It's an interesting story about Somalia; the NYT is disapproving of the individual "can-do" sprirt of perpetually anarchic Somalians, approving of the order imposed by the Islamic Courts, and calls the Islamist uprising a "grass-roots" effort.
#3
The Sulzbergers really want to drive the stock of the NYT Co. into the toilet, so they can buy it back and privatize it. Even their common stockholders now realize that many of the the humiliating mistakes of the newspaper were cynical efforts to crash the price.
And now that the courts have refused to stop the Sulzbergers from doing it, the other stockholders are boned.
#1
First, it's not a debate. There's not a dime's worth of difference between any of these dims. The so-called debate is used only to get dim talking points out and bash Bush. There is no need to waste time and listen to their drivel since it is very predictable.
After an intro citing Barack Obama's statement in the debates that he and his family were "working on" changing all their lightbulbs to save the environment, and a detour through Vladimir Putin's opposition to the U.S. proposals for an anti-missile shield in Eastern Europe, Steyn delivers his main point:
The Defeaticrats are being opportunist: They think they can calibrate the precise degree of U.S. defeat in Mesopotamia that will bring victory for them in Ohio and Florida. Contemptible as this is, it wouldn't be possible had the administration not lost the support of many of the American people over this war. The losses are devastating for the individuals' families but they are historically among the lowest in any conflict this nation or any other has fought. So I don't believe the nightly plume of smoke over Baghdad on the evening news explains the national disenchantment. Rather, the mission as framed by the president -- help the Iraqi people build a free and stable Iraq -- is simply not accepted by the American people. On the right, between the unrealpolitik "realists" and the "rubble doesn't cause trouble" isolationists and the hit-'em-harder-faster crowd, the president has fewer and fewer takers for a hunkered-down, defensive, thankless semi-colonial policing operation. Regardless of how it works on the ground, it has limited appeal at home. Meanwhile, the leftists don't accept it because, while they're fond of "causes," they dislike those that require meaningful action: Ask Tibetans about how effective half a century of America's "Free Tibet" campaign has been; or ask Darfuris, assuming you can find one still breathing, how the left's latest fetishization is going from their perspective:
"On Sunday, April 29, Salt Lake Saves Darfur invites the greater Salt Lake community of compassion to join with us as we honor the fallen and suffering Darfuris in a day of films, discussion and dance with a Sudanese dance troupe." Marvelous. I hope as the "Salt Lake Saves Darfur" campaign intensifies in the decades ahead there'll be enough Darfuris to man the dance troupe. It would be truer to say that the greater Salt Lake community of compassion, like Sen. Obama with his light bulbs, is "working on" saving Darfur.
In Khartoum, Tehran, Moscow and elsewhere, the world's mischief-makers have reached their own conclusions about how much serious "work" America is prepared to do.
RTWT...
Posted by: Dave D. ||
04/29/2007 13:33 ||
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The United States government has disclosed that it has custody of an Al Qaeda operative by the name of Abdul Hadi Al Iraqi at the Guantanamo Bay camp, but it will not reveal how he got to the camp and from where. The only information given out is that Al Iraqi was trying to return to his native country, Iraq, to manage Al Qaedas affairs and possibly focus on operations outside Iraq against Western targets. He is also the man who had planned an unsuccessful attempt on the life of President General Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan.
The Pentagon officer who announced the capture of Al Iraqi also announced that the Al Qaeda man had met with Al Qaeda members in Iran. Pakistan and Afghanistan have welcomed Al Iraqis arrest, with Pakistans interior minister, Aftab Sherpao, saying that the arrest was a significant development and would help the ongoing fight against terrorism.
In another development, Saudi forces have swooped down on an Al Qaeda cell in Saudi Arabia after tracking the cell members for three months. The 170 arrested two days ago were young men trained secretly in Al Qaeda camps in Iraqs Anbar and Diyala provinces and had returned to Saudi Arabia to carry out suicide attacks against the Saudi ruling family and destroy important installations. The authorities found over $5 million in their hideout. What should one make of these developments?
Al Qaeda is obviously under pressure to make its mark again. This is evident from the increase in suicide-bombings in Pakistan, often against state forces. Under normal circumstances, Al Qaeda would be more motivated to attack somewhere in the West, if not the United States. It is active now in Iraq where it is killing far more Shias than Americans. In fact, by going sectarian Al Qaeda has come close to the original Saudi worldview. But is Iran complicit with Al Qaeda through Al Iraqi?
The idea is far-fetched. Iran gave right of way in 2001 but gradually became scared of the Arab warriors as America prepared to attack Iraq. Today, Irans real enemy is Al Qaeda. It is killing Shias in Iraq at the rate of one hundred a day. It has destroyed the famous shrines of Samarra and forced the population of Iraq to kill one another. It is only logical to assume that going sectarian has blunted its anti-West edge.
In 2007, the decline of Al Qaeda into a schismatic organisation is owed to a number of factors. First, it remained a predominantly Arab enterprise where authority was bestowed on Arabs or half-Arabs, in the latter case based on their linguistic ability. Second, it linked up in Pakistan with jihadi militias whose hinterland seminaries were already funded by Saudi Arabia to confront the sectarian challenge of Iran. Third, Al Qaeda tolerated the sectarian violence perpetrated by its jihadi protégés in a policy of laissez faire which nevertheless gave protection to them when confronted with state action from Pakistan. Fourth, because Al Qaeda relied on the approbation of the religious leaders in the Islamic world, it could not oppose their schismatic leanings, since Islamic sectarianism can be avoided only through non-religious nationalism. Fifth, because of the non-intellectual nature of Al Qaeda and his own non-cerebral charisma, Osama bin Laden allowed ideological transition from Abdullah Azzam to al Zawahiri and Al Maqdisi and other Hanbalite thinkers without any deep thinking or analysis.
Now Al Qaeda stands poised against Iran. In Iraq, where it has chosen to base itself, it will ultimately be less safe than in Pakistan. Apart from the Americans who might leave next year Syria is an unfriendly state with a lifeline to Irans strongest bastion in the Middle East, Lebanon. The Iraqi majority community will also be backed by the Kurds of the north because of Irans old ties with the Kurdish leaders, and both together will take on Al Qaeda.
Given this situation, a strange new relationship is likely to develop between Al Qaeda and Jordan and ultimately Saudi Arabia, too, the two countries greatly upset over the growing dominance of Iran across the Gulf. Both will be interested in training the Sunni Iraqi refugees and sending them back home to face the Iran-backed forces in Iraq. As for the expat Muslims in the West, most of the money is being funnelled by them to the sectarian warriors. The rise of Zarqawi as the Shia-hating Al Qaeda leader was owed to their money.
America may be exaggerating the Al Qaeda threat because of President Bushs own problems at home and his reluctance to let go of Iraq. But the truth is that Al Qaeda in Iraq has got its hands full facing equally lethal foes backed by Iran. Its sectarianism might well push it into its terminal phase.
#2
"Irans real enemy is Al Qaeda. It is killing Shias in Iraq"
No, Iran's real enemy is the West. The Shia lost in Iraq are acceptable, if it leads to defeat of the West. Plus, a stable, quasi-free Iraq, even under Shia leadership, is not a comfortable situation for the MM - it could be contagious. Both AQ and the MM have the same interest in causing chaos in Iraq - they just see different end-states to the chaos (and neither sees chaos itself as the end state - must have missed that lecture in Thermodynamics).
#3
Now Al Qaeda stands poised against Iran. In Iraq, where it has chosen to base itself, it will ultimately be less safe than in Pakistan.
Spinning hard to conceal the widely known fact that the Al Qaeda leadership are comfortably ensconced in Pakistan's tribal regions near the Afghan border, under the protection of both the tribal elders and Pakistan's oh-so-clever ISI wallahs. AQ based in Iraq? I think most definitely not.
#1
I find Maher smarmy ... but if guests such as Ajami, Manji, and Ali have struck a nerve, so be it. Blacks robbing liquor stores don't claim they are doing the work of God under the cover of clerical fatwa.
#2
In my case, everything I needed to know about Islam I learned on November 4, 1979; 9/11 was just yet another reminder.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
04/29/2007 10:00 Comments ||
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#3
I believe the tagline at the end says it all: Remi Kanazi is a Palestinian-American poet and writer based in New York City. He is the co-founder of www.PoeticInjustice.net and editor of the forthcoming anthology of poetry, "Poets for Palestine."
Why would anyone expect anything else from a Palestinian? We should ship him to Gaza so he can see how his poetry is appreciated by his fellow Palestinians. Hyphenated Americans should be deported to whatever country comes before the hyphen and have their American citizenship revoked.
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/29/2007 13:42 Comments ||
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#5
Regrettably, we have a plethora of examples to point to post-911, but we don't need to rehash all of it
No need to rehash what totally disproves Kanazis assertions, more likely.
More than happy to respond, Hirsi Ali proclaimed, "It's not a religion of peace. Immediately after 9/11 they should have said, it's not a religion of peace, we're up against Islam."
Which is what Bush and everyone else should have been saying from 9-12 onwards. It would have gone a long way towards isolating promoters of terrorism and militating the American public onto an effective war-footing.
What if Hirsi Ali said, "Immediately after the black thug robbed the liquor store, they should have said, black people are criminals, we're up against black people"?
But Hirsi didnt say that, now did she? Not all blacks subscribe to criminal behavior. However, all Muslims do subscribe to the Koran and it explicitly advocates violent jihad as a tool of global domination.
Maher's lesson on the malady of Islam followed up on his earlier comments in which he said that the West is not only better, but "superior" to the rest of world. Huh, I wonder why they don't like us.
I dont watch Maher, so I have nothing to say about him, but the notion that Islam hates the West for its superiority is absolutely true. The Wests amazingly successful democratic experiment and prosperous free market economy drives Islam, with its putatively more advanced culture, to absolute distraction whenever its forced to recognize how their own Neanderthal social model is still mired in the stone-age.
Bias against Arabs and Islamand bashing them as a monolithic entityis accepted across the news media
Bullshit, Islam gets a free ride nearly everywhere it appears in the MSM. This is total nonsense.
We should make fun of ourselves, our ethnicities, religions, and races, but when it is done in a vindictive nature or when a seemingly comedic joke or informative political comment is enveloped with racist, sexist, or bigoted undertones, it should be rejected by all peoples.
Especially when it involves some cartoons, right, Kenazi?
The only question left is how big of a gaffe is necessary for Americans to come to the defense of Arabs and Muslims?
There is no gaffe that can do it. Islam has had over half a decade to prove wrong the perceptions of it as a violent cult. Nowhere have there been the sort of routine mass demonstrations, aggressive reformation or counter-jihad measures that might have turned otherwise rational Western concerns into any sort of gaffe.
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.
