Madinah - The Custodian of the two Holy Mosques King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz armed with bucket and mop has issued his directives to Prince Meqrin bin Abdulaziz, the Governor of Madinah region and Head of the Executive Committee for the Development of the Central Region in Madinah, and Dr Ibrahim Al-Assaf, the Finance Minister, to take the required measures for the completion of the remaining works pertaining to the expansion project of the Wahhabi Ministry of Propaganda Prophet's Mosque.
These remaining works will be implemented at a total cost of SR 4.7 billion.
They include 182 sunshades covering the Mosque's country yards to protect worshippers form the sun and rains. And the more than occasional stampede.
The Mosque's Eastern yard will also be developed to arrange more places of prayer for worshippers, parking facilities will be built under this courtyard, while the project of First King Faisal Circle Road as well as the projects of streets, pavements and lighting in the central region will be completed.Billions of more Riyals wasted on this nonsense, and for what end?
Posted by: The Angry Fliegerabwehrkanonen ||
08/20/2005 09:59 ||
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#1
That's over $1.25Bn US. I'd suggest that, at a minimum, half will be skimmed off by the Gov and the Boyz.
They love "publicly funded" construction projects - it's just another way of soaking up the cash, instead of doing dick to make their people's lives better. Keeps them in "clover". Nobody does nepotism better. Dunno if they invented it, but they have certainly perfected it.
Cindy Sheehan has announced that she will return to
Crawford to continue her message that America is not
worthy...
In battles past at the sound of the trumpet a soldier
designated to carry the flag in the battle would
charge forward into the face of evil. The flag bearer
represented the spirit of the soldiers in the charge
and ensuing battle.
There is no doubt that this war pits good mounting a
charge against evil. In most cases before the battle
the flag bearer volunteers to carry the flag.
Therefore, all the soldiers in this days army are flag
bearers as all volunteered to enter this battle
against terror and possibley die young so that others
may live a long and full life of freedom from fear and
terror.
Each time a flag bearing soldier falls as they surge
forward in battle another soldier takes up the flag
and continues the great charge holding the colors high
for all to see.
Cindy Sheehan has shamed her son who fell holding the
colors by telling the others do not pick up the flag
he bore in the charge. Cindy Sheehan says the colors
her son died holding high representing the ideals of
freedom, justice, liberty and peace is not worthy.
But the day will come when at the sound of the trumpet
these fallen who by then may have been forgotten will
rise again and shout their names to remind the world
that they are now eternal.
And the voices of those who dishonored their valor
while they were fallen will NOT have a voice on that
day but will be silent forever.
#3
I have discovered that this woman was a little kooky before her son was killed.* Of course, being a little kooky around the dinner table and destroying your life by mounting a show like this are two different things - she was obviously traumatized by her son's death. Still - the idea being spread about - that her son's death turned her against the war - is patently wrong.
* From Power Line blog - "As time goes by, and people learn more about Sheehan--e.g., her anti-Americanism, and the fact that she was so fervently anti-war BEFORE her son enlisted that she vowed to run him down with her car if he joined up--her ratings will no doubt slide further."
#4
There are over 1800 mothers who suffer from incredible void of losing a child in this conflict...
She does not speak for "Them", a majority of "Them", or from the best that I can tell (since the MSM isn't spending much effort checking on it) even a significant minority of the others.
Sorry Moonbeam, you are not the spark of the universe... and your handlers offer no solutions.
Ever since her blog was posted, me along with other conservatives posted comment after comment on her blog. We saturated it day and night. I was accused of trolling, but I wasn't.
My comments and rebbutals were backed up with historical facts and actual quotes from Sheehan. They unsuccessfully fired back with their typical feel good responses. But I insisted over and over again that they respond with the facts to disprove my view. They found out real quick that they couldn't refute my view with facts so their responses were getting angrier and angrier. But, I didn't give up. I kept on insisting that they leave out emotion, but they couldn't.
Three or four days ago, they would have only a maximum of 10-15 comments per article. Maybe its coincidence, but when I started commenting two days ago, the number of comments started picking to over 50-170 on the posted Leftwing Agenda article. I'm by no means taking any credit, but the snowball picked up in size after I started posting comments, relentlessly. I don't know who you are, my fellow conservatives, I thank you for helping me pound the blog into the ground.
Final result: The "Crawford Update" blog is NO LONGER accepting comments and archive comments are no longer available. See for yourself. Hypocrites!! They only love "Freedom of Speech" when it fits their agenda. Cinder "The Scam" Sham Blog
#8
We saturated it day and night. I was accused of trolling, but I wasn't
Oh, really? Posting comments relentlessly? Trolling is exactly what it sounds like. Behavior like that would not be tolerated at Rantburg either. Claiming to do it in the name of a higher purpose is simply disingenuous.
Hold on now, that's not what I meant. What I meant was, that I had factual rebuttals everytime they threw something at me and it went on all night and carried to the next day. I wasn't commenting out of subject matter. I simply asked for facts on their rebuttals and I didn't give up on it, that's not trolling. If I come to RB and ask for facts with links, I will get in 5 seconds. If I didn't get facts, I'll keep asking for it until you kick me out. Then RB would be no different than a typical Leftist blog and I don't need to waste my time or knowledge at RB. Since that's not the case, I will continue post because I don't consider it a waste of my time or knowledge to post here.
I did mention words "historical facts" and "actual quote" on #7. But, you are free to judge me as you like.
Bottomline, they didn't want so many factual dissenting views to distort their agenda. There is no agenda here at RB, just the facts.
#13
I was responding to #7. People with the "wrong" opinions are banned here too.
.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
08/20/2005 20:38 Comments ||
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#14
Mike, I would say that people who are relentlessly arrogant and obnoxious are banned here, just as they would be banned from any traditional face-to-face discussion group.
#15
Many of the Rantburg regulars are relentlessly arrogant and obnoxious, so that doesn't explain the phenomenon.
Aris and Gentle bit back at the dog packs. That's why they were banned.
.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
08/20/2005 21:00 Comments ||
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#16
Interesting that you can defend the U.N., Kofi Annan, and Kojo Annan; you cannot stand many Rantburg regulars; and you count anyone who stood up to Aris and Gentle as part of a "dog pack" -- I'll bet you and Cindy Sheehan would get along fabulously. And yet you have not been banned. A real paradox, isn't it?
Don't use my comments to promote your filthy Anti-American/Semite agenda. Use the US taxpayer funded UN money to get yourself a thesaurus and stand in your own sinking tar pit. Now, I think I will take a trip to Bangeldesh to have some jihadi throw some acid on me so I can be cleansed of yours and Aris's hatred.
#18
by the way, MS - I don't think you should be banned. Shamed and ridiculed for your defense of anti-american tyrants stealing OFF money to pad their pockets while keepind Saddam et al in power, yes. Abused for your nonsensical JUS posts to try and do what? Yes. I've called you a moral cretin and worse, but I stand by it. Banned? Noooooo you provide an example of what BDS and moral equivalence can lead to....
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/20/2005 21:51 Comments ||
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#19
Well, Aris and Gentle are banned here at Rantburg. From that perspective, it's silly for Poison Reverse to make such a big deal about comments being cut off at some other blog.
.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
08/20/2005 23:10 Comments ||
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#20
banned? If you say so. If some other blog owner chooses to filter comments, you are right, that is their choice. To my knowledge, Fred, et al, are pretty lenient and notify when lines are crossed. "Relentlously arrogant and obnoxious" is a slur from you that I wear as a badge of accomplishment. I've made myself clear on how esteemed I hold you.
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/20/2005 23:16 Comments ||
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#21
Fred himself said he banned Aris.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
08/20/2005 23:17 Comments ||
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#22
Aris made a decision before his required service time started...he crossed lines, something even he admitted. It's Fred's blog. If you, I, or Aris get out of favor due to our comments, it's Fred's prerogative to bar access. "Get your own" is always in order...
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/20/2005 23:26 Comments ||
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#23
Yes, Fred can ban whoever he wants. So can people who run other blogs. I was responding to Poison Reverse throwing a fit here about comments being cut off at some other blog.
.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
08/20/2005 23:45 Comments ||
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#24
Uh, wait a minute Mike. I thought that Aris voluntarily left before he got banned......not quite the same thing as getting banned.
I wasn't throwing a fit about my comments being thrown out at the Left wing site. I was stating that ALL comments are thrown out because Left wingers don't like dissenting views. Re-read #7 and click on the link.
#30
"Dissidents are hounded, and if they bite back, they are banned.
You haven't learned a thing. The problem is not dissiention. The problem is that dissidents think they can come to RB and fire some nonsense and not be challenged. Also, the problem is that dissidents resorts eventually to name calling a personal attacks when they can't anyone to agree with them. Please refer to Exibit A at page 1 "Bad guys meeting, training in Bosnia."
Back up your opinions with solid research links and you won't get bit.
It's not enough to say that world affairs are in a crazy state and leave it at that -- which is exactly what I did last week in outlining how the United States is effectively boosting the spread of sharia law and the Iranian sphere of influence in the Middle East. It's easy to say this is nuts. But what do we do now?
It's time to get back to basics. And by basics, I mean getting back to First Term W., back to when the president's strategy to defend and protect the United States was to take military action against terrorists and the nations that sponsor them. By unfortunate contrast, the security strategy of Second Term W. is best described as bringing universal suffrage to these same terrorists and the nations that sponsor them. Getting back to Bush basics requires a re-reckoning of what and why we fight -- and, just as important, for what and why we don't fight.
Do we fight to spread democracy? Or do we fight to stop jihad? Far better to fight to stop jihad. Second Term W. believes democratic principles will neutralize jihad -- a.k.a. "extremism" in the strangled parlance of political correctness. It may not be polite to notice, but the nasty reality is that jihad is neutralizing democratic principles. The fact the administration must reckon with is that the concept of human rights -- the ideals of liberty and justice for all -- isn't a natural by-product of majority rule. Islamic terrorists still support Islamic terrorism, even when, as in the Palestinian Authority or Lebanon, they are democratically elected; and sharia erodes human rights even when, as in Afghanistan and likely Iraq, it is implicitly mandated by a constitution.
It's time for the administration to consider the possibility that the democratic process alone -- constitutions, legislatures, ballot boxes -- doesn't result in Jeffersonian democracy. Such a re-reckoning doesn't mean abandoning Iraq. But it does mean reordering our goals. Forget the Iraqi constitution for now. More important is a single-minded effort to eradicate the death squads that destabilize the country and threaten to exhaust our staying power. Getting back to Bush basics, that means taking action against the nations that sponsor these terrorists: Iran, for instance.
Tragically for the human race, the strategy articulated by First Term W. is a novel, never-before-implemented doctrine. Re-reading Claire Sterling's "The Terror Network," a 1980 work of careful analysis that unraveled the Soviet-sponsored tangle of terrorists from the Baader-Meinhof Gang (now defunct) to various Palestinian terror groups (now approaching statehood), drives home the shocking fact that throughout the 1970s the first real "fright decade" of terrorist kidnappings, assassinations, embassy takeovers and bombings designed to destabilize mainly Europe, often in the name of Palestinianism -- the Western democracies never took action against, never even mentioned the names of, terrorism's state sponsors. This was the time of the Cold War, and a craven policy of "soft neutrality" toward the terror masters in the Kremlin and its proxies prevailed.
More astonishing, the democracies never took action against the extensive network of martial training camps that turned out tens of thousands of deadly terrorists, not only in the Soviet Union and the Eastern European "bloc" countries, but also in Cuba, Libya, Algeria, Syria, Lebanon, South Yemen and North Korea. These camps for killers -- camps for killing democracy -- functioned freely under clear skies never penetrated by a NATO bomber. This was a moral surrender that undermined Western civilization to an incalculable extent. Nothing really changed (Ronald Reagan's one-time bombing of Libya notwithstanding) until September 11 and George W. Bush.
This little history lesson should ring a bell, particularly in light of Time magazine's report about how Iran has marched its Revolutionary Guard units into Iraq to kill Americans -- units that, according to Time, train in Iraq's Sadr City district, Lebanon and "another country" (very possibly diplospeak for Iran). Putting this together with a most encouraging discussion of America's massive Air Force potential against proto-nuclear Iran from The Guardian (flagged by the blog View from the Right) makes me wonder: Can Iraq ever be stabilized without defanging Iran? Shouldn't there be, for starters, a big bull's-eye on these Iranian training camps?
Such questions need addressing. It's not enough for Donald Rumsfeld in an interview to refer, glancingly, to Iranian interference in Iraq, or for the president to let drop that "all options are on the table" regarding Iran's compliance with international nuclear regulation. We need to be educated, not left wondering in what sounds like pusilanimous silence. We need to be prepared. We need First Term W.
#1
She makes a lot of important points, not all of which I agree with. I'll think about this and see what others have to say before commenting further.
#2
Democracy is not so fragile as she supposes. In fact, it has an extraordinary combination of factors that may eventually prove it to be a slow, but irresistable force in the world.
First of all is its organization. Visible is the powerful balanced hierarchy of its leaders; what a traditional oriental thinker might call its "masculine" trait. Invisible is the "masses" from where that power derives; its feminine trait. The masses are amorphous, coalescing into ad hoc, volitile and unpredictable groups to flesh out this powerful masculine hierarchy by voting. Add the two traits together and you can order and change; whichever is the mood of the people.
There is an expression: "People eventually get the kind of government they want." By silently resisting and cooperating, they can train even an invader army to go along to get along.
Democracy truly is what people want--to choose their own leaders. An obvious choice, the safest one there is. People who choose otherwise would also elect to obey orders instead of choosing their own way. Such is the way of sheep heading to the slaughterhouse.
Any government stands or falls based upon a ratio of "government efficiency". It is simple, the ratio of what a government promises vs. what it actually delivers. Promise little and deliver it, and you will remain the government. Promise much and don't deliver, and you will be deposed. Ironically, it doesn't really matter *what* you promise, good or bad, as long as you deliver.
Democracy promises much; but it can do so because it has rapid feedback from the people. It knows what they want, and knows it had better deliver or it will be replaced with someone who either doesn't make promises he can't keep, or delivers on those he does.
So what opposes democracy? First of all, the "priests" and the "royals". "Priests", the shamen, ministers and imams say that all law and organization are dictated from heaven. And this law can only be dictated by them, as the voice of heaven. Theirs are the "moral" laws, and violations of those laws are "immoral". To challenge those laws is "blasphemous."
Democracy creates laws written "Of men, by men, and for men", no god or gods needed. And if men want to change the law, they do so. To follow the law in a democracy means that one is "ethical", not necessarily "moral". But though the dictionary equates the two, democrats inherently know the difference. And they distrust those politicians who claim to be "moral", as they would distrust that policitician's priest, and his particular interpretation of "morality", if he wants to inflict it on them.
"Royals" are much like "priests", in that they are elitists, thinking themselves so superior to everyone else that their dictates, based on their wisdom, should be the law. "Royals" still exist in those individuals who seek to undermine democracy from within, such as EU bureaucrats.
"-isms" also oppose democracy. Tribalism, racism, sexism, socialism, fascism, communism, etc.
And both groups, the "priests" and "royals", and the "-isms", always seem to take the upper hand, expecially in a new democracy. But this is deceptive. What would you expect when such entrenched and institutionalized forces meet that new upstart revolution?
But revolutionary it is. Perhaps North Korea is the only remaining country on Earth that does not have at least some hidden democrats among its people. Democrats look like anyone else, and generally behave themselves even in a bitter dictatorship, but they are always there, waiting for their chance.
The Saud family was recently shaken to its roots, not by the realization that there were Jihadis in its ranks, but democrats. And as surely as they knew they had them, they had no idea as to who, among their kin, they were. There can be no greater threat to their dictatorial rule than democrats--the democratic "disease" spreading unpredictably, but inexorably, throughout their kingdom.
Right now, the entire Middle East faces what Europe faced in 1847. Democrats are everywhere, spreading their revolution. People become democrats without even fully knowing it, like a contagious philosophy. And once they become a democrat, they can't go back.
In 1848, democratic revolutions spread to every country in Europe but two.
What could mere Jihad do in the face of such an overwhelming enemy?
#3
While I agree with some of what the author said, this comment is primarily to say *bravo* to Moose and echo many of the same sentiments.
Regards the article, Bush has, indeed, slackened the pace - I hope to consolidate gains, realign and refresh resources, and prepare for Round Two. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt over the author, because he has a history of taking action to back up his words. I will be the most disappointed person on the planet if he fails to follow up. Obviously Iran, driven by time and events, is the next serious challenge. He must meet it with what he has on hand when the time comes - wishing, sniping, and bitching won't affect it. I believe he will.
As to Moose's comment, you rang many of the same bells I feel are important when I attempt to post on so complex a topic as true democratic ideals - and their end product, personal freedom. Agreed, once experienced and appreciated instead of feared, everything else is immediately and simply hateful, vile, intolerable. Nothing less will do, ever again. The desire for Freedom is an emotional addiction - and emotions drive people, not logic, and not even traditions and customs can withstand it forever.
It can be a bitch to seed in hostile environments - and Islam + Arab Tribal "society" + absolute Dictatorships / Monarchies / Mullahcracies make almost the harshest imaginable... I picture it as 90% automatons, 9% sycophants, and 1% unchallenged controllers who are fighting for their very existence against it, trampling out individualism at every turn and resorting to killing their own to maintain power. But it's an idea that won't die as long as one person "gets it". Heh, it's like kudzu or bamboo - once rooted, it's there to stay. That's not to suggest it won't take generations, however. I figure that will be the case in both Iraq and Afghanistan. They have a lot of catching up to do in an environment purpose-built to prevent it.
Do we even have a word to describe the new criticism?
Sometimes even the English language is without the right word to describe a commonplace occurrence. We don't, for example, have a term quite like the German schadenfreude: "Taking malicious delight in someone else's misfortune." The Arab world has no real word to denote constitutional democracy, and so uses our Anglicized form of the Greek dêmokratia.
Take the recent boomerang effect of those critics who critique the war, but in the process achieve the exact antithesis of what they intend. After the spring 2004 butchery of American contractors, we went into, and then withdrew from, Fallujah â apprehensive that global media scrutiny would portray us as storm troopers.
In fact, the enemy considered us too equivocating and claimed the retreat as a great victory. So until we retook the city in November, we fretted that the Fallujah encirclement was an example of our blunt-headedness, while our enemy equated it with softness.
Indeed, throughout this conflict the United States has been apprehensive that it was becoming too brutal in its effort even as the Islamic fascists were convinced that we were too weak to fight such a war.
The Greeks might offer us a term for such ironic turnabout; perhaps something like antiepistrophe â "a turning back against oneself" â since the self-appointed moralist usually ends up looking stupid when his own examples refute the very reasons he adduced them.
But in the interest of simplicity, I'll call it the "biteback" effect. Every time one hears a strident censor bring up a purported American sin, expect that he'll be bitten right back by proving the opposite of what he intended â and looking foolish in the bargain.
Examine a few recent examples of biteback.
We endlessly quarrel over the Patriot Act as an infringement of civil rights. "We are a nation of laws and liberties, not of a knock in the night," John Kerry intoned to Iowa votersduring the 2004 presidential primaries. "So it is time to end the era of John Ashcroft. That starts with replacing the Patriot Act with a new law that protects our people and our liberties at the same time."
Yet few Democratic senators, including John Kerry, now seem to want to repeal it. But in terms of what either the British or Dutch are doing, the Patriot Act is pretty tame.
We are hardly arresting Americans for inflammatory speech, closing down madrassas, or stripping suspect naturalized Americans from the Middle East of their citizenship â even in a war where the only real danger to the homeland seems to come from Islamicists who are planning our destruction through cells so far undetected often due to our past laxity.
On the basis of an FBI agent's e-mail alleging loud rap music, cold room temperatures, and the rough handling of a Koran, former president Jimmy Carter and Illinois Democratic Senator Dick Durbin advanced Guantanamo as a national scandal and proof of our amorality in this war.
"I think what's going on in Guantanamo Bay and other places is a disgrace to the USA," Pius Maximus Carter pontificated, adding that the detention center had "given impetus and excuses to potential terrorists." Sen.Durbin earlier had assured us of Guantanamo that, "You would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime â Pol Pot or others â that had no concern for human beings."
But the more one learns about Guantanamo, after having it raised constantly by such self-righteous and anguished censors, the more it seems unlike any wartime detention center in recent memory â but in ways exactly opposite from the Stalag its detractors imply.
Rules of interrogation, Korans, prayer arrows pointed to Mecca, visits by U.S. congressmen, Middle Eastern food, inmates as voracious readers of Harry Potter, and the absence of a single inmate lost in captivity: All of that suggests humane treatment toward terrorists â often caught in combat, always out of uniform, and not subject to the Geneva Convention. Guantanamo seems radically different from any prison run by any other current wartime state, much less like anything in our own past when, for example, we summarily shot German agents not in German uniforms during the Battle of the Bulge.
Indeed as a general rule, the more hysterically Guantanamo is cited, the more it seems, after introspection, to be a sensible wartime jail under nearly impossible conditions.
The sexual humiliation at Abu Ghraib was reprehensible, but the reaction of its critics was equally so â as in Ted Kennedy's assertion that "Saddam's torture chamber reopened under new management."
Americans did not systematically kill or torture tens of thousands of innocents. Apprehended terrorists still prefer to be captured by American troops rather than by Iraqi militia and security forces, since it means a trip to a supervised Abu Ghraib â and air conditioning and regular meals where they will not be shot or tortured.
We bandy about Abu Ghraib as something out of the Inquisition, but for those on the frontline it means something far different from the ritual beheading, torture, and murder that characterize the enemy's way of doing business.
Every time Cindy Sheehan tries to adduce another writ against the current administration (a.k.a., "Bush crime family," "evil bastards in the administration," "f***ing hypocrites," "biggest terrorist in the world") â whether demanding a second private presidential meeting before so many other grieving families have had even one, or blaming Israel for the deaths of American soldiers â it has the opposite effect of what she intends. Under the sad logic of biteback, she reverses her own original position from the legitimate lament of a grieved mother trying to make sense out of the tragic loss of her brave son, to a deeply disturbed object of cynical partisan manipulation by the Michael Moore/Moveon.org Left.
So why do we see so much biteback these days?
In the age of utopianism we demand impossible standards of perfection. Then when they cannot be met, we conclude that we are not good at all, but the equivalent of a Pol Pot, Hitler, or Saddam himself â an elected American president who is a worse terrorist than Osama bin Laden.
And in a war with enemies like few other in our recent history, the contrast between rhetoric and reality is only accentuated: panties over the head of an Iraqi inmate, no head at all on an American prisoner; Korans given to the enemy terrorists in jail, Bibles outlawed for visitors to our friends the Saudis; our elected president becomes a member of the "Bush crime family" as we worry about proper barristers for Saddam Hussein's genuinely criminal family. As we fear that we have fallen short of the postmodern therapeutic age, Islamic fascists brag they are avatars of the Dark Ages.
Second, we don't believe that we are in a war anymore. Jimmy Carter thinks that something we do in Guantanamo galvanizes terrorists, as if the camp had been in existence since 1979, when under his watch this present quarter-century cycle of killing and terrorizing Americans with impunity in the Middle East began in earnest. Thus instead of joining in the effort to defeat Islamic fascists, the opposition and our pundits nitpick and moan, hoping for media attention and political points, convinced that none of their triangulation aids the enemy â since we aren't really in a war at all.
There is a third reason as well for biteback. The offenders are often old-line partisans like Sen. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, or Sen. Durbin, in addition to the more hysterical Left like Michael Moore or Moveon.org. For the most part, under our system of democratic majority rule, despite sizable support in the electorate, they are currently without real political power, lacking majorities in the House and Senate, without the presidency, behind in the state legislatures and governorships, and losing the Supreme Court.
Instead of advancing a comprehensive counter-agenda to the president's, too many on the Left turns to hysterics.
Yet the United States itself has not changed its character under Republican hands. Its government and people are as they were, thus ensuring the more the Left lashes out about losing the republic, the more their charges seem strident and extremist â bringing them shame as the additional wage to their irresponsibility.
Biteback occurs because the truth cannot be warped or distorted by its assailants: We are waging a moral war involving rules of engagement, the promotion of democracy, freedom from fascism, and billions of dollars in aid to others.
Once one is familiar with the nature of biteback, it hardly seems so bothersome since it only damages those who induce it.
There is also the biteback not just of hysterical slurs, but equally of counterfeit praise.
More pious praise for the United Nations? Thanks for conjuring up the memory of the Annan clan, Oil-for-Food, and the slaughter in Darfur. When Jimmy Carter talks of morality, I brace for even more amorality â like his contrived 2003 broadside against a sitting president in order to win a Nobel Prize from anti-American European judges. Dan Rather still lectures on journalistic standards â which reminds us of the protocols of forged memos.
Anticipate that when the full complexity of biteback is mastered, future allegations from Sens. Durbin and Kennedy that we are Saddam-like or Nazis will be taken as proof that, on the contrary, we are probably too naïve and too lenient-and that they still sound unhinged.
It is generally believed, at least in Pakistan, that the international media is dominated by the Jews who deliberately tend to malign Muslims and do not present a balanced view of world affairs. In the UK, many tabloids and national newspapers are owned by Rupert Murdoch who is a media giant based in the USA. Previously he lived in the UK. It is difficult to guess if the recent coverage was carried out under any specific directives issued by Mr Murdoch or an unsaid policy aimed at causing ill-feeling among the British against Pakistanis.
Posted by: john ||
08/20/2005 18:27 ||
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#1
denial is a river running from Saudi pockets to Madrassahs and the ISI. Waziristan is a nuthouse region that, depopulated, could be better used as a no-man's land
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/20/2005 20:35 Comments ||
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#2
Too bad the Empty Quarter is not really empty. What would balance the view of Muslims? What do they contribute that is worthwhile? Same old whine.
For the sake of all of us, I think it is time that Muslim leaders and communities stopped whining about persecution and gave up finding excuses for why their young men prefer to kill themselves and others instead of fighting for better lives. A good starting point would be to answer some very simple questions, not at global, international political levels, but at the level of parents and community leaders of Muslim communities around the world:
1. How about taking responsibility for what your young men and women do? Not only when they blow themselves and others up, but also when they refuse to work, or to go to any school except madrassas where they learn no skill but to recite the Koran, and thus willingly, even knowingly, isolate and alienate themselves.
2. How about expecting your children to become a Shahrukh Khan, APJ Abdul Kalam or Azim Premji? Or a poet like Mourid Barghouti? None of them were born to privilege and yet grew to become true heroes in vastly different fields. Doesnât the responsibility of teaching children to dream lie with the parents?
3. More importantly, what about teaching the young that to struggle to better oneself and oneâs own lot is truly the âgreater jihad,â far more difficult but definitely higher than blowing oneself up? That true change requires unstinting hard work and doesnât come easy, but that it is possible.
4. And finally, how about pointing out to these silly young men that blowing oneself up in the London metro or a Kashmiri marketplace or an Iraqi mosque is the act of a coward. And no God allows a space for a coward in heaven!
Perhaps this is the infidelâs way, of taking responsibility for oneself instead of continually complaining of being victims. If that is so, there is much to learn from it.
Posted by: john ||
08/20/2005 08:27 ||
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#1
Things are changing. Now even leftist women are beginning to question the politically correct nonsense that protects the islamists.
Posted by: john ||
08/20/2005 18:21 Comments ||
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#2
It's worth reading. She is quite educated and does offer an uncovered perspective and asks the rigth kinds of questions. I rate it a 3 out of 5.
"How about expecting your children to become a Shahrukh Khan, APJ Abdul Kalam or Azim Premji?"
So many muslim parents name their child Osama yet real muslim role models are ignored.
Shahrukh Khan was born in Mumbai slum yet is now one of the most successful (and wealthy) Indian film stars.
APJ Abdul Kalam was born to poor fishing folk but became a rocket scientist, building India's first satellite launch vehicles. He is now the Indian president.
Azim Premji also came from a humble background. His outsourcing firm Wipro is now one of the largest companies in India and he is a multi-billionaire, the richest person in India.
Muslims need to ask themselves why terrorists are idolized instead of such men.
Posted by: john ||
08/20/2005 20:05 Comments ||
Top||
Rather critical in its review of the US strategy (as to be expected from a lebanese pundit?), but gets a good point on arab intellectuals.
Why the Arab world roots for American failure in Iraq.
BY MICHAEL YOUNG
As the U.S. stumbles in Iraq, many in the Arab world (but also in the American academic left and isolationist right) have solemnly, at times pleasurably, described the situation as fitting retribution for "neocolonialism." The debate on America's imperial calling, particularly in the Middle East, is surely absorbing; yet from an Arab perspective, particularly that of the region's liberals, far more essential than how a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq might smash the Bush administration's hubris is the misfortune it will visit on Arabs striving for change.
Even assuming that carelessness long ago derailed American democratization ambitions in Iraq, failure will, at the very least, push democracy to a far lower rung of regional priorities. This will be a boon to the security-minded Arab regimes that most feared a regional democratic transformation in the first place. And those of the Iraq war's critics who, legitimately, bemoaned Washington's coddling of Arab dictators (but then refused to endorse the exception to the rule in Iraq) may one day see this or a subsequent administration again prefer the steadiness of tyrants to the wishy-washiness of Arab societies that seem to hate the U.S. far more dependably than they do their own lack of liberty.
Conceptually and politically, the Iraqi situation has shown the Arab world and its intellectuals at their stalemated worse. As an idea, the "neocolonial" paradigm is intriguing, because, rhetorically, it goes back decades to when Arab nationalism was at its peak. In holding to a storyline that the Iraqi conflict reflects an Arab desire for release from American hegemony, Arab critics are resurrecting an intellectual phantom. As Iraqis have fallen back on sect, tribe or ethnic loyalties, they have further demolished the myth of an all-encompassing Arab identity that, everywhere in the region, must dissolve primary identities. What the critics won't admit is that Iraq is yet another graveyard of Arab nationalism, not its avatar.
But even with respect to Iraqi nationalism, Arabs have little to cling to. Iraqi displeasure with the U.S. may be genuine, but has largely been framed parochially, not by a desire to re-create a broad Iraqi national self--though the impulse may yet be alive in some quarters. Is that letdown surprising? After all, Saddam Hussein's Baathist Iraq, like Hafez Assad's Syria, blended symbols of nationalism with the counterfeit comprehensiveness of Arab nationalism, all to burnish systems that were--are--duplicitous facades for minority rule.
It is politically, however, that Arab societies, specifically liberals, failed to see the advantages in the removal of Saddam, regardless of their antipathy to the Bush administration. Here was an opportunity to cheer on the emergence of an Arab democracy, with deep implications for democracy at home, and it was missed. More disturbing was that this need never have contradicted Iraqi sovereignty. Washington could have been repeatedly reminded by Arab democrats keen to see the Iraq project succeed for their own good, that true democracy meant, after a period of stabilization, allowing Iraq to be free of foreign interference. Yet other than from the Iraqis themselves, the argument was rarely heard in the Arab world; advantageous pragmatism was supplanted by stubborn attachment to principle--"principle" that, in yearning for American failure, ignored how Iraqis suffered from the ensuing carnage.
Saddam's fall was welcomed by shamefully few Arabs (I recall how, on the day of his capture, a liberal Arab intellectual living in the U.S. mainly regretted that this would bolster George W. Bush's popularity ratings): The "humiliation" of seeing an Arab leader toppled by Western armies far outweighed that of seeing one of the most talented of Arab societies, the Middle East's Germany, subjected to a ferocious despotism responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths. Nor was there much interest regionally in the discovery of the Baath's mass graves. One reason was the secondary concern that many Arab societies have for Saddam's foremost victims--the Shiites and Kurds; but the main cause of indifference was that Saddam's crimes, if acknowledged, threatened to imply the Arabs' inability to responsibly manage their own emancipation.
Arab rejection of the Iraqi project rested on another foundation: sympathy for the Palestinians. Here again, Iraq offered opportunities never considered. How could the U.S. be serious about Iraqi democracy, the critics muttered, when Palestinians still suffered? The statement was a non sequitur, but it undercut efforts to draw on what was best in Iraq to advance Arab liberty and Palestinian self-determination.
Some neocons indeed argued that victory in Iraq, by sounding the death knell of terrorism, would oblige Palestinians to accept a settlement with Israel. This was incredibly simplistic, but no less so is the widely held view in the Arab world that Iraq was mainly done to help Israel. There is little evidence of even a consensus in Israel over Iraq, let alone that the alligator-skinned Ariel Sharon seriously bought into a plan positing Arab democracy. But again, that is less important than another question: Could Arabs have used Iraq to help the Palestinians?
The answer seems evident. From the Arab side, encouragement of a democratic Iraq, and its fulfillment, would have proved the viability of an Arab democracy, denting Israel's presumption that it is the "only democracy in the Middle East." By becoming a dominant cornerstone of U.S. policy, Iraq would have relativized Israel's paramountcy; and a truly representative Iraq would have highlighted Israel's denial of Palestinian representativeness in the occupied territories. For all these reasons, American achievement in Iraq could have been looked on with greater self-interested approval and imagination by the Arab publics. It never was.
How the U.S. adventure in Iraq ends is anybody's guess. However, its repercussions will be felt, first, by the Arabs themselves. By refusing to profit from the prospective democratic upheaval that Saddam's removal ushered in; by never looking beyond the American messenger in Iraq to the message itself; by lamenting external hegemony while doing nothing to render it pointless, Arabs merely affirmed their impotence. The self-pitying Arab reaction to the Iraq war showed the terrible sway of the status quo in the Middle East. An inability to marshal change for one's benefit is the stuff of captive minds. Mr. Young, a Lebanese national, is opinion editor at the Daily Star in Beirut and a contributing editor at Reason magazine
#1
Well, if I believe this guy, there might be some good that could've come out of it, but it wasn't accomplished they way *I* wanted it, and have been preaching it, and *I* can't be *wrong*, so anyway, it's all about oiloiloiloil. How else could Amerika have gotten that cheap $64 a barrel oiloiloiloil? Not to mention that $2.75 a gallon gasoiloiloil.
#2
This is interesting in that he hits on the true nature of the problem, BDS compounded by USDS in the Arab world, on top of the lack of a desire among the elites for anything resembling freedom.
The idea that the U.S. has stumbled in Iraq is only really true if your expectation and measurement is perfection. The "Iraq as Denmark in 90 days" metaphor.
His "Even assuming that carelessness long ago derailed American democratization ambitions in Iraq...." implies that it was NOT carelessness on our part that has caused the problem.
The problem is that, apparently, the people don't really care about freedom. His ending sentence sums it all up well. "An inability to marshal change for one's benefit is the stuff of captive minds."
Arab liberals aren't, at least in the Western sense. They have no particular committment to abstract principles like freedom and individual worth, so they blew their best chance.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
