt it was because the Taliban's economic policies were better than the Northern Alliance's).
Even so, if the Taliban had just minded their own business and just stuck to blowing up local museums and Buddhist statues instead of American skyscrapers, they'd probably still have their Buddha-less, extremist utopia today....all with the blessings of their Muslim allies Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and UAE. But for some reason, the reputation of pre-Gulf-War-2 America was soooo bad back then (even after the USA helped liberate Afghanistan from the Soviets and Kuwait from Saddam) that it somehow warranted taking their crusade out on the WTC and Pentagon on 9/11/2001....a bunch of buildings tens of thousands of miles away that shouldn't have mattered one iota in their bizarre quest to construct their private extremist paradise for their blind subjects.
yadayada,
The Taliban could have remained in power just by turning over UBL and his cohorts (or maybe by expelling them?). The Taliban wasn't blamed directly for the 9/11 attacks. By protecting Osama, they made themselves accessories. By standing in the way of our getting our hands on Osama, they made themselves a party to the war and it wasn't necessary. They made their own bed and so they had to lie in it.
Here's all you need to know about the supposed "secularism" of Saddam: Islamic history is replete with sensuous, power-hungry Sultans who seemed insouciant about the puritanical strictures of Islam, but who nevertheless were powerful agents, in one way or another, of the baseline supremacism of Islam.
That's all you need to know about Saddam. He was an Islamic Sultan in the 20th century who had certain habits and predilections that seemed "un-Islamic" to the illiterate observer.
5. The invasion of Iraq was a U.N. mandated effort. Spread the hate around."
Dont think so, mate. mp11
Well mate, I would suggest you do some more research because that's A FACT!
Hesperado - re Saddam Hussein as sultan - you're right. His whole personality profile is eerily similar to that of many, many rulers who have risen to the top either locally, regionally or imperially, in the Islamosphere, throughout its history - whether we consider a local warlord of the Ottoman period, in what is now northern Israel, who was nicknamed "The Butcher", or whether we look at the assorted beys and deys of the Barbary coast, or at the Mamluk dynasts, or Tamburlaine, or the Mahdi slavemaster/ warlord (see the film 'Khartoum'), or - I would hazard the guess - pretty nearly all of the Ottoman 'emperors' and the mogul 'emperors'. The scuttlebutt that seeps out, concerning the 'behind the palace walls' conduct of the members of the Abominable House of Saud, suggests that many of them, too, regularly indulge in behaviour that, if carried out by individuals within the western world, would in the past have warranted instant execution and would, today, lead to confinement in an asylum for the criminally insane.
Those who claw their way to the top in the Islamosphere were and are, for the most part, so wildly awful, so massively murderous, so pervertedly sadistic, so *bizarre*, as to make the worst tyrants the West could claim- e.g. Henry VIII - look sane and sensible by comparison. Even the worst of the non-Muslim east only occasionally - Mao, Kim il Sung, Pol Pot, some of the historic Chinese mad emperors - equal the sheer depths of monstrous evil routinely exhibited by rulers , great and small, within the Islamosphere.
Susanp:
Here is a reference for you on the U.N. Mandate:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_Resolution_1483
Could someone please tell me when non Muslims such as us EVER had a good reputation with Muslims anywhere at anytime in history? People who believe we can somehow win the hearts and minds of Muslims are in fantasyland.
“America's reputation has taken a hit following such stupidity as destroying a secular state (Iraq) which acted as a buffer against religious extremism.”
True! And we (in Israel)tried to warn against installing a Shiite regime in the formerly secular Iraq. Now we have an Iranian satellite asking for F-16's and citing a threat "from Israel and Turkey".
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090831/D9ADSOM00.html
Arming the Islamic hordes has been a terrible idea from the beginning.
There are only two great enemies in the Islamic world. Of course many believe that Moslem wrath will only be vented towards Israel....but that is ridiculous. Those who have been armed for a "Final Solution" to the Arab Israel problem, will certainly turn their weapons on their American benefactors.
PMK - good point.
The attack on an impotent Iraq after being attacked by the Saudis on 9-11-2001, is a cause for retrospection and analysis. When Saddam DID pose a threat, we [the Israelis] did the dirty work and were subjected to US sanctions for our effort. (See the excellent video]
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2295792449224502914
I am still waiting for an American response to the attacks of 9-11. If the Saudis plan, fund, and execute another attack on US soil, I imagine Obama will attack Guatemala.