Jihad Watch: "Radical Islam’s war with the West is not finite and limited to political grievances — real or imagined — but is existential, transcending time and space and deeply rooted in faith”

August 22, 2007

"Radical Islam’s war with the West is not finite and limited to political grievances — real or imagined — but is existential, transcending time and space and deeply rooted in faith”

Here is a review of an essential new book that lays bare the jihadists' motivations and goals in their own words: Raymond Ibrahim's The Al-Qaeda Reader. There is no way we can resist and contain the jihadists, and stave off the Islamization of the West, without understanding how they recruit, the power of their appeal in the Islamic world, and the ways they explain what they are doing and why. This books cuts through the PC nonsense that still dominates the public discourse in the West and illuminates all that like no other book ever has.

"In Their Own Words: Newly translated writings of the al Qaeda leadership," by Bruce Thornton at VDH's Private Papers:

Given that war, as both Sun Tzu and Mohammed preached, is deception, it behooves us to understand accurately the enemy’s motivations and not be fooled by his deceiving propaganda. Yet in the current war against Islamic jihad, the West has stubbornly refused to take seriously what the jihadists tell us, believing instead what Thucydides called the “pretexts” with which an enemy rationalizes his aggression. Osama bin Laden and his theorist Aymin al Zawahiri in particular have provided us with numerous texts outlining the Islamic foundations of their war against the West. A few of these pronouncements and manifestoes have long been available, but now thanks to Raymond Ibrahim’s The Al Qaeda Reader, writings previously unavailable in English can be studied and analyzed. Such study will provide powerful evidence that contrary to the deceptions of apologists and the naïve delusions of some Westerners, the bases of the jihadists’ actions lie squarely within Islamic tradition, not in the alleged Western crimes against Islam.
Fluent in Arabic and trained as a historian in the ancient Middle East, Ibrahim is currently a technician in the Library of Congress’ Near East Section, where he discovered al Qaeda documents that had not been translated into English. He has organized these writings into two sections: theology, writings intended for fellow Muslims that ground al Qaeda’s war against the West in the traditional Islamic doctrine of jihad; and propaganda, writings meant for Westerners that cast bin Laden’s war as a just response to the depredations of Western powers.

The documents in the first section make a sustained, coherent argument for offensive jihad based on the Koran, the Hadith (the traditions of the words and deeds of Mohammed), and the Ulema (past and present scholars of Islam). Indeed, as Ibrahim notes, “Zawahiri’s writings especially are grounded in Islam’s roots of jurisprudence; in fact, of the many thousands of words translated here from his three treatises, well more than half are direct quotations from the Koran the Sunna [words, habits, and practices] of Mohammed, and the consensus and conclusions of the Ulema.” This extensive grounding weakens the “highjacking” charge apologists use to explain Islamic jihad. On the contrary, al Qaeda’s arguments are unexceptionally traditional — which is why, of course, millions of Muslims accept them.

In these writings addressed to fellow Muslims, bin Laden and Zawahiri argue against the notion of “moderate” Islam; the compatibility of Sharia (laws governing Islamic society) with democracy; the idea of accommodation with the enemy; and the prohibition against killing women and children. In other words, they meticulously attack as distortions of Islam all the popular assertions about Islam’s nature promulgated by apologists, Westernized Muslims, and even many Christians. As bin Laden himself writes in “Moderate Islam Is a Prostration to the West” — a letter written to the Saudi theologians who in 2002 publicly advocated coexistence with the West — such moderation necessitates the adoption of Western values: “They [the Saudi theologians] first acknowledge their [Westerners’] values and ideologies in their entirety, while shying away from evoking the truth valued by the Religion [Islam] and its foundations.” Even the notion of “co-existence” is a Western idea contrary to Islam: “As if one of the foundations of our religion is how to coexist with infidels!” Quite the contrary: the traditions and foundations of Islam urge believers to “wage war against the infidels and the hypocrites, and be ruthless against them” (Koran 66:9), a verse Zawahiri quotes along with the commentary of al Qurtubi, 13th-century author of a 20-volume exegesis of the Koran: “There is but one theme — and that is zeal for the religion of Allah. He commands the waging of Jihad against the infidel by use of sword, sound sermons, and the summons to Allah.”

So too with other Western notions such as tolerance and “dialogue,” which bin Laden correctly asserts are “built on Western conceptions, which themselves rest upon the most loathsome, secular principles.” Indeed, bin Laden has a strong case, for he appeals for evidence to the life and practices of Mohammed and his companions — along with the Koran the Muslim’s guide to every aspect of life — and asks sarcastically, “What evidence is there for Muslims for this [dialogue and shared understanding]? What did the Prophet, the companions after him, and the righteous forebears do? Did they wage jihad against the infidels, attacking them all over the earth, in order to place them under the suzerainty of Islam in great humility and submission? Or did they send messages to discover ‘shared understandings’ between themselves and the infidels in order that they may reach an understanding whereby universal peace, security, and natural relations would spread — in such a satanic manner as this?”

History shows that bin Laden has the better understanding of Islam than do Western apologists; as Ibrahim summarizes the argument, “‘radical’ Islam is Islam — without exception.” In this same vein, Zawahiri argues in his “Loyalty and Enmity” that the only relationship one can have with the infidel is enmity. Zawahiri buttresses this argument with numerous quotations from Islamic theology, the most important coming from the Koran 60:4: “‘We disown you and the idols which you worship besides Allah. We renounce you: enmity and hate shall reign between us until you believe in Allah alone.’” On this authority comes the necessity to wage jihad against the infidel.

Perhaps the most important document in Ibrahim’s collection is Zawahiri’s “Jihad, Martyrdom, and the Killing of Innocents.” For years, we have been told that terrorism is un-Islamic because Islam forbids suicide and the killing of non-combatants. Zawahiri, however, teases out from Islamic tradition a perfectly rational and coherent argument in support of terrorism and suicide bombings.

Zawahiri starts by repeating Islam’s acceptance of deception in war as justified, thus legitimizing suicide bombings, which are deceptive by nature. Next, he builds his argument on selected hadiths, which as Ibrahim notes requires some interpretive stretching. Zawahiri gets around this difficulty by resorting to analogy, “a legitimate tool of Islamic jurisprudence,” as Ibrahim reminds us. Zawahiri focuses on intention, why the Muslim kills himself, not who kills him: “Thus the deciding factor in all these situations is one and the same: the intention — is it to service Islam [martyrdom] or is it out of depression and [despair]?” As for killing women and children, Mohammed himself provides a precedent during the siege of Ta’if, where he used catapults. The Prophet’s response to the question of killing women and children, which of course catapult missiles would do perforce, was “They [women and children] are from among them [infidels].” Again, the ultimate intention is the key: referring to al Shafi’ and the Hanbalis, two schools of Islamic jurisprudence, Zawahiri argues that it is permissible “to bombard the idolators even if Muslims and those who are cautioned against killing are intermingled with them as long as there is a need or an obligation for Muslims to do so, or if not striking leads to a delay of the jihad.”

Zawahiri’s reasoning in defense of suicide bombing may be ultimately unconvincing to many Muslims, or unsustainable by more careful exegesis. But the mere fact that such a case can be made — something impossible to do in the Christian, or Hebraic, or Hindu, or Buddhist traditions — and that millions of faithful Muslims accept the case, speaks volumes about the “religion of peace.”

[...]

These leftist bromides appear over and over in subsequent speeches and manifestoes, and testify to bin Laden’s shrewd recognition of the West’s Achilles heel: the appeasing proclivities of its elite intellectuals who, riddled with self-loathing guilt, are incapable of defending their way of life and its highest goods.

[...]

The Al Qaeda Reader, simply by letting our enemies speak in their own voices, explodes the popular delusion that Western crimes and policies are responsible for the “distortion” of Islam that al Qaeda represents. As Ibrahim writes, “This volume of translations, taken as whole, prove once and for all that, despite the propaganda of Al Qaeda and its sympathizers, Radical Islam’s war with the West is not finite and limited to political grievances — real or imagined — but is existential, transcending time and space and deeply rooted in faith.” This means that the fight will be long and hard, that leaving Iraq or creating a Palestinian state will not buy peace, and that the side that accurately understands its enemy and has confidence in its own beliefs will ultimately triumph. Thanks to Raymond Ibrahim’s The Al Qaeda Reader, we have the means for achieving that understanding.

Posted by Robert at August 22, 2007 9:44 AM
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I love everything Bruce Thornton writes.

Posted by: Jimmy the Dhimmi

at August 22, 2007 10:14 AM

...more and more....the infidels are learning Islams truths and intentions.....and the Muslims hate it when the infidels know the truth...

Posted by: exsgtbrown

at August 22, 2007 10:23 AM

The great Rabbi Hillel was asked to explain the Torah while standing on one leg.

He said: "Do not do unto others what you would not want done unto you."

I haven't read this Al-Qaeda book yet, but I can explain it while standing on one leg.

"The Arabs are superior in every way to non-Arabs."

Posted by: Ynkedoodl2

at August 22, 2007 10:30 AM

This is an important book, and sourcebook.

One wonders if the author of the introduction, Victor Davis Hanson, can conceivably begin to relate what he has learned about, and is continuing to learn about, Islam with the idea that the stated goals for "victory in Iraq" make no sense, that the goal ofAmericans and other Infidels should be not to create a functioning state (with cigars passed around for the final birth of a happy, healthy, baby boy, after such a difficult pregnancy), which in any case is impossible, with Allawi or Jaafari or Maliki or anyone at all, given that Islam itself is what prevents compromises and encourages continued aggression between Sunni and Shi'a, who have taken from Islam the lesson that there can only be, after any conflict, only two possible conditions: that of Victor and that of Vanquished.

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

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

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

Posted by: Hugh

at August 22, 2007 10:31 AM

Osama didn't hijack Islam, he just returned it to its orginal heading.

The denial of this is what hamstrings the West's response.

It's the Koran, stupids!

Posted by: profitsbeard

at August 22, 2007 10:32 AM

Osama didn't hijack Islam, he just returned it to its orginal heading.

The denial of this is what hamstrings the West's response.

It's the Koran, stupids!

Posted by: profitsbeard at August 22, 2007 10:32 AM

That is so true. I have a friend with a yahoo 360 blog. No matter how much facts I put forth, no matter how much the Muslims that post on their dodge my simple questions, he still insists that he wants to see the goodness in all people. Im the bad guy on his blog. he got pissy when I asked what Muslims support the state of Israel and he listed a few links. They were people like Shoebat and Darwish. I said they arent Muslims. He got mad because I discounted their opinion even though the crux of the argument was MUSLIMS supporting Israel.

Posted by: Elric66

at August 22, 2007 10:37 AM

Bullshit is bullshit but the study of bullshit is scholarship. Unfortunately this bullshit called Islam is dangerous and must be studied. I have a special admiration for anti-Jihad scholars, just as I have a special admiration for proctologists. To live all day with your eyes and nose in shit and stink takes real devotion.

Posted by: Ynkedoodl2

at August 22, 2007 10:38 AM

WOW!!

Posted by: guide inside

at August 22, 2007 10:50 AM

Elric66-

I may want to "see the goodness in all people", too, but then along comes Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot or Mohammad, and spoils the party.

A doctor may want to see health in all people, but sometimes it's cancer.

Better to see what's there, and not what you wish.

Posted by: profitsbeard

at August 22, 2007 11:01 AM

Sounds like another one that I need to read.

I am listening to the President right now and I think he is trying to make some sort of comparison between Japan during WWII and their religion, shinto, that they were fanatic about, and islam.

It just amazes me how the chosen ignorance of islam is so pervasive. I don't know that much about shintoism, but there must be some kind of a major difference that he is chosing not to find out about - he is our leader and should find out that difference.

Posted by: R_not

at August 22, 2007 11:05 AM

Profitsbeard

Thats what I am trying to do on there. He thinks Muslism are going to rise up and stop the jihadists. I keeping telling him that the moderate Muslim is a myth. Just because they arent blowing up people doesnt make them moderate. Jihad takes on many forms. The most dangerous is the demographic timebomb.

Anyway, since he talked about good Muslims, I left him a question that I hope he answers. I asked him if a Muslim can be a good Muslim if he is true to the Qur'an, the hadiths and the teachings of Mo. Be interesting how he responds. Sadly, I cant access his 360 page at work so I have to wait until I get home.

Posted by: Elric66

at August 22, 2007 11:07 AM

Trackbacked by The Thunder Run - Web Reconnaissance for 08/22/2007
A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day...so check back often.

Posted by: David M

at August 22, 2007 11:26 AM

The whole notion of "co-existence" is based on the Western notion that living peacefully together is more important than asserting the rightness of your particular ideology or religion

The foundation of Islam involves the OBLIGATION upon all Muslims to advance Islam by any means necessary.

The two notions are fundamentally incompatible.

re R_not's "It just amazes me how the chosen ignorance of Islam is so pervasive": chosen ignorance follows from an extreme desire for co-existence.

If acknowledging X means that it logically and inevitably follows that we must either choose between submission, death, or launching a war of extermination, then someone who desperately desires to not face the choices that follow X, must never, EVER admit that X might possibly be true. Chosen ignorance is just another form of cowardice.

Posted by: PapaBear

at August 22, 2007 11:28 AM

The Bin Laden is worth highlighting since it reinforces so much here at JW:

"The West did not treat Islam in this atrocious manner until after it (first) understood the truth about Islam--comprehended its essence and soul (*did it really!-my comment) it is bent on pulverizing the Muslims, since first learning of their enterprise (offensive Jihad)...they describe the majority of Islamic movements as being moderate, but what is meant by "moderation"? Is it based on the understandings of the Sharia or the understandings of the West?...'moderation' is demonstrated by our Prophet who did not remain more than 3 months in Medina without raiding or sending a raiding party into the lands of the infidels to beat down their strongholds and seize their possessions, their lives and their women. 'Moderation' is clear from one look to the life of the Prophet and the lives of his Companions after him.

"The most important feature of the moderation the West favors is elimination of Jihad, especially Offensive Jihad, also elimination of enmity for the infidels and the things they worship, and their religions and idols...today they are agreed to the meaning and definition of "terrorism" as acknowledged and agreed to by the Americans, that is "unjust aggression against life and property." And such acknowledgment by necessity must apply to and include the Prophet who assaulted the lives, properties and women of their infidels, who were living in secure and settled cities. As did his Companions after him. Such aggression, as understood by the West is not justified, nor does such hostility agree with the western notion of "freedom of religion". Thus our Prophet and his Companions and the righteous forefathers have all now become 'terrorist'"

Such acknowledgment by necessity must include the Prophet...

Posted by: Nick Danger

at August 22, 2007 11:29 AM

Bush is a fine example of our leader's own ignorance when it comes to Islam. They know nothing about Islam, but for some reason that doesn't stop them acting as experts. I've heard a lot of talk about launching an alternative-energy initiative in order to cut back on oil imported from the ummah. Why not launch an "understanding Islam initiative"?

I much prefer the Rudy Doctrine: it is not in the interests of the United States (or the rest of the world) to facilitate the creation of (another) terrorist state. Kind of deligitimizes what the Administration is doing right now with its "road map". Newt Gingrich was dead-on when he refered to the Hamas victory as a significant "defeat for the West", in a recent speech of his. How was this defeat brought about? Fair democratic elections.

The smartest thing to do, would be to not lift a finger and allow nature to proceed naturally (ie. let Hamas, Fatah, and the other factions rip each other's throats out, as is their tendency). Disunity amongst Muslims through-out the ummah has a long historical precendence (a precendence not nearly as long or pronounced as the historic tendency of Christians to sell each-other out to Islam). Think about the Qu'ran; not only was Muhammad uncertain at times and prone to mistakes (allowing the Nadir to leave Yathrib/Medina with their necks intact, something the Moon God later chided him for doing), but think about the many instances in which his companions fought and quarraled amongst each other). So why are we helping them?

I know why the Europeans are helping Hamas and Fatah, and to a lesser extentent I can see why Russia helps Iran, and China helps the Janjaweed in Sudan, but why are the States getting in on the action too? Selling massive amounts of weapons to Saudi Arabia? Let the bloody Iranians invade! Let the "Palestinian" factions fight it out, let Syria crumble from within, let the Brotherhood over-run Egypt (and get the Copts OUT), and throw Turkey's application to the EU in the dustbin. Do I have to point out that a severly weakend ummah was unable to wage jihad against the infidels for nearly 300 years after the Battle of Vienna?

Containment is the word of the day.

Posted by: TheDiggler

at August 22, 2007 11:30 AM

Oh, I posted a link about this book a week or two ago. It can be ordered from Amazon.

And, here's a quotation from Voltaire:

"It is the characteristic of the most stringent censorships that they give credibility to the opinions they attack."

Pakistan has censored Spencer's "The Truth About Muhammed."

Obviously, this is a great quotation to use against CAIR and any Mohammedan who seeks to SILENCE and MUZZLE us. Because universally he's admired and respected, the Great Voltaire.

Posted by: darcy

at August 22, 2007 11:34 AM

One of the more interesting aspects of Bin Laden's piece is his assumption the West is not ignorant of the beliefs of Islam, does not misunderstand Islam at all which is why it wants to destroy it.

"Offensive Jihad is an established and basic tenet of this religion. It is a religious duty rejected only by the most deluded. Divine foundations that are built upon hating the infidels, repudiating them with tongue and teeth till they embrace Islam or pay the jizya with willing submission and humility. The Prophet was 'sent in the final hours with the sword, so that none is worshipped but Allah alone, partnerless.'

"Muslims, and especially the learned among them, should spread Sharia law to the world--that and nothing else...Muslims are obligated to raid the lands of the infidels, occupy them and exchange their systems of governance for an Islamic system, barring any practice that contradicts the Sharia from being publicly voiced among the people as was the case at the dawn of Islam...they say that our Sharia does not impose our particular beliefs upon others; this is a false assumption. For it is, in fact, part of our religion to impose our particular beliefs upon others.

"The Word of the Messenger (per Berida) 'Call them to Isam: if they respond (convert) accept this...if they refuse to accept Islam, demand of them the jizya...if they refuse, seek the aid of Allah and fight them.' Does Islam, or does it not, force people by the power of the sword to submit to its authority, corporeally if not spiritually? Yes. There are only three choices in Islam: either willing submission or payment of the jizya or the sword."

Posted by: Nick Danger

at August 22, 2007 11:47 AM

Well, you sold me one.
Looks like an essential read.

Posted by: iamnot

at August 22, 2007 11:55 AM

The above is evidence that every believing Muslim, one who takes the scriptures seriously, -is by nature a terrorist.

But we're still trying to 'win hearts and minds'- as you can see here:

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007/08/21/story_21-8-2007_pg7_48

Posted by: sheik yer'mami

at August 22, 2007 12:01 PM

"I much prefer the Rudy Doctrine: it is not in the interests of the United States (or the rest of the world) to facilitate the creation of (another) terrorist state."
-- from a posting above

This endorsement of Giuliani is premature. He has not shown, has shown signs in fact of the opposite, of being sufficiently clear-minded about Islam, and sufficiently unsentimental (none of that business of Bush's "ordinary moms and dads" or his latest business about not "abandoning" the Iraqis to their islamically generated fate) to view "victory" in Iraq to be achievable not through remaining and tamping down internal sectarian and ethnic fissures, but in welcoming them, just the way the Muslims in Europe have welcomed, and cleverly exploited, the two mental pathologies of antisemitism and anti-Americanism to drive a wedge, in policies related to Muslims and the Islamic countries, between America and Western Europe).

Until Giuliani gives signs that he is no longer a Bush loyalist, or listening to them, he will not be satisfactory. We can't tolerate more years in Iraq; the Amerian army can't, taxpayers cannot. The Americans must get out of Iraq not because Islam is not a world-wide threat, but because it most definitely is.

Unless and until Giuliani, Thompson, someone on that side, begins to get this, and clearly distiniguishes himself, unsticks himself from Bush, adducing the right reasons for so doing, then Bush, who is for the Republicans a Tarbaby as Iraq is a Tarbaby for the whole country, will bring down that Republican candidate, whoever he is.

And meanwhile, while everyone focusses on Iraq, trivial Iraq, and because of Iraq continues to be inveigled into thinking that the main weapon of Jihad at present is "terrorism" and thereby overlooks Da'wa and demographic conquest and the Money Weapon that furthers both, other things are also happening but being overlooked.

Not only the matter of Islam. There is the economic warfare being conducted by China. Everywhere you go now in sub-Saharan Africa you will find colonies of Chinese, busily engaged in locking in the vast natural resources, for the Chinese are not inhibited in any way in their attempt to ruthlessly dominate in the new "Race for Africa" which, unlike the late-19th century vresion, now has only one entrant -- China. And go to remote places (Belize, say) or go to un-remote places (Italy, say) and you will find economic colonies of Chinese who have managed to beat the locals, and forced them go give up. The silk manufacturers of ties and other clothing in Como now have yielded to Chinese suppliers; the small manufacturers of pots and pans in Italy have done likewise. And it is the same everywhere that the God of Globalization has been worshipped, unthinkingly, and the lowest-price competitor wins, as Ricardo's comparative advantage takes the place of any considerations of patriotism, or a sense that local manufactures, for not only economic but for social and political reasons, may well be worth protecting, even if they may cost more.

And what else is not being attended to as we tie ourselves in idiotic knots over Iraq, aside from the real menace, and real instruments, of Jihad? And aside from China's economic march through the globe? Well, there is anthropogenic climate change, and the problem is not so much the end-state (with Boston having a climate like Savannah) but all the things that will happen because of the astounding unprecedented speed of the change, the rate of the change. The flooding of all of Lower Manhattan, Shanghai, all of Bangladesh, and of a great many islands are part of it, but only a part.

What is causing calendrical confusion in bird migrations? What has caused the CCD -- colony collapse disorder -- with bees? What is causing strange mutations in the amphibia of Costa Rica? What may be causing the disappearance, within a century or two, of 90% of the world's species? Who is minding the global-warming store, while the richest, most powerful country on earth, with the largest scientific establishment, seems preoccupied with keeping Iraq, and its assorted Muslims, in a unified state?

This misguided war, which it is now clear was based on ignorance of Islam, has been colossaly exensive. It is war that was, and is being commanded, by those who demonstrate repeatedly an ignorance of the full menace of Islam and the varied instruments of Jihad, and who never considered, never thought of considering, the ways in which, for our purposes, we might welcome rather than deplore, exploit rather than attempt to remedy, the pre-existing fissures within the Camp of Islam, not by doing something but by leaving the place alone, once the American forces had scoured the country and assured themselves that the regime had not had, or was not close to developing, nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction.

This war, Tarbaby Iraq, has now cost in past, present and committed future costs, $880 billion. That is more than the total cost of all the wars, save World War II, ever fought by the United States. If the Administration were to achieve its stated goals in Iraq -- a unified Iraq, with a "democratic" government and a populace in which various local lions lie down with various other local lions -- then nothing whatever will have been done to weaken the Camp of Islam, or to diminish the menace of the Money Weapon, of Da'wa, and of demographic conquest. Those ignorant of Islam think or claim to think that the example of "democratic" Iraq will do something.

What? What will it do? Will Sunni regimes take pleasure in an Iraq, and in Baghdaad, madinat al-islam, the fabled capital for four hundred years of the Abbasid Caliphate and hence the most important city, after Mecca and Medina, in the history of Arab Islam, and dear to the history-haunted and myth-making Arabs, especially those Sunni Arabs who rule in every state except Iraq (even where, as in Bahrain, the Shi'a may outnumber the Sunnis, or as in Yemen, where they come close)? Will they be impressed by the transfer of power from Sunnis to Shi'a in the Land of the Two Rivers? What madman could think so. Answer: the madmen, or dopes, who have conceived of this policy and who cling to it, and all those who, not having thought things through but determined to show those "cut-and-runners" especially if they happen to be Democrats, stick loyally with Bush on the assumption that any criticism of the war must come from appeasers. As visitors to Mihad Watch know perfectly, the must unanswerable, withering, and therefore dangerous (to Bush loyalists, to those who support Tarbaby Iraq) criticism can be found at this website.

But it is not only thaat $880 billion that has been largely squandered, nor the problem of norale in the services, where many of the best young officers leave the service, and few of those whom one would like to have join, will now think of joining (well aware, as they are, of how peremptorily and unfairly the Pentagon has misused and abused their predecessors, assuming they could simply push them around, interrupt without end their regular careers and lives, all because the Pentagon itself miscalculated completely the size of the regular army, and the specialties that would be needed, but that have been permanently farmed out, it appears, to those citizen-soldiers who, one suspects, will not be re-enlisting in large numbers).

No, it is also the Opportunity Costs. What hasn't been handled. The growing Muslim presence and threat in Western Europe. The economic warfare of China. Anthropogenic climate change that may be unstoppable - it may be too late, and time now only to plan to mitigate, to build those seawalls in, say, Lower Manhattan to protect it.

Meanwhile, Tarbaby Iraq holds us fast.

Posted by: Hugh

at August 22, 2007 12:21 PM

The link given by a poster above is to this story in a Pakistani newspaper, The Daily Times:

"LAHORE: The US State Department is launching what it says will be the first comprehensive public diplomacy effort targeting children, hoping to shape the views of Muslim youths ages 8 to 14 with a series of summer camps and enrichment programs designed to counter negative images of the US, The Boston Globe reported on Monday.

The report said the new initiative was the brainchild of Karen Hughes, a confidante of President Bush who has become the most powerful public-diplomacy czar in decades. Hughes has argued forcefully that the US government must reach out to children younger than age 14, a population the State Department has largely neglected because they are too young for traditional exchange programmes.

“By the time kids get to high school, their impressions are already pretty well shaped,” Hughes said in an interview. She said she began to plan the initiative last year when she realized that the US government’s programmes for young people “weren’t reaching down really young enough”.

As a test of her idea, Hughes asked embassies in 14 Islamic countries this summer to come up with pilot programmes for that age bracket, and spent nearly $1 million on projects that involved about 6,000 youths and hundreds of local partnering organisations. Participants included more than 2,000 girls in Turkey who attended a basketball camp and 80 children from rural schools in Malaysia who learned about Thomas Jefferson and other US heroes on an American-style camping trip with embassy staff and families.

But the programmes also carry risks in nations with virulent anti-American sentiments, which are where most of the programmes are aimed. For example, 41 Iraqi students learned about baseball and the English language for three days this summer in Baghdad. A photo of the group meeting with US Ambassador Ryan Crocker hangs on the door of Hughes’s office at the State Department – but it cannot be publicly released for fear that the children may be harmed by terrorists.

Nonetheless, some foreign policy specialists praised the notion of targeting public diplomacy efforts at average people, rather than elites and opinion-makers, and said children often develop their world view during ages 8 to 14.

“There is a generation, in the Middle East in particular, of 15 to 22 year olds, that during the most formative years of their lives has only seen the US as an imperialist nation,” said Joshua Fouts, director of the University of Southern California Centre on Public Diplomacy, a Los Angeles-based think tank. “If kids aged 8 to 14 are all that’s left, then it is important that we engage them.”

Nidal Ibrahim, executive director of the Arab American Institute, a Washington-based advocacy group, said he believed many Arab families would embrace this kind of outreach. But he also said the programmes would not significantly improve the United States’ image abroad unless accompanied by a change in US policies.

Hughes said she hoped to greatly expand this summer’s pilot project with $8.5 million she received from Congress this year. State Department officials will plan the expansion of the project after seeing exit interviews with the children."

How will 6,000 children, playing basketball and doing crafts, or 60,000 children, or 600,000 children, or 6 million, doing the same, all paid for by the long-suffering American taxpayer, in a program that is called the "brainchild" -- presumably adopted -- of Karen Hughes, overcome what they, or other children, will constantly be fed from the Qur'an, the Hadith, the Sira? Why will memories of nice camps paid for by nice Americans, with pictures of July Fourth picnics, and cowboys in Wyoming, and lobstermen in Maine -you know, the kind of thing that the karen-hughses of this world think might be just the ticket to make Muslims "like us -- because they are just like us." (I made it up, it's not her idiotic slogan, but it just as well might be).

The way to limit the menace of Jihad is to get a large number of Muslims to change what they believe. The belief may be in Islam itself -- that is, we may show them that we Infidels are well aware of what Islamic texts contain and what Islam teaches (see Ayaan Hirsi Ali, see Ibn Warraq, see Wafa Sultan, see Ali Sina, see an ever-growing list of distinguished and articulate apostates: then see Magdi Allam, for the "Muslim-for-identification-purposes-only" Muslim, see Bat Ye'or, see Oriana Fallaci, see many many others including those associated with this website), and willnot be fooled. And when that happens the Muslims will quickly realize that the blague as before will not do, and have to start speaking something with just a little more resemblance to the truth, and by degrees, as they do this, as they are forced by Infidel attitudes to do this, some of them will realize that they are not obligated to stay with Islam forever, and may become those defectors, those apostates. This is likely to take place especially among those who are non-Arabs, and who can be persuaded of what is, of course, true: that Islam has always been a vehicle of Arab supremacism, of Arab cultural and linguistic imperialism. And not if the Infidels say resolute and implacable, based on their greatly-increased knowledge of Islam, Muslims are going to have to think about Islam itself, and non-Arab Muslims will have to think about whether or not pretending to be little Arabs, with Arab names, and following Arab folkways of the seventh-century (as imagined), is really quite the thing that they want for themselves.

And if the ways in which Islam limits artistic expression, or free and skeptical inquiry, are pointed out, repeatedly, there will be some wavering Muslim parents, able to inwardly recognize, if not outwardly admit, that Islam does indeed stunt the mental (and moral) growth, and who wants that for one's beloved children?

And if Infidels make clear that the prevalence of despotism among Muslim states is not accidental, but reflects the view, in Islam, that political legitimacy comes not from the expressed will of the people but from the will expressed by Allah in the Qur'an (and glossed by the Sunnah, that is, mainly, by what is in the Hadith and Sira), for Muslims are merely slaves of Allah, subject to his whims, then at least some Muslims are going to have to answer this criticism, and they will be unable to do so, for the true-blue Believers will admit to the justice of the charge, and indeed claim that it shows the superiority of Islam.

And if they make clear as well that the economic backwardness of Muslim states is a result of several factors, and that those factors again arise out of the teachings, attitudes, atmospherics of Islam, then there will be those who, contemplating the attraction of Islam, but also wanting economic development (say, in sub-Saharan Africa) who will choose to keep Islam out, or it if is present in their countries, to keep it from spreading. And it should be clear that inshallah-fatalism, and political despotism, both prompted in Muslim countries by the tenets of Islam, are what explain the failure of the rich Arab oil states, for example, to develop anything like modern economies, despite the ten trillion dollars they have received, since 1973 alone, in unmerited oil revenues.

Posted by: Hugh

at August 22, 2007 12:58 PM

@Hugh

Bravo!

Posted by: Ynkedoodl2

at August 22, 2007 1:02 PM

"Meanwhile, Tarbaby Iraq holds us fast."
Right you are, Hugh... And Afghanistan is a sticky wicket, too.
We're trying to set up a strong, central government amongst tribal people who have never wanted one. These people hate each other due to their tribalism. They have been at war since 1979 and have gone feral to boot.

Certain elements of the "left" and "neocons" think we ought to be here due to ideological blinders. In the case of some in the left the basis for their fairy tales is multiculturalism, "in the end, all cultures are the same and want to get along." I wish they could see the shreds of human flesh from a jihadi I saw hanging off an automobile that was used as a Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Device (VBIED). My culture has nothing in comon with Islam's and that man blowing himself to bits for 72 virgins proves he didn't "want to get along."
In the case of the neocons, their fiction is "Everyone wants to have a representative democracy and live like we do." Well, for starters, our ancestors worked hard for the society we have today. The people here are too lazy to pick up their own garbage & the more we do for them, the more dependent they become on our generousity.
Tomorrow, we'll be out giving the feral people medical assistance. Let's just say they don't behave well when they have to wait in line. I hope none of us get killed or wounded trying to put band aids on some of these grateful citizens of Afghanistan.

Posted by: Armalite

at August 22, 2007 1:33 PM

Greetings in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ: that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,… every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

More fascinating information and commentary by Mr. Hugh Fitzgerald. Too bad he's not the president's advisor on Islam....

Posted by: Stand fast in the liberty

at August 22, 2007 1:41 PM

Dissemination of this handbook just might be counterproductive. Islamic apologists will use this to claim that it is al Qaeda that is responsible and has nothing to do with Basic Islam. It could cause the focus to shift away from a critial examination of Islam and focus on the mythical Tiny Minority of Extremists. They will use this to reinforce their belief that Islam has indeed been hijacked. It will take a concentrated effort to show people that the content of this manual is a true statement of Basic Islam.

Posted by: Pelayo

at August 22, 2007 1:44 PM

R_not wrote: I am listening to the President right now and I think he is trying to make some sort of comparison between Japan during WWII and their religion, Shinto, that they were fanatic about, and Islam.

Oh, did I get excited when I read that. I thought perhaps Bush had finally been pressured to read this article:

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/014450.php

But it does not seem so. Seems like Bush still is still blissfully unaware of the "Islamic" part of the phrase "at war with Islamic Jihadists".

Bush is a man so hell-bent on creating his own legacy by democratizing something, anything, that he could have read John David Lewis's piece and come out only with some vague comparison to Japan Iraq and ignoring the keystone concept of de-Shinto-fication (is there such a word? lol) of the Japanese government as part of unconditional surrender.

Posted by: GreatShaitan

at August 22, 2007 1:56 PM

On payday, I'll order some copies of this book and distribute them to my comrades involved with this 21st century version of the "Huertgen Forrest" campaign known as the "Global War on Terror."
I use the Huertgen Forrest analogy because we do have to fight the Islamists like we had to fight the Germans; however our choice of ground (Iraq) and methodology of nation building in both tar baby Iraq & Afghanistan aren't contributing to a speedy victory... Quite similar to how the Huertgen Forrest campaign affected WW II.

Posted by: Armalite

at August 22, 2007 2:11 PM

Armalite, I would like to add to your post if you don't mind.

The Huertgen Forest battle was one of those battles like Aachen and Pelielu that were not necessary. Both areas could have been bypassed and isolated as were Rabal and Truk in the Pacific.

Some people lack that kind of WW2 knowledge. Iraq will not be the last place where American lives and equipment have been squandered.

Posted by: Pelayo

at August 22, 2007 2:34 PM

Welfare States tend to collapse eventually. This would include the form of Global welfare state wherein the US spends the treasure of US taxpayers to attempt to change the culture of the Islamic world to something that will co-exist better with us

The US taxpayer cannot carry the rest of the world

Posted by: PapaBear

at August 22, 2007 3:13 PM

I was watching The Wind and the Lion dvd the other night... and I know the movie is minimally based upon a Greek American businessman who was kidnapped and not some very attractive American woman with teo children. Anyway, there's a scene where the US State Dept diplomats are meeting with the nominal leader of Morocco and he replies to the "threats" by the US diplomat that he's been threatened by experts: the French, Germans, etc. I know, it's a movie, but still, I think there's some truth in that line. Per Hugh's numbers: $880 bilion, 3700 dead, etc., and well, maybe we should own Iraq. We certainly have paid a very price for it and what is there to show for it? We certainly do seem to operate at the international level like Sally Field - they like me, they really like me. That if we only pay up enough foreign aid, dead Americans, etc that they will like us, really like us. Well, the Hamas, Fatah, Maliki, etc don't and never will.

Posted by: HOV Dummy

at August 22, 2007 3:27 PM

I am not opposed to taking the oil in Iraq and using to offset the cost of the war. The left accuses the right anyway. I am thinking on the lines of Gen. Sherman in his march through the south. I want it announced as state policy not sneak it out of the country.

1Chron 26:27
They dedicated part of the spoil won in battles to repair the house of the LORD.

Posted by: Im.mad.as.HELL!

at August 22, 2007 3:38 PM

www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=57197

There's the Rudy Giuliani link for those of you who haven't already seen what he has had to say with regards to "Palestine". To build upon what my earlier post said, the so-called "Rudy Doctrine" is a VAST improvment over the Bush Doctrine (all things considered). We should be wary of politicans who say the right things, but we should also refrain from passing judgement on their words until they have been given a chance to act upon them. The more Giuliani has had to say over the past few weeks with regards to political Islam, the more relaxed I honestly feel towards his potential presidency. But I say that as a Canadian, so my two cents on inter-Republican attitudes towards geopolitical issues may not hold much weight amongst those of you to the South.

The Bush Doctrine vaguely holds that it is in the interests of the United States to promote and build democratic institutions in the Islamic world, while not ruling out the use of force to acheive these goals. The Bush Doctrine is a fraud, as one can see that democracy is completely incompatable with Islam. Force is a neccessity in promoting this Doctrine as force is the only way in which Muslims will accept democracy. Attaturk literally had to do this in bringing secularism to Turkey (which is now being abandoned slowly after last month's elections, surprise, surprise). The use of force, as we can see in Iraq, is draining money, resources, and most importnatly of all, personel, which will be desperately needed in the next few years in order to stop Iran from building nuclear weapons. Our boys (and YOUR boys are indeed OUR boys) are fighting and dying to bring democracy to a country that would throw said democracy in the rubbish bin and replace it with sha'ria as soon as possible. The Bush Doctrine is an exercise in idiocy.

At least with Giuliani, he's pointing something out which is obvious to all of us; it is not in our interest to create a Palestianian state, to refrain from putting pressure on Israelis to make concessions they shouldn't be forced to make in the first place, and to stop funding and training Palestinians who then turn around and kill innocent Israelis. Right now the world (and in particular the Europeans) are banking on a new American adminstration and I can think of nothing better than President Giuliani telling the Europeans that their insistance (at the behest of the Arab League) that the Isralei-Arab conflict is the source of all evil in the world is what it is, a diversion and a smoke screen and as such, the United States will not let the Europeans and the Arabs get away with such doouble-faced good cop/bad cop thuggery. Now of course Giuliani's point is a clear break from the rest of the political establishment (and, while I do not have a link to prove it, I have seen Thompson backing the same stance). So at least with Rudy, we're taking steps in the right direction.

I will say this in closing, don't expect a change in the political establishment's views towards Islam any time soon. If we're going to be successful in this war, with regards to revealing the true nature of Islam, it will have to be done in baby steps, but by men like Thompson and Giuliani (and on the Democrat side, by Lieberman alone, although he's no longer a Democrat!). It's an uphill battle AGAINST the media, AGAINST academia, and AGAINST our political elite(s). A tall order indeed.

Think about this hard, what could we honestly get away with right now, if one of us went on national television and started quoting all those nasty passages in the Qu'ran, the hadiths, the Ulema, not to mention the libraries full of books documenting (in most cases, in the words of Muslim scholars themselves) the nature and history of jihad and dhimmitude? Look at Robert, in promoting his new book he has only been able to get on Fox and CBN. Do you honestly expect a REPUBLICAN national candidate to get up in front of the nation and say "F**K Islam"? It'd be fantastic and I personally would watch the clip on YouTube about a thousand times (if I owned a cellphone I'd make it my ringtone), but it isn't going to happen any time soon. This at least is a small step in the right direction.

Posted by: TheDiggler

at August 22, 2007 3:56 PM

Another book-or three to the list! Glad I didn't go yet! Ten Hanson is my favorite too. Thankyou, had no idea he had a book out. He will write something I have been thinking of for awhile, it blows me away! He words things so well!!!!!!!!!!!
This article, might make them-bin ect have a little big head, oh ya, their dead, because I have to say this too it will be quite interesting.
I guess you could say about the article so far, killers like to kill their own way, or be chief of their own tryant group. Like the Sunni's and the Shia's constantly arguing who is on the right path!? The Shia's seem to be looked at more what I read of the Great Satan blogg. They know more of their own religion. If ya believe that!? Osama mass murderer, so was Zarw,he was brutal, cutting heads off. Wearing a explosive belt incase he got caught. Yaa, right, did ya notice it didn't even explode when he did get killed!?
What could make a man so many not think for themselfs and not know what they are doing is wrong. For what reason. Those kind of anxies should be contained. How can it feel good in your heart. I would have to question my God, I was reading Saul they other day. David escaping.
I hope I find all this time.
Nope I do not even think they know what is their own religion, which way does it go. I would ask myself sometimes which time period are we in? The devil has definitely has been let loose from his chains!
reminds me I have a poem!....

Posted by: MZ

at August 22, 2007 5:31 PM

A poster above writes that "the The Bush Doctrine is a fraud." He then goes to praise Giuliani for his supposed break with others. But Giuliani has appointed Norman Podhoretz, who first described Bush's disjointed and often contradictory moves in the Middle East as the "Bush Doctrine" and continuyes to praise that "Doctrine" and the splendid victory in Iraq that is always, in Podhoretz's view, just around the corner, as the chief of his foreign policy advisers. That single act makes one wonder if Giuliani will be able to finally see through to the folly of Tarbaby Iraq, folly not because Islam is not a world-wide threat (that Podhoretz recognizes, but hasn't any ideas as to how that threat might be countered, other than the Iraq folly, and possibly bombing Iran's nuclear facilities -- nothing about Muslim immigration, nothing about NATO making it a point to bring Western Europe and North America together to diminish Muslim oil revenues, Muslim infiltration of the West through the deployment of the Money Weapon (simply keep it out -- don't let the Saudis build mosques and madrasas and rent armies of Western hirelings to do their bidding in the corridors of power, and work to demoralize and divide the Camp of Islam, starting with the exploitation of the pre-existing fissures so self-evidently presented in Iraq), nothing at all but fulsome praise for "The Bush Doctrine" and a good deal about "World War IV."

If that is the line Giuliani takes, he will go down, stuck to Tarbaby Iraq. Only a Republican who completely distances himself from that folly, and for the right reasons, can conceivably win.

Posted by: Hugh

at August 22, 2007 6:06 PM

I'm not going to even bother to try and make sense out of your above posting Hugh (your original take on this topic was much better on Dhimmi Watch). I think it's plain and obvious that, based on his recent comments, Giuliani is headed in the right direction (or at least in a direction Martin Kramer would advise). I welcome (not praise) such steps, while you would rather dismiss them as not good enough(?).

What doesn't make sense is your statement:

"Only a Republican who completely distances himself from that folly, and for the right reasons, can conceivably win"

Republicans cannot distance themselves from Iraq, and we all know that. But denying a Palestinian state, which runs against the current Administration's ridiculous "road map for peace plan" is not just that? On Palestine, is he not distancing himself from the Adminstration's position? Iraq does not enter into my above posts (only to point out that we're losing resources following a ridiculous Doctrine). I thought, and again I'm only a Canadian here, that in America the candidate's words are more important than the opinion(s) of one of his many advisers. If you have a recent example of Guiliani openly supporting the Bush Docrtine I think we should all hear it.

You were right in your original posting that Guiliani (and every other Republican candidate) needs to go further in their statements and intentions concerning Islam. But here, Guiliani is hitting the nail on the head with the Arab-Israeli conflict. Since 1974, both the Arab League and the European Union have made this the central issue in world affairs. Every little problem and evil in the world is connected, by them, to the conflict between the Arabs and Israel. For example, by using the Arab-Israeli conflcit as an excuse they have been able to promote an agenda of Islamification within the Christian Church(s), culminating in several cases in the dispicable re-adoption of replacement theology.

I know, and you know, that the conflict between the Arabs and the Israeli's is not the cause of the jihad (to say the least). But our enemies in the European Union and in the Arab League have turned it into the central issue, at least in the public square. This is also why, to some extent, politicians are prevented from taking a hard stance against the jihad (no one wants to be seen denying peace). This is partly why there hasn't been a real hard look at Islam on the part of the general public, because the Arab-Israeli conflict clouds the judgement of the public at large. They can't see past this fabrication in order to see the real threat underneath. Also, without the peace process the European Union is left with no credibility in its pathetic attempts to eclipse American power by "negotiating" a settlment to the Palestinian conflict. If Guiliani follws up on his statements he kills two birds with one stone; discredit Europe in its vanity and sycophancy, while throwing the Arabs off course. The Israeli question is not the central issue, but if our opponents make it so, why not take them on?

Posted by: TheDiggler

at August 22, 2007 6:48 PM

Islam doesn't scare us.

And by the way we know that Islam is a human sacrifice cult that is centered around the Babylonian idol Baal ("al-lah"). Islamic acts of terror are in eesence acts of human sacrifice to Baal.

The Muslism can keep Islam all to themselves no matter WHAT they say or do!

al-Qaeda can tell THIS to Baal, its master.

Posted by: pythagoras

at August 22, 2007 7:27 PM

Islam doesn't scare us (unlike the lunkheaded bureaucrats in the EU who ARE running scared).

And by the way, we know that Islam is a human sacrifice cult that is centered around the Babylonian idol Baal (aka "al-lah"). Islamic acts of terror are acts of human sacrifice to Baal (and acts which form the essence of these "true believers'" "religion").

The Muslism (aka "true believers") can keep Islam all to themselves no matter WHAT they say or do!

al-Qaeda and "radical" Islamists can go ahead and tell THAT to Baal, their master.

Posted by: pythagoras

at August 22, 2007 7:34 PM

Hmmmm...I thought that, according to their own dogma (which also happened to get run over by my karma) the word (let alone the philosophy) "INfinite", which is being alluded to, was a context, reserved exclusively by their allah, and him alone.
(remember the snivelling about our afghan operation originally called "infinite justice", and they all snivelled about it, forcing a name change).

Nothing like the age-old double-standard catch-all escape clause:
taqqiyah, taqqiyah, taqqiyah.
Hypocrisy at its best...lol

Posted by: jcom972

at August 22, 2007 8:24 PM

What a thread! a notable article and book, and so many comments for making other...comments! and the link to Newt's speech was encouraging though Newt, like Guiliani, like Thompson, will not let go of the wish for "Victory" in Iraq.

I would also like to know how VDH would square this book and its review, with his position on "Victory" in Iraq. I intend to email him ( he apparently has no blog with commenting) and ask if he would care to explain that.

Elric66 mentions his forays in yahoo forums and I experience similar frustrations.

JW/DW is great for the insight and analysis and keeping to date. But we aren't converting many that are ignorant of Islam by our posts here. Preaching to the choir is the phrase that comes to mind.

So I spend a lot of time in other forums. Liberals are blinded by hatred of their own country and their minds are made up. They want to leave Iraq, with apologies to all whom Bush might have offended.( Oh and BTW, have you all seen the legislation proposed by Kennedy et al to allow virtually unlimited immigration for Iraqi refugees? the most grand apology of them all).

I went to Newt.org where there are boards for discussing Defending America. Any comment suggesting that maybe the war in Iraq is a bad thing, even for conservatives as well, is treated with absolute scorn and ridicule. I am called a liberal S**thead and a traitor. It's quite brutal. And these are my fellow conservatives.

My attempts at opening eyes to other conservative minded folk is disheartening.

LGF is most disappointing. At least there you have a group of fairly intelligent folk who follow the daily incidents of the global jihad much like JW/DW. They have a head start. But for the fun of it, you all should try to go there some time and try to convince them of the folly of tarbaby Iraq. They will have none of it. You might as well go to the DailyKos and convince them to vote for Newt. It will be just as successful. Not.

Which leads me to my next observation, re: global warming. I find little, if anything to ever disagree with Hugh's analysis. I am sold 100% on the tarbaby Iraq position. I do what I can in the above mentioned forums to provide links to Robert, Hugh, Diana West, Lawrence Auster and any one else who sees the problem being Islam itself. I think we all agree about there being a war of ideas going on right now. Particularly among the presidential candidates, towards whom we evaluate for who has the best idea about the nature of the problem.

But, I really dislike the idea of linkage of tarbaby Iraq to the idea of ignoring global warming. For lack of better term at this moment...yuck.

If our efforts are better spent converting those who already know about Islam, the Koran and Mohammed. We don't need to move mountains there- just a little push over the summit maybe all that is needed. Arguing against the war because we are ignoring Iran, Islam in Europe, the da'wa of the Saudi's, is something other conservatives can sink their teeth into, but telling them Iraq will contribute to the impending disaster from global warming? I guess I am one of those "deniers" Newsweek described a few weeks ago. I won't do it. But, I am, only, a single voice in the blogging universe.

Posted by: Leave Iraq Now

at August 22, 2007 8:57 PM

The poster above who seems content with Giuliani's correct expression of disgust with the "two-state-solution" and does not think he need demand more of Giuliani, offers one more example of the notion that Man Wants But Little Here Below.

I'm a bit more demanding. I think Giuliani should go beyond saying, as he has, that "right now" he does not think the "two-state-solution" is correct, or that "right now" further Israeli surrenders of territory and rights is unwise, with the clearly implied "until such time as the 'Palesinians' do this or do that." Why? Well, in the first place becuase under Mahmoud Abbas, or Accounant Fayad, or perhaps someone even more outwardly acceptable but just as dangerous, say Sari Nuseibeh, one can see those on whom particular Arab personalities -- remember Saint Sadat? Remember plucky little King Hussein of Jordan, who so impressed Anthony Lewis and so many others? -- make such an impression, may be fooled yet again, especially if the then-current Israeli leader is someone physically unappealing (think of Begin, or Sharon at his most bloated), or incapable of stating Israel's case because he doesn't know it himself (think of Olmert) or long ago started impersonating some clownish figure in a story by I. B. Singer, say the Fool of Chelm (think of Shimon Peres).

No. What is asked of Giuliani, who is hard-headed and not sentimental, is that he recognize, and begin to discuss, the nature of Arab Muslim opposition to Israel -- even if the Israeli government has been too stupid or clumsy or awkward to do it itself. It is up to him, or to another candidate, to begin explaining that the Arab and Muslim opposition to Israel is based on the immutable texts of Islam, that Israel's size is a matter of indifference to them, but Israel's existence, as an Infidel state on land once part of Dar al-islam, means that it should never expect, and its supporters should never expect, that it can win a permanent peace by surrendering more territory. Far from it. Any such surrender will whet, rather than sate, Arab and Muslim appetites, and force the Israelis, who already live in conditions of daily peril beyond anything any of us can imagine, tho live in conditions that are still more perilous, possibly intolerably so. And such a withdrawal, such an inability to make the considerable, indeed overwhelming legal, moral, and historic case for Israel retaining every inch or dunam of what it now possesses, and to give the local "Palestinians" as much control over their own affairs -- but no more -- as is consonant with Israeli security. That means not only no state no, but no state ever. It means no control now over the Judean heights, or the aquifers, now or ever. It is absurd of the Arab Muslims to demand that everywhere in their vast territories non-Muslims and even non-Arab Muslims must be subservient to, live as harried minorities among, dominant Arab Muslims, but that it is an outrage that anywhere in the world Arab Muslims should have to live as a minority, not wielding power, in the state of anyone else.

In other words, Giuliani must start studying Islam, must get a crash course in Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira, and then make it his constant daily study in odd moments (with a private no-nonsense tutor, possibly), and begin to understand that the war against Israel is a war mandated by Islam.

Then, in Iraq, his constantly-reiterated support for the war, continued right up to the present, in his Foreign Affairs article and in every speech he makes in which he alludes to Iraq, is disastrous. He does not challenge the definition of "winning." He merely accepts Bush's definition, which though vague, clearly has something to do with keeping Iraq united, and trying to make it prosperous, for the prospect of an Iraq where sectarian and ethnic fissures would be welcomed as furthering the cause of the Infidels, and dividing and demoralizing -- and therefore weakening, for a very long time -- the Camp of Islam, is apparently still not in the universe of his potential thoughts, his understanding. Apparently it just is too different from what everyone has been saying, Republicans and Democrats. Or perhaps he is a sentimentalist after all, and lacks the common sense that some, in this treacly age, might regard as undue ruthlessness, when of course it is nothing of the kind, but merely the application of the oldest principle of warfare: divide et impera. Actually, we don't want to "divide and rule." We don't want to rule over Muslims at all. We wish them to leave us alone, to not try to impose their values, to be deprived of that weaponry, which is mainly money but also the ability to push what should be their transparent line of propaganda and apologetics, and to be understood by those who have come to grips with the texts, tenets, attitudes, and atmospherics of Islam, and have enough knowledge of the history of Islamic conquest and the subsequent subjugation of non-Muslims in the lands conquered as never to be fooled, never to allow themselves to be buffaloed, able to make sense of the data that the day's news brings, to fit, that is, the practice of Islam into the theory, or ideology, of Islam.

Finally, the hint of a coherent strategy, consiting not only of the exploitation of the sectarian and ethnic fissures in Iraq, but the same fissures outside Iraq, and the appeal, to non-Arab Muslims, of emphasizing the nature of Islam as a vehicle of Arab supremacism, linguistic and cultural but also economic and political, can only be undertaken -- as a much more effective method of dealing with the world-wide Jihad (and there are many other lists of recommendations for countering the Jihad and constraining Islam, for limiting the damage that Believers can inflict on Indiels, elsewhere at this website) than the "Bush Doctrine," with its $880 billion spent or committed, and the 3,700 dead and 25,000 wounded squandered in Iraq, for goals that are both unachievable and which, were they to be achieved, would make no sense.

All that must be asked of Giuliani, and Thompson, and the others. The bar is being set much too low.

Posted by: Hugh

at August 22, 2007 8:57 PM

The one good thing about Giuliani is he dislikes the Saudis. At least we can assure ourselves that when in office he will hopefully end that idiotic farce of a friendship.

Outside of that he is not a whole hell of a lot better then the rest. He is for the Iraqi adventure which resembles the Scott expedition to the South Pole each and every day. He still uses bizarre terms like “terrorists” and “Moderate Muslim allies” and still thinks the core of Islam is good. Maybe deep down he feels otherwise but it is time for real leaders to take on the challenge of saying the truth.

It is as if people think this quantum mechanics or something....

Posted by: greatcometof1577

at August 22, 2007 9:17 PM

Greetings in the name of God, to whom alone I am going to bend my knee - NEVER to any man.

I thought there was a policy that JW/DW is not supposed to be a sectarian site. Of course, as long as you're trying to save people, I guess it's OK, right?

JW/DW also has a policy of not engaging in political arguments irrelevant to jihad - unless it's Mr. Fitzgerald preaching the anthropogenic global warming religion. Because I have a life, I'm not going to go into a full-fledged rebuttal. I do know that there are plausible reasons to think that the question is definitely open, and that increasing numbers of climatologists are willing to say so.

The other popular religion here is bashing the war in Iraq. You don't have to be an open-borders multiculturalist dhimmi to believe that it might not be a bad thing for us to kill tens of thousands of jihadis. Certainly the Iraq and Afghanistan vets I know want America to finish the job.

Mr. Fitzgerald has a theory that if we just leave Iraq, the Shi'ites and Sunnis will fight a gentlemanly war among themselves and leave us alone, as they did so well until the Bush presidency (sarcasm). So, let's pull the cops out of East LA, let the Bloods and Crips kill each other and as many innocent people as possible, and there will be no more crime in America.

Some of us think victory in Iraq will assist victory over jihad more than surrender, and that Manhattan will still be above water in 50 years. No, I'm not a Bush-bot. I criticize him plenty in meetings among Republicans, but I don't find the Daily Kos - Moveon.org crowd to be a better alternative.

I'd love to see the day when most people using this website admit that honorable patriots who want victory over jihad could legitmately conceive of different ways to achieve success, without getting into lowercase ad-hominem demonization. And some of us believe in various minority religions, too, and we don't intend to change.

Posted by: Surak

at August 22, 2007 9:41 PM

Surak

I think I disagree. But I can't tell. It would help me understand why there should be support for the war in Iraq, and therefore, a victory, if someone could honestly explain what the victory, that you and the president wish to achieve, is supposed to look like? Is it an independent democratic Iraq (remember that sharia in the consitution bugagoo)? is it the death, capture with indefinite imprisonment of all members of Al-Qaeada, the Qods force and Iran's revolutionary guard?

It is a question often asked of posters here who do not think Hugh's position is correct. The last time it was posed, no one bothered to answer.

Please explain.

Posted by: Leave Iraq Now

at August 22, 2007 10:22 PM

Leave Iraq Now

Surak wants to win it just like France won the 100 years war...

Concepts like money, economics, basic strategy, tactics, hell even who the enemy is means very little.....

The "Edwardian Parades" of the 100 years war as Liddell Hart called them in which nothing could be learned by military strategest
except "negativity". We can call it the same thing in Iraq today..."Georgian Parades".

Posted by: greatcometof1577

at August 22, 2007 11:11 PM

I have posed the questions so many times before.

But here they are again:

1) Should a "victory" in Iraq be defined as anything other than an outcome which will definitely leave the Camp of Islam weakened?

2) If the answer to #1 is, as I hope it will be, "No," then why is it better to prevent the sectarian fissures within Iraq, between Sunnis and Shi'a, fissures which are not limited to Iraq but can be observed in a half-dozen countries, and what's more have the ability to set Sunni regimes not only against the Shi'a who stand to inherit The Land of the Two Rivers, that is Mesopotamia, that is the place where, under the 500 years of the Abbasid Caliphate, for the first hundred centered in Samarra and for the remaining four hundred in Baghdad, madinat al-salaam, the fabled city of Haroun al-Rashid, but against the Shi'a in their midst, or, to put it another way, to allow the "Persian" Shi'a, those "Rafidite dogs," to inherit that part of the Arab land that is considered to be the place where its (much exaggerated) "glorious history" was made, and where its capital city, "glorious" Baghdad, was the center of that history.

3) If the answer to #1 is "No," and if it is clear that 80% of the world's Muslims are non-Arab, but have in various ways and to various degrees (with the Kurds and black Africans of Darfur, mass murder; with the Berbers, denial of their right to use the Berber language or preserve and disseminate the Berber culture) have been the victims of Arab cultural and linguistic and economic and political imperialism, why does it not make sense to encourage the Kurds to obtain independence, for this will raise, in the minds of many non-Arab Muslims, the very thought that it might be possible to throw off the Arab yoke, and this in turn is likely to cause all kinds of dissension within the Camp of Islam, even possibly driving some non-Arab Muslims, whose ethnicity works against rather than reinforces their Islam, to leave Islam altoghether.

4) If the answer to #1 is "No" (as I hope it still is) then do we not wish that the co-religionists of Sunnis and Shi'a in Iraq will send aid from outside, that such aid is likely to use up their men, their money, their materiel, their attention, and especially to force the two most sinister and poweerful Islamic states, Iran and Saudi Arabia, for reasons of prestige, to necessarily ensure that "their side" does not lose, and since, in Islam (as the Americans refuse so far to recognize) one does not compromise but ends either as Victor or Vanquished, such a low-level war is liable to go on forever.

5) There is so much more that might be said, including my oft-repeated argument that Turkey can be made to accept an independent Kurdistan, with American guarantees that such a state will not make territorial demands on Turkey, but will direct its efforts to Iran and Syria, and that in the case of Iran, such a Kurdish state can have effects not only in the Kurdish areas of Iran, but among its other non-Persian minorities, and one wishes, for example, for continued unrest among the Arabs in Khuzistan, and Iranian repression, and then renewed unrest, just as one hopes that the Shi'a in the oil-bearing Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia become more and more disgruntled, and that the Shi'a in Bahrain, to which an Iranian official has just renewed Iran's longstanding claim (sending shudders down Arab spines) will behave in similar fashion.

6) If you answered "No" to #1, but find fault with my #2-#5, then tell us please how the Bush strategy, the one to bring "freedom" to "ordinary moms and dads" and to sacrifice Americans, and American money, to prevent those sectarian and ethnic fissures from widening, and doing everything possible to tamp them down, will lead to a good result, to that "victory" I defined in #1 above.

I'll wait right here. Tell me. Tell all of us.
Be detailed. No vagueness, no "we just can't do this" or "it wouldn't be right to do that." Go ahead.

Posted by: Hugh

at August 22, 2007 11:25 PM

"unless it's Mr. Fitzgerald preaching the anthropogenic global warming religion..."
-- from the same poster, "Surak," in a little aside

I haven't preached anything. I have alluded to something. I am not a True Believer in any religion, and I do not consider the data amassed, and the various conceivable explanations, to be akin to a "global warming religion." If it is a "religion," it is a "religion" whose Believers devoutly wish they did not have to believe in, devoutly wish they did not have to come to the melancholy conclusions they have been forced, by the data, and more data, and more data, to come to. I could say much more, based on much more information. But then I would be "preaching," wouldn't I? And I am determined not to do that.

Posted by: Hugh

at August 22, 2007 11:31 PM

How dare you describe Islam as moderate? From the leader of the world's most moderate islamic nation:

from memri http://www.thememriblog.org/turkey/blog_personal/en/2595.htm

Speaking at Kanal D TV’s Arena program, PM Erdogan commented on the term “moderate Islam,” often used in the West to describe AKP [Turkey’s ruling party of which Erdogan is the head] and said, “These descriptions are very ugly, it is offensive and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it.”

Islam is islam and that's it.

Would Al-Maliki disagree?

Posted by: Leave Iraq Now

at August 22, 2007 11:59 PM

Here's some choice quotes from a bush speech delivered today:

"Prime Minister Maliki's a good guy, a good man with a difficult job and I support him."

US troops, whom he hailed as the "greatest force for human liberation the world has ever known", will be in Iraq as long as he is president.

the consequences of leaving "without getting the job done would be devastating", and "the enemy would follow us home."

bush argued that US involvement in the far east had turned it from a continent in 1939 with only two democracies - Australia and New Zealand - into one where democracy was the norm: he mentioned Japan, South Korea and Vietnam.

bush will expand on that in a speech next week in which he will say he has not abandoned his ambitious idea that Iraq could be in the vanguard of bringing democracy to the Middle East.

The Bush administration wants to keep the surge going until at least next April ... .

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2154354,00.html

My comments:

it seems quite clear that bush's strategy in fighting the "war on terror" is to bring democracy to the Middle East. That, my friends, is absolute insanity. it means bush still hasn't the slightest clue as to the nature of the islamic threat to the West.

To bush's defenders, I ask: How can the US possibly be pursuing the right strategy in the "war on terror", including our involvement in iraq, if, despite spending almost $1 trillion, suffering close to 30,000 killed & wounded & driving the military to near-exhaustion, al queda is as strong as ever, according to our own intelligence estimates?

bush & his megalomaniac policies is doing to the US what Katrina did to New Orleans.

Posted by: sheik yer booty

at August 23, 2007 12:58 AM

I agree with the reality of anthropogenic global warming, and with the importance of it. Climate change may soon overshadow Islam's propensity to wreak havoc and cause death and destruction. But I cringed at the mention of it here, and also the introduction of China's growing economic power into the discussion, not because I disagree, but because those topics will only spawn endless off-topic partisan debate.

Posters will often subvert the discussion on protection of our borders from jihadists to protection of our borders from Mexican migrant workers.

Or the treatment of homosexuals by Islam will turn into a debate on the morality/immorality of homosexuality.

I think it's fair to say that the only thing JW/DW readers could agree on is the danger that Islam presents. Ours is an extremely broad coalition of men, women, Hindus, Catholics, Protestants, Jews, atheists, gays, straights, bi's, conservatives, liberals, etc. etc., but it also a fairly singular, fractious, and fragile coalition.

Posted by: special_guest

at August 23, 2007 2:35 AM

Hugh, in responding to a story about Karen Hughes, said

The way to limit the menace of Jihad is to get a large number of Muslims to change what they believe.

I disagree with Karen Hughes assumption that the people we need to focus on are the Muslims. I disagree that we need to spend our time and money trying to win their "hearts and minds". I think we need to first win the hearts and minds of our own people. We should be spending our time and money educating our own people about the unbelievable rarity of our cultural values (personal and religious freedom, economic self-determination, self-governance through democratic republicanism, etc.). Our values are only shared in a very small portion of the world, and have only existed for a very short time.

We should be educating our people just how fragile those freedoms are. We should be pointing out just how different and incompatible those values are from the Islamic values, instead of trying to convince ourselves that everyone in the world wants the same thing, that we all share the same universal values. They're not universal. They're ours.

Muslims will or won't get around to reforming their religion. I doubt we can have much influence on them one way or the other, even if some school girls learn to braid friendship bracelets on a US-taxpayer-funded camping trip. I never cared much whether the Iraqi government would be able to become a non-sectarian freedom-loving democracy, and with the death of each Coalition soldier, my interest in their well-being sinks still lower. It's the same situation with the forever-just-around-the-corner Islamic reformation. If they decide to do it for their own reasons, good for them. But regardless, we need to get our own affairs in order, and prepare to defend ourselves.

Posted by: special_guest

at August 23, 2007 3:10 AM

That remark about changing the way Muslims believe was taken out of context. The whole point was that if, in some distant future, that were to be achieved among some of them, it would happen only if Infidels had been educated, or educated themselves, about Islam first, and arrived at the obvios conclusions about its texts, tenets, and attitudes, and then, in demonstrating their new knowledge, and the implacable attitude toward Islam, and toward Muslims, no matter the smiles and wiles and beguilements and "three abrahamic faiths" and "we all believe in the same god" and "5.32" and "there is no compulsion in religion" and "Jews and Christians never had it so good as in wonderful Andalucia" and "women can retain their modesty in wonderful Islam and not be pieces of meat as of course they are outside of wonderful Islam" and "of course the treatment of Muslim women by Muslim men has nothing to do with Islam" and all the rest, including the conspiracy theories in which the Infidel s are blamed - no, that will all be over. There will be no more nonsense.

And if those Infidels --- not all, but many more than now, capable of articulating their views, and overwhelming any opposition -- keep it up, and keep it up, and are joined by the most articulate and attractive apostates, those defectors from Islam --- this will start to have an effect on Muslims. For as they realize the game is up, some will bethink themselves. Some will realize they cannot indefinitely hide the texts, Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira, or continue to operate the fog machine, or engage in the pettifoggery of lawsuits to silence critics when millions and millions have become those critics.

And furthermore, if Infidels set out -- it has been done at JW many times -- the reasons why the failures of Muslim states and societies, even of communities in non-Muslim lands that are suffused with Islam -- the political, economic, social, moral and intellectual failures -- are the result of Islam itself, which means that Muslims if they wish to overcome their own failures will do so only to the extent that they leave Islam (which no one should be forced or threatened to continue to be part of, as has happened to would-be apostates for the entire history of Islam)--that too will make it ever harder for Muslims not to begin to question and doubt and wonder, and some will be demoralized, and some, one hopes in ever greater numbers, will leave that faith that is a permanent menace to themselves -- it stunts their mental and moral growth -- but much more importantly, a menace to all non-Muslims.

Muslim minds can be changed, in significant numbers, only if first Infidel minds are, in significant numbers, fully informed about Islam.

Posted by: Hugh

at August 23, 2007 7:31 AM

Hugh said

That remark about changing the way Muslims believe was taken out of context.

It's also literally true. If we want to save Islam, we need to foster the growth of a more "moderate" Islam. But our goal shouldn't be to save Islam, it should be to save ourselves from Islam. We should leave Islam to itself, to reform itself or not. Our only interaction with Islam should be to ensure that it does not endanger us with weapons of mass destruction, or with any of the other weapons of Islam that Hugh has enumerated many times such as the demographic weapon, the dawa weapon, the petrodollar weapon.

I quoted Hugh because he explicitly stated the unstated assumptions and goals of the Administration. Karen Hughes, with her $1 million camping-trip-for-schoolgirls program is the latest manifestation of this misguided policy. If we were in Iraq and Afghanistan to protect American citizens from Islamic attack, we would be seeing very different activity there. We would see our troops go in and search and destroy Islamic weapons, and then leave when that mission is complete. Instead we see our troops assisting year after year with the vast Iraqi Infrastructure Construction project, and the Outreach To Our Peaceful Muslim Friends And Allies project.

I quoted Hugh because I could not quote Karen Hughes, because she and the Adminstration will not state their assumptions and goals. Yesterday Bush repeated his "We can't leave Iraq until the job is done" line. What job is undone in Iraq? Saddam is gone, they do not have WMD's to threaten us, they have a democratically elected government, they have a non-Baathist police and military. So what is the undone job that Bush keeps referring to? He won't say it, because then he'll need to defend it, and it is indefensible.

Hugh, and JW/DW, have kept their focus on informing the infidels about Islam, not on converting Muslims' beliefs into something more palatable to us. This is the most efficacious avenue at the moment.

Muslim minds can be changed, in significant numbers, only if first Infidel minds are, in significant numbers, fully informed about Islam.

As always, Hugh is several intellectual leaps ahead of me. He is plotting out checkmate, when I'm still worried how/when we're ever going to move our first pawn. I can't imagine worrying about changing Muslim minds when we can't yet even openly discuss Islam in our own society.

Posted by: special_guest

at August 23, 2007 1:05 PM

special_guest asks:

"So what is the undone job that Bush keeps referring to? He won't say it, because then he'll need to defend it, and it is indefensible."

On the contrary, I think bush has made it quite clear. his goal is to build a stable, democratic nation in iraq. it's true that that objective is indefensible, but that has never stopped him before. examples: our open borders; the secret pursuit of the SPP, deliberately lying to Congress about the projected costs of the Medicare prescription drug plan, the railroading of agents Ramos & Campeon. I could go on. i'm convinced that he thinks that b/c he was elected, he can do what he damn well pleases, the will of the American people be damned.

Posted by: sheik yer booty

at August 23, 2007 1:40 PM

sheik yer booty said

On the contrary, I think bush has made it quite clear. his goal is to build a stable, democratic nation in iraq.

I agree, it's quite clear that the Administration's goal is to build a stable, peaceful, wealthy, democratic nation in Iraq. But has Bush ever stated that as the goal? Has he ever had to defend that goal in a debate in Congress? Has the media ever questioned whether the cost to us in money and blood and goodwill is worth the benefit (if any) to us? Are our soldiers aware that they are fighting and being injured in order that Iraq have a stable, peaceful, democratic nation? And so that our "strong and faithful allies" on the Arabian peninsula do not have to worry themselves over a militaristic Saddam threatening them again?

Bush must have quietly slipped that memo under our door in the middle of the night. If we're going to send our soldiers into harm's way, we should be able and proud to explain why, on every billboard in the country.

Posted by: special_guest

at August 23, 2007 3:41 PM

sheik yer booty said

On the contrary, I think bush has made it quite clear. his goal is to build a stable, democratic nation in iraq.

Posted by: special_guest

at August 23, 2007 3:46 PM