'There are no Muslim terrorists. There are terrorists," Father Paul Hawkins of St Pancras parish church told his congregation on Sunday. "The people who carried out these attacks are victims of a false religion, be it false Christianity or false Islam."
Oh, dear. "Britain can take it" (as they said in the Blitz): that's never been in doubt. The question is whether Britain can still dish it out. When events such as last Thursday's occur, two things happen, usually within hours if not minutes: first, spokespersons for Islamic lobby groups issue warnings about an imminent backlash against Muslims.
In fairness to British organisations, I believe they were beaten to the punch by the head of the Canadian Islamic Congress whose instant response to the London bombings was to issue a statement calling for prayers that "Canadian Muslims will not pay a price for being found guilty by association".
In most circumstances it would be regarded as appallingly bad taste to deflect attention from an actual "hate crime" by scaremongering about a non-existent one. But it seems the real tragedy of every act of "intolerance" by Islamist bigots is that it might hypothetically provoke even more intolerance from us irredeemable white imperialist racists. My colleague Peter Simple must surely marvel at how the identity-group grievance industry has effortlessly diversified into pre-emptively complaining about acts of prejudice that have not yet occurred.
Among those of us who aren't Muslim, meanwhile, there's a stampede to be first to the microphone to say that "of course" we all know that "the vast majority of Muslims" are not terrorists but law-abiding peace-loving people who share our revulsion at these appalling events, etc.
Mr Blair won that contest on Thursday, followed closely by Brian Paddick and full supporting cast. If "of course" Mr Blair and Mr Paddick and the rest do indeed know that "the vast majority of Muslims" do not favour terrorism, is that because they've run the numbers and have a ballpark figure on the very very very slim minority of Muslims who do? And, if so, what is it? 0.02 per cent? Or two per cent? Or 20 per cent?
And, if they haven't run the numbers, why do they claim to speak with authority on this matter? If it were just a question of rhetorical sensitivity, I'd be happy to go along with Mr Paddick's multiculti pap and insist that "Islam and terrorism don't go together" - events in Beslan, Bali, Israel, Nigeria, Kashmir, etc, notwithstanding. But the danger in separating "Islam" from "terrorism" is that it leads the control-freaks of the nanny state into thinking that "terrorism" is something that can be dealt with by border security, ID cards, retinal scans, metal detectors. It can't.
Terrorism ends when the broader culture refuses to tolerate it. There would be few if any suicide bombers in the Middle East if "martyrdom" were not glorified by imams and politicians, if pictures of local "martyrs" were not proudly displayed in West Bank grocery stores, if Muslim banks did not offer special "martyrdom" accounts to the relicts thereof, if schools did not run essay competitions on "Why I want to grow up to be a martyr".
At this point, many readers will be indignantly protesting that this is all the fault of Israeli "occupation", but how does that explain suicide bombings in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where there's not a Zionist oppressor for hundreds of miles? Islam has become the world's pre-eminent incubator of terrorism at its most depraved. Indeed, so far London has experienced only the lighter items on the bill of fare - random bombing of public transport rather than decapitation, child sacrifice and schoolhouse massacres.
Most of us instinctively understand that when a senior Metropolitan Police figure says bullishly that "Islam and terrorism don't go together", he's talking drivel.
Many of us excuse it on the grounds that, well, golly, it must be a bit embarrassing to be a Muslim on days like last Thursday and it doesn't do any harm to cheer 'em up a bit with some harmless feel-good blather. But is this so?
Why are we surprised that "Muslim moderates" rarely speak out against the evil committed by their co-religionists when the likes of Mr Paddick keep assuring us there's no problem? It requires great courage to be a dissenting Muslim in communities dominated by heavy-handed imams and lobby groups that function effectively as thought-police.
Yet all you hear from Mr Paddick is: "Move along, folks, there's nothing to see here." This is the same approach, incidentally, that the authorities took in their long refusal to investigate seriously the 120 or so "honour killings" among British Muslims.
Just as the police did poor Muslim girls no favours by their excessive cultural sensitivity, so they're now doing the broader Muslim community no favours. The Blair-Paddick strategy only provides a slathering of mindless multiculti fudge topping over the many layers of constraint that prevent Islam beginning an honest conversation with itself.
Unlike Malaya or the Mau-Mau or the IRA, this is a global counter-terrorism operation across widely differing terrain, geographical and psychological. We need to be able to kill, constrain, coerce or coax as appropriate.
Kill terrorists when the opportunity presents itself, as 1,200 "insurgents" were said to have been killed in one recent engagement on the Syria/Iraq border the other day. Constrain the ideology behind Thursday's bombing by outlawing Saudi funding of British mosques and other institutions. Coerce our more laggardly allies like General Musharraf into shutting down his section of the Saudi-Pakistani-Londonistan Wahhabist pipeline.
But the coaxing is what counts - wooing moderate Muslims into reclaiming their religion. We can take steps to prevent Islamic terrorists killing us, most of the time. But Islamic terrorists will only stop trying to kill us when their culture reviles them rather than celebrates them.
There are signs in the last week's Muslim newspapers, in London and abroad, that some eminent voices are beginning to speak out. At such a moment, Britain should be on the side of free speech and open debate. Instead, the state is attempting to steamroller through a grotesque law at the behest of already unduly influential Islamic lobby groups. One of its principal effects will be to inhibit Muslim reformers. Shame on us for championing Islamic thought-police over Western liberty.
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/13/2005 10:08 ||
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#1
My 17-year-old son asked me âWhat if the terrorists had been Irish Catholic and not Muslim?â I immediately responded with âI would denounce it in the most vocal tone and blame it on the continued âoccupationâ of Northern Ireland by the British.â He said âDamn it I hate it when you make a point!â If there are (as I believe) moderate Muslims out there, they need to take charge of their religion. When you have a cleric claiming that itâs ok to kill civilians because they arenât Muslim or the wrong stripe then something is very wrong here. FYI it appears that the boomers were all British Pakistani, I wonder if they had a connection with the group we just uncovered in Lodi, California? Makes you wonder if they had a similar operation planned for San Francisco.
#2
Terrorism ends when the broader culture refuses to tolerate it. There would be few if any suicide bombers in the Middle East if "martyrdom" were not glorified by imams and politicians, if pictures of local "martyrs" were not proudly displayed in West Bank grocery stores, if Muslim banks did not offer special "martyrdom" accounts to the relicts thereof, if schools did not run essay competitions on "Why I want to grow up to be a martyr".
That sounds familiar.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
07/13/2005 11:24 Comments ||
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#3
"...'of course' we all know that 'the vast majority of Muslims' are not terrorists but law-abiding peace-loving people who share our revulsion at these appalling events, etc."
Yes, and I'm sure there were many fine people in Germany and Japan in 1941 too. And yet there was WWII. Islamic culture had better clean up its act soon.
Posted by: Neutron Tom ||
07/13/2005 12:30 Comments ||
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THANKS to the war in Iraq, much of the world sees the British government as resolute and tough, the French one as appeasing and weak. But in another war, the one against terrorism and radical Islam, the reverse is true: France is the most stalwart nation in the West, even more so than the United States, while Great Britain is the very most hapless. Consider:
# Counterterrorism. U.K.-based terrorists have carried out operations in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kenya, Tanzania, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Israel, Morocco, Russia, Spain and the United States. Many governments â Jordanian, Egyptian, Moroccan, Spanish, French, and American â have protested London's refusal to shut down its Islamist terrorist infrastructure or extradite wanted operatives. In frustration, Egyptian president Hasni Mubarak publicly denounced Britain for "protecting killers." One American security group has called for Britain to be listed as a terrorism-sponsoring state.
Counterterrorism specialists disdain the British. Roger Cressey calls London "easily the most important jihadist hub in Western Europe." Steven Simon dismisses the British capital as "the Star Wars bar scene" of Islamic radicals. More brutally, an intelligence official said of last week's attacks: "The terrorists have come home. It is payback time for . . . an irresponsible policy."
While London hosts terrorists, Paris hosts a top-secret counterterrorism center, code-named Alliance Base, whose existence was just revealed by The Washington Post, where six major Western governments since 2002 share intelligence and run counterterrorism operations. (The latter makes it unique.)
More broadly, President Jacques Chirac instructed French intelligence agencies just days after 9/11 to share terrorism data with their U.S. counterparts "as if they were your own service." This cooperation is working: former acting CIA director John E. McLaughlin calls this bilateral intelligence tie "one of the best in the world." The British may have a "special relationship" with Washington in Iraq, but the French have one in the War on Terror. France accords terrorist suspects fewer rights than any other Western state, permitting interrogation without a lawyer, lengthy pre-trial incarcerations and evidence acquired under dubious circumstances. Were he a terrorism suspect, says Evan Kohlmann, author of Al-Qaida's Jihad in Europe, he "would least like to be held under" the French system.
# Radical Islam. The myriad French-British differences in this arena can be summarized by the example of what Muslim girls may wear to state-funded schools.
Denbigh High School in Luton, 30 miles northwest from London, has a student population about 80 percent Muslim. It years ago accommodated the sartorial needs of their faith and heritage, including a female student uniform made up of the Pakistani shalwar kameez trousers, a jerkin top and hijab head covering. But when Shabina Begum, a teenager of Bangladeshi origins, insisted in 2004 on wearing a jilbab, which covers the entire body except for the face and hands, Denbigh administrators said no. Their dispute ended up in litigation and the Court of Appeal ultimately decided in Begum's favor. As a result, by law U.K. schools must now accept the jilbab. Not only that, but Cherie Booth, wife of British prime minister Tony Blair, was Begum's lawyer at the appellate level. Booth called the court's judgment "a victory for all Muslims who wish to preserve their identity and values despite prejudice and bigotry."
In contrast, also in 2004, the French government outlawed the hijab, the Muslim headscarf, from public educational institutions, disregarding ferocious opposition within France and among Islamists worldwide. In Tehran, protestors shouted "Death to France!" and "Death to Chirac the Zionist!" The Palestinian Authority mufti, Ikrima Sa'id Sabri, declared that "French laws banning the hijab constitute a war against Islam as a religion." The Saudi grand mufti, Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh, called them a human rights infringement. When the "Islamic Army in Iraq" kidnapped two French journalists, it threatened their execution unless the hijab ban was revoked. Nonetheless, Paris stood firm.
What lies behind these contrary responses? The British have seemingly lost interest in their heritage while the French hold on to theirs; even as the British ban fox hunting, the French ban hijabs. The former embraced multiculturalism, the latter retain a pride in their historic culture. This contrast in matters of identity makes Great Britain the Western country most vulnerable to the ravages of radical Islam, whereas France, for all its political failings, has retained a sense of self that may yet see it through.
Daniel Pipes (www.danielpipes.org) is director of the Middle East Forum and author of "Miniatures."
#1
come on Daniel - what say we let them bury their dead before we start with the serves ya right cause it's your own fault stories.
I certainly think the British need, and will welcome help in establishing facts to see where their government has failed them. But nah, nah-ing that their limp wristed ancient rival has down a better job ....it's just not the right time.
#2
THe key is that the French are less impressed by multicultism than the British.
We have of course, our own idiots who way that Islam means peace and that we should let them oppress their girls and tolerate genital mautiliation. But at the same time we have a tradition of hostility towards religion who in this case helps, we have what we call republicans who are persuaded of the excellency of French civilization and who think France's duty is make from its migrants (yesterday it was Spanish and portuguese, today is Algerians) French people like the other not let them rot in their cess pool. Of course it is harder with Muslims and it is harder with when those Muslims are watching Al Jazeera but the will of making them normal French is there.
Here in France we don't have moonbats, at least not so prominent as Cherie Blair who goes to court to defend a Muslim family who wanted their daughter wear not hijab but burkha. And she was proud of having helped a famaily to not assimilate and to hell with the girl's freedom. I guess next time she would be defending female genital mutilation. Given, she would not be the mutilated...
The republicanism explains why in France we are not that tolerant with fundies (because they discourage assimilation) and imams preaching death to western countries. That and the fact that Chirac was in first line (once as prime minister, the other one just after having being elected president) during two waves of Islamic terrorism so even him understands they are evil and dangerous. During the second one the Islamists tried to derail the high speed train (180 mph). The carnage would have been staggering.
Oh and my daughter was in one of the trains who passed over the bomb without detonating it at a time where the British government was refusing the extradition of the suspects and sheltering the propagandists who were recruiting bombers. I will never forgive that multi-culti bastard called John Major. Could he rot in hell.
#3
Wow, JFM. I'm grateful your daughter arrived safely. I give France credit for trying to keep Al-Manar (aka Hezbollah) TV off their satellite carrier...
Nothing new here, except that I love short, to-the-point piece, and that I delight in posting how Europe is going to die, I revel in self-defeating Doom & Gloom I guess...
Chuck Colson
In a well-known urban legend, college students simultaneously flush all the toilets on campus and break down the townâs sewage system. While this story about overtaxing a sanitation system may be a myth, real-world Germans have learned what happens when you donât tax the system enough. Itâs a vivid example of the damage caused by the âbirth dearth.â
The âbirth dearthâ is what demographers call plummeting birth rates in most of the industrialized world. Throughout Western Europe and East Asia, the birth rate is well below 2.1 births per womanâwhich is the minimum needed to maintain a stable population.
Environmentalist dogma argues that plummeting birth rates are a good thing: People cause pollution, weâre told. Well, officials in countries like Japan, Korea, and Germany now know better. In these and other so-called âadvancedâ societies, shrinking populations threaten their way of life and their cultural identity.
In Japan, for example, a birth rate that is barely half of âreplacement levelâ has forced the closure of more than two thousand schools in the past ten years, with hundreds more closures to come. Itâs left the government wondering who will support Japanâs aging population. These and other concerns, like the possible extinction of the Japanese people, have prompted older Japanese to call their childless children âparasite singles.â
In Germany, the population of some villages has shrunk so much that âthere are now too few people flushing for the sewage to properly flow.â As a result, the government has had to spend scarce resources on retrofitting sewage systems.
Elsewhere in Germany and the rest of Europe, the emptying landscape provides an opening for an unlikely immigrant: the wolf. German biologists expect the growing packs to head soon toward Berlin.
Now, wolves in Berlin sounds like the stuff of science fiction, but itâs a science fact. Whatâs incredible is the response of the average European or East Asian. They literally shrug their shoulders; they canât imagine changing their lifestyle to accommodate having two or more children instead of one or none. They believe against all evidence in a technological or political solution to this problem.
But, as columnist Mark Steyn writes, âthereâs simply no precedent for managed decline in societies as advanced as Europeâsââor Japan, for that matter. Throughout history, societies in demographic decline, usually as a result of disease, have faced two unattractive options: a decline in their standard of living or the replacement of their native population with a more fertile immigrant one.
Europe has, essentially by default, chosen the latter. But as last weekâs bombings in London illustrate, turning millions of Islamic immigrants into âEuropeans,â however you define the term, is a dubious proposition. And in Japan, where racial purity is a primary cultural value, the population faces eventual extinction.
Itâs hard to imagine a better example of the importance of worldviews, and specifically in this case, the Christian one. Steyn is right when he says that Europeâs decline is directly linked to its hostility towards Christianity. Its rejection of what Christianity teaches about the family has made the continent safe for another kind of family: four-legged ones who howl at the moon.
#2
so take your shoes off, wemmen. And for that matter, you don't need no skoolin neither. Somebody else needs to create more folks to mow my lawn cheap and make sure my social security check keeps roll'n in. Now get to work - mule.
#3
"Could it also be that you can't afford to feed yourself in europe, much less a family of man,wife and 2.1 kids?"
There was a very interesting article about that on the excellent Tech Central Station a while back, can't remember if I posted it here (note it was translated and available in french thanks to a swiss military website) :
http://www.techcentralstation.com/012705D.html
#4
sigh. I don't disagree with many of the points that the article makes, but the solution - have more babies - does not logically follow as the way to solve problems in tax codes and mismanaged immigration policies. There are already plenty of people in the world, more than enough. Having more children will solve my social security problems, and it will put more workers into the tax base - benefitting me. It doesn't fix the problem in the tax codes.
A simple solution for a complex problem - not. The argument is worthy of loons on the left, not on the right.
No, no, I take it back. This wisdome is worthy of our Muslim fanatic friends. Let's employ 19th Century solutions to 21st Century problems.
#5
Not sure I agree with you, 2b. It's a fallacy to simply assert "there are too many people in the world already".
Too many for WHAT? And what KINDS of people? Age? Location? Ability to be (in practice) educated and productive in the modern global economy?
It takes a core majority in the West of people educated in western skills and with western values inculcated, to keep going our economies and way of life.
While Euros enjoy 6 week vacations and 35 hour work weeks, Islamic immigrants have families of 8-10, overburdening the social support systems while (in most cases) neither assimilating nor producing children who adopt western skills and values.
Posted by: too true ||
07/13/2005 13:29 Comments ||
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#6
"What if they cannot afford ..."
You know, I watch military families find ways to raise 3-5 healthy, educated and well adjusted kids on a single, modest salary.
The suggestion that Europeans can't afford kids is laughable -- it's a question of will. Will to dismantle their punitive social taxation, to be sure, but also will to put the furthering of their society's future ahead of shortterm self indulgence.
#8
Interesting arguments. I have 4 children and do find it difficult to survive on 1 salary. So I now work 2 nights a week and also on Saturdays. Each child has their own personality and characteristics. The joy of raising them is observing their similarities between my wife and myself. My greatest joy is not only raising a future generation of rantburgers but in raising, moral, ethical and realistic children who will have a grasp of the world around them and watching them develop in this manner. I can't imagine being so selfish as to not want these amazing creations. What do you have left when your gone? Perhaps the Japanese should go extinct consumed by their own greed.
#9
While Euros enjoy 6 week vacations and 35 hour work weeks, Islamic immigrants have families of 8-10, overburdening the social support systems while (in most cases) neither assimilating nor producing children who adopt western skills and values.
Which is where the problem is - not in the fact that the Euro's have too few kids. There are lots of good reasons to tighten your belt and have a family - but for the good of the Democracy seems a bit over the top to me.
Complex problems do not have simple solutions - like outbreed your neighbor. Rather you've put your finger on the problem. Bad immigration laws and a tax codes that works like a ponzi scheme.
It's just like the argument that you should put your children into failing schools so that the schools won't be failing. They are right, it would help- but you PERSONALLY would be foolish to take that advice. Rather, you have to address the underlying problems, like lack of discipline, standards and poor administration to improve the schools.
#10
My greatest joy is not only raising a future generation of rantburgers but in raising, moral, ethical and realistic children who will have a grasp of the world around them and watching them develop in this manner
Now that's a good reason to have kids! But forgive me if this whole idea of impregnating the women for the good of mankind makes me shiver.
#11
We could solve several problems by diverting latin american emmigration from North America to Europe. Latin America has too many people. The U.S. benefits from immigration, but Europe definitely needs the people more than we do. Latins would be much easier to assimilate than North Africans in that they already speak at least one European language and their culture is more European.
#12
I get tired of reading this drivel (not the comments). The only real problem with a declining birthrate is where retirement incomes are funded from the taxes of workers. Japan has largely solved this problem because workers continue to work well past the age of retirement in other Western countries. There are a number of reasons for this including the status afforded to those who work (and I could make a good case this is an important reason why Japanese live longer than anyone else). The reality is that by not allowing immigration, a Japan populated by only a 100 million or even 50 million will still be Japan. Just more affluent and with fewer population pressures. Will the same be true of Europe?
#13
Disagree, stongly, Phil. By not even maintaining population stasis, a society is committing suicide. The ultimate example is Russia. That country is disappearing and I should not be surprised to see the Chinese overrun half of it within 25 years plunging Asia into chaos for decades.
No generation of any nation is the same as those preceeding it, but when people think so much of the present and so little of the future that they don't even reproduce themselves, they've got a problem. For ultimately, it is through out children that we live on.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
07/13/2005 20:07 Comments ||
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#14
If people don't want kids then don't have them I sez.
My wife and I have one kid, two dogs and live paycheck to paycheck due to college loans and getting over "getting established." Heck, and I'm an officer. We live frugal now so in the next couple years everything's paid off minus a car payment and of course the house. We plan on having more kids next year when I get back from the sand box.
#15
Mrs D., China is facing the same demographic changes as Japan, except the absolute and relative increase in the elderly is much greater. Between 1995 and 2050, the number of elderly (aged 50 +) will increase by 422 million, while at the same time the number of people below the age of 50 will decline by more than 165 million. Link
#16
Europe isn't going to die. It's just going to change, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. They will struggle to discover how they will assimilate immigrants and hopefully discover that skin-color isn't a boundary to hating George Bush. With common ground established they brainstorm how to stimulate their collective economy while taking as many vacations and retiring as soon as feasible.
Whatever becomes the predominant language and skincolor in the US I am hopeful that the next generation will learn to pull up their pants.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
07/13/2005 23:32 Comments ||
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The 18-foot-tall giant in steelworker Carlos Owens' Alaska backyard isn't quite up to smashing Volkswagens--or taking the kind of pounding footsteps that might strike fear into the heart of an enemy. With a rumbling gasoline engine and creaking hydraulic joints (not to mention flame spouting from its fists), the red steel monster is limited to taking a young child's few tottering steps. That's not quite enough to sell the military on its worth. But it's a start. Unfortunately for Owens, who has spent almost $25,000 and two years building this homebrewed "mech"--think giant robot, but controlled by a pilot inside--it's also an end, at least for this version. With little room left to improve it, he's shutting down work and selling it on eBay.
That's right, any takers who want a huge, slightly perambulation-challenged mech are in luck, as long as they have $40,000 and a big backyard. He's not happy about selling off the steel giant that he has spent practically every waking hour with for years, but he says it's the only alternative if he wants to start over from scratch. "The one thing that I dreaded doing was putting it on eBay, because I wanted to keep the prototype," Owens said. "But the options are that I can keep it and not build another one, or sell it and have enough money to start the next one. I guess I have to give up my dream to achieve it."
Owens' project has won admiring headlines and baffled responses from the military over the past six months, in the process epitomizing the dogged determination of the grassroots inventor. He might not quite be a Thomas Edison or Steve Wozniak, but those skeptics-be-damned personalities might find in him a kindred spirit. Nor, in its own outsized way, is his project wholly foreign to the currents of today's military research. In the movies, fighting exoskeletons have been used by Sigourney Weaver in "Aliens" and by characters in the final "Matrix" movie. Japanese pop culture aficionados will recognize Owens' creation, down to the horned head, from a long line of robot- or mech-themed animated cartoons.
In real life, there's the $50 million that the U.S. military is pouring into researching ways to augment soldiers' physical capabilities with high-tech exoskeletons. That idea hasn't always gone well. General Electric tried this in the late 1960s, creating the cumbersome Hardiman prototype, a massive steel frame intended to be strapped onto its users' arms and legs to help them lift up to 1,500 pounds. The GE project operators never got more than one arm working, however, and the project died in the early 1970s.
The military's current project, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is under way with two contractors--at robotics company Sarcos and at the University of California at Berkeley. According to a DARPA spokeswoman, both projects have gotten to the point of having "lower extremity models"--the leg part of the exoskeleton, for instance--functioning without having to be plugged into an external power source. Both contractors are now working on upper-body components. The agency declined to give more details on the progress of the project.
The DARPA spokeswoman declined to comment specifically on Owens' efforts, but said it seemed to be very different from what the military is pursuing. "Ours is soldier size," said DARPA spokeswoman Jan Walker. "I don't see that they should be connected in any way."
A 27-year-old former Army heavy equipment mechanic who remains in the service's inactive reserves, Owens has been singularly focused on the mech idea for years. The son of an Air Force officer who later joined the forces himself, he is convinced that the idea of a pilot-powered robot-like vehicle could prove a valuable replacement for tanks or help soldiers go into dangerous situations such as fires or chemically contaminated areas. He built his first 35-foot model out of wood when he was 19. Drawing on his experience in the military for the latest one, he used whatever materials he could afford, substituting low-tech controls such as hydraulics for the electronics he imagined.
Weighing in at more than a ton and a half, the finished version isn't everything he imagined. But he said he has learned enough in this process that the next version will be fully functional, a real (potential) fighting machine instead of a prototype. He's annoyed that the military has dismissed his idea in publications such as "Stars and Stripes."
"I'd like to show you don't need to spend that much money to build something that would protect our soldiers," he said. "I'd rather our country had this thing rather than some other country that thought it up."
All he needs is money to start his next mech. Several foundations have turned him down for grants, and so he has reluctantly turned to eBay. He posted it once before, several weeks ago, and the bidding didn't reach the minimum price he had set. He's hoping this time will do the trick. With an $8,000 shipping fee alone, it won't be a light purchase for anyone. Owens said he'll put it on a flatbed truck and drive it to a buyer if he has to. He doesn't have a choice, he said. "It's my only asset, because I put everything in it, to help me fund the next one," he said.
Originally invented by Canadian astrophysicist Gerald Bull, this, or possibly these weapons (see link) could have radically altered the balance of power in the Middle East. The assumption, of course, would be that they have been dismantled and destroyed at some point after the fall of Iraq. But what if they still exist?
The US army has had a long love affair with artillery, "The Queen of Battle", which in a conventional war is truly the master of the battlefield. I can imagine how much they would desire a weapon that they otherwise do not have, and immediately set to vastly improving its design for any number of purposes.
But the gun is just a launch vehicle, and ordinary artillery tube writ large. The technology of the projectile is where such a weapon becomes very interesting.
In this case, if such a weapon could "launch" a projectile into almost low orbit, then at its apex a rocket would accelerate it to amazing speed, it could possibly mimic a "space-based weapon" without a space launch platform. A 500 pound rocket propelling a 500 pound penetrating projectile towards a GPS-designated target could reproduce the effect of a meteorite.
And as Saddam himself noted, "a missile can be launched only once but a cannon can be used repeatedly."
So the question remains: were these weapons destroyed, and if so, why?
#5
The cannon is being reserved for Saddam's sentencing, when he will be shot out of the cannon without a net?
Am I close?
Posted by: Captain America ||
07/13/2005 4:34 Comments ||
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#6
As artillary the thing was of very little value,except as a terror weapon.It had very limited ability to traverse.Beside it would have had time for,maybe,1/2 dozen shots before it was turned into a smoking scrap heap.
#7
January 2002? What's next, Hitler's secret weapons that could ahve won the war?
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
07/13/2005 8:18 Comments ||
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#8
My point was that such a weapon could fire projectiles towards Iran that would possibly be powerful enough to destroy deep underground nuclear installations. Protected by the US Air Force, three or four such guns could accomplish in short order, and at a fraction of the cost, what "space based weapons", like "the rods of god" are supposed to do someday. And even if Saddam's versions have been destroyed, we should consider re-creating them just for this purpose. That is, of an estimated 350 targets in Iran, many of which are extremely hardened, what better way to reduce them?
#9
Only a smaller scale breech and barrel segments were built to provide proof of concept. They were assembled in Iraq and test fired. The main pieces were seized in Britain and were never sent to Iraq. They had been listed and tagged as oil pipeline parts to try and get them through customs. It's rumored that the Israeli Mossad tipped off the Brits.
#10
I remember seeing a documentary with US soldiers standing around pieces of that cannon after it was dismantled. Having said that, why not build another one? or ten, or hundred?
#11
Given that is most likely the Mossad that capped Bull the notion that they tipped the Brits and others (the propellant charges were being made in Belgium or Holland IIRC) makes sense. The 350MM proof of concept was test fired in Iraq although I have no idea of the range capability. The 1000MM version was partially delievered to Irag and the sections there where rendered into scrap while sitting in a storage area after the Gulf War. Where ever the sections ended up after that is problematic. IIRC Bull originally had proposed the concept of the super gun to the US Army. In this version it would of been capapble of traversing a full 360D but could not elevate. The art work for the proposal looked more like a large refractory telescope than anything else. Nova actually did a show on this in the early '90s. PBS is good for something sometimes. Now as to whether such a weapon would be a vialble weapons system given they worked. A number of these based inside the US would be immune to anything short of an inbound ballistic warhead. And they could threaten just about any target worth considering. There several gun systems under consideration now that IMO could bring about a new golden age for artillery systems. Enhanced ranges, GPS guidance etc. As I understand it the USN would eventually like to put to sea a gun system that would have ranges out to 500 to 600KM. Such projectiles would be launched fom elctromagnetic gun systems (rail guns) and would have flight profiles that take them out of the atmosphere. Sounds like to me they could be used as anti missile waepons. Just my $.02
#12
Wasn't Bull's original design intended as a cheap space launch platform? The thing has many drawbacks as a weapon (e.g. it isn't mobile) but getting things into space is a different beast.
#13
The biggest advantages I see are that it could be assembled in a few *weeks*, just about as long as it would take to build the proper munitions, and would be one of the few really effective ways of taking down the Iranian nuclear infrastructure. For what? $100-200M a gun? That is peanuts! And not a damn thing the Iranians could do to stop it.
#15
As I remember from a show on Discovery or History Channel, the heat and pressure necessary to achieve the high muzzle velocity necessary to carry the distances proposed means that the barrel sections have to be replaced after six shots. Also artillery isn't that accurate. Sadaam was a better novelist than he was a military tactician.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
07/13/2005 12:15 Comments ||
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#16
Sadaam was a better novelist than he was a military tactician.
That's cold, SH.
True, but cold. :-D
(And he was a lousy novelist.)
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
07/13/2005 13:38 Comments ||
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#17
Super Hose: the shot doesn't have to be terribly accurate, if you are using GPS guided munitions. Also, I'm betting that the US could fab up a dozen cannon like that, along with a bunch of replacement barrel tubing, overnight, then ship it off and assemble it where best to do the job, north or south. While it's best bet would be to use it as a very high altitude bunker buster, it would be used in concert with cruise missiles and and air power to devastating effect.
#20
Anonymoose, your idea has much more value than what Sadaam bought. GPS guided artillery shells is a new (post Sadaam getting his gums examined on worldwide TV)idea. Sadaam's gun was just a chance for some yahoo's to steal his money, and based on his penchant for spending larged sums on velvet-Elvis lke desor for his palaces, it was money well spent.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
07/13/2005 23:14 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
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