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| Terror Networks & Islam |
| To follow up on what Fred said yesterday ... |
| 2005-05-08 |
| Fred made the following comments the other day and I just want to echo him on this one: One thing we have been missing, except here at Rantburg, is any kind of real assessment by the press of what makes up the Bad Guy organization. Even here, for fear of becoming too repetitive, I haven't been diligent in pushing my observation that the Bad Guyz are controlled by a cross between SPECTRE, the Council of Boskone, and The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu. When we were kids -- those of us over a certain age, anyway -- you could tell the bad guys when you went to the movies or watched the teevee. They wore black hats and usually were the uglies. If you grew up reading Dick Tracy comix, you knew Pruneface and Flat-top weren't on the side of truth and goodness. Pirates, as everybody knows, had peg legs and eye patches and made people walk the plank. Even today, if you go to a Star Wars movie, you've got no real doubt as to who the bad guys are. Yet here we are, fighting a war to the death -- also a point not being pushed -- with an enemy largely consisting of Dick Tracy characters and (in some cases literally) pirates. We've got one-eyed Mullah Omar, peg-leg Basayev, and pruneface al-Libbi. Khalid Sheikh Mohammad looks like Vanessa del Rio's true love, fergawdsake. Nobody's walked the plank lately, but lots of people have had their heads cut off. We seem to have a lot more emotional reaction to the Katyn Forest massacre than the mass graves, still being filled, mind you, in Iraq. And we do have the Bad Guyz own words to dispell any lingering doubts that they're simply misunderstood or that they're somebody we could negotiate with, meet halfway. We've got one such article today, from Pakland. Yet this isn't a picture the media's painting. To me, that's where they're really falling down, and it's the weakest part of the entire war effort. We're fighting against characters who'd make good cartoons, complete with fanatical minions, and we're worried about their "civil rights." I'm with him on this one. Anybody who has examined the villain's gallery we've come to know and love over the last 4 years can't help but notice the more obvious similarity to some of the more colorful characters from popular fiction than any kind of historical parallel like the Soviet Bloc or the Nazis. I'm too young for Dick Tracy, so let me use Hydra or Cobra from my own youth. More to the point, not only do these guys look like comic book villains (all we need is for someone to show up in Darth Vader or Dr. Doom armor), they also kind of talk like them if you read over the Milan wiretaps that Alphabet City found or the various speeches, communiques, and rants that read like self-parodies if they didn't involve people's heads getting chopped off in the process. I've talked with people in law enforcement about this and they told me that mobsters used to talk like regular people, then they started trying to sound like The Godfather and today they want to sound like the cast of The Sopranos. So you figure people like Zarqawi grew up with the cartoon concept of what terrorists looked, acted, and sounded like, so that's what they became. Near as I can tell, the Bad Guys more or less consist a vast insidious conspiracy, which may be one of the reasons why they believe that there's an opposite number running our side. At the top of it all, we have a nefarious meglomaniac who even went to the point of pseudo-faking his own death and then staging his return at the height of the US presidential election. If that isn't something out of a bad Hollywood script, I don't know what is. But there's even more to it than that, and I'm just talking about Binny here. His mentor, Abdullah Azzam, died under mysterious circumstances, and he even opted talking with his minions Darth Sidious style, with a hood covering his head back when he was "dead" according to Ghailani and KSM. He's also got an evil sidekick in Ayman, who is also his stalwart But wait, it doesn't end there! We have criminal masterminds (Dawood Ibrahim) running the South Asian equivalent of Black Sun, a rogue intelligence agency with entirely too much power (the ISI), a state that looks like something dreamed up by Machiavelli on his darker days (Pakistan), the Council of Boskone in the Soddy elite, a religious conspiracy for world domination in the Supreme Council of Global Jihad that looks like something dreamed up out of the worst anti-Catholic or Masonic conspiracy theories (pick your poison), and a whole host of exotic henchmen every bit as evil as anybody who was ever dreamed up by George Lucas, Jack Kirby, or Stan Lee. We have our own Count Dooku working out of Chechnya at the behest of an evil master, fergawdsakes! What more do you want? Fred and I have discussed on occasion why the government seems to want to isolate the population from the war as much as possible. I think it's a bad idea and still do, even more with everything I've find out about the Bad Guys over the last year or so. All the same, one of the reasons why I can't help but wonder why the government doesn't explain the way stuff is to the general public is because of just how ridiculous an enemy we're up against. Based on everything we've learned over the last couple of years, you don't get the picture of a ruthless and determined adversary out to destroy our way of life so much as you do the plot of a really, really bad novel. Just my $0.02. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #8 To me the interesting issue is what happens when the Iraq war veterans come home and have some time to process the information they've picked up. For example, that Army officer cradling the dying Iraqi girl in the photo last week is likely to have a really serious attitude about the bad guys. And eventually some of these 25 year-old Marine lieutenants and 30 year-old Army captains with real Silver Stars are going to leave the service and enter politics ("Hey, I ran Al-Anbar Province for a year, how tough can Philadelphia be?") In other words: we're about to have two or three hundred thousand young men and women circulating in society who have first hand knowledge that the enemy is not Blofeld. |
| Posted by: Matt 2005-05-08 15:55 |
| #7 I beg to differ somewhat in this respect: Compare the way the Far left talks with the way the Islamists talk, and you'll see similarities that would curl your hair. The United States government cannot embark on an information crusade against Islam because that is contrary to the First Amendment: The genius of the American religious experience is that the constitution forbids that the Government be used as a tool of a specific religious establishment to enforce its will on other religions, forcing the issue into the public square of debate. This accorded well with the nature of the Majority Religion, Christianity, because the New Testament is replete with examples of non-violent prostelization, in which verbal arguments, rather than weapons, were the primary means of persuasion. Things went downhill in the 4th century AD after Christianity was made the official state religion, a situation not corrected until after the Reformation about 12 centuries afterwards. Contrast this with Islam, in which the concept of Jihad, holy war, is not some spiritualized concept applied as a metaphor for the struggle between righteousness and sin within the human soul, but has been concretely and actually implemented as physical warfare. Part of the problem comes from the legacy of communism and leftism: A patently peaceful religion, christianity, has been maligned as a violent, conspiratorial, warmongering entity. Suddenly, there arrives on the scene a TRULY violent, conspiratorial, warmongering religion, and there are no categories left to classify it. Its literature is FULL of literal battles and teachings that make no sense outside of actual physical bloody battlefields in which real people get wounded and DIE. If one keeps calling Bush Hitler based on flimsy, strained, and patently ridiculous analogies, what do you call someone who actually FITS the description in numerous points? In Europe, the Reformation gave cover to political liberalizing movements and trends by destroying the authority of the then reigning neo-theocracy. (My apologies to the Roman Catholics visiting the board, but there's no avoiding the truth. However, things are better now, and only liberals and leftists can't handle the concepts of repentance, reform, and forgiveness that are implemented outside of their political control and independently of them.) The reverse needs to be done for Islam, where political liberty must come first to stop Islamists from using force to impose their doctrine on others. When force is taken out of the picture, then other competing religions can come in, make their case, and show the difference between TRUE World Religions, and a warrior-based religion that bears more of a similarity to the War-God Religions of ancient Sumer, Nineveh, and the Vikings. |
| Posted by: Ptah 2005-05-08 15:42 |
| #6 "I want to know why we don't have a massive funding of propaganda to destroy the basis of the Muslim Faith. [...] I know that Bush is afraid to go there as he doesn't want it done to other faiths including his own. BUT ... It is time to do it!" There are several good reasons why we're not doing this; but whatever concerns Bush may have about Christianity being subjected to the same treatment are not among them. First, trying to talk people out of their religious beliefs by arguing that they're somehow "wrong" or "incorrect" is almost always an utter waste of time; in fact, it usually ends up backfiring-- badly-- because for every person you persuade to abandon his faith, you cause a dozen more to harden their beliefs in defense. And second, embarking on a propaganda campaign to destroy the basis of Muslim faith is going to instantaneously, and unanimously, convince one and a quarter billion people that we are at war with the very basis of their existence. We're the most powerful nation on earth, but I don't think that even we are powerful enough to deal with that much enmity all at once, except by means so horrific that they are presently beyond contemplation. Right now, the best course of action is very likely the one we've been taking: making an all-out effort to determine whether Islamic/Arabic culture can be somehow de-toxified by the introduction of consensual governance and the prosperity which usually follows in its wake. It will either work, or it will not. I have my doubts, but I think we need to carry on longer before we give up. |
| Posted by: Dave D. 2005-05-08 12:18 |
| #5 "Based on everything we've learned over the last couple of years, you don't get the picture of a ruthless and determined adversary out to destroy our way of life so much as you do the plot of a really, really bad novel." I disagree; I most certainly do get the picture of a ruthless and determined adversary out to destroy our way of life. What I don't get is a picture of an adversary that is ruthless, determined and competent. But that's the nature of Islam, the world's most prolific producer of hateful, murderous, fanatical fuckups. And it isn't just the last couple of years, either: it's been obvious for a very long time that "there's something about Islam." Even the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979 was "same shit, different day" at the time it happened; by then, we'd already endured more than a decade of airplane hijackings, bombings and assassinations by various spawn of the Cult Of The Sick Puppy, and their bullshit was getting old even before the Ayatollah clawed his way to power. Yes, the gang we are fighting right now seems a bunch of clowns, sometimes too absurd even for a bad comic book; but don't underestimate the malignant intent of the creed that spawned them. |
| Posted by: Dave D. 2005-05-08 08:48 |
| #4 I agree with 3dc, it's one thing to talk about destroying Islam as a religion, but most people are very attached to their religion of birth. In times past when a King would convert, his subjects would be expected to follow, but nowadays it would take generations of missionary work, and other religions have loopholes and contradictions that can be explioted just like Islam can. |
| Posted by: Paul Moloney 2005-05-08 08:12 |
| #3 Marvel fanboy! Bin Ladin is much closer to Lex Luthor and al Qaeda is a good match with the Secret Society of Super Villains/Legion of Doom. |
| Posted by: Paul Moloney 2005-05-08 08:12 |
| #2 It my possibly work on some, 3dc, but the faith of majority can't be shredded without replacement. Perhaps conversions to other religions--Christianity may be best because of some surface commonalities--may work. There may be some common denominators discerned on this site and an approach that would facilitate trend towards conversions may be, possibly, devised. No, I am not a Christian, nor member of any other religion, I am an agnostic. |
| Posted by: Sobiesky 2005-05-08 04:29 |
| #1 I want to know why we don't have a massive funding of propaganda to destroy the basis of the Muslim Faith. The muslim paranoia at a certain writer mentioning the Satanic Verses in novel was enough to drive them so far over the edge that they demanded a world wide hit order sanctioned by Allen. This should point the way. There is a huge plot hole in the religion there. I have posted An Atheist's Guide to Mohammedanism repeatedly just for that reason. It needs to be done. I know that Bush is afraid to go there as he doesn't want it done to other faiths including his own. BUT ... It is time to do it! The American Atheist group has made a good start at Fisking the religion. example: As is necessary for foundation myths of virtually all religions, the first followers of the new faith had to endure persecution, fleeing to Christian Ethiopia around the year 615. While those Muslims-in-the-making were out of town, Mohammed and the disciples who had stayed with him in Mecca were confined under siege - to be starved into submission. Just in the nick of time, Mohammed received a revelation that helpfully clarified the theopolitical questions at issue for the Meccan guardians of the gods in the Kaâaba. When Mohammed had reported that Allah was the only god in town, it turned out that he hadn't received the entire satellite transmission. Perhaps Gabriel had mumbled and Mohammed missed part of the message. Wouldn't you know? The three favorite goddesses of Mecca - al-Lat, al-Uzzah, and al-Manat - were also real! This saved Mohammed's neck and all body parts attached thereto, and the exiles were able to return from Ethiopia. Later, when it was safe to do so, this all-important revelation was expunged from the Qurâan and it was explained that the revelation had come from Shaitan (Satan), not Allah. Thus began the legend of the "Satanic Verses," which more than a thousand years later was to prompt the Ayatollah Khomeini to issue a fatwa of death against the novelist Salman Rushdie. To draw attention to the Satanic Verses is to galvanize a still-raw nerve in the body politic of Islam. To draw attention to the Satanic Verses is to galvanize a still-raw nerve in the body politic of Islam. The Satanic Verses are an acute embarrassment to Mohammedan authorities because they imply that it was Satan, not Allah, who had saved their prophet's life. If Allah was the only god, and if he had previously selected Mohammed to be his last and greatest mouthpiece on this planet, why didn't he save his own appointed prophet? Why would the god of evil want to save his enemy's ambassador? Might not there be more Satanic Verses in the Qurâan â verses that have never been recognized as the handiwork of the prince of devils? Who knows what evils yet may lurk in the Book of Books? Another researcher worth supporting it this man. reported upon by DhimmiWatch. Example: Q. â What makes your method different? A. â âI began from the idea that the language of the Koran must be studied from an historical-linguistic point of view. When the Koran was composed, Arabic did not exist as a written language; thus it seemed evident to me that it was necessary to take into consideration, above all, Aramaic, which at the time, between the 4th and 7th centuries, was not only the language of written communication, but also the lingua franca of that area of Western Asia.â .... Rigorous scientific research of their faith needs to be done and the plot hole blasted into their reading space, their radio and tv space, their movie space everywhere. |
| Posted by: 3dc 2005-05-08 02:53 |