“Mr. McCain had pointed exchanges with both generals, who conceded that events had taken them by surprise.
“General Pace,” the senator said, you said there’s a possibility of the situation in Iraq evolving into civil war. Is that correct?”
“I did say that, yes, sir,” the general replied.
“Did you anticipate this situation a year ago?”
“No, sir.”
“Did you, General Abizaid?”
“I believe that a year ago it was clear to see that sectarian tensions were increasing,” General Abizaid said. “That they would be this high, no.”
--- from a report on testimony by Rumsfeld, Abizaid, and Pace before Congress on the present situation in Iraq given on August 2, 2006
It has been said that before the Americans invaded Iraq, George Bush pooh-poohed the notion that Sunnis and Shi’a would be at each other’s throats. After all, to reasonable Western men, convinced of the awfulness of Saddam Hussein, convinced that his awfulness in killing Kurds and killing Shi’a Muslims was unsupported by the vast number of “good Sunnis” and certainly by that silent Sunni majority that had also suffered from the cruelties of that cruel regime, what was to come was clear. Just as soon as that cruel regime was removed, everything would be all right. Just as soon as the promise of American money, tens of billions lavished all over the country, was received, things would take a turn. Those Americans -- the biggest construction and oilfield companies, and all those American soldiers -- had been made to believe that if only those Iraqis had new schools and hospitals and roads and bridges and power grids, if only Umm Qasr was dredged, if only the Americans kept putting out oilfield fires and rebuilding things, so that Iraq would be – would be as it had never been, in fact – then all manner of things would be well.
After a week or a month of celebration when the regime fell, the Iraqis reverted soon to type. They complained, they whined, they watched and watched as the Americans tried to get them to organize, tried to get them to cooperate with each other and not merely hold out their hands, pushing each other aside in order to claim more, more, more of the endless American funds and goodies, and never satisfied with what those American soldiers, risking their lives even to go from Point A to Point B, did for them. “But where’s the air-conditioning?” said a teacher to a stunned American soldier who had just proudly showed her the building he and his men had totally rebuilt and refurbished, and thought she would be pleased.
No, instead they began, some of them, to do all they could to impede and obstruct American efforts. These were mainly Sunnis but also the followers of Moqtada al-Sadr, a troglodyte who turned out not to be a dismissable fringe Shi’ite, but in the end the most powerful Shi’ite, next to Sistani, in the country, and the one most likely to succeed Sistani in calling the Shi’ite shots. Contractors have been murdered, dismembered, and hung on bridges, projects constantly attacked. All the while, the Iraqis watched and watched and never pitched in. They even seemed to be indifferent or even to enjoy the spectacle of American casualties. The exasperation and fury of American soldiers, and the junior officers, has been palpable. Meanwhile, too many of the generals remained loyalists, loyal that is to the policy set in Washington, which they did not question and were not allowed to question. Their job was only to inform the President and the Pentagon when those “Iraqis” had been trained in sufficient numbers, not questioning anything except whether or not the Iraqis would be ready to “stand up, so that our forces can stand down.” No general, however, has been asked to make any comment on policy. No general is apparently allowed to suggest that this stand-up/stand-down business is not the limit of what a general with experience in Iraq should comment on, but perhaps he should be allowed to comment on the real state of “Iraq” and the non-existence of the “Iraqi” people, about which so much hallucination continues in official Washington. Retired generals have allowed themselves to criticize this or that tactical decision – too few troops, silly to dissolve the army, that kind of thing, but none of those seemingly brave dissenters has taken issue not with this or that Pentagon “error” but rather with the policy of trying to create Iraq the Light Unto the Muslim Nations.
Not a single general apparently has suggested that the ethnic and sectarian fissures that those generals have been asked to somehow heal cannot be healed, and what is more important, should not be healed, from the Infidel point of view. Instead, the best thing for all Infidels is to withdraw troops and cease the aid. Let Sunni Arabs support the Sunnis, let Shi’a Arabs and Iranians support the Shi’a, let “the government of Iraq” borrow from them against future oil earnings. Exploit, without attempting to discourage, the fissures within that country -- in order to divide, demoralize, and weaken the camp of Islam and Jihad, not only in Iraq, but everywhere that the clash of Sunni and Shi’a, or of Arab and non-Arab Muslims, can be found.
The more acute soldiers understood this -- those who had the time to observe those oily Iraqi contractors, the ones who never did what they promised, but were so good at promising, and so very good at making off with fantastic amounts of American taxpayers. But these soldiers had no control over what was going on in Iraq in a policy that would not work and could not work. All they could do was observe how the more this policy did not work, the more money was put in to it, the worst things became. Yet officials continued to delude themselves that if we gave them this, and then that, and then this, and ultimately some of them would be grateful to us, genuinely and not falsely, permanently and not temporarily. Had the Administration’s policymakers thoroughly understood Islam, had they read such texts on the Arab mind that went more thoroughly into the tenets of Islam, the attitudes of Islam, the atmospherics of Islam, the learning curve in Iraq would not have been so nearly flat. Rather, it would have been sufficiently steep for the adventure in Iraq to have ended far sooner. For the last 2-3 years we might have, from a safe distance, been enjoying the spectacle of Sunnis and Shi’a at each others’ throats, with men and money and materiel pouring in from Saudi Arabia and Jordan and Egypt for the former, and from the Islamic Republic of Iran, for the latter. Instead we have had hallucinatory reports, hallucinatory speeches, hallucinatory hopes all over official Washington. Any American soldier of reasonable intelligence, assigned to Baghdad or Tikrit or Tel Afar or Mosul or Fallujah, could see for himself that there was no “Iraqi” people, there were no “Iraqi” patriots, and that hands were out – hands were always out – for me, for my family, for my tribe. And that was about it.
What a surprise, then, to keep being surprised. What a surprise to find out that the Shi’a, who made up the entire delegation of influential Iraqis-in-exile (Chalabi, Allawi, Makiya, all the others), were set not on creating a “new Iraq,” but on merely creating an Iraq in which the Ba’ath, and with the Ba’ath the Sunnis, would be put permanently in their place, and the Shi’a Arabs would dominate. What a surprise for the American policymakers, who continually ignored or misinterpreted the evidence. That first purple-thumbed election was interpreted as “democracy on the march.” It was nothing of the sort. It was the Shi’a, keenly aware that they constituted 60-65% of the population, and knowing that obtaining power through this “democracy” would please the Americans, and realizing that the Americans were useful for a good while longer -- useful because they would keep distributing largesse, billions and billions of it. The Americans were useful because it was always hoped they would train the Shi’a (thinking all the while, those Americans, that they were training “Iraqi” police and “Iraqi” soldiers). And of course, wasn’t in pleasant to have the Americans fighting and dying in Anbar Province, putting down the Sunnis, both the followers of Al-Zarqawi who regarded the Shi’a as Infidels and the local Sunnis who simply opposed the Shi’a because they wanted to retain political, and hence every other kind of power, for themselves, for the Sunnis? Let the Americans do as much of the fighting and dying as possible – why not?
But the civil war now in its early stages in Iraq was not caused by the American presence. It could not have been prevented by anything done, or not done, by the Americans. It reflects many things. It reflects the new demographic balance. Just as in Lebanon, the Shi’a Arabs have outbred the Sunnis in Iraq. Where at the beginning of Saddam Hussein’s regime they constituted less than 50% of Iraq’s population, they now constitute 60-65%. And 30 years of persecution and murder of Shi’a by Saddam Hussein’s Sunni-officered army, and in some cases by units consisting entirely of trustworthy Sunnis, has reinforced, but did not create, the Shi’a distrust and fear of Sunnis. This distrust goes back to the first century of Islam. “Taqiyya,” the doctrine of dissimulation or lying about the faith, originates in a practice of the Shi’a that began not because those Shi’a were worried about non-Muslims, but because they were worried about Sunni persecutors. All of this has to be kept firmly in mind, lest one succumb to the temptation to believe those who will certainly insist that “the Americans caused it” or “everything was just fine in Iraq before the American invasion.” (How quickly amnesia sets in about Iraq, and especially Iraq from 1968 to 2003.) Some Americans, ignorant of Sunni-Shi’a relations, will be quick to blame, if not themselves, then the current Administration. But the current Administration can be blamed not for causing it, but for not recognizing the inevitability of the war that would inevitably result at whatever level, using whatever means, once it was clear that the Sunnis were losing political and economic power and would not be getting it back.
Was this really impossible to predict? Or was it merely impossible to predict for those who believed the assurances of Ahmad Chalabi, and other Shi’a, all of whom had a stake in inveigling the United States into invading and removing Saddam Hussein. These clever, plausible, thoroughly westernized and secularized Shi’a knew that no Arab state would help them, for the Arab Sunni regimes had no quarrel with Saddam Hussein as long as he was killing Kurds or Shi’a – why should they? It made no sense for them to object. That didn’t mean they weren’t worried. No doubt Saudi Arabian rulers assumed that Saddam Hussein would be removed, but had no idea the Americans would actually start in on this “democracy” project that would ensure Shi’a dominance, and of course there was no way they could straightforwardly oppose such a project. That didn’t mean they couldn’t try to prevent those crazy Americans from crazily going through with their plans – not because they, the Saudis, had any desire to prevent American mistakes, but only because they now feared the power of the Shi’a, and the power of the Shi’a in Iran and Iraq to affect Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia itself, by appealing to the Shi’a there, and possibly leading them to become worrisomely restive.
How, for example, did J. B. Kelly describe Iraq back in the late 1970s, when he wrote “Arabia, the Gulf, and the West” (published in 1980)? He spent a lot of time in the Gulf, working for Sheik Zayed in Abu Dhabi [and even running into Adnan Pachachi, on the run from Saddam Hussein, and supposedly working for Abu Dhabi – but no doubt at the same time also offering his services, if the price was right, to Saudi Arabia with which Abu Dhabi was fighting over oil, and therefore over borders] and traveling all around the littoral. Over half-a-century he became the great expert on the sheikdoms and their relation to teach other, and to Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. Here is what Kelly wrote about Iraq:
The Kurdish struggle for autonomy, which has gone on for well over half a century, is symptomatic of the political instability of Iraq, and of the centrifugal forces within Iraqi society. Iraq is an artificial state, with no sense of historical continuity between its previous existence as three distinct vilayets of the Ottoman empire and its modern metamorphosis as a unified nation-state. Even the appearance of nationhood is illusory, for the population of Iraq is made up of a number of separate communities, each distinguished from the others by racial, religious or even national differences. There are Sunni Arabs and Shii Arabs, Kurds and Yazidis, Turcomans, Jews [there may still have been some when Kelly wrote his book, more than thirty years ago] and Christians, none of whom, in the judgment of one of the most knowledgeable and thoughtful scholars of recent Iraqi political history, ‘accepts the State of Iraq in its present form, and to all of [whom] it remains an artificial political entity. [Abbas Kelidar, “Iraq: the search for stability,” Conflict Studies no. 59]. Because there is no general political community there is no common basis for the rule of law, so that political differences are resolved by violence, coercion and revolt. The Shiis, who constitute at least half the population of roughly eleven million souls [Kelly was writing in the late 1970s; the population, due to overbreeding, has ballooned in Iraq as it has everywhere Muslims live] and inhabit the lower half of the country from Baghdad southwards resent the Sunni supremacy in the government. The Kurds and Turcomans, who are Sunni and live mainly in the north and north-east, chafe under the Arab ascendancy; while the scattered groups of Jews [very few by then] and Christians are kept in subjection as non-Muslim minorities.One reason why a proper sense of Iraqi nationhood has not developed is that many in the Sunni community, which comprises about a quarter of the population and is concentrated principally in a territorial triangle whose apexes are Mosul, Baghdad and Rutha (in the west towards Syria), assert that their prime loyalty belongs to the Arab nation as a whole. Arab nationalism, however, is inseparable from Islam, and Sunni, or orthodox, Islam at that. Thus to quote the opinion of the scholar [Abbas Kelidar] just mentioned:
‘It has meant that nationalism as advocated by the Iraqi political elite could appeal to only one community, and in that sense it has become sectarian and divisive. In a mosaic society like that of Iraq the introduction of the concept of national autonomy linked to religion, as it is in the Arab nationalist ideology, could hardly encourage national cohesion.’
For the greater part of past twenty years, ever since the destruction of the monarchy, Iraq has been ruled by a military junta, and for the last decade at least this junta has been dominated by the leaders of the Iraqi branch of the Arab Baath Party. The army and the police, and more especially the officer corps, are traditionally recruited from the Sunni communities dwelling along the Tigris north of Baghdad, and along the middle reaches of the Euphrates. For the Sunni army and air-force officers drawn from these communities the pan-Arab and socialist ideology of the Baathist movement held a strong appeal, and it was they who overthrew Qassim in 1963, largely in the name of pan-Arabism. Though they had to wait another five years before achieving absolute power in the state, they succeeded in those years in purging the higher ranks of the armed forces of all Shii and other non-Sunni officers.
The purges did not stop there, however, but have continued down to the present day. Like so many revolutionary movements, the Baath party is riddled with factionalism, which in turn breeds cliques and conspiracies, rebellion and repression. Despite their pan-Arabism, they Syrian and Iraqi wings of the Baath are at daggers drawn, not least over their rival claims to ideological purity. Though the Baathist government in Baghdad gained power through the arm, it has attempted in recent years to present itself at home and abroad as essentially a civil regime. Its motives for doing so have been twofold: firstly, to give the outward appearance of conforming to Baathist dogma, which holds that the armed forces should be the military arm of the party, i.e. a ‘people’s army’ at the vanguard of the revolutionary struggle but subordinate to the party hierarchy; and, secondly to make the dogma a realty so far as the party’s actual control of the Iraqi armed forces is concerned. Hence the repeated purges of the latter’s ranks. Yet the fact remains that the Baath seized power by force of arms and it is dependent upon the same force of arms to stay in power. All its cosmetic efforts to give the illusion of civil rule cannot disguise this fact, or invest the regime with the political legitimacy it has lacked from its inception.
Supreme authority in Iraq is wielded by a tightly knit group of army officers and civilians, the Revolutionary Command Council, which also incorporates the ruling apparatus, or regional command council, of the Iraqi Baath. The chairman of the RCC and president of the country was until recently Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr, a former major-general. The former vice-president, and secretary-general of the Iraqi Baath, who succeeded him as president in July 1979, is Saddam Husain, a civilian. Both men come from Takrit, a town on the Tigris about 100 miles north of Baghdad, in the heart of the Sunni ‘triangle.’ So also do the sixteen other members of the Baath’s regional command council. Almost from the outset Saddam Husain al-Takriti’s power in the government equaled, if it did not supersede, that of al-Bakr….
Now suppose Bush and Rice and Rumsfeld and others had done what they should have done beginning on September 12, 2001: start studying, and start having their staff studying, what is contained in the Qur’an and Hadith, and what Muhammad, that Perfect Man always and everywhere to be emulated by Muslims, actually did. Imagine they had not relied on the espositos and the armstrongs for the acquisition of such information. Imagine they had thereby come to realize the significance of the changes, largely because of OPEC revenues, that had provided the wherewithal hitherto lacking, that transformed this or that local Jihad (against India, against Israel) into something much bigger, more potent, more permanently menacing. Suppose, that is, that they entered Iraq – as they claimed initially they did – only to find and destroy certain kinds of weapons, and not to rebuild, reconstruct, or otherwise attempt in Iraq or elsewhere to create an impossible “new Middle East.” Suppose they had entered Iraq recognizing the tenets and 1350-year history of Islam that explained why, in the Middle East (whether old or “new” hardly mattered) and in many other parts of the world, Muslim attitudes, atmospherics, and behavior are a threat to all non-Muslims -- whether they now live in countries where Muslims dominate, or as yet still live in the Land of Infidelity, the Bilad al-kufr, perhaps best translated as the Lands of the Infidels.
And suppose, then, they had entered Iraq with only one goal: to weaken the camp of Jihad. Removing dangerous weaponry was not an irrational goal. Nor is it clear to all today that even if the exaggeration and misstatements that have been uncovered are taken into account, that the expressed need to search Iraq for such weapons was irrational. But had they studied Iraq more closely, had they not relied either on the assurances of those most ingratiating and charming Iraqi exiles, or on those American policymakers who had been seduced by them, they might, more coldly, have recognized that Iraq was the perfect place for the two main kinds of divisions within Islam – the sectarian and ethnic – to appear, to widen, and to have the effect, without any further effort on the part of the Americans, of weakening the camp of Jihad.
How many read that passage of J. B. Kelly in 2002 or 2003? How many read Philip Ireland? Gertrude Bell? How many read anything of value on Iraq, before they went in believing that this “Iraq the Light Unto the Muslim Nations” Project was eminently doable, made perfect sense?
Let these revolting barbarians off one another. The world will be a better place for it.
Mistakes like this are yet another unforeseen byproduct of cultural relativism. What passes for the intelligentsia continually bleats that "After all, we are all alike, and all cultures have equal validity." Our leaders can not believe that the Iraqis will not behave like Kansans.
US/UK ought to get out of Iraq without further ado.
In keeping with the wishes of the people in those areas, Iraq may have to be trifurcated between the Shias (south), sunnis (central) and the kurds (north). Initially, very simplistically, the Shia territory will tend to be affiliated to Iran while the Sunnis will be Saudi supported. The Kurds will probably come under quick threat from the Turks. There's no point in wasting any more western lives esp when the prognosis there is a greater morass.
Perhaps the trifurcation should be done under UN auspices, to prevent Saudis and Iran going to war with each other.
Whenever one hears or reads, on the radio or television or in the press, of some American official who is described as "warning of civil war" or, still worse, "warning of the danger of civil war," one wonders what point of view is being adopted so unthinkingly. It is perfectly obvious that one could write, instead, as a headline, and in the text, or read out as our glorified news-readers do, a sentence such as "So-and-so predicts civil war" rather than "warns" of civil war. Why attempt to make the audience react as if "civil war" is a bad thing for us? Was the Iran-Iraq War a bad thing? If the Sunnis in Lebanon were to join forces with the Christians and Druse and, in a few months, to begin to dismantle what they could of Hizbollah's power, and this led to violence in Lebanon, would that from our point of view be a bad thing? If Saudi Arabia supplied billions in arms to the Sunnis of Anbar Province, who were under assault by, say, the Mahdi army of black-turbaned Moqtada al-Sadr -- so hard to tell him apart, isn't it, from Nasrallah, two turbaned peas in a pod -- would that be a bad thing? What if Sunni volunteers arrived from Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, to help those Sunnis and what if, at the very same time, Iranians and Hezbollah volunteers from Lebanon arrived to help the Shi'a of Moqtada al-Sadr? Worried? Upset? Think we should move heaven and earth to prevent this "instabiility" that we must, at all costs, some say (you know who those people are -- the ones who don't want us to defeat or protect ourselves from the Jihad, but do want us to throw Israel to the wolves as the "root cause" of the problem, and these people are not only the Buchanans and David-Dukes, but also the General Odoms and Brzezinskis on one side, and the Kos-and-Huffington brigade on the other, brothers and sisters under the skin.
Let them fight. Low, hi, or -- here it comes again -- Trendelenburg.
Watch. And concentrate now on diminishing oil revenues of Arab and Muslim states, curtailing Da'wa, and halting, and reversing, everywhere in the Lands of the Infidels, the demographic conquest by Muslims has been permitted, through criminal negligence, to take place in almost every country of Western Europe, and to a much lesser but still disturbing extent, in North America as well.
No, Dunk, we want a Saudi-Iran war. In fact, it would be fun to see the Rafidite dogs taking over Mecca and Medina. The only thing the US should do in response is capture the oilfields - not only in Saudi Arabia but also in Iran. Other than that, let Iranian troops enter Saudi Arabia, let them appeal to Pakistan and Egypt to send troops in response, and let all the Hajis this year join in the riots.
This vali nasr spews at length on how the U.S. and U.K. absolutely must engage the "help" of iran right now so the Middle East will not become "inflamed by a sectarian split" .... without ever giving a single reason as to why we, the infidels, should give a rat's ass about muslim internecine squabbles dating back to year 632. What's in it for us?
The interests of even the nicest Muslim (Vali Nasr often says things that are true) deviate from those of Infidels. They, those "nice Muslims," wish to inveigle the Infidels, but above all the United States, into somehow making things better, without harming Islam itself. They want Saddam Hussein to be deposed, they want Ahmadinejad and Khameni and the Islamic Republic of Iran to crumble, they want the Al-Saud to stop stealing all that money, they want Kuwait, Egypt, Jordan, the "Palestinians," you name it, to hold free and fair elections but simultaneously for those elections not to result in the voice of the Muslim People -- the Ikhwan al-muslimin, Hamas, Hezbollah, and so on -- from becoming stronger or even taking power, never to hold a "free and fair" election again (or maybe they would, because these groups are, after all, wildly popular).
Who represents "the Egyptians"? Is it more likely to be the Ikhwan, or Ayman Nour? Who represents Saudi Arabia -- is it one of any number of Wahhabi Sheikhs, or is it the Saudi who runs "The Religious Policeman"? Who is it who more nearly represents the majority in Lebanon, the primitive majority, and not the Charles-Malik school of comprehension and sophisticiation, the man who runs the website Ecce Libano, or Fuad Siniora, or going rapidly down the phylogenetic scale, Nasrallah? Who represents Jordan, Queen Noor with her "Act of Faith" shtick, or plummy-voiced Prince Hassan, or is it those Jordanian masses, Eastern Palestinians and Western Palestinan Eastern Palestinians alike, who so hate not only Israel but America as the powerful Infidel state it is? Who represents Kuwait, the U.A.E., and so on? And who was more representative of Iraq -- was it Ahmed Chalabi, or Allawi, or Kanan Makiya, or was it rather this or that Sunni of the Dulaimi clan or Moqtada al-Sadr, now the most powerful man in Iraq?
We want instability, hostility, rivalry, constant worry, in the Arab and Muslim world. And we want that display of violence to be shown daily on the evening news, so that Infidels everywhere, apparently disinclined to see what should by now be staring them in the face, will have to begin to recognize, and admit, that they were wrong. Wrong about so many things, and especially wrong about the Jihads, Lesser and Greater, now unleashed against them, and the varied instruments employed in those various Jihads, all of them prompted by the same texts, attitudes, atmospherics, all of them with the same goal, even if here and there it seems locally defined or circumscribed, for the world as it is, and as it must become.
I have to agree with Hugh's previous comment. The "VERY BEST" thing that could happen, especially for us infidels, would be a sectarian conflict. Make mine multi-nation, please. While we're at it, lets urge our own home grown variety of Muslims pick a side and then pay their way.
Diana West:
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/dwest.htm
Hugh-
When I first read your posts re Iraq my visceral response was to reject your ideas, but I have deliberately made myself read your comments to understand precisely your reason for those opinions. You have in essence stated that the democracy project was doomed in Iraq by Islam, particularly by sectarian hatreds, and now that appears to be reality.
Americans come from every part of the globe (in my extended family there are Vietnamese, Irish (three cheers), Puerto Ricans, Greeks and Poles-and mixtures thereof); all basically believe in individual freedom, education and the work ethic as the means to a better life. For Americans, religion is a personal matter.
It's hard for Americans to comprehend how people could kill each other for sectarian reasons. Our ancestors left old worlds to get away from that kind of thing. So we tend to believe that what we desire is what the world desires-what's good for America must be good for the world. But maybe the world (especially Muslims) don't desire to be in a place where public opinion matters (what we call democracy), where education is considered the road out of ignorance or poverty, and where religion is a matter of personal conscience.
Maybe we have to reassess our general views re what the world desires, and especially what Muslims desire (which appears to be the imposition of Sharia law). America may have to begin its education with Iraq.
It is not only that the Light-Unto-the-Muslim Nations project ignored Iraqi reality, ignored the absence of any spirit of compromise or non-violence, in the Muslim world. It is also that the policy was intended to prevent exactly what we should have wished to encourage -- Sunni-Shi'a hostility that lasts for a very long time, and that draws in, and uses up the resources, of the circumjacent Muslim states, including Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran, with thier governments supplying the money, the materiel, and even volunteers to their respective co-religionists. Apparently one is not supposed to wish for such things. Apparently one is supposed to deplore any divisions in the camp of Islam.
Imagine if, in 1943, for some reason Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan came to blows. What would have been our reaction? Horror? A desire to avoid such an outcome? Attempts to prevent it?
The American government has been insufficiently clear on what it should be doing. And the main problem is its failure to identify the "root cause" of Muslim terrorism or the other sources of unsettlement and menace directed at the people, legal and political institutions, art and culture, of the Infidel world. That "root cause" is Islam.
Mr Fitz-
I think our democracy-social-worker delusion re Islam may be every bit as lethal as Islamic delusions. But Americans will let go of beliefs that obviously don't work-and see that if they want to kill each other-it's better that they kill each other than that they kill us.
I never watch CSPAN, and as a consequence only saw snippets of the Senate Testimony, but one snippet that I NEVER saw (especially on Fox, which totally ignored it) is Rumsfeld's statement: "“If we left Iraq prematurely,” he said, “the enemy would tell us to leave Afghanistan and then withdraw from the Middle East. And if we left the Middle East, they’d order us and all those who don’t share their militant ideology to leave what they call the occupied Muslim lands from Spain to the Philippines.” And finally, he intoned, America will be forced “to make a stand nearer home.”"
Where I did hear it was on leftist Democracy Now interview with that Muslim taqiyya specialst Juan Cole
And Juan Cole's obfuscating response was
I, of course, sent polite by correcting Email to Democracy Now and to Juan Cole, explaining clearly and supporting my corrections, that Islamic ideology (true Islam) is that all lands once muslim are forever Muslim and must be reclaimed for Muhammad and the occupants forced into submission or slaughtered.
I also explained the significance of the Khaybar (Khaibar) one missle, so named by Hizballah, and provided links and documentation that by occupied territory or occupation, Muslims mean that state of Israel, not just west bank or Gaza.
I also provided this link: The Dilemna of Recognizing Israel from Tanzeer
To be fair. I'm quite sure that the left is absolutely and totally ignorant of Islam, the left suffers from the same disability as the right, they only read their own propaganda and they only listen to voices from their own choir, pulpit and pew, in other words I don't think that know anything near what we on Jihad Watch know, (and neither do many on the right, especially the paleocons and Buchananites and Right Wing (Socially conservative) Libertarians.
And I know for a fact that you can't educate and convert people by attacking them and calling them names.
I got carried away with verbosity in my previous post.
The point I wish to make is that apparently Rumsfeld has a realistic understanding of Islamic ideology and goals to reclaim what they consider "occupied territory" from Spain to the Phillippines, if that be the case then why doesn't he educated Bush, why doesn't the adminstration take off the gloves and educate the rest of the ignorant world..
Only a handful of people (mostly Jihad Watchers) know and understand that salient, underlying, defining and motivating feature of Islam.
Or maybe Rumsfeld thinks as Bush apparently does that it is only some fictional creature called radical Islamists that have that opinion and world goal.
Yes that is it, Rumsfeld, Bush, Neo cons are too involved with friendly with and making too much money from the "moderate" Muslims their "friends" in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Dubai and Oman.
For Iraqi Christians, Yezidis, Mandeans, and other non-Muslims, Saddam Hussein was the best leader they could hope for. Not only did his secularist Ba'ath Party end official discrimination against non-Muslims (and women) but outside of his own Tikriti tribesmen, they were the only people Saddam trusted.
Unfortunately, the first Bush sent Saddam the wrong signals and he thought he could end the family enterprise that owned Kuwait. This caused the Saudis to cajole the US into the first Gulf War and everything bad that's happened since.
It cannot happen now, but if the US had any decency, they would apoligize to Saddam for murdering his two sons, abolish the Islamic Republic that the US established in Baghdad, release Tarik Aziz and the other imprisoned Christian leaders, and turn all power back over to whatever Ba'athists remain alive. Then withdraw and watch as the mass slaughter of these Muslim fundamentalists begins.
It's just a fantasy but it is a fun one.
"“If we left Iraq prematurely,” he [Rumsfeld] said, “the enemy would tell us to leave Afghanistan and then withdraw from the Middle East. And if we left the Middle East, they’d order us and all those who don’t share their militant ideology to leave what they call the occupied Muslim lands from Spain to the Philippines.” And finally, he intoned, America will be forced “to make a stand nearer home.”"
-- from an informative posting above
So the enemy would "tell us to leave Afghanistan" if we left Iraq? While now they are telling us to stay? They would tell us to "withdraw from the Middle East" while right now we are being told to stay? And apparently, in Rumsfeld's view, there is practically nothing we can do but comply with whatever it is that they would then tell us, once we are out of Iraq, for that will be the one key thing which will lead to this damned domino effect where we become cringing and helpless, and finally they will take, those Muslims, so delighted to have forced us out of Iraq, to take control of "all the occupied Muslim lands from Spain to the Philipines."
And this hallucinatory vision of events, by the once-seemingly lucid Rumsfeld, is to be accepted? We are to prevent a Sunni-Shi'a breakup in Iraq, with all that that might mean for ensuing unrest and trouble, and diversion of men, and materiel and money from Saudi Arabia and Iran, each helping its co-religionists, not to mention the brigades of Sunni volunteers arriving to make sure the outnumbered Sunnis of Anbar Province and Baghdad hold their own, and Iranians and Hezbollah volunteers to help the Shi'a. That is not something Rumsfeld and his genereals would welcome? Why wouldn't they? Because they started out with one idea, and they simply cannot bear to give that idea up, even if the goal is unattainable, but terribly wasteful of American resources in the attempt to attain that unattainiable, and even if that goal is itself the very opposite of what we should wish?
What happened to these people? Why did they prove to be so inflexible, so ignorant -- so dumb?
Leaving Iraq sounds good on paper, but in reality, that would be bequeathing the entire nation to Iran. That in turn, means putting Israel on the border of Iran via Syria. What would happen then is that Iranian and Syrian forces would launch an all out attack on little Israel.
I don' think for a moment that Israel wants the US to abandon Iraq. US presence in Iraq keeps Iran and Syria from becoming one large attacking force on Israel.
Taking out Saddam Hussein was a mistake. Bush did it for personal reasons having nothing to do with WMD. But having removed the secural plug of islamic fundamentalism from the Iraqi nation, he has now inherited a mess that he can't walk away from without sacrificing Israel in the process. Iraq separated Syria from Iran. If the US pulls out, that vacuum will be filled and Israel will be fighting for her very surival in a massive Syrian/Iranian onslaught.
That is why Iran is funding the war in Iraq. They hope to drive out the US, a la viet nam, and then rush in to grab, not only the iraqi oil, but more importantly, a seat next to Israel, from where their land army can do what their Air Force can not. Drive into Israel.
It will be great when we get out of Iraq and watch them turn on each other instead of killing us. It will be great when the flow of money from the USA to Iraq stops. That will be a great day for us. But I'm afraid that while the muslims are attacking each other over there, we here will turn on each other simultaneously. There will be a lot of political recrimination and backbiting about who was responsible for the whole mess. I think that we are going to go through some period of demoralization ourselves. Our military probably will not be spared in blame, even though I wish all the blame go to the military leaders, the yes-men generals that did not raise one question about the whole misadventure.
From above - Continue reading "Fitzgerald: What Did The Bush Administration Not Know (about Sunnis and Shi’a) and When Did It Not Know It"
I don't need to continue reading and I don't wanna anyway. This administration is clueless now and is as clueless as it was on September 12, 2001. I'll admit that in March 2003, I also thought that Iraqis would embrace the fact that Saddam is out and their destiny is in their hands, not Saddam's.
The difference between us JW/DW "contributors" and the Bush Administration is that we became un-clueless a long time ago.
"That is why Iran is funding the war in Iraq."
-- from a posting above
O for god's sake. Iran is not funding, and did not fund, and would be happy to do away with, all those who regard Shi'a as "Infidels" and Iran certainly is not funding the indigenous enraged Sunnis of Baghdad, of Fallujah, of Ramadi, of Tikrit, of Baquba, of Mosul, of all those Sunni Arabs who will not willingly acquiescence in Iraq's new order, where Shi'a Arabs (and Kurds in Mosul and points north) have, in the opinion of those Sunni Arabs, far too much power, far too much control of the oil wealth.
The contortions and salti mortali that are engaged in by those determined to suggest that a largely-Sunni insurrection is somehow prompted by Iran is amazing. Of course Iran enjoys seeing the Americans bogged down in Iraq, spending hundreds of billions, risking the lives of its soldiers and seeing 2,700 dead and nearly 20,000 wounded, and in watching how the equipment desert-degrades at such a fast clip. What would one expect? The problem is that everyone in Iraq, save the handful of Christains (who are fleeing, and who made up such a disproportionate number of the drivers, cooks, laundry-women, wait-staff of the Americans in the Green Zone, as well as furnishing a great many of the interpreters who have used by the American military), and the Kurds, has no fondness for the Americans, wishes them ill but at the same wishes to use them both in order to grab whatever those Americans are giving out, from soccer balls and candy to new power grids and refurbished hospitals, and to trick the Americans into fighting the Sunnis (if you are Shi'a) and Shi'a (if you are Sunnis), and training and outfitting Sunni "soldiers" and "police" (if you are Sunni) and ditto with Shi'a "soldiers" and "police" (if you are Shi'a).
As for Israel hoping the Americans stay in Iraq -- that's nonsense. All the Israelis care about is making sure that Iran does not get that weaponry it is trying to acquire. That's it. And that is best handled, by the Americans and others, not by being next door (those Khaybar missiles can also rain down on American forces in Iraq, where Iranian agents have over the past few years infiltrated, just as they did over the same past few years into Lebanon). The only way to scare the Iranians, if such is possible, is for the Americans to withdraw from Iraq, which will have such consequences for the unsettlement of the Iranian regime, and for the ethnic miniorities -- Kurd, Arab, Baluchi, Azeri -- in Iran, as to be a blow indeed to the hitherto self-confident Islamic Republic of Iran.
Hugh, I'm surprised you could say that. Iran is supporting the jihad in Iraq. The evidence is overwhelming. They want the US out of Iraq for the purpose of taking it themselves. That can not be doubted. Don't be naive. Your plan would result in exactly that. That is why it is foolish. It may feel good to say, let's pull out and let these islamic hotheads slaughter each other, but entertainment like that comes at a price. And Israel would pay that price.
The last thing Israel would want is to have Iran and Syria on their border. Israel wants the US to stay put. Look at the fighting Israel is doing just to have a buffer from Hizbollah. Imagine the buffer they would need from Iran. Iraq has been that buffer.
Hugh,
There are not many voices that agree with your policy of leaving Iraq to exploit the divisions there. It is a position that I am strongly considering. To date, I have not changed my position and I still disagree with yours. However, I wanted to report to you that have encountered you have an unlikely ally. Indeed, I know of one voice that echoes your own on Iraq: Andrew Sullivan.
I hope that our disagreements do not distract from our mutual hatred of Islamism (and Islam).
Kindly go to "Bailing on Iraq" http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/
August22-
Re: "Leaving Iraq sounds good on paper, but in reality, that would be bequeathing the entire nation to Iran."
I think what Hugh is saying is that the Sunnis , who are now the core of the "insurgents", will continue to be insurgents and that's not good news for Iran, that Iran will be bequeathed the "Sunnis of Baghdad, of Fallujah, of Ramadi, of Tikrit, of Baquba, of Mosul, of all those Sunni Arabs who will not willingly acquiescence in Iraq's new order, where Shi'a Arabs (and Kurds in Mosul and points north) have, in the opinion of those Sunni Arabs, far too much power, far too much control of the oil wealth."
The problem is that whatever sectarian violence may exist in Iraq after the US pulls out, is only a sideshow to the big picture, which is that the Iranian military will own Iraq. Who cares if the Sunnis and Shi'a go at it. Who cares if muslim kills muslim. It won't weaken islam one iota. They can replace the dead quickly and easily. Look at the Iran/Iraq war, that killed one million of those islamics, and it didn't stop the jihad against the west one bit. Islamics have been killikng each other for 1300 years, and it has not caused islam to fail, to weaken, or to stop the never ending jihad against the west.
What will happen once the US leaves, is that Iranian forces, which fought very well against Iraqi forces, will have a much easier time moving into Iraq because there will be no unified defence - the kind of defence that Saddam was able to produce with his Stalinist, iron-fisted approach. With the Sunni and Shi'a in chaos in Iraq, the mechanized iranian forces will have no organized army to stop them, and they will sweep into the country and set up on the Syrian border. From there it is a short drive into Jerusalem.
That's geopolitical reality. So while the Iraqis are busy killing each other, Iranian military forces will be setting up for the final attack on Israel through Syria.
Hugh's prophetic, two part essay on what to do in Iraq, posted over one year ago, deserves another read:
From June 24 and 25 2005:
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/006782.php
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/006810.php
The very idea that somehow the Shi'a of Iran will "own Iraq," as you put it, and while this ownership is being declared, Sunni Arabs of Iraq, of Syria, of Jordan, of Saudi Arabia, of Egypt, of the U.A.E., of Kuwait, and so on will simply do nothing, allowing those Sunni Arabs to be overrun by Shi'a, so that without a finger being lifted one of the two main historic centers of Arab Islam be taken over by Persian Shi'a, is preposterous. During the Iran-Iraq War Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the U.A.E. gave Iraq some $60 billion to conduct its war. That would be what today? $120 billion? $180 billion? How much do you think Saudi Arabia would pay to prevent the Shi'a being right next door, next door that is to the seveal hundred thousand Shi'a in Dammam and Dhahran and the rest of the Eastern Province in which the Shi'a of Saudi Arabia live, and which also happens to be the place where the oil is located? Would Saudi Arabia do nothing? Would Sunnis everywhere do nothing?
Why this crazed scare-scenario? As for the idea that the Israelis "want" the Americans to stay, where is the evidence for this? Before the war on Iraq, and during it, Israelis kept saying that the major threat to them, at least, was Iran and not Iraq. They were right. The fact that some of those who were involved in promoting the war on Iraq are also often attacked as "neo-cons" interested in promoting Israe's safety, should not allow anyone to forget not what Wolfowitz and Feith may have been enthusiastic about, but what the Israelis thought.
Any American withdrawal will inevitably lead either to paralysis of the Iraqi government, or to low-level conflict always in danger of growing into something greater. It is impossible to imagine the Shi'a Arabs conceding the minimum that the Sunni Arabs demand, or vice-versa. Why is this situation not, for us, a good thing?
Those are political donations, the kind that Oprah would give to Hillary Clinton. What's 60 billion? Buffet gave that much to Gates just to be charitable. Donating money to help in a fight is one thing. Actually sending your nation to fight to stop another marauding nation is quite another.
If Iran moves into Iraq, and they will, what nation on earth will send tanks, planes, and soldiers to stop the Iranian tanks, planes, and soldiers, especially since their mututal hatred of the Jews and Israel is much more motivational for both of them than their common inter-islamic squabbles, which continue in any case.
The whole point of this iranian exercise is to get rid of Israel. Is Saudia Arabia, Kuwait and UAE, all going to be so put off by Shi'a Iran, that they will yell HALT! and go to protect Iraqi terrority with their armies, and protect Israel in the process? Not likely. Only the US is willing to send men and material to stop Iran from occupying Iraq. No other nation, and certainly no arabic nation has the will or the military might to do that.
What the Sunni nations will do is sit back and watch Israel be attacked. No Sunni is going to stop a Shi'a from attacking a Jew. After the Jew is gone from the planet, and Israel is history, then yes, then the Sunni will wage holy war against the Shi'a and plant a roadside bomb and blow up a Shi'a taxi cab.
My perpespictives on Iraq are President Bush only, repeat only failed from the start. When shock and awe was planned and half emplamented the mission was a loss. Failure to totally wipe out anyone standing for, with, or waiting to see who would come out on top was a mistake. Look at muktadder cannon fodder for one. This fool now also runs iraq, with irans help. Failure to wipe out any resistance of any kind allowes an opening for any two bit thug to amasse followers, everybody wants to rule the world. Which now if you look at Israel anew, I'll have to state that as long as Mr Olmert keeps kicking a$$, and to hell with france, and outher butt monkey countries have to say. Israel will be better off. Fear of the gun beats a pen anyday.
JTF, if Hugh is as prophetic as you say, why was he in favor of entering Iraq in the first place? Surely he must have know what I knew, that is, that entering Iraq would be disastrous for the US.
To cut and run is one alternative, but we must not forget that the costs will be enormous for the US to leave. It will begin the decline of the US power and unleash a terrible cycle of war that will be blamed on the US (even if it is not the US that caused it).
know = known; decline of US power
General Abizaid. Think about that. Marines going on trial for murder for shootings that took place admidsts Moslem activists killing from amidst an ocean of sympathetic Moslem inactivists. Think about that. Donald Rumsfeld running the DoD. Think about that.
610 * 623 * 732* 1066* 1215 * 1504 * 1526 * 1683 * 1928 * 1938 * 1948 * 1996 * 2001
My 17 yr old just graduated high school. 6-2 and a fairly strong street fighter. US Marines, 101st Airborne, or IDF?
Does the IDF accept gentiles?
"JTF, if Hugh is as prophetic as you say, why was he in favor of entering Iraq in the first place? Surely he must have know what I knew, that is, that entering Iraq would be disastrous for the US"
To get saddam and those WMD's. That is all.
And I know for a fact that you can't educate and convert people by attacking them and calling them names.
this said by Nariz, so if you can actually make a choice of who is the evil ones, this only makes them worse? that is the major problem with liberals these days,, they cannot make any judgement on anything, causing us to tolerate all the crap from terrorist of the likes of Hezbollah, Hammas. This comes from PC mentality, we have to fair, we cannot tell them their society sucks big time, we dare not tell them Western society evolved from Judea/Christian thought, this would alienate those poor muslims, BS to them! Western style Democracy is the best thing we have.
"The American government has been insufficiently clear on what it should be doing. And the main problem is its failure to identify the "root cause" of Muslim terrorism or the other sources of unsettlement and menace directed at the people, legal and political institutions, art and culture, of the Infidel world. That "root cause" is Islam."
The entire West continues to fail to identify that root cause. It will continue for a long time. Given the current posture of the West, it is doubtful it will naturally incline to the appropriate learning curve. It is more likely that only several gigantic, horrible, cataclysmic attacks in the West by non-white non-Western Muslims will shake the West out of this irrational syndrome.
It will be interesting (among other things) to see who wakes up first: the West (to the Problem of Islam), or Hugh Fitzgerald and the Jihad Watchers (to the Problem of the inability of the West in general not just its "elites" to wake up to the Problem of Islam). My hunch is that both will wake up at about the same time.
"...if Hugh is as prophetic as you say, why was he in favor of entering Iraq in the first place. Surely he must have know what I knew, that is, that entering Iraq would be disastrous for the US."
-- from a posting above
This poster continues either to ignore, or to misread. Entering Iraq was not inevitably "disastrous" nor, in fact, need it turn out to be "disastrous" if the Americans do not remain but promptly withdraw. The mistake was not in entering, but in staying beyond the time needed to scour the country for weapons projects, and to believe that "democracy" in any Western sense could be transplanted, or that the seeming supporters of such "democracy" (the Shi'a) had anything more in mind beyond the use of the ballot-box to insure a transfer of power acceptable to the powerful Americans, and the seeming opponents (Sunnis) of such "democracy" opposed to even that primitive exercise because it would lead to their loss of power, again through the ballot-box. But had there been no purple-thumbed exercise, the transfer of power from Sunnis to Shi'a would have taken place anyway, inevitably, but through more violent means.
It is the additional goal, proferred later, not expressed before the Americans seized Iraq in March and early April 2003, this whole Iraq the Model business, the goal that appeared to take on a life of its own, and stubbornly remain long after it should have been clear that the goal was unattainable and in any case, far less likely to further the Infidel goal of weakening Islam ("democracy" in Egypt, in Pakistan, in Jordan, in Syria, in Lebanon, in the "Palestinian territories" would increase the power of assorted local versions of the Muslim Brotherhood), than would withdrawing those forces.
The victory is there. It remains only to be recognized. The removal of Saddam Hussein inevitably set in motion the transfer of power from Sunnis to Shi'a that cannot be accepted by the former, and will not be surrendered by the latter. This is the War of Unintended Consequences. But what is "unintended" and apparently unrecognized by everyone else, seems perfectly clear to me and did so back in March and April of 2004, and earlier too -- that the forces set in motion, and that could not be stopped, would inevitably lead to further division, and demoralization, and a weakening of the camp of Islam.
I call that a victory for Infidels. The fact that Bush, Rice, and Rumsfeld cannot see that, cannot describe it that way to themselves (yes, I know that they will have to be circumspect in how they describe it to the outside world, given the absurd requirement that one cannot take pleasure, or at least express such pleasure, in the damage done to the umma and to Islam. Why Americans and other Westerners, and other Infidels, have been led to believe they must hide their evident delight in the weakening of an enemy, is unclear.
This "victory" will be a passive one. No one can rightly claim it, because those who helped bring it about did not intend to do so, and in fact for three years have been working toward quite a different end.
A fantastic situation. A war, followed by a mistake, a failure to realize that a victory may be claimed only through withdrawal, and not through remaining. Hard for some people to grasp. But the invasion of Iraq was not, pace the poster above, "disastrous." It set in motion exactly what one would have wished had been deliberatey set, but which one knows was in fact an accidental, entirely unintended, uncomprehended, result.
Hugh,
For us to pull out now is (or right after removal of Hussein) would have been suicidal. And I will not argue you on your deep knowledge of Islam, but as a military man myself, your suggestion of leaving Iraq to “sort it all out” and “divide the camp of Islam” sounds nice and would certainly work well for a while but gains us nothing but a short term diversion from nuclear-armed Islamic fanatics.
From a military standpoint, Iran is indeed the #1 goal ultimately in this “War on Terror”. We have a battle-hardened military force of 150,000 on both sides of Iran. This should be obvious. More importantly, we are operating (militarily) from a position of absolute strength. We have had 3-5 years to build up the necessary infrastructure and intelligence to confront Iran militarily. We are on their doorstep.
Had we pulled out in say July 2004 from Iraq, can you say with 100% certainty what Iran would have gotten away with? They are nutcases and have only been held in check with the threat of force. We cannot do that credibly from 10,000 miles away. I cannot imagine what would have happened if we had pulled out. Yes we keep the peace as best we can by dolling out billions, but that is unfortunately the cost of maintaining 150,000 troops in a Muslim land.
Nay we must not leave Iraq now or it is sure military suicide of which I argue you know not a whole lot about.
I personally do not think you realize that a nuclear Iran trumps all and everything including the “weakening camp of Islam”. As Bush said, he simply will not allow Iran to go nuclear under his watch. We can’t. The day Iran announces the bomb, who will be thinking of “weakening the camp of Islam” and what will it matter then? Who will give a rat’s ass about Sunni versus Shea? That will merely become the undercard bout for the main event.
At this moment in world history, we are in perfect position to deal with Iran militarily. This option would be virtually null and void if we left Iraq. Iran must be confronted sooner or later, and that confrontation must contain the threat of military force. I repeat, we cannot do this without the troops in the area.
It is a changed world Hugh, and your way of thinking is pre-9/11, I dare say. Betting the house on “keeping Islam divided” matters for nothing when they are armed with nukes for an atomic Islamist cannot be weakened in ways that worked all these decades in the 20th century.
It is you who must wake up to post 9/11 realities! Let me repeat to the point of nauseum, Iran must not acquire nuclear weapons! It is imperative we maintain a major military presence in the heart of the Muslim world for the foreseeable future, at least until Iran’s mullahs can be overthrown. And yes, our frontline soldiers are dying, but I say not in vain.
I for one appreciate the insight into Islam I have gained from this site, but your pounding on “cut and run” strategy would resonate for decades in the camp of Islam. And then when Iran announces her intentions of nuclear blackmail, we cannot do much if we all are hunkering down in “Fortress America” can we? I for one do not wish to live in a world in which Iran holds us all blackmail with the threat of nuclear terrorism every week.
Or have you not been listening to what Ahmanednutjob has been saying for over a year now?
Dan
Hugh et al,
Maybe there's another solution.
What should be done is for the US and its allies to announce the emminant withdrawal from Iraq with this caveat:
We admit that Iraq faces perpetual internal conflict as it is currently constituted. Thus the precurser to withdrawal will be the partition of Iraq into four nations.
1. A Shi'a Nation in the south. This may effectively be absorbed by Iran but that will only make official what has already happened behind the scenes. On the other hand, it may empower the Iraqi Shi'as to assert their newfound independence and resist Iranian domination.
2. A Sunni nation in the center. This will be the buffer to keep Iran from linking up with Syria.
3. An independent Kurdistan in the northeast including As-Sulimaniya, Irbil, and the oil fields near Kirkuk.
4. An independent Assyria in the northwest from Mosul to Sinjar. Assyria and Kurdistan would have to have some economic and political confederation for mutual defence and to share the oil around Mosul.
Iraq is, after all, the artificial creation of British colonialism out of the ruins of the old Ottoman Empire and was therefore never a legitimate nation to begin with. To maintain the myth of Iraqi national unity is in nobody's interest.
Why not withdraw? Why not let whatever Allah wishes to happen just happen? What real business is it of ours?
Think of the monetary savings. Think how those savings could be put to more practical use - countering dawa, investigating islamic organizations, helping muslims in the West to get the information they need to be able to leave islam.
"Mistakes like this are yet another unforeseen byproduct of cultural relativism. What passes for the intelligentsia continually bleats that "After all, we are all alike, and all cultures have equal validity." Our leaders can not believe that the Iraqis will not behave like Kansans."
Absolutely, 100%, dead-bang on target. It was only a matter of time before atheist-nihilist-pseudointellectual moral and cultural relativism began to erode and, ultimately, to destroy the foundations of Western civilization. The "education" received by most of our current (and, God help us, future) leaders is of course almost completely corrupted by this sort of idiotic drivel; obviously it's "garbage in, garbage out", and of course we're going to have to pay the piper sooner or later if we as a society come to be divorced from our very foundational principles. Consider that such relativism is diametrically opposed to any orthodox reading of the Bible (whether Jewish or Christian), and then consider the great Mortimer Adler's comment that the birth and flowering and achievements of Western civilization are incomprehensible apart from the existence and influence of the Bible.
Which is all a fancy way of saying, People who literally can't think straight---because they no longer have a proper worldview or frame of reference from which to make sense of reality---certainly cannot formulate a proper course of action vis a vis Islamic Fascism, an ideology which has no doubts about its own superiority and divine mandate to rule the world. Simply saying "why can't we all just get along in our wonderful multicultural relativist utopia" because that's what passes for intellectual, ahem, "thought" in most, ahem, "universities" is an utterly bankrupt response to virulent Islam bent on world conquest. It is, in fact, complete stupidity, ignorance, weakness, decadence and cowardice when you get beyond all of the psuedo-intellectual, pseudo-moral posturing. No wonder the Imams think the West is ripe for conquest. I have no doubt personally that the leaders of Islamic "jihad" are well aware of how various nihilisms have corroded the West and destroyed its conviction and its willingness to use force to defend itself. If there's no objective difference (or none that matters) between worldviews or cultures or ideologies---a completely idiotic assertion just on the surface of things---but if that's so, so the "thinking" goes, Who are we to "force our way" on anyone else? And, why can't the Muslims just accept that nobody knows anything for sure, anyway? Why can't they accept that there's no such thing as truth, like we do? And so on and so on and so on.
This is why I said, after 9-11, that it was an open question whether the West had the moral force and unity to survive the onslaught of Islamic Facism. I think it's still an open question. I have my doubts. But make no mistake: this is in fact World War. The Muslims have no question about this fact, nor do they have any doubt about their course of action. Only real strength---moral, intellectual, physical, political, and military---can turn back the barbarian tide that is headed for the gates of the West.
"Mistakes like this are yet another unforeseen byproduct of cultural relativism. What passes for the intelligentsia continually bleats that "After all, we are all alike, and all cultures have equal validity." Our leaders can not believe that the Iraqis will not behave like Kansans."
Absolutely, 100%, dead-bang on target. It was only a matter of time before atheist-nihilist-pseudointellectual moral and cultural relativism began to erode and, ultimately, to destroy the foundations of Western civilization. The "education" received by most of our current (and, God help us, future) leaders is of course almost completely corrupted by this sort of idiotic drivel; obviously it's "garbage in, garbage out", and of course we're going to have to pay the piper sooner or later if we as a society come to be divorced from our very foundational principles. Consider that such relativism is diametrically opposed to any orthodox reading of the Bible (whether Jewish or Christian), and then consider the great Mortimer Adler's comment that the birth and flowering and achievements of Western civilization are incomprehensible apart from the existence and influence of the Bible.
Which is all a fancy way of saying, People who literally can't think straight---because they no longer have a proper worldview or frame of reference from which to make sense of reality---certainly cannot formulate a proper course of action vis a vis Islamic Fascism, an ideology which has no doubts about its own superiority and divine mandate to rule the world. Simply saying "why can't we all just get along in our wonderful multicultural relativist utopia" because that's what passes for intellectual, ahem, "thought" in most, ahem, "universities" is an utterly bankrupt response to virulent Islam bent on world domination. It is, in fact, complete stupidity, ignorance, weakness, decadence and cowardice when you get beyond all of the psuedo-intellectual, pseudo-moral posturing. No wonder the Imams think the West is ripe for conquest. I have no doubt personally that the leaders of Islamic "jihad" are well aware of how various nihilisms have corroded the West and destroyed its conviction and its willingness to use force to defend itself. If there's no objective difference (or none that matters) between worldviews or cultures or ideologies---a completely idiotic assertion just on the surface of things---but if that's so, so the "thinking" goes, Who are we to "force our way" on anyone else? And, why can't the Muslims just accept that nobody knows anything for sure, anyway? Why can't they accept that there's no such thing as truth, like we do? And so on and so on and so on.
This is why I said, after 9-11, that it was an open question whether the West had the moral force and unity to survive the onslaught of Islamic Facism. I think it's still an open question. I have my doubts. But make no mistake: this is in fact World War. The Muslims have no question about this fact, nor do they have any doubt about their course of action. Only real strength---moral, intellectual, physical, political, and military---can turn back the barbarian tide that is headed for the gates of the West.
if the coalition forces withdraw now, it will be recognized as a victory for radical Islam.
I believe the US is in Iraq to protect its oil interests from China.
the Shia's and the Sunni's could be encouraged into civil war, and this would diminish radical Islam globally, but the gap could be filled by China.
So, I advocate the US imposing a strategy that dominates the oil fields (where it can) within the ME. Taking a divide and conquer approach to the sunni-shia conflict, and restricting China from all the resources it can as soon as possible. (China is the real threat to US sumpremacy, radical islam is but a mere pin-prick).
The very idea that the Sunni Arabs and the Shi'a Arabs inside Iraq, or that Sunnis and Shi'a outside Iraq, including those non-Arab Muslims in Iran and Pakistan and Afghanistan, could after a brief interval patch up their differences, shows a misunderstanding of the depth of the divide that has always existed between Shi'a and Sunni, to which is now added the fury felt among Sunni Arabs at the possible loss of what was once the center of the Abbasid Caliphate to Shi'a, especially Persian Shi'a , and the sense of triumphalism among the Shi'a in Iraq and more importantly, among those who rule, or are ruled by, the Islamic Republic of Iran.