| FrontPageMag.com | By Robert Spencer | By Hugh Fitzgerald | Books | Dhimmi Watch | Islam 101 | Qur'an Blog | Raymond Ibrahim | Robert Spencer |  |
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The President is speaking about Iraq, and Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald has some initial impressions:
I have been watching someone on television positively hallucinating about "winning" some "war on terror" by sticking it out in a country called "Iraq" where there are citizens who think of themselves as "Iraqis" and who are eager to put into place what sounds amazingly like the American Bill of Rights, after decades of enduring terrible misrule at the hands of some strange regime apparently totally unconnected to the behavior of the gentle Iraqis themselves -- possibly these mis-rulers arrived from outer space.I didn't catch mention, in this "important address to the nation," of the words "Islam" or "jihad" or anything except some reference to the "murderous ideology" of "the terrorists."
So I suppose Europe has nothing to worry about, just as long as it goes quietly, step by step, and islamizes the way a frog is cooked -- by slowly turning up the heat, by indiscernable degrees.
I feel secure now in the knowledge that my leaders have understood the threat, and are not relying merely on brute force, and have decided to take their stand in Iraq, and after the military phase, to pour American aid in so as to create that Light-Unto-the-Muslim-Nations which is already having such major effects, we were told, because "elections have been held in Lebanon [where the Christians may lose their confessional arrangement, and the new head of Lebanon is an outspoken admirer of Saudi Arabia], in the "Palestinian territories" [yes, and what a success that has turned out to be, with the performance of Hamas, not to mention the corruption and meretriciousness of Mr. Abbas, the phony leader of a made-up people, who waits while Sharon helpfully writes out his own Treaty of Al-Hudaibiyya, and presents it with a little wink -- please do not break until at least 6 months go by], and in "Saudi Arabia" [this must be a reference to the municipal election where the most fundamentalist of the usual fanatics swept the board -- well done, democratic experiment in Saudi Arabia!].
Unmentioned went, for some reason, the election in Iran, where a former Teheran mayor, a tireless pothole-fixer, was elected, and will show the world that in his version of Light-Unto-the-Muslim-Nations pothole-fixing and fanatical Islam can exist in the same mind of the same maximum leader of the same totalitarian regime. This is something the smug speaker gave no signs of comprehending.
Posted by Robert at June 28, 2005 8:42 PM
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Bill writes "What do you expect from a moderate president???"
LOL. You spelled "moron" wrong.
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at June 28, 2005 9:01 PM
The president's speech is a reflection of the views of the median voter, a point on which I agree with JW poster Hulagu. The White House speech writing apparatus will begin talking about the Islamic ideology directly when the polls show that the median voter connects the dots between the violence of jihad conquest in our time and the 13 centuries of the same that was faced by our ancestors. Until that time, we need a solution that will at least confine the violence to the region from which it is promulgated. For that reason I continue to support the Bush honeypot doctrine.
Posted by: DrMack at June 28, 2005 9:16 PM
Defining Islam as a "murderous ideology" is the only way to get certain Americans to quit yapping about freedom of religion. That First-Amendment right is what prevents many people from seeing that mosques are hotbeds of activism--which recent arrests prove (only scratching the surface, however).
While I would love to see GWB and others "call a spade, a spade," the vast majority of Americans won't hear the truth until they "connect the dots," as DrMack points out. What it will take for the median voter to connect the dots is the unthinkable--a nuclear attack here in the United States.
For now, I'll settle for the label "murderous ideology." And, of course, Bill in Virginia is correct: that murderous ideology is ISLAM.
At least GWB didn't talk about the jihadists' needing diplomatic meetings.
Posted by: WatchfulEye at June 28, 2005 9:37 PM
I posted this to Hugh in the wrong comment section..I think it belongs here where we are talking about Iran..I think you are all wronge for attacking the poor Iranians who only want peace
Hugh,
I dont what you are talking about with Iran. My wife and i just returned from our honeymoon in Iran. We spent alot of time in the resort town of Teheran. I admit it was a little different there, probably just culture shock. The people there were so friendly, I mean everywhere we went people went out of there way to yell "Kafir!" at us..I think it means Hello. They were so worried about us that they wouldnt even let us go out in the rain...they must have been worried we would get wet and have a bad day. When we arrived they pinned the star of David on us...I guess to show everyone that we were guests and to make sure to say hello. One thing that bothered us was the constant demand for tips for doing nothing..they call it Jizya or something, but I guess that is how a 5 star resort town is.
Mullah World was quite fun also..its like American Disney world but a little more toned down. We stood for hours on the Martyrdom line..not sure what the ride was but there were alot of fireworks towards the front where I couldnt see. They had these fun races where people pretended opposite sides of their limbs were cut off and ran from machete weilding men...it looked so real. Pin the tail on the donkey was not for us because instead of a blindfold they just cut your eyes out...must be a culture thing. They constantly kept putting a veil on my wife...I guess because of sunburn..they really worry about us. All in all it was a good trip and I look foward to going again...maybe I will see you there.
Posted by: pocadon at June 28, 2005 9:37 PM
Bill, wouldn't Afghanistan have been a good enough platform from which to attack the Iranian nuclear facilities?
Posted by: Doctor Phibes at June 28, 2005 9:40 PM
Pocadon, this looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
When your Marine brother returns, perhaps the two of you can collaborate on a book of stories based on his experiences, and those of his unit, in that Sunni isosceles triangle, in the vilest of the three vilayets. "Iraq Unvarnished," or possibly a Guntheresque "Inside Iraq" or even "What It's Really Like" [no need to specify what "It's" refers to] or another title that the two of you can come up with.
I'll buy it. I'll eagerly review it.
Posted by: Hugh at June 28, 2005 9:48 PM
Good piece, Hugh. I wasted 30 minutes of my time watching the same speech tonight. This guy just doesn't get it. Or, he gets it and doesn't want anyone to know it.
What a waste of time this address was tonight. Perhaps he should've used the time to out his Saudi friends for sending foreign fighters into Iraq. I didn't hold my breath waiting for that to happen, and I'm glad I didn't.
Posted by: DCWatson at June 28, 2005 10:00 PM
Doctor Phibes:
"Bill, wouldn't Afghanistan have been a good enough platform from which to attack the Iranian nuclear facilities?"
Who said it is not? As for Dr Mack's honeypot thesis, note that he suggests that Iraq was the intended location for the main event all along. The reasoning goes that the Americans were smart enough not to repeat the Russian adventure in Afghanistan in the 1980's.
Posted by: Hulegu Khan at June 28, 2005 10:06 PM
Air strikes from Afghanistan? What kind of air infrastructure does Afghanistan have to support an air war? Not strikes but air war which I assume the Iranians would conclude they were in. What about Pakistan? They have nukes..would they get involved next door? Pakistan is not borderline crazy, they are certifiable. Would it be better to be west and not east in the midst of the least militarily incompetent of the muslims? Frankly, I don't care from which direction we go as long as Iran is the destination.
Posted by: pismopal at June 28, 2005 10:12 PM
How do we slay the monster without offending it? That seems to be the question.
Posted by: Beagle at June 28, 2005 10:14 PM
Unfortunately, because of the liberal ACLU and political correctness, the President isn't able to publicly call a spade a spade. But rest assured, as a born again Christian, he is fully aware of the evil we are dealing with today in Islam and how the decendants of Ishmael, the Muslims, will bring about the Armageddon. 9/11 was the wake up call from God. I do believe my fellow Americans are fully aware of this evil as well, so don't doubt them. Most everyone I know, except my democratic friends would like to see the entire middle east turned into a giant sand dune. We detest Islam and all it represents. If there is another attack here, I'm sure there will be a lot of dead muslims afterwards, because we won't tolerate it again. People will take action into their own hands. Frankly, I feel they should all be deported. I believe the only way to deal with them is for all western leaders to take a stand together to publicly shame the muslims for their evil, destructive teachings. Something is up though because CNN announced over the weekend that Prince Bandar was resigning as the Saudi Ambassador.
Posted by: Bonniea at June 28, 2005 10:32 PM
“Which ever way the LEFT wants to go, I avoid it”.
--- from a posting above
That is not exactly the way to arrive at the best possible policy. In 1941, the Communists of Soviet Russia wanted to defeat Adolf Hitler. Yet for some strange reason, so did we in capitalist America -- and we were right to do so.
Perhaps you think that "leaving Iraq" for the reasons, and in the manner, and accompanied by the kinds of other actions I think could be taken nearly simultaneously to insure that no one mistakes this for a retreat, but that Muslims understand it, with great alarm, as the beginning of an entirely new era in attempting to contain Islam, and to create, by having less to do with them, the conditions in which they themselves, no longer rescued by Infidel aid of any kind, not money, not weapons,not ready access to Western educational training in schools, or Western technology, will have to come to terms with the political, economic, social, and intellectual failures of Islam.
That is not what Moveon.org has in mind at all. And if what I suggested were to be undertaken, there would immediately be the shrillest of cries from that "Left" you posit, insisting -- quite inconsistently given their previous demands -- that no, we "have" to stay in Iraq, "we broke it and we have to fix it"(Friedman's nonsense), or "we have to make Iraq whole and that will require a few hundred billion dollars" that "we owe them." Nonsense, of course -- but wouldn't be fun to see the alarm and hysteria from all the worst and most malevolent haters of the West once they realized what the government was up to, and that from now on out Islam, or "the Jihadis" (nudge nudge wink wink) were the enemy that, for far into the future, would have to be contained.
And just how would the traditional "left" deal with the fact that a most important part of the whole business is to diminish Muslim oil revenues, and to force the rich Arabs to take the place of Infidels in showing that intra-Arab solidarity that is mostly a question of sharing a desire to wipe out Israel, and push back the Infidels, but not at truly helping one antoher (do the princes of the Al-Saud family care about anyone else in Saudi Arabia? Of course not. Nor do any Arab leaders. Nor does any group of Arabs wish to help other Arabs or Muslims, save in encouraging the terrorism of this or that group).
No, let's do it. Let's seem to be taking up the cry of Vanessa Redgrave, and George Soros, and all the rest -- but they will realize, soon enough, that we are now engaged in something which, from the point of view of appeasers and those who identify with the enemies of America and the West, is not to be welcomed.
Moveon.org wants American soldiersto leave Iraq in order to cease disturbing Muslim sensibilities -- to appease, in other words.
Quite a different set of reasons has been offered here for such an action. Those reasons are based on an understanding that the ideology of Islam is a menace to non-Muslims world-wide, not merely to America or Israel, not merely to the countries and peoples of the West, but to all non-Muslims. A long history of conquest and subjugation of non-Muslims offers evidence for this.
Confusion reigns, because the government has failed not only to correctly identify the threat, but failed even to hint properly at the threat, the menace, not of "Wahhabis" and "extremist" Muslims, but of orthodox, mainstream Islam.
The hallucinator on television not only failed to mention the word "Jihad" (which he could have, feigning ignorance of its centrality in Islam, pretending that it was a doctrine that only "extremists" believed in when, of course, it is part of perfectly orthodox, mainstream Islam), but also failed to hint at such problems as the islamization of Europe. He appears not to have considered the possiblity that "democracy" has no connection to weakening Islam, and that our task shouldbe correctly defined not as that of spreading democracy (which guarantees nothing, and in Lebanon, would end the confessional arrangement that helps ensure Christian representation, and in such places as Saudi Arabia make for a regime that might even be worse -- it is hard to imagine what could be worse, of course -- than the present kleptocracy.
Nothing about Da'wa (the Call to Islam), nothing about demographic conquest.
But he could have signalled it. He could have noted the "many instruments, by no means limited to terror, by which the forces that do not wish our civilization and our political and social arrangments well" and are bent on world-domination, as their ideology (okay, don't use the word "Islam" just yet) of Jihad requires of them.
It was a wasted moment, and a telling one.
There is a hysteical faction that keeps confusing opposition to a silly and self-defeating policy with treason, or that wants to Stand By Its Man whatever it costs, whatever it takes. But why? American forces must get out of Iraq in a year, at the latest. And for one good reason, that politicians in the Republican Party can understand. If another year or two of casualties are endured, if in another year or two we have spent another $100-$150 billion on this folly instead of applying it to energy projects (did you see what small amounts are in the just-passed-in-the-Senate energy bill, as compared to the vast sums being squandered to make awful Iraqis who hate us (ask pocodan's brother) just as soon as they are old enough to be taught to hate us as Infidels, but some are willing to string us along to get whatever else they can out of us (Jaafari's "Marshall Plan" for Iraq), then any Moveon.org Democrat will win in 2008. Hilary Clinton, for example. And the "war against terrorism" will never metamorpohose into the war "against the Jihad" that it should long ago, on all fronts, in all ways, with a thousand methods and schemes and ways to divide, demoralize, disrupt, and diminish the revenues of, the enemy.
They are obstinately locked into a course that is based on deep ignorance of Islam, and of how it affects the habits of mind, the attitudes, the political and economic and social and intellectual aspects of life, in Islam-suffused Muslim lands.
They need to think again. They need to consider, that a democracy, even if it were less primitivge than the one that Iraq may have (but in the elections, people marched off to vote, if they were Shia, for whomever Sistani and Co. had instructed them to vote; if they were Sunni, they largely stayed away; if they were Kurds, they not only voted for Kurdish candidates, but also voted in a Kurds-only referendum the same day, 98% in favor of an independnet Kurdistan (according to Peter Galbraith, who works closely with the Kurds). Calling these elections "Iraqi" elections in which people voted as "Iraqis" is a travesty.
I don't mind seeming to suggest the same thing as Moveon.org in this case, for one good reason -- what I am actualy suggesting arises from completely different motives, and will if done properly lead to completely different results, from those Moveon.org, and George Soros,and a great many others hope will be the natural outcome.
A perfect opportunity presents itself to the American government: it can do what the public wants. It can do what it wants, but in so doing, can also change a host of things, including the way it talks about the threat, and the way it focusses attention on the situation in Europe, and on the "targetted campaigns of ideological penetration among our most disadvantaged and vulnerable" (read: prisoners, the poor, immigrants, the psychically marginal -- all of them targetted by Muslims bent on Da'wa).
Who can object to wanting to protect "our most disadvantaged and vulnerable" from the wiles of those conducting "targetted campaigns of ideological penetration."
And who can object to the government insisting that our energy policies must be put on a quasi-war footing, in order to defeat the "ideology of Jihad" (everyone will understand what is meant, and we are still creeping asymptotically closer to the truth every time we use the word "Jihad"). Osama bin Laden has spoken on tape about the economic damage that he believed the Iraq entanglement was causing to the United States. Well, he was right. So let's stop the squandering, and the drain on resources, and apply what is being spent in Iraq to bring "democracy" (good god) to something else, the deliberate diminishing of OPEC revenues without which Saudi Arabia and its fellows could not possibly fund mosques, madrasas, propaganda, armies of Western hirelings, and arms purchases -- the idea of Jihad would remain, the ability to conduct Jihad shrivel or perhaps even disappear.
Posted by: Hugh at June 28, 2005 10:33 PM
Hey guys. This may be my first time posting, I believe.
I think this site is at the very forefront in understanding what we are really dealing with. While, like others, I would appreciate the President "calling a spade, a spade", I understand why it isn't so, just yet.
I mean, think about it, in WWII, it took us 5 or more years to come to the fact that we need to get involved, much less really understand why. Even after Pearl Harbor, some people still hesitated. This time around, we have had strategic action within one presidency..we're gettin quicker. GWB is dealing with a media framework that still thinks it's in the Vietnam war, much less even understanding what we are dealing with..and most American's just see what comes out of that mindset.
I thank Jihad Watch for all it does to spread the word of what's really going on. Keep it up. It may not be up to the government to say what we're up against..it's really up to us to understand.
Posted by: peterdj at June 28, 2005 10:52 PM
Blahh, blahh, blahhh, blahhh, blahh...
Hugh, the suggestion that we should pull out of Iraq, regardless of how you "word-finesse" it, is pusillanimous, misguided and a gross miscalculation of islam.
-MZ
Posted by: Madzionist at June 28, 2005 11:08 PM
Troops aren't going to leave Iraq next year unless the President thinks Iraqi forces have been built up enough to defend the country. The Republicans aren't going to loose in 2008 either, not because of Iraq. The Republican party and Karl Rove are already positioning the Democrats as the party of appeasement, "cut and run", moveon.org, amnesty international and detainee rights.Pat Leahy was even described as a "leading advocate of detainee rights". Dems backed off on Gitmo after polls showed the American people didn't give a crap about scumbag detainees.Just wait until the ads appear next year with Dick Durbin comparing American soldiers to Nazis. Durbin is so tainted he can't even appear with Congressional candidates next year.
at June 28, 2005 11:09 PM
Four years should have been sufficient to build better airbases in Afghanistan than anything Saddam had. But in any case, I predict that Bush will never change the language he uses to refer to this conflict. It will stay as the 'War on Terror' for the remainder of his term, and he will never explicitly make the connection between the actions of jihadis all over the world, and the core tenets of islam.
Posted by: Doctor Phibes at June 28, 2005 11:10 PM
Oh..not that it's directly related, one BIG "connect the dot" is this. It's not hatred that they do this, they are doing what they think their god says to do. It's fullfillment/following orders, not hatred. That's a hard pill for most Americans to swallow.
An Islam father starts to shoot his son when he finds out he is a Christian..it's not because he now hates his son, it's because he's doing what he thinks he must to follow "Allah"
Posted by: peterdj at June 28, 2005 11:25 PM
You're all wasting your collective breath. The only way that Americans as a people have historically woken up to the dangers on a scale as we all know we are truly facing right now and in the near future is by means of violent shaking.
Islamic Terrorism again on U.S. soil will light the fuse. Then words like Islam, Muslim, Al Qaeda, OPEC -- they'll be angrily uttered by Americans like we once spoke of Communists, Nazis and Barbary Pirates.
Posted by: Foehammer at June 28, 2005 11:29 PM
"In 1941, the Communists of Soviet Russia wanted to defeat Adolf Hitler. Yet for some strange reason, so did we in capitalist America -- and we were right to do so."
Actually, Stalin and Hitler were rivals more than ideological opposites. Hitler's Party was the National Socialists. They had much more in common with the Soviets than they had differences.
Hitler was essentially an aryan supremist communist.
-MZ
Posted by: Madzionist at June 28, 2005 11:46 PM
"Hugh, the suggestion that we should pull out of Iraq, regardless of how you "word-finesse" it, is pusillanimous, misguided and a gross miscalculation of islam."
--- from a posting above
Well, "Madzionist," quite by chance, I stopped last week at a residential moving-sale. The family that was moving turned out to be that of a commander in the Israeli Air Force. I brought the conversation around from desks and bookcases to Islam.
And then we got onto the subject of Iraq. It might surprise you, self-described "Madzionist," to learn that this Israeli pilot, one of the elite, had strong opinions about Iraq. And you know what those opinions were? He agreed with me completely, was relieved to hear what I had to say, and said he was terribly worried that staying in Iraq would drain American resources, lead nowhere, made no geopolitical sense, and he further agreed that it originated in what you accuse me of, which is to say, "a gross miscalculation of Islam."
Why do I bother to tell you this? Because, though you will not give my aruments the time of day, perhaps if you hear that an Israeli top gun agrees completely, then you, in America, stoutly "not giving an INCH" (as you announce urbi et orbi on your website) -- might reconsider your own objections, that are not argued, but merely stated, and loudly.
Or not.
Posted by: Hugh at June 28, 2005 11:55 PM
W cannot inspire because he can't talk. He simply mouths words written by someone else. His mind is a disjoint, cluttered attic.
When W intones, "... your'e either with us, or with the terrorists ...", we know that his delegates are simultaneously negotiating with terrorists in Iraq and pressuring Israel to do the same with Abu Abbas. And, we know the borders are wide open.
Meanwhile, W is surrounded by sycophants telling him that he is the light of the world - yet, they haven't the courage to tell him how 'nucyuler' is pronounced by high school graduates.
W is the weak-kneed President who hadn't the stomach to drop the hammer on Fallujah or the Mahdi army. He only needed to give the word. The word wasn't in him.
Excuse me. While I hurl ...
Posted by: Havoc at June 29, 2005 12:02 AM
Just stop beating around the Bush! Bush is not a smart man. I don't even think he has ever heard of any of the following words - taquiyya, kafir, dhimmitude, jizya.
I find the ignorance of this administration disturbing.
Bush just served another cold plate of leftover lines from his previous 'iraq is worth the sacrifice' speeches.
I deeply respect our military, but I have little respect for this administration. The more I read about Rice's activities, the more I think she is an idiot.
Posted by: reset at June 29, 2005 12:14 AM
Eve writes "Defining Islam as a "murderous ideology" is the only way to get certain Americans to quit yapping about freedom of religion. That First-Amendment right is what prevents many people from seeing that mosques are hotbeds of activism--which recent arrests prove (only scratching the surface, however). "
Umm no. It has nothing to do with the first ammendment. It has everything to do with ignorance.
Posted by: Crusher at June 29, 2005 12:16 AM
Pismo writes "Air strikes from Afghanistan? What kind of air infrastructure does Afghanistan have to support an air war? Not strikes but air war which I assume the Iranians would conclude they were in. What about Pakistan? They have nukes..would they get involved next door? Pakistan is not borderline crazy, they are certifiable. Would it be better to be west and not east in the midst of the least militarily incompetent of the muslims? Frankly, I don't care from which direction we go as long as Iran is the destination."
Well Pismo, it seems you finally figure out that Afghanistan borders Iraq.
Sufficient tactical air support infrastructure in Afghanistan could easily have been built with the 9billion squandered down a rat hole by Bremer.
Posted by: Crusher at June 29, 2005 12:19 AM
Now, now, Hugh. Don't get emotional just because you can't convert everybody to your views.
If Israelis are so anti Iraq war, it seems odd that Bush was the overwhelming favorite amoung Israelis in the polls of the last election. If they really do think the war in Iraq is wrong, and should be abandoned immediately, that sure is a funny way to show it.
Now, if you've been reading my posts you know that I agree Iraq is flawed, however, it is flawed because we aren't hitting hard enough or stating the real enemy, ISLAM, clearly enough.
Also, you know very well, Hugh, that I have outlined my opinions extensively about what needs to be done with islam and why, so don't give the false accustion that I merely scream out objections without ideas. You know better than that.
Perhaps it really bothers you that, even though we both agree Islam is the enemy, my views on what is the answer to the islamic enemy is the polar opposite of yours, and you can't stand it.
Another thing, Hugh. Let's take the Gaza Expulsion plan in Israel. Now, you may run into some "guy" from the IDF while taking out your garbage tonight who tells you it is the smart thing to do for Israel, but if you calculate such a story will change my point of view, well, you are miscalculating as badly as you did thinking this air force commander story would change my opinion of Iraq, or, for that matter, as badly as you are miscalculating the "isolation/sanctions"
approach would succeed in defeating the islamic menace.
-MZ
Posted by: Madzionist at June 29, 2005 12:28 AM
"This is something the smug speaker gave no signs of comprehending" -- hugh fitzgerald
hugh,
oh i see, bush is stupid and arrogant. right out of the left-wing playbook from the LAST election. that oughta work!
robert,
when you let irrational bush-haters like hugh drag the discourse on this site into the gutter, aren't you worried that it will negatively reflect on what JW is trying to accomplish?
also, i might note this is the second time in as many days that hugh's ethics have been called into question, for example re: selectively quoting his adversary to gain an unfair advantage, a favorite tactic of wanna-be blog-stars.
please fix the problem, thanks.
Posted by: fishboy at June 29, 2005 1:03 AM
Hugh wrote:
"Confusion reigns, because the government has failed not only to correctly identify the threat, but failed even to hint properly at the threat, the menace, not of "Wahhabis" and "extremist" Muslims, but of orthodox, mainstream Islam."
Hugh, how do you respond to those who say "we don't want to unite a billion people against us by naming the enemy as Islam".
Posted by: Zeno at June 29, 2005 1:12 AM
fishboy, the point of this website is not to offer support to the President, or to anyone else. It is to analyse the threat posed by islam, and to try and work out the best response to that threat. President Bush will be gone in four years, but islam will remain. Is refusing to name the problem the best way forward? I think it isn't, but maybe I'm wrong. Either way, a single post by Hugh contains more information about islam, and more ideas about how we might deal with it, than all of the President's speeches put together.
Posted by: Doctor Phibes at June 29, 2005 1:31 AM
Zeno
The truth is never an easy thing to deal with but I myself would rather speak out about the true problem than hide under my covers and pretend the monster isnt there. It might kill me, it might run but at least it knew I wasnt scared of him.
Posted by: pocadon at June 29, 2005 1:37 AM
Hugh, how do you respond to those who say "we don't want to unite a billion people against us by naming the enemy as Islam".I'm quite sure Hugh can come up with a sparkling answer, but I'll give it a shot.
The enemy is not every person who claims to be a Muslim. The enemy is a fairly literal reading of the Koran, Hadith, and Sira. The goal is not to name Muslims the enemy, but to acknowledge Islamic teachings are part of the problem. The closest GWB comes is discussing an "ideology". How can we back so-called "moderate Muslims" when we don't acknowledge the uphill struggle they have against accepted Islamic teachings?
Most active jihadis already claim we're fighting a war against Islam. Their recruiting message is centered on this 'fact' already. Depending on the change in rhetoric, a major sea change is probably not forthcoming.
No amount of support - whether humanitarian, military, or development - changes the equation. Islamic leaders claim our motives are impure, we are impure, or those who take our aid are impure. The Islamic "brain" trust has already concluded we are Crusaders and infidels. Only by changing the ulema will this type of indoctrination change. Nothing we say or do will change the message so long as the same people control the minds of the ummah.
Reverse the argument:
Why hasn't the West "united" even though jihadis have made it clear their goal is total domination of the world under sharia law. This sudden unification of a billion people all trying to kill us, based on a change in rhetoric most of them would not notice, seems speculative at best.
Posted by: Beagle at June 29, 2005 1:57 AM
MZ writes "Another thing, Hugh. Let's take the Gaza Expulsion plan in Israel. Now, you may run into some "guy" from the IDF while taking out your garbage tonight who tells you it is the smart thing to do for Israel, but if you calculate such a story will change my point of view, well, you are miscalculating as badly as you did thinking this air force commander story would change my opinion of Iraq, or, for that matter, as badly as you are miscalculating the "isolation/sanctions"
approach would succeed in defeating the islamic menace."
Containment defeated the Soviet Union and the commie menance.
Indeed, MZ, obviously has a lot more military experience then Sharon, one of, if not Israel's most decorated military men and a veteran of 4 wars.
In actuality MZ, your mouth runneth over. Simple fact,is, what worries the IDF, wasn't Saddam, not since the last gulf war. What worries the IDF the most is Iranian ShehabIII missles. And if you actually read any journals instead of your comic books, you might know that.
Its a good thing the IDF officer corps isn't filled with the likes of you. You can't differentiate between actual military threats, strategic or tactical from fantasy.
If you wish to beat your chest and think your clever cuz you can diss the IDF military planners and Sharon, I got news for you.
You're Borrrrrriiiinnnggg.
Iraq no matter how it turns out, was a strategic mistake. And if we let Iran becomes a nuclear power a colossal one indeed.
at June 29, 2005 6:19 AM
I'm sure I ain't the only conservative around who's disappointed with the President's speech. It could've been way better.
Dubya's big problem is that he really is a nice guy and what compounds the problem is he's usually naive about the character of 'others'.
There's abuse happening at Gitmo - of honorable uniformed US military personnel who're forced to endure leftist tantrums and trials based on rumour and slander.
With the media hounding Bush's war as it is, I wonder if it wouldn't be easier for a Dem prez (Hillary?) to take the war to islam with the liberal media firmly behind her rather than a Republican one fighting the war on thwe home front against 48% of the country as well.
Problem is, if you think W was bad, who knows if Hillarty might be catastrophic.
Posted by: voletti at June 29, 2005 7:21 AM
Hugh
I have doubts about withdrawing from Iraq too quickly. I haven't been able to keep up with JW/DW for several days so I have only read your third article on Iraq (I have read Rebecca's awful article about evolution though and haven't recovered fully from the shock yet). Here are some of the questions that I have.
1. The financial cost of the war
What if the US (and the coalition) bill the "Iraqis"? Sure they don't have cash but how about pay in oil then? Assistance-for-oil programme?
2. The human cost (Casualities)
What if the US let the "Iraqis" (Shias and Kurds) do the fighting like it was in Afghanistan? Maybe implement "the Salvador option?" The reason the "insurgents" (terrorists) are now targeting the "Iraqis" instead of the US forces is because it is so hard to hit the coalition forces these days. Maybe the US can give tactical, logistical and other support without committing any fighting troops. Then maybe there would be no more casualities. Why not just let them fight?
3. Containment/Abandonment
You talked about containment but haven't we had containment before? When the invading Moors were expelled from Spain and the Turks stopped at Vienna they were "contained" (checked) for around 400 years and were left behind while the West took off into the sky. Unlike communism, the RIP RoP© didn't collapse.
Wouldn't abandoning Iraq just create another "failed state" and a haven for Islamic terrorists and a launch pad for their terror attacks?
If the US just leave then Iraq might become like Afghanistan after the Soviets withdrawal. After the Soviets left they had the their little paridise but people didn't seemed to have learned anything for that experience. RIP RoP© is still there. It didn't collapse.
But I do agree with you that these "Trojan Horses" should be taken out of the city.
at June 29, 2005 7:29 AM
cruncher
I am going to break my own rule about addressing your posts. Read your post. You have nothing to say about possible solutions to an issue. Somebody you don't agree with is stupid and that is it...thats all you have to say. Your post copies something I wrote and makes a pejorative remark..nothing else.If you are going to masquerade as a brilliant thinker try coming up with an original thought.Do your part to repair the damage that you and the rest of the left have done to your reputations. Try to be less emotional and strident and immature. Seek the advise of a health care professional, it could help.
Posted by: pismopal at June 29, 2005 9:06 AM
Voletti, you make some interesting points.
"With the media hounding Bush's war as it is, I wonder if it wouldn't be easier for a Dem prez (Hillary?) to take the war to islam with the liberal media firmly behind her rather than a Republican one fighting the war on thwe home front against 48% of the country as well."
This is an interesting approach, as the overwhelmingly liberal media would undoubtedly fawn all over a Dem hawk who went to war, which would improve the effort to defeat (or at least identify) islam. The problem is finding a Dem hawk.
"Problem is, if you think W was bad, who knows if Hillary might be catastrophic."
Ahhh, there's the rub. Hillary, or any other Dem, is far more likely to either flat out appease moslems, or at best use the foolhardy containment strategy that brought about Pearl Harbor and 9/11.
In the end, Bush and the Republicans are probably the lesser of the two dhimmis.
-MZ
Posted by: Madzionist at June 29, 2005 9:06 AM
MZ:
Hillary is definitely a dhimmi. Bush may have held hands with a Saudi Prince, but looked distinctly uncomfortable about it. Hillary, on the other hand, gave Suha Arafat a very warm embrace after Suha gave a speech in which she made absurd allegations as to Israel contaminating the Palestinian water supply in order to kill Palestinian children.
Posted by: waterdragon52 at June 29, 2005 11:18 AM
From Postings Above:
"And why must you people (on the left)…” – “Bill in Virginia”
This is apparently addressed, weirdly, to me. I try to use such words as “right” and “left” sparingly, and always with distaste, but to call me someone “on the left” makes me think of a well-known Russian idiom -- ne po adresu. You’ve got the wrong address. Or Adressat unbekannt. Or something.
"You're all wasting your collective breath. The only way that Americans as a people have historically woken up to the dangers on a scale as we all know we are truly facing right now and in the near future is by means of violent shaking.” – from "Foehammer"
But this observation shows the folly of the present course, and the present rhetoric. Were not attacks in the heart of New York, on the largest building in New York, and on the Pentagon itself, in which nearly 3,000 people were killed and possibly more than $100 billion in damage inflicted – was that not at least as much a “violent shaking” as Pearl Harbor, and that only required an intelligent shaping of the public understanding by those whose duty it is to protect and, to a lesser extent, instruct us [part of that Confucian “statecraft as soulcraft” that George Will wrote about in his Godkin Lectures]. But they could not understand, because the apologists for Islam, and those who were Saudi hirelings, had so influenced so many, that we could not, for 30 years, even begin to have a policy to recapture oligopolistic rents from OPEC, instead preferring to trust in “our staunch ally, Saudi Arabia.” Many, on both sides of the aisle, and many who had retired from government (diplomats, intelligence agents, former senators) had their hands in the Arab till, one way or another. And no one screamed, except for the odd outsider, such as J. B. Kelly when he was at the Heritage Foundation back in the early 1980s. Eventually someone as vicious, as completely awful, as Michael Moore would mention the “Bush-Saudi connection” but of course the connection was the Saudis – and Kennedy apparatchik Fred Dutton, and a list of supposedly loyal Americans (ambassadors to Saudi Arabia), some of whom were political appointees, and not one of whom showed sufficient understanding of Saudi Arabia, and all of whom were appeasers, save for Hume Horan, who was recalled on Saudi request.
“Shaking”? If not the 275 Marines killed in Lebanon, the Ambassador killed in Khartoum, then Washington and New York. If not Washington and New York, why not Beslan, and Amsterdam, and Madrid? If not Beslan, Amsterdam, and Madrid, what? As long as things are NOT defined, as long as out of fear or ignorance or some shallow Machiavellianism that some have concoted (meaning: let’s pretend there is “moderate Islam” and let’s not say anything to offend those people, which means lets not analyze Islam as a belief-system, and its effects on its believers, and the impossibility either of reliably separating the “moderate” from the “immoderate” Muslims (given all the lying, and the oily assurances), and the further impossibility of knowing when a “moderate” will metamorphose into an “immoderate” Muslim – well, given all that fear, that confusion, that ignorance, that shallow Machiavellianism – the entire Western world is where it is today. Only the killing of Van Gogh has begun to waken the Dutch.
What if there are no more spectacular terrorist attacks? What if Western security services simply head them all off? Or what if Bin Laden’s strategy, as he announced but the American government has carefully refrained from drawing attention to it, that the best effect of Iraq, and of future attacks, should be to inflict “economic damage” (as Iraq certainly is) on the United States.
We’ve had one damned Pearl Harbor, here and in Europe, after another. But just as our political figures cannot orate, nor think, as did some of their predecssors, they cannot arouse the nation. Nor can the muddle-headed at The New Duranty Times, a newspaper that thinks Tom Friedman should be given a column, even allowed to keep it, for his unique blend of nonsense and saying the obvious portentously, that makes him such a comical figure.
“Eve writes ‘Defining Islam as a "murderous ideology" is the only way to get certain Americans to quit yapping about freedom of religion. That First-Amendment right is what prevents many people from seeing that mosques are hotbeds of activism--which recent arrests prove (only scratching the surface, however). ‘
“Umm no. It has nothing to do with the first ammendment. It has everything to do with ignorance.” --- a second posting by Foehammer
I agree. There is no connection between the First Amendment guarantees of Freedom of Religion (the Free Exercise Clause, the Establishment Clause) and the failure to identify the ideology of Islam, or to speak of elements in that ideology, as menacing. Or perhaps our leaders feel some kind of automatic respect for something many call a “religion.” I call Islam a belief-system, partly in order to cut out from under it that salaam-salaam respect that some think they owe it. But freedom from government constraint or interference does not mean we cannot criticize something called a “religion.” By the way, who would care to define a “religion” and who a “cult”? Was David Koresh the head of a “religion” or something lesser, a “cult”? If the latter, why? Is it a function of numbers, of the length of time that the belief-system has existed, what?
“Also, you know very well, Hugh, that I have outlined my opinions extensively about what needs to be done with islam and why, so don't give the false accustion that I merely scream out objections without ideas. You know better than that.”
"Now, you may run into some "guy" from the IDF while taking out your garbage tonight who tells you it is the smart thing to do for Israel, but if you calculate such a story will change my point of view, well, you are miscalculating as badly as you did thinking this air force commander story would change my opinion of Iraq, or, for that matter, as badly as you are miscalculating the "isolation/sanctions"
approach would succeed in defeating the islamic menace.” --- from "Madzionist."
No, I did “not “calculate such a story will change” your “point of view” but thought it might be given a hearing. A cheap trick, admittedly, and one I should not have attempted, for it should not matter who presents an argument. In the same way, someone who comes from a military family should not be entitled to a greater hearing than someone who has no relatives who have served. What counts are the ideas, their logic, their coherence, and their relation to the known evidence. So you have a point – I should have stuck to my guns, and not tried to inveigle you into taking a second look. Life is too short – why bother?
"Hugh, how do you respond to those who say "we don't want to unite a billion people against us by naming the enemy as Islam?" -- from "Zeno" (with echoes of Italo Svevo, Venetian cartography, and a logical paradox).
One cannot continue to sow confusion among Infidels, confusion which has direct and dire results. The Europeans allowed into their midst millions of Muslim immigrants, dreamily assuming that these immigrants either would be “guest-workers” (as with the Turks in Germany) who would then return home (they didn’t; they stayed and multiplied, everywhere, at rates far beyond those of the indigenous Infidels), or would be steadily secularized (the reverse happened: some in the first generation only wanted to make a living, but the second and third generations have rediscovered, as their all—purpose explanation, guide, and solace, Islam – and there are plenty of “My Son the Fanatic” cases). And the mere presence of large numbers of Muslims has inhibitied discussion, caused physical insecurity (a great rise in crime, with 70% of the prisoners in French jails being Muslims,and in Scandinavia, 70-80% of the rapes committed by Muslims on those Infidel women who “deserved it” because of the way they dressed and looked – and besides, they were Infidels, so who cares?).
Start to name it. Slowly at first. Here and there. Do it obliquely. Have Rumsfeld, have a Senator who has been prompted, and then another, and then another, talk about not just the “Jihadis” (though that’s a start) but “the ideology of Jihad.” Talk endlessly about the ideology of Jihad. Have people go on talk shows and explain that Jihad is mistakenly understood to be only military in nature. Explain the other instruments of Jihad – the money weapon (to pay for “institutions, such as mosques and madrasas,” where the Jihadist ideology is inculcated). Keep a few phrases sprinkled in to protect yourself. You know, of the “of course most Muslims don’t believe in Jihad.” Or, “some Muslims are trying to suggest that Jihad means a peaceful inner struggle and of course we wish them well in their endeavor” or “we have to take seriously, obviously, and act to counter, those who believe in Jihad but those who do not believe in Jihad at all – save as a “inner spiritual struggle” – may not represent a threat (make sure it is “may not”).
NO ONE in the Western world, not Bush, not Blair, not Rice (all of whom have been guilty of this, repeatedly and shamefully) of telling us that Islam is a “great religion” and we “respect Islam” and it is a religion of “peace” and “tolerance” and “I’ve read the Qur’an” (Blair, the egregious Blair, so greatly overrated transatlantically, though admittedly in England there is so little to choose from at the moment) and it’s “fine.” Stop the nonsense and lies, and approach the truth asymptotically or obliquely – but approach it.
“How can we back so-called "moderate Muslims" when we don't acknowledge the uphill struggle they have against accepted Islamic teachings?”
The whole business of “moderate Muslims” comes up against three problems that need to be kept constantly in mind:
1. What is a “moderate Muslim”? What would constitute “moderation?” Would mere abstention from, or disapproval of, terrorism constitute enough “moderation” for you? It wouldn’t for me. Look up something that may be in “Articles” above – “Ten Things to Think About When Thinking About Moderate Muslims.” (I think that’s the title).
2. Assuming that such “moderate” Muslims exist – that is, those to whom we think we can give that label, how do we determine, with what instruments, which Muslims are truly “moderate” and which ones “immoderate” but pretending to be “moderate” so as to remain within our countries, or to achieve their ends by manipulating and propagandizing among unwary, or willfully trusting, Infidels, especially some of those ministers and rabbis hellbent on interfaith “understanding” that is always and everywhere an exercise not in understanding but in moral equivalence, and in the end, helps to justify Islam, not to analyze it.
3. Even assuming there are “moderates” and assuming further that we can, somehow, detect them, distinguish them even from the “immoderates” who feign, there is still the problem of defensiveness by so many Muslims. Even those who claim to be entirely laic, perhaps even non-believers, still call themselves “Muslims” in most cases, and still are quick to defend Islam at a certain level. Take the otherwise seemingly rational, seemingly Western man, seemingly on-our-wave-length Kanan Makiya, who cannot bring himself to read Bat Ye’or (doesn’t he have any interest in learning about the treatment of non-Muslims under Islam – even to find out what evidence she has accumulated? None?), and on television, during one of those discussions where he came across, Fouad-Ajami-like, as one of those “good” Arabs who does not in oily fashion cover us with lies, each more slippery than the next, but the minute he felt Islam was under discussion or the mildest of attacks, having announced that he was not a believer in god “but a Muslim” he did not join in the analysis, did not become a milder version of Ibn Warraq or Ali Sina, but rather began to talk of his “pious grandmother” with such evident devotion, as a way of demonstrating that “Islam” could not be attacked. A kind of Muslim Barbara Fretchie, presumably. Well, Islam can be analayzed, its doctrines and their effects on many hundreds of millions of people, over time and space, can be dissected – but not, apparently, by Muslims. (Which is why having something called “Islamic law” taught by Muslims in law schools is such a bad idea – will they treat of the legal status of non-Muslims? Will they assign Antoine Fattal or Joseph Schacht, or will they, “scholarofthehouse” Khaled Abu El Fadl style, be guides to nothing, carefully listing as “Not to Be Read” all the most scholarly and truthful books about Islam, and instead list “To Be Read” their own exercises in soft propaganda (yes, I know the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has just awarded a bunch of Bright Young Muslim Grant-Getters and Reformers a lot of money, with Khaled Abou El Fadl’s name among them, and each of their proposals more transparent, or more akin to Rashid Rida’s hopeless attempts – see Gairdner, for example, on the lexical attempts of Rida to help “reform” the texts. We have been there before, and the “reformers” of the last century got nowhere, and so will these grants-getters and tenure-pushers -- the canonical texts immutable, the single interpretive principle of naskh (abrogation) unhelpful, Believers implacable, so that there is essentially nowhere to turn, nothing to do, except constrain, constrain, whittle away at, demoralize, divide, constrain. That's it.
Well, I’ve used up a perfectly good half-hour or so (echoes both of Click and Clack on Car Talk, and of D. C. Watson above) that I could have spent reading Ricoldo da Montecroce on Islam. But perhaps it has helped to further clarify.
at June 29, 2005 11:31 AM
Hey Hugh, remember that the next time a draft-dodging coward runs against a combat hero.
Good lord, where to start... let me just pick out a few monkey-isms.
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If President Bush was to call "a spade, a spade", all the (childish) people that are left of center would call President Bush "insensitive to Muslims around the world".
So... Bush cares about what the childish people say? Then why did he invade? Nice try to excuse the Dhimmi in Chief, but Hugh and I see right through it.
It’s my hope that President Bush is playing the role of a smiling moderate who is, cleverly, slowly, and incrementally making progress to dissolve Islam.
Hope in one hand, and Dole in the other; see which one fills up first.
Here is a good rule of thumb that I (Bill in Virginia) finds very helpful in making the right decisions in today’s political arena. “Which ever way the LEFT wants to go, I avoid it”.
I'm so glad you finds that very helpful. No wonder you celebrate Jefferson Davis' birthday: the liberals hate him. In fact, the liberals of the 1860s hated him so much, they kicked his ass.
Now let me get this straight (oops was that politcally incorrect?): the left opposes lynching black people. The left works for more cheaper medicine for senior citizens. The left wanted to save the Native Americans. The left ennacted child labor laws. The left was for the GI Bill, the Marshall Plan, Medicare, WIC, and the ADA. The left says we shouldn't call paraplegics "gimps" and "cripples." The left says we shouldn't call black people "niggers." The left says we SHOULD let women work outside of the home. The left says women should be able to divorce their husbands.
And you oppose all these things? Well, of course you do: you're conservative, so you're perfect. But you knew that already.
Political Correctness is calling a "manhole" a "personhole" and "women" "womyn." Calling black people "African Americans" instead of "darkies" and "niggers"; or calling women "women" instead of "broads" and "chicks"; etc. etc. Most of what soulless bastards call "Political Co-Rectness" (Earl Pitts voice) is merely a hateful way of describing "politeness."
Or, put another way, when you're polite to rich, white, protestant, straight, healthy men, it's "politeness." If you're polite to anyone else, it's "political correctness."
Put that in yer corn-cob pipe and smoke it, Billy Reb. And go join your conservative, southern, christian idol, Strom Thurmond. You know, the race-mixing, child molesting, rapist?
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Dr. Phibes:Bill, wouldn't Afghanistan have been a good enough platform from which to attack the Iranian nuclear facilities?
Dr. Phibes, Bill probably knows about as much about geography as he does about politics: "What in tarnation does Afghaner-stan have tuh do with Iran? If Rush and O'Reilly don't bring it up, it don't matter. We had to invade Iraqistan 'cause of what them terra-ists did to us on 911. (Later:) We had to invade Iraq onaccounta Slick Willie let Saddam build up a new-clee-yur arsenal. (Later:) We had to invade Iraq 'cause they wanted freedom, and FREEDOM'S ON THE MARCH. (Later:) We JUST HAD to invade Iraq because that's where the terra-ists were. (Later:) We had to invade Iraqi 'cause we got to prepare to invade Iran.
Of course, the REAL reason we had to invade Iraq is because Karl Rove determined that a war-time president would be more likely to be re-elected, ... because fools mistake supporting an inept, troop-killing president for patriotism, and equate questioning the preznint with un-patriotically hating the troops.
[BTW... I personally would love to see us invade Iran, because that's ONE Muslim land where it is widely believed that democracy would work; i.e. where the majority of people would actually vote in and keep a secular democracy. (As opposed to the inevitable Sharia theocracy that Iraq WILL become.)]
Hey Bill, how's that Abraham Lincoln Memorial going in Richmond. They loooove Lincoln there, don't they? After all, he was "the first republican." LOL.
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fishboy, the point of this website is not to offer support to the President, or to anyone else. It is to analyse the threat posed by islam, and to try and work out the best response to that threat.
Oh Dr. Phibes? You must be new here. The point of this website notwithstanding, the point of EVERYTHING for people like fishpunk and Bill From Virginy is to fellate the preznint and blame his failures on the "left-wing media" and the fact that his "hands are tied by the left-wing PC crowd."
What they CANnot and WILL not admit is that Dub makes a TERRIBLE conservative. The GOP doesn't stand for conservative principles any more; they are merely a personality cult that worships Dub and--when it suits their purpose of glorifying Dub--Ronald Reagan.
Plato (one-a them there high-falutin' lib'ruls, Bill) says this:
The partisan, when he is engaged in a dispute, cares nothing about the rights of the question, but is anxious only to convince his hearers of his own assertions.
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...The problem is finding a Dem hawk.
No, the problem is finding a Dem either stupid enough to believe or coniving enough to maintain that there was a connection between Iraq and 9-11.
Another funny thing... when we had a Dem president that inherited a war from Bush (Somalia) the media--especially the fledgeling FUX news jumped all over him. Just 10 years prior to the ill-fated "Black Hawk Down" mission (which killed 19 troops) Reagan's "Beirut Marine Barracks Down" killed 241 Marines. Good thing the "left-wing media" covered for him.
And when Clinton sent in the fighter planes to stop Milosevic, the "left-wing" media was all over him for "starting a war" and the MSM right-wing media was all over him for "wagging the dog" and "sending our troops into harm's way." I disctinctly recall draftdodging GOPers like DeLay and Lott claiming that they "supported the troops but not the president that sent them there."
Furthermore, the marginalized "left-wing" media like Adbusters, FAIR, Democracy Now, Z, etc. lambasted Clinton the whole time about Yugoslavia; in fact Democracy Now sent their drones out to harass Wesley Clark during the 2004 primaries about depleted Uranium in Yugoslavia.
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Mad Zionist, I have said this many times before, but no one will respond. The only threat Saddam posed was to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iran. This is an historical fact.
We KNOW he couldn't hit the US, because he couldn't hit Europe. We KNOW he couldn't hit Europe because he couldn't even hit Israel. We KNOW he couldn't hit Israel because if he could have, he would have. They wouldn't have been able to touch him down in his bunkers; the IDF Air Force would've only been able to hit military bases, and--OH MY!--imagine the cry of "international condemnation" if they had!
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Hugh, it looks like the monkeys are starting to throw their dung at you through the bars. You'd better be careful. Partisan politics permeates EVERYTHING for these lot: religion, "ethics", family relationships, diplomacy--EVERYTHING. (Reread the Plato quote from above.)
If you should go start your own jihad awareness site where every dhimmi is equally brought to task (as opposed to what the rabble here prefer; namely, to only call them a dhimmi if they oppose Saint Dub) please let us know on your way out.
This isn't meant to be snide toward neither the staff at jihadwatch.com nor the commenters that stay on topic. I am only refering to the partisan commenters who--like their folkheroes on a.m. radio, wing-nut blogs, and FAUX news--constantly strive to inject an infomercial for their pathetic political slants into every topic.
KJ
at June 29, 2005 11:35 AM
DC Watson,
You wrote: "What a waste of time this address was tonight. Perhaps he should've used the time to out his Saudi friends for sending foreign fighters into Iraq. I didn't hold my breath waiting for that to happen, and I'm glad I didn't."
I, too, am worn out with our connections to Saudi, the Wahhabi Lobby. The Saudis are not our friends--never have been. They're all about the money, and any yapping from them as to reform means nothing. Sucking up to the Saudis is playing a dangerous and deadly game. It will backfire.
To many commenters,
I have yet to be convinced as to the reality of "moderate Muslims." Moderate Islam is considered to be apostasy.
Besides, the goal of "moderates" and radicals is the same--a worldwide caliphate. Only the methodology differs.
at June 29, 2005 11:43 AM
Hillary is definitely a dhimmi. Bush may have held hands with a Saudi Prince, but looked distinctly uncomfortable about it. Hillary, on the other hand, gave Suha Arafat a very warm embrace after Suha gave a speech in which she made absurd allegations as to Israel contaminating the Palestinian water supply in order to kill Palestinian children.
LOL... I love this crap. Oh waterdragon? Last time I checked, "palestinians" had only murdered a couple of Americans, while most of the 9-11 hijackers were Saudis.
And the Hilary-Suha kiss was something like eight or more years ago. Bush KISSED the Saudi Prince before traipsing around on his arm. And that was just a couple of months ago!
That's the problem with you GOP personality cult followers. YOUR side can do no wrong. YOUR side is perfect, and when they aren't, why the other side was surely done worse! It's like the old comparision of Clinton to Packwood. Clinton allowed Monica to seduce him and give him a little (what Bush gives the Saudis), while Packwood ATTACKED women that worked for him.
19 Soldiers were killed in Somalia weeks after Clinton took office, and the ditto-monkeys went crazy. Bush ignored terrorist threats for eight months (including a month-long vacation where he received the briefing "Bin Laden Determined To Strike In The US") and HOURS after the WTC towers fell, the emails were flying about "Clinton should've done more!!!"
Posted by: kj at June 29, 2005 11:44 AM
A friend of mine wrote an interesting commentary on Islam and the so-called moderation @
http://socialsense.blogspot.com/2005/06/terror-is-universally-islamic.html
Posted by: WatchfulEye at June 29, 2005 11:46 AM
Some of the points immediately above I agree with, others I do not. I would not accuse others of "fellating the President"; it is unseemly, and furthermore puts one immeidately in mind of another recent President and his abusive relationship with an easily-inveigled intern, who has been permanently damaged by his indifference, his cruelty. That aspect of Clinton should not be forgotten.
As for Iraq's threat -- it was in the main a threat to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and to Iran (the Israelis were and are, far more worried about the latter), but of course any Muslim state is a potential supplier of arms, or money, or encouragement, or bases, to any brand or group or groupuscule of Muslims promoting Jihad primarily through the instrument of terrorism.
You begin, however, with this remarkable phrase:
"the problem is finding a Dem either stupid enough to believe or coniving enough to maintain that there was a connection between Iraq and 9-11."
Well, I may not be a Democrat or a Republican, but I am "stupid enough to believe, or conniving enough to maintain, that there was a connection between iraq and 9-11."
The connection, for me, is that of Islam. Ba'athism was not opposed to Islam but was, rather, a pan-Arabist subset of it, and it made sense, as an invention of the Christian Arab Michel Aflaq (and some more "secular" Muslims), and finding favor, naturally, both among the Alawite military caste that rules Syria (and needs, for its own purposes, to slightly de-emphasize Islam for the Alawites are not regarded by Muslims as true Muslims -- and they know it, and are constantly worried about Muslim attacks on them, as they should), and the Sunni caste that has ruled Iraq (while in sectarian terms, it is the Shi'a who are the majority, and the Shi'a mosques that are the natural center of political opposition to that Sunni rule, whether "Ba'athist" or, before it, accomplished through a displaced, and imported, Hashemite monarch.
So color me "stupid and conniving" for believing that there is a connection between "Iraq and 9/11." However, the Administration's efforts to tie itself in knots in attempting to "prove" an Iraqi-Al-Qaeda connection are ridiculous. They had only to allude to the problem, generally, of all Muslim states. There may be no Al-Qaeda conection (though there is one with the Taliban) among those seemingly trustworthy generals who run Pakistan. But of course there is. The connection, again, is Islam.
But because the entire Western world, and even the American government, does not want to discuss this, does not want to even consider how to discuss it, does not want to think that Islam might be the problem and prefers to tell us it is a matter of "extremists" who, presumably, are prompted by forged texts, or texts that they alone have interpreted quite wrongly, and that their acts have nothing to do with the real contents of Muslim sacred texts, nothing to do with the entire history of Muslim conquest and subjugation of non-Muslims.
I beg to differ.
So here goes: Pretty please, with sugar and spice and everything nice on it. Won't you just consider that Islam is the problem, and that a well-armed and aggressive Iraq, irremediably Muslim, had to be disarmed. And that, not a supposed Atta meeting in Prague with Iraqi agents, is all the evidence we needed to justify smashing Iraqi military capabilities, and its regime.
That was fine. It is the goddamn rest, that came afterwards, and is still going on, and that some people feel they must defend, that is so infuriating.
Posted by: Hugh at June 29, 2005 11:52 AM
KJ,
I think you need a stiff drink and some loving from the wife (or whoever). Just take a deep breath, relax, and express your views without all the cheezy name-calling and hyperbole.
I do enjoy rigorous discussion/debate with those who disagree with me, but I don't engage radical ranters like Crusher, King of Tolerance, or White American Patriot.
Calm down, say your piece, and we can have at it. Just don't go off the deep end like the aformentioned psychotics I listed above.
OK?
-MZ
Posted by: Madzionist at June 29, 2005 12:19 PM
"So here goes: Pretty please, with sugar and spice and everything nice on it. Won't you just consider that Islam is the problem, and that a well-armed and aggressive Iraq, irremediably Muslim, had to be disarmed"
Great line, Hugh!
-MZ
Posted by: Madzionist at June 29, 2005 12:29 PM
MZ writes "KJ,
I think you need a stiff drink and some loving from the wife (or whoever). Just take a deep breath, relax, and express your views without all the cheezy name-calling and hyperbole.
I do enjoy rigorous discussion/debate with those who disagree with me, but I don't engage radical ranters like Crusher, King of Tolerance, or White American Patriot."
Translation: I can dish it out, but I can't take it.
MZ, you're among the last to talk about rigorous debate, name calling and hyperbole.
And that goes for Pismo too.
What I wrote about your misreading of Sharon, the IDF etc. was serious.
Gaza is a then strip of over 1 million nut bar Pals. Finish the wall and be done with it. leaving 8000 Jews in the midst of all that makes little sense and the military resources guarding them can be withdrawn to the border where they can be on call and not continuously harassed.
Further it puts the ball firmly in the Pals court. If Abbas can't control Gaza, lets find out now, rather than later. Israel will find out if the Pal leadership is willing much less, capable of delivering on any of its roadmap promises. THis is the acid test.
Sharon didn't give up Gaza for nothing. According to Dore Gold, Sharon got a promise from Bush stating US policy is for Israel to have defensible borders and specifically stating that includes the border area on the WB next to Jordan. In case you didn't know, the IDF has deemed that important.
at June 29, 2005 1:00 PM
Crusher,
Since you presented a reasoned argument rather than a foolish rant of name-calling, I will happily engage you in the discussion.
"Gaza is a then strip of over 1 million nut bar Pals."
I agree.
"Finish the wall and be done with it."
The wall has been done for many years separating Gaza from Green Line Israel. You are confusing this with the Judean/Samarian wall that is still a work in progress.
"leaving 8000 Jews in the midst of all that makes little sense..."
Actually it makes a lot of sense. The numbers, by the way, are a bit higher, officially being listed as 9,000. Anyway, ethnicity, religion or nationality should not determine whether or not these Jews have the right to live there. If you are making the argument based on population realities than there are plenty of Israeli arabs who need to be expelled as well.
My point, also, is that ALL of Israel belongs to the Jews and no Jew should ever be forbidden dwell in the Land he is Biblically obligated to settle. You may not agree with that point, but I see no reason to deny a Jew the right to dwell in the Land of Israel, or to make any part of Israel Judenrein simply because jihadi moslems want us out.
"...and the military resources guarding them can be withdrawn to the border where they can be on call and not continuously harassed."
Actually, many militarily experts agree that expelling the Jews will be harmful to Israeli security. By possessing important areas of Gaza, notably Gush Katif and the Philadelphi route, arabs have had difficulty smuggling terrorist weaponry that would endanger large Green Line Jewish population centers, such as Tel Aviv.
Top military experts, including Moshe ("Bogey") Ya'alon, outgoing IDF Chief, are on record stating that by leaving Gaza open to smuggling through the tunnels of the Philadelphi border with Egypt, Jewish lives will be imperiled by subsequent large rocket attacks deep into Israel that are currently not possible do to the Jewish presence in Gaza.
Ya'alon and many others also warn that moslems view the expulsion as a great islamic victory, and are only emboldened to drive the Jews into the sea by claiming a great victory over the Jews in Gaza. Reports are already out that Hamas and other terror groups who have leadership in Syria will be transferring their operations to Gaza once the strip has been cleansed of Jews. They are not moving there for the weather.
Also, one look at the exploding popularity of Hamas in "Palestinian" polls since Sharon announced the Gaza retreat is a clear portent of what is to come should this heinous plan be enacted.
So you see, Crusher, there are many very legitimite reasons to oppose the expulsion, and I hope you find one of them good enough to see why I think it is a huge mistake.
-MZ
Posted by: Madzionist at June 29, 2005 1:49 PM
Hey Hugh, remember that the next time a draft-dodging coward runs against a combat hero.
Which "combat hero" is that?
Is that the guy who ran in the last election? The one who described American soldiers as murders and rapists while comparing them to "Gen-ghis" Khan? You know the "combat hero" who was torpedoed by American Veterans who despise him and hate his guts. Is that the guy you're talking about?
Posted by: Roxane at June 29, 2005 2:40 PM
"Bill in Virgina" -- you are right. I am obviously on the "left" and you know how all those people on the "left" -- Oriana Fallaci, Pim Fortuyn, Theo van Gogh, Ibn Warraq, Ali Sina, are when it comes to appeasing Islam. Not like Grover Norquist, or Exxon, or Mobil, or United Technologies, or any of those other corporations that have been loyal lobbyists for Saudi Arabia for so many decades.
In fact, I have a confession: I am an Old Bolshevik. That's right. I joined the party before 1905. I joined when a certain Djugashvili was still a seminary student, and even robbing banks, much less ruling a whole country as the Father of Peoples, was still in his future. I still have my card or tessera from 1902-- I think I was the fourteenth person to sign up. You can see me, standing to the left of Ulyanov (Lenin) in the photograph of the First Party Congress in Minsk. Like my goatee -- does it remind you of kindly Anton Pavlovich, doesn't it -- or maybe Zaitsev.
And you know what -- I was right to join up. We did it. We won. We marched forward toward Communism, and just look at the results. We took over the whole of Russia. We created the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. We built the White Sea Canal. We went to the moon, and into space. We struggled for peace and friendship with all peoples of the world. We helped China --where would China be today if it didn't have Communism?
And I learned on the radio just two months ago, the one they put in all our rooms, the one you can't shut off, that finally America has accepted Communism. I knew it would happen, but I didn't expect to live to see it. Wonderful. So just who was on the right side of history, and who was on the wrong side, eh?
And now that I'm 121 years old -- and I'm not even a Georgian, I don't even like yogurt -- I think about the old days, as I sit here surrounded by birch trees. Do you know about our special little village, the "Posyolok starykh bolshevikov" (the "Settlement for Old Bolsheviks") which was constructed for us by Stalin, in appreciation of the fact that we joined the party before it was the easy, popular thing to do. We used to come here mainly in summers, but in the last 20 years, the government decided we should stay here permanently, with a special staff to take care of us. Something about "new developments that would could upset us and endanger our health. They are always thinking of our well-being. So we stay here. We walk in the woods, or at least we used to. We pick griby, mushrooms. We play chess. I was studying a book by famous grandmaster Paul Keres (you should have seen him in 1935, in Varshava -- that was something!) -- his "Sto Partii" (One Hundred Great Games) is one of my favorite books, along with a collection of funny things little children say, from the ages of 2 to 5, that friendly old Korney Chukovsky compiled. And I was reading Keres, and then the nice young man from Cuba who came here about 15 years ago, and decided not to go back when the Cuban government asked him to -- he said he prefered Russian food, and the Russian weather -- he came right up and said that Keres was "nothing" compared to Capablanca, Jose Capablanca, the "greatest chess player," he insisted, "who ever lived." Well, I think he is crazy. But he is a Cuban, so what do you expect? I didn't want to offend him because he pushes my chair for me now that I am not walking. But really -- how silly some people can be.
So we are about 30 kilometers from Moscow, and sometimes we watch television and while I watch I have some nice borscht, with sourecream, and pickled herring, and satsava, a special Georgian chicken dish -- very tasty. You know, before the last few years, when we started to get real meat, I think I only had this dish once in my whole life -- when Stalin had it served the one time I went to the Kremlin for a special gathering of Old Bolsheviks in 1947. I wonder why now, all of sudden, they have all this meat.
Memories, memories. Sometimes I get confused. How are Ilf and Petrov? They were funny. Pilniak, he was funny. And Marshal Frunze -- did he recover okay? And whatever happened to Feliks Edmundovich?
I made the right decision, so long ago. Lenin knew everything. We sold them the rope. We took care of Renegade Kautsky. We fooled Ribbentrop. Nobody could get the better of Comrade Stalin. Even Brezhnev was clever, in a very simple way.
And that's why, even after all that has happened, at the age of 121, Bill, I'm glad you found me out. Yes, I am "on the left." And proud of it.
Posted by: Hugh at June 29, 2005 3:53 PM
"fishboy, the point of this website is not to offer support to the President, or to anyone else." -- Doctor Phibes
so i complain about the bias & lack of professionalism of a JW board vp & the potential effect on JW's reputation, and suddenly i'm asserting that the point of JW is to support the president?
thanks for misrepresenting my post, doctor fibs ;o)
at June 29, 2005 4:24 PM
Well Pismo, it seems you finally figure out that Afghanistan borders Iraq.
Sufficient tactical air support infrastructure in Afghanistan could easily have been built with the 9billion squandered down a rat hole by Bremer.
Posted by: Crusher [TypeKey Profile Page] at June 29, 2005 12:19 AM
I hope you're being sarcastic....
Afghanistan DOES NOT border Iraq
Posted by: 2pacshakur at June 29, 2005 5:48 PM
2pac writes "Well Pismo, it seems you finally figure out that Afghanistan borders Iraq.
Sufficient tactical air support infrastructure in Afghanistan could easily have been built with the 9billion squandered down a rat hole by Bremer.
Posted by: Crusher [TypeKey Profile Page] at June 29, 2005 12:19 AM
I hope you're being sarcastic....
Afghanistan DOES NOT border Iraq
"
LOL. I meant Iran.
Whats the difference? :-)
Posted by: Crusher at June 29, 2005 6:43 PM
"Hugh,
LOL :)
Good piece. You should be a writer too."
--- from a posting above
I'll keep that in mind.
at June 29, 2005 7:12 PM
Those of you who call yourselves conservative should be ashamed of yourself..with this righteous right v miserable left thinking.. pure Manichean, pure childish and self defeating.
You call anyone who has their own brain and can form their own opinions and doesn't embrace you, your follies, childishness and self defeating behavior and language with a big warm bear hug - leftist.
And worse you hold up as demigod, that idiot on a stick with an adams apple Ann Coulter.
And Hugh Madzionists is the mirror image of he whom he hates and whom hates him.
His motives are clear, to use American blood, American money to secure, for him, Eretz Y'srael.
Problem is that can only be done through expending all of our and Israels nuclear arsenal on the Arabs. And then that won't eradicate the Muslims, just fire up the survivors that don't live in the Capitals, Mecca, Medina, Najaf, Karbala, or Qom.
Then we won't be able to follow up, because there won't be any petroleum and gas to fuel our tanks, humvees, Bradleys, Strykers, ships and Airplanes, nor enough petroleum to feed our own citizenry, mcuh less transport food to market, or people to jobs.
Madzionist has the Sampson complex, the mirror image of the Islamic "Shaheed"/mujahideen.
I like your solutions better Hugh.
Educate the people
Isolate the Muslims
Evict where possible
Energy independence from "black crack". We've paid enough covert Jizyah to the Arabs for "black crack".
Give the Muslims what they want, fence them in and isolate them from the west, let them enjoy and starve to death in Shari'a purity and perfect medieval Islam.
The only thing that is keeping Islam is alive, is that they are welfare cases, internationally and in their own countries, the suck off the teat of the cow they hate.. the west.
No more milk, no more bread, no more computers or consumer goods and no more jizyah for muslim oil.
Posted by: Giaour at June 29, 2005 11:02 PM
You call anyone who has their own brain and can form their own opinions and doesn't embrace you, your follies, childishness and self defeating behavior and language with a big warm bear hug - leftist. -- giaour
we don't need to do that, giaour ... all we need to do is point to your lies about & hatred of conservatives! ;o)
folks like howard dean & you are a godsend to the republican / conservative / christian causes. keep up the good work!!!! :o)
Posted by: fishboy at June 29, 2005 11:20 PM
"And Hugh Madzionists is the mirror image of he whom he hates and whom hates him." -Giaour
Giaour, what the hell does that mean? I have no clue what that says. I think I was right before about you being drunk.
-MZ
Posted by: Madzionist at June 30, 2005 12:10 AM
"And Hugh Madzionists is the mirror image of he whom he hates and whom hates him...His motives are clear, to use American blood, American money to secure, for him, Eretz Y'srael....Problem is that can only be done through expending all of our and Israels nuclear arsenal on the Arabs....I like your solutions better Hugh."
--- from a posting above
I am puzzled by this seeming endorsement, the terms of which I completely reject. I did not offer a "solution" to the problem of Islam; I said that there is no "solution" and the very word is as deceptive, and therefore as dangerous, as the phrase about a "war on terror" that "can be won." But if there is not a "solution" that does not mean that there are not a series of acts, each perfectly rational, explicable to Western publics, and each having the effect, over time, of dividing, demoralizing, and checking the enemy, and of rendering less effective the various instruments of Jihad.
As to the comments about Israel -- you have failed to understand me. I think it not only crazy for the Israelis to be shutting down their villages in Gaza, a territory which was part of Mandatory Palestine, has always sat astride the historical invasion route (e.g., that of Mehmet Ali) from the south, but crazier still for the Americans to be encouraging this, instead of trying to undo Sharon's obstinate idiocy.
Furthermore, any further reduction in Israel's power to defend itself will make less effective the only thing that permits Arab leaders NOT to entire a full-scale war -- the doctrine of darura, or necessity. Google "jihadwatch" and "Posted by Hugh" and "Darura" for a number of discussions of this.
Finally, the poster who thinks he "supports my views" obviously does not realize that I am a far stronger supporter of Israel -- because my support is based on a belief that if Israel is allowed to go under, or if it is only to survive not by right but by sufferance of its cruel and implacable neighbors, the consequences not merely for the Jews of Israel (and presumably outside) but for all those who care about the West, Westeern civilization, will be considerable.
Muslim control, for example, of Jerusalem would not be as indifferent or lackadaisical as that of the distant, and somewhat down-at-the-heels Ottoman Porte in the 19th century, but -- given the wide distribution of the full panoply of Muslim views, now imparted with special venom -- would be akin to that of the worst days of Muslim rule over that city, i.e., the 11th century. I would prefer that Israel retain control of the Holy Land for the sake of itself and for the sake of all non-Muslims, but especially Christians, and I am quite confident that there are more people who agree wtih that, such as the current Pope, than do with the vicious crew that, persuaded by the islamochristian Arab Anglicans who pushed for an anti-Israel divestment resolution in England last week, managed to get what they worked for, so cunningly, so tirelessly, with the intolerable, and immoral, results, we all see.
One good reason for being a member of the Episcopal Church right now is so that one can register one's fury, one's indignation, one's disgust.
As far as this business of using "American blood, American money" to "secure Eretz Y'Israel, that begins to me to sound like the Zundel-poster whom we all dislike. The Israelis received no aid from the United States in 1948, nor much support of any kind until after, not before, the Six-Day War. Since then, the Israelis have received aid, but on the whole they have had to succumb to constant American dilomatic pressure -- including the disastrous Oslo Accords, and before that, the preposterous and useless agreement with Egypt that the Israelis scrupulously observed, while the Egyptians failed to observe a single one of the their solemn commitments. As for inteligence information, military know--how, and so on, what Israel has provided has been worth a good deal to the United States, and not only in the days when the Israelis were providing captured top-of-the-line Migs for analysis.
As for the notion that nuclear weapons will have to be used by both Israel and the United States to secure Israel, that possibility is unlikely, unless of course the idiotic Israeli government keeps giving up so readily, keeps retreating, keeps being unable to make its own case, and the American government fails to recognize that deficiency, but instead urges the Isralies on in their mad policy of surrendering, by degrees.
I don't think the West, can morally, or intellectually, survive the destruction of Israel -- not as a civilization, anyway. Should it take nuclear weapons to protect Israel, those weapons should be used unhesitatingly. So opssibly you will not find these views to your liking, and will wish to reconsider your supoprt for what you call, incorrectly, my "solutions." The survival of Israel relates directly to the self-awareness and moral coherence of the West. It is no secret that the same Muslims who claim to wish to engage in "dialogue" and attempt to deny the reality of Islam's contents, its tenets, its long history of conquest and subjugation, are now attempting to inveigle Infidels into thinking that there is only that "little problem of Palestine" and if you "give us what we want there" there will be no other issues, no other problems.
Some people may fall for that transparent nonsense. Certainly some in Europe seem to wish devoutly to believe that -- it makes things seem so much more manageable, makes one less concerned about the Muslims in one's midst.
Not me. I don't buy it. I'm with Indro Montanelli, Eric Hoffer, and a cast of millions of people who, for reasons quite different from those I suspect that "Madzionist" might offer, support Israel more than many of the Israelis do.
Posted by: Hugh at June 30, 2005 12:11 AM
I would feel a lot better about Bush if he had just not kissed, and held hands, with "that" Saudi.
If thats part of a covert operation, he has got me fooled.
There's double reversed, triple psychology, going on here between the wests, and Islamic, geopolitical chess game they are playing.
Now you see it now you dont...Who's on first and all that. What Bush and the Bushmen/woman talk about behind closed doors, may or may not be reflected in speeches. Unless we are allowed into these cigar smoked rooms, we can only speculate and see if our speculations manifest in the future. Sometimes they, do and sometimes they dont.
I dont by the lefts bent viewpoints at all, but I do sometimes wonder if the Gov has the foggiest idea what it is doing, or maybe it does...who the heck knows for sure...only your hairdresser knows for sure and "he" aint talking...All the political bickering going on here, and infidels who should be united, but are not, is not helpful or productive. Yahoo chat entertains name callers and the like...anyone can sign up for free...
at June 30, 2005 12:42 AM
Hugh,
Actually, we are in complete agreement here. I wish you didn't feel the need to give an implied slight to my reasoning, as my logic is essentially the same as yours in every sense.
Well, almost the same. The only thing that differentiates my position on Israel from yours is that I additionally hold to the biblical obligation for Jews to settle the Land. If that is offensive to you, well, so be it. However, as long our goals remain the same I have no problem with that, and am glad to have you supporting Israel on this matter.
Politics often does make strange bedfellows, no?
-MZ
Posted by: Madzionist at June 30, 2005 12:48 AM
"All the political bickering going on here, and infidels who should be united, but are not, is not helpful or productive" -- duh_swami
i ABSOLUTELY concur.
the purpose of JW is stated right on the front page ... it's to get the message out that ISLAM is at its core a violent, jihadist ideology & not the peaceful religion some claim.
so if JW descends into partisan bush-hating (or loving) on the FRONT PAGE, that is counter to our purposes, because it unnecessarily alienates key constituencies.
how can anyone safely recommend this site to someone influential if right on the front page one of the supposed EXPERTS is unprofessional, unfair, discourteous, and disrespectful to those they disagree with?
the jihadists are playing for keeps, but sometimes i get the feeling we infidels are just playing.
at June 30, 2005 2:50 AM
"Politics often does make strange bedfellows, no?" --- from a posting above
You should see what strange politics bedfellows make.
Posted by: Hugh at June 30, 2005 5:26 PM
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