What he said. Indeed, NATO's intervention in the Libyan revolution is the apotheosis of fantasy-based policy making, driven by the expectation of realizing a politically correct fairy tale narrative that must end "happily ever after" because someone has invoked "freedom." "We're cheering on a football crowd with AK-47s, who could be worse than Gaddafi," by Peter Hitchens for the Mail on Sunday, August 28:
The moment has come to admit that I loathe the Arab Spring and almost everything about it.
It looks to me pretty much like a football crowd armed with AK-47s and bazookas, with the added ingredient of Islamic militancy. Why am I expected to like it?
For we are all supposed to approve of it. Every media outlet, every politician, every church pulpit, treats it as an unmixed Good Thing.
Not me. I look at these wild characters in baseball caps and tracksuit bottoms blasting ammunition into the sky (often killing or injuring innocents far away, but they don’t care) and I am mainly thankful that they are a long way off.
Just because existing regimes are bad, it does not follow that their replacements will be any better. The world has known this since the French Revolution of 1789, when bliss and joy turned to mass murder and dictatorship in a matter of months.
The test of any revolution comes not as the tyrant falls, but two or three years later, when the new rulers have shown us what they are really like. Power can be given (not often) or taken, and shared out in different ways. But it never ceases to exist.
Egypt’s upheaval has already begun to go bad. Libya’s has been plastered with danger signs from the start. The anti-Gaddafi rebels are an incompetent and fractious mess. They have already murdered one of their own leaders.
And – I think it very wrong that this aspect is played down so much – their victory would never have happened without Nato providing them with an air force, as it did for the equally suspect Kosovo Liberation Army in the early days of Blair.
We have given them the military gifts of cool self-discipline, long training and competence which we ought to reserve for ourselves and for protecting our own freedom and independence. If they don’t possess them, I don’t think they deserve to rule a country.
The official pretext, that we are ‘intervening to protect civilians’, is lying hogwash and should be laughed at every time it is used. In the past few days – according to reliable reports – Libya’s rebels have been guilty of indiscriminate shooting into civilian areas and the brutal and arbitrary arrests of suspected opponents.
According to many reports, black Africans in Libya have been a particular target.
It is false to claim, as some instantly will, that by saying this I am defending Colonel Gaddafi. I am not. He is indefensible.
The questions are these: Will what follows be better? Will the burned, bandaged bodies, the crammed morgues and the hospital wards full of stench, screams and groans have been worthwhile? Were we right to take sides?...
....How strange that, more than half a century after the Suez bungle finished us as a Mediterranean power, British military force is now in action again in North Africa, bolstering a farcical yet sinister army in pick-up trucks whose aims we don’t even know.
It's not like anyone with basic knowledge of mahoundianism wouldn't have seen this coming the moment Ben Ali was ousted and fled Tunisia, isn't it? When that happened, my wife and I just shook out heads and talked about how Tunisian enforced-with-an-iron-fist secularism would almost inevitably give way to Mein-Qurampf-sanctioned, inshallah-based "government." And, to those who couldn't have seen it all, there has been no shortage of such warnings from JihadWatch or any other islamo-realist website since then to help with that.
Islamo-realist. Now theres a term I like. Mein Quarampf is also pretty good.
you are right proud kafir7928. The results of the arab spring are easy to predict for jihad watch readers. In fact when it comes to any islamic regime it is always easy to predict the outcome. It will always be bad. It will always be a bunch of tyranical religious fanatics imposing sharia at the point of a gun. You don't have to be a genius to figure that out. Even a passing glance at the history of the last 1400 years will tell you that. How so many stubbornly remain so willfully ignorant to this is mind boggling.
With each passing day Islam gets closer and closer to the final hour of the fofilment of Muhammad. We keep thinking some one or some thing will step forward and put a stop to this maddness.
But it wont happen. Because in general people can't grasp this ideology. Islam is encouraged by the free worlds kindness. They see that as a waekness.
So every time one of our U.S. legislators shows any kind of fixablity Islam moves closer to their final goal. Islam has told us "this is a war", and yet our legislators still don't get it. They still kind trying to appease Islam. Islam continues to see that appeasement as a weakness. And we all keep going closer and closer to the end of freedom as we know it.
THE MISSING LINK IN THE "ARABIC SPRING"
The so-called Arab Spring revolutions in such countries as Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, etc. have no philosophical or intellectual infrastructure or ground support.
In other words, no Arab intellectual in any of the rebelling countries has written anything resembling a Manifesto of what the rebelling populace wants.
Where is the Arabic Rousseau? Where is the Arabic Thomas Jefferson? Where? There will never be philosophical or intellectual infrastructure for democracy in the Islamic world. Not in a million years. Islam sits on the Arab world’s chest like a gorilla.
The epitome of the Islamic world’s Rousseau, and Jefferson is Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi. Abe Ahmenijad Lincoln is another. And the minds of the natives are overexcited by Facebook. I do believe that for the masses of people in the Arab world freedom and democracy are synonymous with Facebook. And as they say in the world of software engineering Garbage In Garbage Out. The Palestinians and the Palestinian Authority are in the same monkey cage.
Anything to appease the tyranny of islam .. Nato, Us, et al.
And day after day we see the beards in Libya grow longer and longer, the moustaches neatly trimmed, gaping mouths roaring "Allahu Akbar!".
Hitchens will be reviled for telling the truth.
All he has said is quite obvious for those of us in the anti-Jihad camp.
Our politicians have lied to their own people again.
One fine day there will be a reckoning.
Daniel Greenfield has a good take on this:
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2011/08/shawarma-republics-are-burning.html
The fact that so many "Arab Spring" uprisings occurred in so many Muslim countries at the same time leads one to think that Islam is incapable of providing quality leadership. As history shows Muslim leadership continually goes from bad to worse. Every time a new revolution in the Islamic world rises up it's army of pious Muslims carry the Qur'an and vow to install Islam and Shar'ia law. It's the same Qur'an and Shar'ia the previous leaders carry. Maybe they are only concerned about is the level of enforcement of the Qur'an and Shar'ia law, maybe they want to be better than Saudia Arabia. What they end up with is something akin to Somalia where the rule of the land is held by those who have the most guns mounted on pickup trucks and who are willing to kill at will. Maybe the reason "Arab Spring" struck so many Islamic Countries at the same time is because they are all the same...bloodthirsty and insane. A couple things are for sure when Islamic revolutions are successful...the body count rises and civilization declines. It's already happening and dust hasn't settled.
This article is an affirmation to my points of view as well as my concerns. I see this so-called Arab Spring as nothing more than it is, militant Islam is on the march globally.
Say what you will about Bush, but he was instrumental in keeping the US safer for his term. What I disareed with and told everyone, was, ""You cannot give someone or a people Freedom".
Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
QUOTATION: The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.
We all seen those Libaians that felt free from the nutcase Gaddafi, but they have not any idea of the freedoms that a democracy or a republic has on its' people. Islam and Sharia rules and chains their mind and true freedom will remain elusive to them. Islam is indeed their tyrant. What's next is something that will not surprise us here at all. I wonder if NATO discussed the proposal to use military force to help the rebels overthrow Gaddafi with Israel? At this time I haven't researched this question, but can only surmise they didn't. Why did the big O not go through the process as written in our Constitution and take it to the Congress for approval? I am appalled at having put our Us military lives on the line and having US citizens pay for more insanity that will be the Libyan end result. What was the president thinking? Four more years of the big O, I'll get my papers and move to Israel.
There are two vote of thanks here:
1. Thank you Robert Spencer for bringing Mr. Hitchen's article to our attention.
2. Thank you Mr. Hitchens for writing in detail what many of us suspected but did not have the resources to plumb and verify. Your article is a pleasure to read as always.
I am constantly amazed by the type of company the leftists keep. It is as if they have a death wish. You think for a moment that wherever islam comes to power, any of these people will be safe? On the contrary, they will be hounded out of existence - literally. There is a precedence in Indonesia. Plus there is ample evidence in all the countries where islam sharia is the law. Islam has a 1200 year history of violent overthrow of ruling governments. It does not matter if they are dictatorships or democracies. Pakistan is the current example where political assassinations are the rule. Watch for crumbling states and new succession of murdered oil rich sheiks on the heels of the current Arab Spring. Sit back and enjoy the spectacle. I sincerely hope that muslims keep this fight amongst themselves and lose any military lessons that were taught by the West; this will keep us safer although no one is safe from islam.
"whose aims we don’t even know." Spot on Peter. Very strange isn't it?
"You think for a moment that wherever islam comes to power, any of these people will be safe? On the contrary, they will be hounded out of existence - literally."
Not so sure. Simpering cowards have their uses; they can be used as tools in all manner of ways, especially if trained in tasks too wearisome for Our New Masters to perform.
Should the worst happen, all those pious, self-proclaimed "pacifists" will no doubt enjoy being fawning slaves, if they are given a few favours and are still allowed to drink a bit of red wine.
Well, Peter Hitchens, I've not heard the Arab Spring lauded from any Church pulpit. I guess where I worshipped, the preachers were too busy talking about the work of the Holy Spirit or expounding the letter to the Ephesians.
Also, there are two defensible things about Qaddafi: (1) he gave up his nu-kule-ar weapons program after Ba'athist Iraq collapsed and (2) he looks as if he might be the natural son of either Chico or Harpo Marx (anyone else here old enough to know who those guys were?).
Where is the Arabic Rousseau?
Rousseau, the biggest fool in all of philosophy, wrote the blueprints for modern totalitarianism. Here he is in The Social Contract.
In order then that the social compact may not be an empty formula, it tacitly includes the undertaking, which alone can give force to the rest, that whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so by the whole body. This means nothing less than that he will be forced to be free; for this is the condition which, by giving each citizen to his country, secures him against all personal dependence. In this lies the key to the working of the political machine; this alone legitimises civil undertakings, which, without it, would be absurd, tyrannical, and liable to the most frightful abuses.
Of course, Rousseau did not define the general will very carefully. Perhaps he was trying to be clever in making his reference to the rule of law oblique. If he had not meant to create totalitarian ideas, he failed. Later, Jean-Paul Sartre would add that "man is condemned to be free," and then went on to endorse the Communist Party.
I suppose there is no irony in that.
Muhammad had a similar idea centuries before. Whosoever would not become a Muslim, must be compelled to become one. If he is a person of the book, a Christian or a Jew, he is allowed one of the "three choices," convert, pay the jizya, or die. If he is a polytheist or an atheist, then he simply must convert or die. Islam is so stunningly simple isn't it?
Voltaire is famous for saying that after he read Rousseau, "he felt like crawling around on all fours." The Muslims have been crawling around on all fours five times a day for fourteen-hundred years - but they aren't joking.
Peter Hitchens on Arab Spring: "It looks to me pretty much like a football crowd armed with AK-47s and bazookas, with the added ingredient of Islamic militancy. Why am I expected to like it?"
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"Why am I expected to like it?" Why indeed? *Thank you*, Peter Hitchens.
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Indeed, NATO's intervention in the Libyan revolution is the apotheosis of fantasy-based policy making, driven by the expectation of realizing a politically correct fairy tale narrative that must end "happily ever after" because someone has invoked "freedom."
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Very true.
Just because existing regimes are bad, it does not follow that their replacements will be any better. The world has known this since the French Revolution of 1789, when bliss and joy turned to mass murder and dictatorship in a matter of months.
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Excellent example. Many of the American Founding Fathers uncritically supported the French Revolution at first—John Adams was one of the few who had serious reservations from the beginning.
Thomas Paine—he of "Common Sense"—was so thrilled by the prospect of the revolution that he immediately set sail for France to lend his assistance. For his troubles he was arrested and almost executed. It was only a ham-fisted mistake by his jailer that led to his being spared. Finally his friends in America were able to secure his release, but it was a close thing.
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The test of any revolution comes not as the tyrant falls, but two or three years later, when the new rulers have shown us what they are really like.
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**Yes**.
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Egypt’s upheaval has already begun to go bad. Libya’s has been plastered with danger signs from the start. The anti-Gaddafi rebels are an incompetent and fractious mess. They have already murdered one of their own leaders.
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Support for the Libyan uprising seems especially "fantasy based". While a relatively sane but not very well-informed person might get exited over Egypt's "Facebook Revolution" and believe it to have been a genuinely democratic movement, the situation in Libya has been ugly and very bloody from the very beginning—with many of the rebels known Jihadists.
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And – I think it very wrong that this aspect is played down so much – their victory would never have happened without Nato providing them with an air force, as it did for the equally suspect Kosovo Liberation Army in the early days of Blair.
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Yes. The road to Hell—at least the Shari'ah state version of it—is paved with good intentions.
Spring shmring! Unfortunately some of the enlightened young men and women in the Arab world still suffer from the same Jihadist delusion regarding Jews, Christians and "infidels". At the end they will blame the failures of the Jasmin Revolution on the Jews and America, as usual, rather then taking a deep look at themselves and their hate-filled religion. Internet had only helped develop better propaganda techniques for spreading their delusionalo nJew-hatred, which has nothing to do what Israel does or does not do.