#2
anon1, in order to spare this site's bandwidth, all of the recipes are slowly folded into their original thread titles. I leave the past two day's worth of recipe headers listed so that people can locate recently posted items of interest. Each of the thread titles is an active link to that day's postings. You'll find your soup recipe by clicking on October 15th's title, "Rantburg Ramadan Reloaded".
#5
I'll be loading up the crockpot late late late tonight with pork to try out a new BBQ recipe. Uses cherry preserves, heh, and if worthy and anyone is interested in such a mundane thing, then I will post. I'm not the sophisticated gourmand and I like simple - the lowly crockpot is my favorite tool.
#6
Though the Muzzy Ramadan thingy ends Oct 23, thank allan, that doesn't mean there shouldn't be an ongoing RB Recipe file / thread, page...
Not to fear. Rantburg Ramadan ends just in time for starting the "Happy Rantburg Holiday" threads! I'm not sure about being able to do a daily edition but I've got slathers of non-pork recipes to post as well. This is something I've been wanting to do for a long, long time.
#8
If it turns out well, please post it, .com. It's nice to have easy things to make for busy days. (You'll have noticed the sandwich spreads and meatloaf recipes (mit optional boiled egg inside)) Besides, anyone who likes Rantburg clearly demonstrates good taste!
[This is a fascinating post from an insider. It tells a lot.
Hi SV,
I am most delighted to hear your comments on this matter. Well, if the Colonels stand in the way, maybe in the future the ANC will fire them?? But I can appreciate how whites try to maintain a bit of "civilisation" in this country. That meningitis story of yours is fascinating - deeply fascinating. Please keep us informed of your observations regarding the army.
You mention they're not worth a fart in a war. That's good to know. We have had discussions about the army and what it really means and can do. In Zimbabwe its main use during the land invasions was to facilitate the "mass action" and I think the army's greatest danger lies in that.
I agree with you that if they had to be involved in "helping" the cash vans - they'd probably be helping the criminals, or stealing some of it for themselves.
When I spoke to Mwezi Twala, who was tortured by the ANC in Angola, he said to me that you can describe the ANC in one word, and that word is "Greed." He said that is what everyone is in this for. Everyone in the ANC is a CROOK. They're all thieves... all of them, lining their pockets. And guess what... I'll bet the Police are also part of the game... EVERYONE is in this for the same reason. Its the only way this rotten actually function. Jan]
S.Africa: Army to protect cash vans?
Interesting to see this on the news. Clearly the cash-in-transit unions haven't noticed what they are being shot at with - AK's sure, but also R-5 and R-4 rifles - which comes from...?
I think that bringing the SANDF in (probably only beaten for general lack of anything remotely identifiable as military discipline by the ZDF and other African goon squads) will only result in more cash-in-transit heists - by the troops themselves!
I remember a few years ago when I was involved in a JOC (Joint Operations Center) which was handling a possible meningitis crisis - I was there as a Fire & Rescue representative. Everything was very hush-hush and I was ordered to shut up about what I saw and heard, since it could cause panic. Some of the incredible schemes suggested by the ANC politician in control to Army Colonels present was to proclamate Martial Law. Close the roads, seal off the town, and keep everybody inside, announce a curfew, etc. etc. - all the trappings that seemed strangely familiar ("noodtoestand" in the the old SA) - only now it was an ANC type who was grabbing at this straw, to "save" the town. How this would help with "saving" people infected with cerebral meningitis was not explained.
What I did note and note very well was how the (white) Colonels ducked and weaved to avoid answering. Erm.. no. We don't have enough troops. Besides, an excercise is scheduled. At the next meeting the Colonel very defintely replied in the negative - sorry, no troops, they are on an exercise. (Which he, in a panic, quickly organised, to "make" his troops be unavailable - read on)
Much later I found out (from another Colonel who was once my CO when I served in the SANDF in 95/96) that the "Army" discipline was so bad (even then - this was 2002/2003) that the Defence Force officers couldn't -trust- their black subordinate officers to behave in a disciplined manner in a martial law situation.
If you are unfamiliar with what "martial law" means, this means that the military takes control. Constitutional rights (it's just a piece of paper anyway - paper never bothered anybody in Africa) are waived, curfews are announced, and the military takes absolute and unlimited control. This vests virtually unlimited, plenipotenary powers in very low-ranking military officers - Lieutenants, Captains and Majors, who patrol the area and enforce the terms of the emergency declaration.
Apparently, this scared the hell out of the Colonels at that JOC. Why? Because black Lieutenants and Captains (most of them of the "kits-soldaat"/instant officer types, ex MK and APLA -terrorists-) couldn't be trusted to be allowed to go off alone, with the law on their side, to control Platoons and Companies in the CBD or any other areas of the town, armed with automatic rifles. Why should this be?
Because the white Colonels KNEW how dangerous that was. They had so little confidence in the black officers notionally under their command that they nearly had a heart attack when they saw a situation coming that required the mating up of black soldiers with some weapons and emergency powers. They KNOW what will happen - a wave of looting and rape as has never been seen (yet) in a SA town, BY THEIR SOLDIERS. They clearly knew the first thing most of their ex-MK and ex-APLA subordinates would do is to walk into houses, businesses and other facilities, use their "martial law" powers (like lawful entry without warrant, search and seizure, arrest and indefinite detention, lethal force with less than normal or no legal restraint) and start their own little kingdoms in town where they make the laws - and guarranteed, those would be the types of laws that come from the barrel of an R-4 assault rifle - looting, rapine and murder like any group of blacks with weapons have committed in Africa over and over.
So give me a break - have the Army guard cash vans?
The "Army" is actually a gang who just all wear the same "colors", with ZERO discipline and officers so scared of their troops they don't want to be anywhere near them if they're armed... Where the hell have these cash van union people BEEN the past ten years? This is one of THE grandest stupidities in a veritable river of grand stupidities that is the "new" SA.
Calling in the Army WONT'T help one millimeter. Instead, it will make the situation much worse. I served in the SANDF, and I know - all it is good for is spending its funds (the proportion that is not stolen of course) on keeping its AIDS ridden 40 year old privates going in military hospitals, and living off the state in all other respects, contributing nothing, a truely useless and expensive appendage that in a real war won't be worth a fart in the wind anyway.
That ridiculous idea lies at the core of political correctness: that a minority culture is always a victim of the majority culturethat even its crimes can be understood as having been provoked by the oppressions of the majority. During the cultural revolution of the 20th centurys later decades, Britain swallowed that toxic brew in lethal doses.
Thus, even after Islamists filled Londons public transportation with corpses, British officials read from the script, blaming not Islamism, but Islamophobia. Londons mayor, Ken Livingstone, after initially condemning the attacks, within a couple weeks was saying that the true fault lay in 80 years of Western intervention into predominantly Arab lands because of the Western need for oil.
Yesin Britain, one of the most widely used receptacles for pitching blame for Islamism is the war in Iraq. If only Tony Blair wasnt George W. Bushs poodle, 7/7 never would have happened, in other words.
The Church of Englanddeeply infected by liberalism and hatred of the Westput forward its recommendation for protecting Britain from another 7/7: Win the hearts of militant Muslims by prostrating before them. A group of Anglican bishops, in a September 2005 report, proposed that Britain apologize for the Iraq war. Since they didnt expect Downing Street to do so, they agreed that the church itself should make a public act of repentance before Muslim leaders.
British criminologists came up with a unique explanation for what caused 7/7: that the terrorists were just trying to prove their masculinity. Presenting a paper on the subject to the British Society of Criminology, the University of Huddersfields Antony Whitehead explained, Its a very understandable dynamic. Young Muslim men in the British culture experience a lot of internalized pressure to conform to the idea of manhoodthe ideal of courage and standing up for yourself. We are coming at this from the wrong angle. We are making the assumption that its all about Islam. In truth, virtually no oneat least, no one of influenceassumed it was all about Islam; in fact, they tied themselves in knots trying to prove their assumption that it was all about anything but Islam.
#2
Be under no doubts that the majority of people in the U.K. thought "F**king backward muslims", you have to realise that there is a small number of people who get publicity in the UK, but are totally unrepresentative.
At long last, the debate on Islamism as politics, not Islam as religion, is out in the open. Two weeks ago, Jack Straw might have felt he was taking a risk when publishing his now notorious article on the Muslim veil. However, he was pushing at an open door. From across the political spectrum there is now common consent that the old multicultural emperor, before whom generation of politicians have made obeisance, is now a pitiful, naked sight.
The 10,000 Muslims in my constituency of Rotherham can only benefit from removing the dead hand of ideological Islamism allowing their faith to be respected and their children to flourish in a Britain that finally wakes up to what must be done. Despite the efforts of extremists to prevent any sort of rational debate about the place of Islam in Britain, it is at last happening.
A fight-back is beginning to reclaim Britain from the grip of those who refuse to acknowledge the centrality of British values of tolerance, fair play and parliamentary democratic freedoms notably those of free speech and respect for all religions, but supremacy for none.
A fight-back is beginning to reclaim Britain from the grip of those who refuse to acknowledge the centrality of British values of tolerance, fair play and parliamentary democratic freedoms notably those of free speech and respect for all religions, but supremacy for none. Voltaire noted this attribute of the English three centuries ago, when he wrote: "If there was just one religion in Britain there would be despotism. If two, there would be civil war. But as there are 30, they all live at peace with each other."
It is worth returning to Voltaire on this issue. The struggle is not between religion and secularism, nor between the West and Islam, and still less between Bush-Blair and the Taliban or Iraqi insurgents. It is the ideologisation an ugly word for an ugly thing of religion that needs confronting. Return to Voltaire who noted, "Neither Montaigne, Locke, Boyle, Spinoza, Hobbes, or Lord Shaftesbury lighted up the firebrand of discord in their countries; this has generally been the work of divines, who, being at first puffed up with the ambition of becoming chiefs of a sect, soon grew very desirous of being at the head of a party."
The row ignited by Jack Straw has, so to speak, ripped away the veil over the failure of British policy-makers since the 1980s to come to grips with growing ideological Islamism in our midst.
In David Blunkett's diaries, he refers to the arrest of the Finsbury Park radical Islamist imam, Abu Hamza, in January 2003. Mr Blunkett records: "We had been to-ing and fro-ing on this for months." For months! For years, every other politician in Europe had been complaining about the failure of Britain to act against Hamza and the other ideologues of hate who were turning young Muslim minds long before 9/11 or the Iraq conflict into cauldrons of hate against democracy, and some, tragically, into self-immolating killers of innocent men, women and children.
Where Blunkett and previous ministers failed to act, it has taken a young, devoutly religious Christian politician, in the form of Ruth Kelly, who knows the difference between private faith and public politics, to come forward and to speak en clair to organisations and ideologues who believed that their world view would and should overcome British values and traditions.
An all-party commission on anti-Semitism that I chaired reported recently. Our most worrying discovery was the complacency on many university campuses about harassment of Jewish students. Jew-baiting behaviour that would have had the Left outraged in the 1930s is now actively encouraged by an unholy alliance of the hard Left and Islamist fundamentalists, and the odious anti-Semites who have infiltrated some lecturers' unions. Ruth Kelly, whose fealty to her faith matches that of any deeply religious British Muslim, is right to make clear there are now limits which must not be overstepped.
As a Foreign Office minister, I tried to get Whitehall to take the issue seriously. I argued that diplomats who spoke relevant languages should go and talk, discuss and report back to ministers.
Chinese walls in Whitehall prevented effective inter-departmental co-operation. The Home Office, in addition to allowing Hamza to poison the minds of a generation, refused to return to France Rashid Ramda, who was wanted for questioning in connection with the 1995 Paris Metro bombings a foretaste of our own 7/7. I hated having to go on French television and waffle defensively at a policy of not extraditing this evil man. But the prevailing culture was to deal with religious leaders, not elected politicians. Whitehall sought the advice of friendly theologians from Cairo, or Muslim ideologues such as Tariq Ramadan. This denied political space to British citizens of Muslim faith, women as well as men.
Late in 2003, I made a routine speech to my constituency. It followed the murder of British and Turkish men and women at our consulate in Istanbul by Islamist terrorists. At the same time, a young South Yorkshire Muslim had gone to Israel and killed himself in a suicide bombing attack.
The two events led me to make a speech in which I said: "It is time for the elected and community leaders of British Muslims to make a choice: it is the democratic, rule of law, if you like the British or Turkish or American or European way based on political dialogue and non-violent protests or it is the way of the terrorists against which the whole democratic world is now uniting." I thought my remarks were banal. After 7/7, everyone used them.
But, three years ago, the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, Trevor Phillips wrote a whole page in the Observer denouncing me. The Foreign Office and Downing Street would not allow me to defend my position. It was an ugly, uncomfortable time, as no one in Whitehall or the media showed any support for efforts to get a debate going on issues that today rightly predominate. Red boxes are here today and gone tomorrow. But if a minister is to be dismissed for telling the truth, even if the telling of the truth is not perfectly timed, then this or any government is in trouble.
Islamist politics is now one of the most important issues for the future of democracy. Getting the right answers will define the world's future. All main parties, other than the odious BNP, rightly shun Islamophobia. British Muslims will be welcome at Eid parties in the Commons to celebrate the end of Ramadan. But we have to find answers to calls for censorship, to celebrations of jihadist terror, or a religiously ordained world view that denies equal rights for women or gays here and in Afghanistan.
Some difficult politics lies ahead. It is bizarre that neither David Cameron nor Sir Menzies Campbell have spoken. At some stage, the metro-populism of Notting Hill will have to engage with the worries of British citizens who understand a problem long before Whitehall gets it.
There is a new generation of British Muslims who want to engage in politics and reclaim the issues that concern their communities from religious-based outfits or those who see their task as importing foreign conflicts into domestic British politics.
They must be encouraged before it is too late. From Margaret Thatcher, until very recently Tony Blair, political leaders have been in denial. It is time to wake up.
Denis MacShane is Labour MP for Rotherham and worked at the Foreign Office as PPS and minister, 1997-2005
Posted by: Fred ||
10/18/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
First off, "NOT between religion and secularism" > tell that to those activists-pundits on the MSM whom argue on nationwide TV that "GOD/RELIGION IS FAKE", that "RIGHTISTS/CONSERVATIVES ARE THE TRUE + ONLY STALINISTS-COMMUNISTS-SOCIALISTS-GOVERNMEN^TSIST-TOTALITARIANISTS, and that adherents/believers can't be trusted to respect individual rights-liberties precisely becuz they believe; Second, why should Rightists-Conservatives, at least in America, trust Lefties to reform, OR FIGHT, whom live in the world of Universal, Permanent, PC, Hyper-PC, Waffle-ism + Dialecticism, etal > THEY-WHOM-MUST-NOT-BE-NAMED/SEEN/HEARD-BUT-MUST-BE-OBEYED, CLAPPING HANDS WID NO FACES-BODIES [VOICES?] ON DARK BALCONIES.
#2
"If there was just one religion in Britain there would be despotism. If two, there would be civil war. But as there are 30, they all live at peace with each other."
Or as some French gourmands have said;
"Britain, the land of seventeen religions and two sauces."
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez will build 20 military bases in Bolivia, which will be situated on the borders with five other nations: Chile, Peru, Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil. Those installations will be under the control of Venezuelan and Cuban personnel, in complicity with Bolivian soldiers. Most certainly, the Cubans will carry Venezuelan passports and identification papers. It isn't easy to tell them apart. They're alike, even in their virtues and defects. The cost of the new Venezuelan armaments will rise to $30 billion. Venezuela has become the leading international buyer of arms and military equipment.
The plan reprises an old dream and early strategic concept created by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara: to turn Bolivia, a country in the heart of Latin America, into the subversive bastion of South America. That conviction cost Guevara his own life in 1967.
First target: Chile
Bolivia is a country from which the entire Andean region can be destabilized by fanning ethnic conflicts. It is a country (soon with the right bases) from which the new warplanes bought by Chávez in Russia can operate. I expect the Chileans -- the first targets in the sights of the Venezuelan colonel ready to "swim in the Bolivian sea" -- are aware of the enormous danger that will hang over them in the not-too-distant future.
Chávez, in cahoots with Evo Morales, intends to seduce and recruit the Bolivians into his revolutionary adventure by means of a gigantic aid plan that includes medical treatment, literacy campaigns and abundant food. He is sure that such massive aid will demolish any nationalistic wariness. He already is very much appreciated by the Bolivian masses and will be even more so in the future. Bolivia is the poorest country in the continent. Several hundreds of millions of dollars conveniently distributed (Chávez calculates) may achieve the miracle of attracting the enthusiastic adhesion of the neediest people and the complicity of the radical groups to the cause of a redemptive conquest of Latin America, a step on the road to 21st-century socialism.
No sense of boundaries
What we're witnessing is the consequence of a delirious vision of history and global political reality. Months ago, last December, that vision was explained in Caracas by Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque, and the world was foolish enough not to pay any attention. Castro and Chávez, two absolutely messianic characters without any vestige of prudence or sense of boundaries, came to the conclusion that Marxism had revived after the debacle that ended the Soviet Union and its European satellites 15 years ago. From that conclusion, they derived the sacred mission that both assumed with the responsibility and fervor of crusaders: Caracas and Havana would bear on their shoulders the task of redeeming a humanity cowardly abandoned by Moscow.
That's the hair-raising picture before our eyes: Caracas-Havana, and now La Paz, are the new Moscow, mother and father of world socialism. The task they have as signed themselves begins with the revolutionary conquest of South America and the installation in all its nations of sympathetic governments that will collaborate in the final battle against ``imperialism.''
What is the objective of that battle? Obviously, to bring the United States and its despicable European acolytes to their knees. To end forever the iniquitous exploitation of the Third World by the creation of a grandiose collectivistic and egalitarian civilization that will reign eternally for the glory of humanity.
Hungry and hopeless
It would be a huge mistake to dismiss this blueprint to conquest just because it's the senseless madness of a couple of characters who didn't take Prozac when they should have. The Third Reich spawned by the Nazis was no less mad or absurd, yet it cost the world 40 million dead and the monstrous Holocaust. Cuba is an impoverished Third World island, hungry and hopeless, but that didn't deter its government from participating in successful coups d'etat in Madagascar and Yemen, or sending its troops to fight in bloody African wars, both in Angola and Ethiopia, for 15 years.
With his petrodollars and the help and guidance of the Cubans, who are expert and combat-tested, Chávez is building the largest Spanish-speaking army: 1.2 million men who will have at their disposal the most destructive air force in all of South America. Once that machine is well oiled, he won't hesitate to put it to use as the Cuban armed forces were once used. Once the tool is available, it will inevitably be put into operation. No matter that Chávez is mad. Madmen also kill.
#7
Well that kind of confirms my worst case scenario I put forth here a few months ago. Venezuelan oil money, Cuban hard boys and expertise, and Andean drug money. If he can leverage off the indianismo thing, he'll have lots of willing brown shirts, believe me.
#9
Chávez is building the largest Spanish-speaking army: 1.2 million men who will have at their disposal the most destructive air force in all of South America.
LOL!
Gimme Chile and 1 point.
Want a little Brazil action?.... Oooops off the Board they don't speak Spanish.
Maybe a little Parugray insanity?
Sure, I'll give 'ya 5.
It is said that amateurs study tactics, professionals study The Line.
With its Al Manar television station launched in 1991, the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah has pioneered the use of mass media as a weapon. It uses the broadcaster to recruit suicide bombers, raise money for terrorist operations, conduct pre-attack surveillance and incite violence. This fall, the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas is poised to follow in Hezbollah's footsteps.
Until now, Hamas's Al Aqsa television has been broadcast only within the Gaza Strip. But this month it will begin satellite distribution via the Nilesat satellite, the Palestinian News Agency (Ramattan) reported in August. This would allow Hamas to spread its message of hatred across the Middle East, North Africa and most of Europe. Nilesat, owned by the Egyptian government, and Arabsat, majority-owned by the Saudi government, are the only two satellites still carrying Al Manar despite joint U.S.-European efforts to halt its broadcasts.
For a preview of things to come, it's worth looking into the Palestinian terror group's media operations at home. Like Hezbollah, Hamas uses its propaganda network to support terror activities, including recruiting suicide bombers, inculcating hatred, raising funds and providing direct operational support to terrorist operations.
Al Aqsa TV routinely broadcasts Hamas leaders calling for jihad, songs of incitement to murder, and videos of Hamas gunmen. Just like Hamas newspapers, magazines, and websites, Al Aqsa programs typically feature splashy stories glorifying the actions of "martyrs" and assurances that through their sacrifices the "Zionist Entity" will be destroyed.
Children are specifically targeted. Hamas produces radio and television shows and publishes an online magazine geared at preteens. A recent issue of the magazine opens with a cartoon of a smiling child riding a rocket while the previous issue glorified suicide bombers and other "martyrs" in cartoons and poetry.
Hamas websites have been used to raise money for terrorist activities, both explicitly and under the guise of "humanitarian" aid. There have been reports, citing Israeli intelligence, that Hamas field coordinators have used Voice of Al Aqsa radio broadcasts to provide terrorists with exact coordinates and trajectories to fire Qassam rockets at Israeli targets.
In short, there is no reason why the West should show more leniency toward Al Aqsa than toward Al Manar. While a few free speech activists have defended Hezbollah's television as a legitimate programmer, American and European governments have correctly identified it as a danger to free society. Washington designated Al Manar a terrorist organization, making it the first media outlet to be sanctioned under U.S. anti-terrorism laws. The European Union ruled that Al Manar contravened its broadcast laws and requested that European satellite providers stop carrying their programs. Private sector companies have taken action as well. Eight out of ten satellite providers have removed Al Manar from distribution and numerous multinational corporations have pulled more than $2 million in annual advertising from the station.
Similar steps can be taken to curb Hamas. The U.S. government should designate Al Aqsa TV as a terrorist organization. This would put strict limits on U.S. companies and banks from doing business with Al Aqsa. Multinational companies should refuse to advertise on Al Aqsa, denying it revenues that will ultimately go to support terrorist operations.
Finally, U.S. and European officials must put more pressure on the Egyptian government to deny Al Aqsa, as well as Al Manar, distribution over the Nilesat satellite. Egyptian officials cannot be interested in helping Hezbollah and Hamas radicalize their own citizens or the Arabic-speaking citizens of their European allies.
Given Al Manar's experience in the U.S. and Europe, Hamas may try to soften Al Aqsa's content to give it the veneer of a legitimate TV channel. However, policy makers and private sector executives must recognize a simple truth: Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of innocent civilians and until that changes, its television broadcasts will be used to further that goal.
A decade passed before the international community recognized the dangers posed by Hezbollah's Al Manar. Similar mistakes must not be made with Al Aqsa. Otherwise, in too many European and Middle Eastern homes, Hamas's hate TV could become the must-see fall programming for a new generation of terrorists.
Posted by: Captain America ||
10/18/2006 01:58 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
FOX NEWS?O'REILLY > author MARK STEYN's new book AMERICA ALONE = EUROPE is a GONER [Eurabia rising], or soon [enuff] will be, HOPE FOR CURRENT + FUTURE WESTERN WORLD/DEMOCRACY/-ISMS NOW LIES SQUARELY ON AMERICA'S AND ONLY AMERICA'S SHOULDERS.
#2
Blow their production sites, broadcast facilities, signal feeds and transmitters all straight to hell. This is the 24 Hour Terrorist Shopping Network and nothing else. We are idiots for allowing such filth to be disseminated.
#3
Children are specifically targeted. Hamas produces radio and television shows and publishes an online magazine geared at preteens. A recent issue of the magazine opens with a cartoon of a smiling child riding a rocket while the previous issue glorified suicide bombers and other "martyrs" in cartoons and poetry.
I'll even go one step further. Blow the damned Nilesat and Arabsat satellites clean out of the sky. We need some anti-sat target practice anyway.
Soldiers, sailors, and airmen once determined the outcome of warfare, but no longer. Today, television producers, columnists, preachers, and politicians have the pivotal role in deciding how well the West fights. This shift has deep implications.
In a conventional conflict like World War II, fighting had two premises so basic, they went nearly unnoticed. The first: Conventional armed forces engage in an all-out fight for victory. The opposing sides deploy serried ranks of soldiers, lines of tanks, fleets of ships, and squadrons of aircraft. Millions of youth go to war as civilians endure privations. Strategy and intelligence matter, but the size of one's population, economy, and arsenal count even more. An observer can assess the progress of war by keeping tabs of such objective factors as steel output, oil stocks, ship construction, and control of land.
Second assumption: Each side's population loyally backs its national leadership. To be sure, traitors and dissidents need to be rooted out, but a wide consensus backs the rulers. This was especially noteworthy in the Soviet Union, where even Stalin's demented mass-murdering did not stop the population from giving its all for "Mother Russia."
Both aspects of this paradigm are now defunct in the West.
First, battling all-out for victory against conventional enemy forces has nearly disappeared, replaced by the more indirect challenge of guerrilla operations, insurgencies, intifadas, and terrorism. This new pattern applied to the French in Algeria, Americans in Vietnam, and Soviets in Afghanistan. It currently holds for Israelis versus Palestinians, coalition forces in Iraq, and in the war on terror.
This change means that what the U.S. military calls "bean counting" counting soldiers and weapons is now nearly immaterial, as are diagnoses of the economy or control of territory. Lopsided wars resemble police operations more than combat in earlier eras. As in crime-fighting, the side enjoying a vast superiority in power operates under a dense array of constraints, while the weaker party freely breaks any law and taboo in its ruthless pursuit of power.
Second, the solidarity and consensus of old have unraveled. This process has been underway for just over a century now (starting with the British side of the Boer War in 1899-1902). As I wrote in 2005: "The notion of loyalty has fundamentally changed. Traditionally, a person was assumed faithful to his natal community. A Spaniard or Swede was loyal to his monarch, a Frenchman to his republic, an American to his constitution. That assumption is now obsolete, replaced by a loyalty to one's political community socialism, liberalism, conservatism, or Islamism, to name some options. Geographical and social ties matter much less than of old."
With loyalties now in play, wars are decided more on the oped pages and less on the battlefield. Good arguments, eloquent rhetoric, subtle spin-doctoring, and strong poll numbers count more than taking a hill or crossing a river. Solidarity, morale, loyalty, and understanding are the new steel, rubber, oil, and ammunition. Opinion leaders are the new flag and general officers. Therefore, as I wrote in August, Western governments "need to see public relations as part of their strategy."
Even in a case like the Iranian regime's acquisition of atomic weaponry, Western public opinion is the key, not its arsenal. If united, Europeans and Americans will likely dissuade Iranians from going ahead with nuclear weapons. If disunited, Iranians will be emboldened to plunge ahead.
What Carl von Clausewitz called war's "center of gravity" has shifted from force of arms to the hearts and minds of citizens. Do Iranians accept the consequences of nuclear weapons? Do Iraqis welcome coalition troops as liberators? Do Palestinians willingly sacrifice their lives in suicide bombings? Do Europeans and Canadians want a credible military force? Do Americans see Islamism presenting a lethal danger?
Non-Western strategists recognize the primacy of politics and focus on it. A string of triumphs Algeria in 1962, Vietnam in 1975, and Afghanistan in 1989 all relied on eroding political will. Al-Qaeda's number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, recently codified this idea, observing that more than half of the Islamists' battle "is taking place in the battlefield of the media."
The West is fortunate to predominate in the military and economic arenas, but these no longer suffice. Along with its enemies, it needs to give due attention to the public relations of war.
October 18, 2006 -- HAVE we lost the will to win wars? Not just in Iraq, but anywhere? Do we really believe that being nice is more important than victory?
It's hard enough to bear the timidity of our civilian leaders - anxious to start wars but without the guts to finish them - but now military leaders have fallen prey to political correctness. Unwilling to accept that war is, by its nature, a savage act and that defeat is immoral, influential officers are arguing for a kinder, gentler approach to our enemies.
They're going to lead us into failure, sacrificing our soldiers and Marines for nothing: Political correctness kills.
Obsessed with low-level "tactical" morality - war's inevitable mistakes - the officers in question have lost sight of the strategic morality of winning. Our Army and Marine Corps are about to suffer the imposition of a new counterinsurgency doctrine designed for fairy-tale conflicts and utterly inappropriate for the religion-fueled, ethnicity-driven hyper-violence of our time.
We're back to struggling to win hearts and minds that can't be won.
The good news is that the Army and Marine Corps worked together on the new counterinsurgency doctrine laid out in Field Manual 3-24 (the Army version). The bad news is that the doctrine writers and their superiors came up with fatally wrong prescriptions for combating today's insurgencies.
Astonishingly, the doctrine ignores faith-inspired terrorism and skirts ethnic issues in favor of analyzing yesteryear's political insurgencies. It would be a terri- fic manual if we returned to Vietnam circa 1963, but its recommendations are profoundly misguided when it comes to fighting terrorists intoxicated with religious visions and the smell of blood.
Why did the officers in question avoid the decisive question of religion? Because the answers would have been ugly.
Wars of faith and tribe are immeasurably crueler and tougher to resolve than ideological revolts. A Maoist in Malaya could be converted. But Islamist terrorists who regard death as a promotion are not going to reject their faith any more than an ethnic warrior can - or would wish to - change his blood identity.
So the doctrine writers ignored today's reality.
Al Qaeda and other terror organizations have stated explicitly and repeatedly that they're waging a global jihad to re-establish the caliphate. Yet the new manual ignores religious belief as a motivation.
The politically correct atmosphere in Washington deems any discussion of religion as a strategic factor indelicate: Let our troops die, just don't hurt anyone's feelings.
So the doctrine writers faked it, treating all insurgencies as political. As a result, they prescribed an excellent head-cold treatment - for a cancer patient. The text is a mush of pop-zen mantras such as "Sometimes doing nothing is the best reaction," "The best weapons do not shoot," or "The more force used, the less effective it is."
That's just nutty. Should we have done nothing in the wake of 9/11? Would everything have been OK if we'd just been nicer? What non-lethal "best weapons" might have snagged Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora, where the problem was too little military force, not too much violence?
Should we have sent fewer troops to Iraq, where inadequate numbers crippled everything we attempted? Will polite chats with tribal chiefs stop the sectarian violence drenching Iraq in blood?
On the surface, the doctrine appears sober and serious. But it's morally frivolous and intellectually inert, a pathetic rehashing of yesteryear's discredited "wisdom" on counterinsurgencies and, worst of all, driven by a stalker-quality infatuation with T.E. Lawrence, "Lawrence of Arabia," who not only was a huckster of the first order, but whose "revolt in the desert" was a near-meaningless sideshow of a sideshow.
Lawrence is quoted repeatedly, with reverence. We might as well cite the British generals of the Great War who sent men over the top in waves to face German machine guns.
You can trust two kinds of officers: Those who read a great deal and those who don't read at all. But beware the officer who reads just a little and falls in love with one book. A little education really is a dangerous thing.
The new manual is thick - length is supposed to substitute for insight. It should be 75 percent shorter and 100 percent more honest. If issued to our troops in its present form, it will lead to expensive failures. Various generals have already tried its prescriptions in Iraq - with discouraging results, to put it mildly.
We've reached a fateful point when senior officers seek to evade war's brute reality. Our leaders, in and out of uniform, must regain their moral courage. We can't fight wars of any kind if the entire chain of command runs for cover every time an ambitious journalist cries, "War crime!" And sorry: Soccer balls are no substitute for bullets when you face fanatics willing to kill every child on the playing field.
In war, you don't get points for good manners. It's about winning. Victory forgives.
The new counterinsurgency doctrine recommends forbearance, patience, understanding, non-violent solutions and even outright passivity. Unfortunately, our enemies won't sign up for a replay of the Summer of Love in San Francisco. We can't treat hardcore terrorists like Halloween pranksters on mid-term break from prep school.
Where is the spirit of FDR and George C. Marshall, who recognized that the one unbearable possibility was for the free world to lose?
We discount the value of ferocity - as a practical tool and as a deterrent. But war's immutable law - proven yet again in Iraq - is that those unwilling to pay the butcher's bill up front will pay it with compound interest in the end.
The new counterinsurgency doctrine is dishonest and cowardly.
We don't face half-hearted Marxists tired of living in the jungle, but religious zealots who behead prisoners to please their god and who torture captives by probing their skulls with electric drills. We're confronted by hatreds born of blood and belief and madmen whose appetite for blood is insatiable.
If I hadn't observed Sen. Kerry's incoherent ramblings during the 2004 presidential campaign, I would have been shocked by his indecipherable utterances on "Fox News Sunday" regarding President Bush's foreign policy.
Almost every statement was at war with the facts or with other statements he made elsewhere and in this same interview.
Almost every statement was at war with the facts or with other statements he made elsewhere and in this same interview.
On North Korea, Kerry said, "One of the reasons that North Korea can misbehave the way it is today is because the United States has lost its leverage, lost its credibility and doesn't have the capacity to be able to bring countries together in the way that it used to. This administration is allowing North Korea to get away with what its doing." Notice Kerry didn't make the argument that we haven't brought enough force into Iraq and so we lack the credibility to inspire fear in and thereby deter the North Korean regime. No, the context makes clear that Kerry is talking about our failure to approach our diplomacy multilaterally: We don't "have the capacity to be able to bring countries together."
So one would assume that when Chris Wallace asked Kerry what he would do differently, he would respond that we need to work more closely with other nations. Wrong.
Kerry was saying -- if anyone could follow him without falling asleep -- that because of our alleged "go-it-alone" policy on Iraq we have lost our credibility to employ a go-it-alone policy with North Korea.
Kerry said, "I would engage in bilateral, face-to-face negotiations with North Korea, make it absolutely clear that we are not intending to invade and have a regime change, and work on the entire set of issues that are outstanding since the armistice with regard to the north."
Kerry was saying -- if anyone could follow him without falling asleep -- that because of our alleged "go-it-alone" policy on Iraq we have lost our credibility to employ a go-it-alone policy with North Korea. When Wallace asked him to explain the obvious inconsistency, Kerry didn't even bother to clarify. In fact, a little later in the interview he went back to the same point, saying, "[Bush] has made every mistake possible so he has isolated our troops, isolated America." Yet, Kerry would have us isolate ourselves with respect to North Korea.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/18/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
I was against going it alone before I was for it!
#2
"I'm an internationalist. I'd like to see our troops dispersed through the world only at the directive of the United Nations."
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/j/johnfkerr158723.html
Posted by: John F. Kerry ||
10/18/2006 9:05 Comments ||
Top||
#3
I would engage in bilateral, face-to-face negotiations with North Korea, make it absolutely clear that we are not intending to invade and have a regime change, and work on the entire set of issues that are outstanding since the armistice with regard to the north."
On September 19 - 2005, North Korea agreed to give up its nuclear program. As part of the same agreement, which followed the latest round of the Six Party Talks, the United States pledged not to attack or invade North Korea, to coexist peacefully with the country, and to work toward normalized relations.
#4
Dems have an incredibly large blind spot and have for decades. It comes from the inability to recognize that there are evil f*cks in the world. Everything, in their mind, can be mitigated by 'engagement' and 'dialog'.
Reality however, rears it's ugly head. Some things cannot be negotiated and dialogged away. The fact that the world has some evil sons of b*thces in it is one of them.
Thus, dems approach to world affairs is laughably naive, and dangerously irrelevent.
Senator Reid, the Democratic Party's leader in the Senate, will reimburse his campaign fund for $3,300 that it spent on Christmas bonuses for workers at the Ritz-Carlton luxury condominium where he lives in Washington, the Associated Press reported yesterday.
Cheap bastard: wouldn't even tip the staff with his own money.
Which raises the question: The Ritz-Carlton? The Democrats, who tout themselves as the party of the common man, are rapidly turning into the party of the plutocrats. The Democratic Party's candidate for Senate in Connecticut, Ned Lamont of Greenwich, is an heir to a J.P. Morgan fortune who has spent $10 million of his own money trying to purchase a Senate seat. The Democratic Party's candidate for governor in New York, Eliot Spitzer, is accused by his Republican rival of having begun his political career with a $9 million loan from his father.
At a certain point it is going to become hard for the Democratic Party's leaders to assail the Republicans as the party of the rich without blushing, or without a chuckle from ordinary Americans who follow the news.
Senator Clinton, who seeks to be the standard-bearer in 2008, splits her time between a $2.8 million mansion in Washington that recently underwent an expansion and upgrade that cost an additional $900,000, and a $1.7 million, 5-bedroom house with a swimming pool in the Westchester town of Chappaqua. Senator Kerry, the party's nominee for president in 2004, lives in a $10 million townhouse on Louisburg Square in Boston's Beacon Hill and summers at Nantucket. The Rockefeller in the Senate is a Democrat who represents West Virginia. These columns have nothing against either luxury housing or prosperity, but at a certain point it is going to become hard for the Democratic Party's leaders to assail the Republicans as the party of the rich without blushing, or without a chuckle from ordinary Americans who follow the news.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/18/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
Since the Danish cartoon issue, a pattern seems to be emerging from the US and Europe where there appears to be a concerted two-pronged effort to harass and discriminate against Europe's Muslim population and undermine assertive/strong Muslim states. One cannot simply label it a coincidence that even as British politicians began abusing the veiled Muslim women, a Danish outfit chose to show a film on the blasphemous cartoons and so-called analysts in the US and the UK began to launch a new campaign against the state of Pakistan, while the French lower house of Parliament seemed to embark on a new path of rewriting the history of Muslim states, beginning with Turkey. Perhaps one is being too much of a conspiracy theorist, but if we examine the manner in which the US built up a campaign based on either outright lies before the international community at the UN, or misstatement of facts and rather flimsy evidence to finally launch its invasion of Iraq, we in the Muslim World would do well to see patterns of intent appearing well in time.
In this two-part article, first the attack against Muslims within their own European countries is examined. Let us take the issue of the veil, which I personally have no affinity with, but should that give me the right to impose my perspective on other women and how they should dress? After all, European Muslim women have been wearing it for decades, so why should Jack Straw bring up the issue now? Could it be that the European states have now decided to assert a white, Christian ethos of Europe and deny its multiculturalism where the social traditions and culture of the Muslims is an integral part of the new European identity? It would seem to be the case because the Dutch Parliament has voted to ban the wearing of the burqa and three Flemish cities in Belgium have already instituted such a ban. Of course they ran into some problems because they did not want to make it a crime to wear carnival masks.
But then continental Europe has become overtly anti-Islam since 9/11 and there are cities like Rotterdam where designs to build mosques have been rejected because they are "too Islamic". Has anyone in Muslim Pakistan objected to the building of a church because its design was "too Christian"? Imagine the abuse we would have had to take from the West if we had been stupid enough to do such a thing, but it seems the Europeans can do what they like in terms of abusing Islam -- it is all acceptable under the guise either of "freedom of expression" or assimilation into the European culture.
Even more absurd, the Europeans are now deciding on an acceptable dress code for their Muslim citizens and the logic of this can eventually lead to a forced exodus of European Muslims to their ancestral lands -- so that the white, Christian identity of Europe is restored. Of course that is the hope but it may be more difficult to achieve and what might happen instead is the increasing polarisation within European societies, which would create more violence and radicalism especially amongst the marginalised members of this society.
Britain, of course, has gone even further in beginning a campaign against Muslim women wearing the veil. It was not too long ago when Jack Straw was seeking re-election and came to Pakistan to visit the homeland of a bulk of his constituents in order to win their vote. He even broke bread with them in their tradition - all because of their vote. Throughout his visit one never heard him say anything about the discomfiture he felt when faced with veiled women.
Worse still, the British media has gleefully jumped on the bandwagon, least concerned about their distortion of facts in the process. Take the case of the British Muslim teaching assistant who is being penalised because she refuses to take off her veil in front of her male colleagues. It is being given out that she has been penalised for wearing the veil while trying to teach young children which debilitates the learning process. Yet this is a blatant lie because the girl, Aishah Azmi, stated on BBC radio that she had agreed to remove the veil in class and only sought to wear it in front of her male colleagues. But who will listen to her in the present climate of intolerance in Britain? With Blair joining in the tirade against the veil, it is hardly surprising that attacks against mosques and imams have become rampant, with the latest incident taking place in Glasgow where a Bangladeshi imam was attacked following an attack against a mosque a week earlier. All a coincidence or can we see a pattern emerging, which targets Muslims and seeks to compel them to "Christianise them" socially and culturally?
Otherwise, why can't Straw and Blair seek to force the white Brits into becoming more modest in their dress so as not to offend the British Muslims whose culture is now part of what makes up the British identity? If the veil is to be banned, perhaps the mini-skirt or bikinis should also suffer the same fate since they give offence to British Muslims.
Nor is one making too much of the veil controversy because we need to see it in the wider context of the British government's efforts to get Muslim parents to spy on their school-going children and now the UK education department is proposing to have lecturers in universities spy on Muslim students. This reminds one of the Nazis making Germans spy on Jews.
As for the resurgence of the Danish cartoons amidst all these other developments, what can one say about this new reflection of fascism except that the Jews have been replaced by the Muslims and that eventually the Muslims of Europe need to organise and fight back before they land up in the twenty-first century equivalent of concentration camps and a new holocaust begins. Within this new oppressive European environment, the demonisation of strong Muslim states is a natural outcome. Coincidentally, two of the targeted states, Pakistan and Turkey, also happen to be the countries of origin of a large amount of the ancestors of the present European Muslims.
Both Turkey and Pakistan are also strong nationalist states, sensitive to the defence of their sovereignty. Of course, they are being attacked in different ways, but a deliberate targeting is now becoming only too apparent. What used to be more covert -- especially in the case of Turkey -- is now becoming more overt and the move by the French lower house of parliament to declare it a crime to deny the genocide of the Armenians by the Ottomans is a reflection of this. France has been the most vehement opponent of Turkey's entry into the EU because that would bring in a sizeable Muslim population into Europe -- something Europe still cannot live with. But this move is just one in a series of negative EU moves against Turkey. After all, the admission of Greek Cyprus into the EU when the conflict there had not been resolved was a major political move against Turkey. Ironically, Turkey's vociferous commitment to secularism has done nothing to dilute its perception in Europe as a Muslim state. The West wants to redraw Muslim states' borders, rewrite Muslim history and tell its Muslim citizens how to dress.
Next week: The campaign against Pakistan
The writer is director general of the Institute of Strategic Studies in Islamabad.
Posted by: john ||
10/18/2006 13:20 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[7 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
why can't Straw and Blair seek to force the white Brits into becoming more modest in their dress so as not to offend the British Muslims whose culture is now part of what makes up the British identity?
Is it something in the Pakistani water supply that encourages this sense of entitlement?
Posted by: john ||
10/18/2006 13:28 Comments ||
Top||
#2
this new reflection of fascism except that the Jews have been replaced by the Muslims and that eventually the Muslims of Europe need to organise and fight back before they land up in the twenty-first century equivalent of concentration camps and a new holocaust begins.
Right. Except for the part where the Jews of pre-Nazi Germany weren't rioting or blowing things up. And the how they never tried to impose their religious law on the larger populace. And how they had no problem with free speech or pluralism. Except for that.
Posted by: Baba Tutu ||
10/18/2006 14:23 Comments ||
Top||
#3
She reminds me of the old flick, "Return to the Planet of the Apes", where the hero made it back to Earth only to find it populated by apes....but in this case replete with a twist, a vertical flip only possible with islamo-think.
War is peace.
Freedom is slavery*.
Ignorance is strength.
... George Orwell's Animal Farm
#8
It seems like it was just yesterday that a mob of militant Muslims were protesting in downtown London, at Westminster Cathedral. "Rome Will Fall!" and worse during the Sunday services. Yeah, sing me a song.
#10
You're so right bitch. There's a vast conspiracy in the West against Muzzies. We noticed how ignorant and repulsive you really are. Just think, the action is only beginning. Maybe you better pack your bags and head back to the desert.
#14
No, no, no... Go ahead and build the church, then we firebomb it!
How insensitive of me.
Posted by: Bobby ||
10/18/2006 17:32 Comments ||
Top||
#15
The ugliest most insidious of conspirators (to dominate the Earth and turn it into another Mars) complain about conspiracies when met with resistance. Their irony and hypocrisy is bottomless as Mopires.
The warning signs are everywhere, yet no one wishes to see them. Israel's foes are gearing up for war, and it's time that we opened our eyes to the danger that confronts us.
The conflict may be just weeks or even months away, or perhaps a bit longer. How it will start is anyone's guess, but make no mistake, a major outbreak of hostilities is almost certainly around the corner.
If this sounds like scare-mongering or even an advanced case of paranoia to you, just take a glance at the newspapers from the past few weeks. If you read them with a discerning eye, you will see exactly what I mean.
For whichever direction one chooses to look, be it north, south or east of us, trouble - major trouble - is brewing.
In Lebanon, Hizbullah is busy rebuilding its expansive terrorist infrastructure after this summer's fighting with Israel. Under the protective shield of UN troops, the group has been welcoming large shipments of weapons from Iran and Syria, and fortifying its bunkers in advance of the next round of conflict.
#1
I confess: I share the fear the Middle East is on the brink of all-out war.
This is because Iraq situation if it does indeed become a civil war, will upset the balance of power and also because America's strength is being increasingly tested and probed by foes.
As Israel's was recently by Hezbollah.
As soon as it seems there is a possibility of knocking them off their perches the arabs won't hesitate.
1) Israel looks weaker to the Arabs after Hezbollah won - and they did win. They are not disarmed or broken, and what happened to those kidnapped soldiers? - temptation for Iran/Syria/Hezbollah to attack
2) Iraq could dissolve into all out civil war: temptation for Iran to invade to secure oil fields.
3) Turkey tempted to invade Iraq in civil war situation to prevent Kurds getting homeland in north
4) Iran extra tempted to strike Israel/USA because Ahmanutterjob is an apocalyptic religious freak who wants to wipe israel off the map and the US off the world stage
5)If Iraq goes to civil war, US image will be weakened as a force, tempting other hostiles to attempt attack
6) China through North Korea probing and testing US tolerance, strength and resolve. Trouble in the middle east would tempt them to jostle for world position as number 1 because US couldn't fight all-out ME war plus a major hot war on the Korean peninsular at the same time.
7) Russia tempted to join an all-out ME war to jostle for power/oil
Iraq is a key strategic piece of the ME jigsaw which is why we went to war in the first place. We couldn't let Saddam hold that chip.
It's the geographic hub around which Iran, Syria, Jordan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia all share borders.
It's the most important geographic jigsaw peace in the war on Islamist extremism as it allows us to pressure these adjoining states to reign in jihadist culture.
That was the idea I believe.
But the stakes are very high if the wheels fall off World War 4 could become a hot war very quickly.
Pax Americana will not go quietly into the night
My question is: what are the Saudis likely to do in the event of civil war in Iraq?
Iran will go in, Turkey may go in to crush kurds... but it's the Sunnis in Iraq that have the bit of territory that doesn't have any oil. Will the Saudis try to help their co-religionists against Iran?
Will the house of Saud view Iran such a big threat that it fights? What will this mean for Syria and Jordan? At the moment they are (i think) strategically aligned with Iran/lebanon/syria against Israel...
#2
I totally disagree. I think the Hezbollah/Hamas team was beaten pretty bad and the Arabs know it. What we are seeing now is posturing in an attempt to restore face in addition to rebuilding which will take years.
Iran won't provoke anything that might preempt an attack. Certainly not before the US elections (they have calanders) and probably not before they have nukes. Better and easier to play off the great nations in the UN.
In Iraq the Sunni recently turned on Al Queda in a big way in the hopes that the sectarian violence which has hurt Sunni far more than Shia will finally end. At the same time the Iraqi police numbers are getting bigger. Its getting time for the US to pile into firebases along the border and let the Iraqi's handle the bulk of internal operations. This leaves our hands free and our enemies puckered.
I think things are far better than most people realize.
#3
I agree that there is the possibility things are going MUCH better than we realise due in part from the media's love of broadcasting bad news stories from Iraq and ignoring the good stuff.
And I hope that is the case, that Iraqis get behind their new constitution.
But if it does dissolve into civil war, I am not so sure Hezbollah are defeated. I believe they won in ways that counted against Israel (though i wish they didn't).
Hamas, yes, is divided and in civil war. But a regional war would perhaps unite them against their common enemy for the duration of conflict.
I guess my point is a civil war in Iraq (if it were to happen) may prove too tempting for regional players and so become a regional war.
And a regional war in Iraq may prove too tempting for the great powers and become a global hot war the likes of which we haven't seen since our Grandparent's generation.
#4
There is no doubt that weapons are being smuggled into Leb at a rapid rate. They will, no doubt, try again. I favor allowing a civil war in Iraq. We need to allow them to self destruct. Would Shia led Iraq be more hospitable to US ? Doubt that. Just a different crowd. We can control any situation in the sandbox if we decide to. We just quit playing pattycake. We need to inflict some real casualties in a short time as a demonstration of our will. After a real asskicking(in the millions of casualties), the Muzzies will slink back to regroup. Our understanding of their philosophy is greatly lacking. Our will to be assertive is greatly lacking. If we want to maintain presence in Iraq, we can. If we have misjudged our purpose there, then we should leave. If we leave, the Muzzies will press on, revved up, and the smack down which must then be applied will lead to massive death rates. There is no easy path forward. We're in the swamp now. We either proceed through it, or try to get back out the way we came in.
#5
A true civil war in Iraq would look like Rwanda with a week of carnage, a lot of dead Sunnis, then peace again, I don't think it would be the drawn out terrible civil war people imagine.
We'd take a hit in our credibility somewhat but on the other hand it would create a big split between the Shia and the Sunni bad guys.
#7
Agree with rj (#2)-Remeber the Iraqi army took over Ramadi last week - the so-called "hotbed of the insurgency". They (and/or coalition - not clear) repelled a complex, three-way attack a day or two later.
Looks good to me.
Posted by: Bobby ||
10/18/2006 17:27 Comments ||
Top||
#8
I agree with SpecOp35: the limited responses of Israel in Leb and US forces in Iraq in recent months do not belie some lack of fighting will or power on the part of the soldiers themselves.
These limited responses have been strictly political. And while I sure as hell don't agree with the politics behind pulling punches, I also know that the political has a place right now. If the ridiculous did occur, and Syria/Iran started rolling armor, then Israel/US-Iraq would suddenly conduct operations of a different timbre. Assad knows it. Ahmadinejad knows it.
I am frustrated, too, and can't help but wonder whether or not the pot is slowly boiling. Iraq has a lot to show, to prove that they are worth the cost paid in American/Allied lives.
Posted by: Vegas Matt ||
10/18/2006 19:23 Comments ||
Top||
ROMA, October 18, 2006 One month after his lecture at the University of Regensburg, Benedict XVI received an open letter signed by 38 Muslim personalities from various countries and of different outlooks, which discusses point by point the views on Islam expressed by the pope in that lecture.
The letter came to pope Joseph Ratzinger through the Vatican nunciature in Amman, to which it was delivered by one of the signatories, prince Ghazi bin Muhammad bin Talal, special advisor to the king of Jordan, Abdullah II.
The complete text of the letter, in English, has been available since Sunday, October 15, on the website of Islamica Magazine, a periodical published in the Unites States that holds the copyright to this document.
...
A first point on which the letter from the 38 Muslims reasons with Benedict XVI concerns sura 2:256 of the Quran: There is no compulsion in religion. The authors of the letter assert that Mohammed formulated this commandment, not when he found himself powerless and under threat which the pope maintains as probable in his lecture but when he was in a position of strength, in Medina. And that he intended by this to appeal to Muslims, whenever they conquered a territory, not to force anothers heart to believe.
...
The fourth point is holy war. The 38 signatories of the letter recall that the word jihad properly means struggle in the way of God, which is not necessarily war. Even Christ used violence when he chased the merchants from the temple. They sum up in this way Islams three authoritative and traditional rules on war:
civilians are not approved targets;
religious creed alone cannot make a person the object of an attack;
Muslims can and must live peacefully beside their neighbors, although the legitimacy of self-defense and the maintenance of sovereignty remain valid principles.
So if some Muslims they write have ignored such well-established teaching on the limits of war, preferring to this utopian dreams where the end justifies the means, they have done so of their own accord and without the sanction of God, His Prophet, or the learned tradition.
Well, it's "dialogue". I wonder if the Vatican's reply will be sent before or after Benedict's trip to Turkey (end of November)?
(via vaticanwatcher.blogspot.com)
Yes, I read the original text at the Islamica Magazine site. While I did so, the Baron's Bloody Borders Project came to mind.
Muslims have zero(0) incentive to hold themselves accountable to infidels. The signers' "Forced Conversion" argument, for instance, is simply unbelievable.
One thing I've perceived from this episode is that for Muslims, Western history from a Western perspective is simply irrelevant. Western philosophy, empiricism, and social constructions have no place within the tent of Islam. What we think as members of Western civilization is seen as an incomprehensible threat to the Islamic order.
Now, Pope Benedict XIV is a Western man to his fingertips - how he responds to this "letter" is going to have profound ramifications will affect the lives of hundreds of millions of people.
#6
I didn't bother to read it. It's just another piece of "blah, blah, blah, we aren't capable of tolerating your religion but we demand you tolerate ours".
Tell it to those who care - but better hurry - their numbers are getting smaller everyday.
Or 38 engaging in the taqiia thingy - you know, I spelled it wroing.
I think I'll leave wroing wrong, too.
Posted by: Bobby ||
10/18/2006 17:38 Comments ||
Top||
#9
What compelled these Muslim scholars to reply at all?
The Pope's divisions. The Pope has said it's OK to question Mohammedanism. They know that if they don't engage in the debate, he'll turn the European population on them. Blair's latest comments and the comments from others have gotten much wider distribution than they otherwise would because the Pope has opened the debate. They are arguing for the minds, if not the hearts of the Euros. Because if the Pope can make the Euros face reality with reason, the game is up for Muddy's boys.
#10
All taqqiya, all the time. In the midst of death fatwas for apostasy, having the audacity to claim that, There is no compulsion in religion. is simply an outright insult.
Islam will say anything, do anything and sign any agreement to buy whatever time it takes to overthrow the West. That is all we should expect and to think otherwise is the height of insanity. We must begin a purge of all Muslims from our lands and ship them straight back to their Islamic hell holes utopias.
IN another sign of predictable cultural capitulation, a check-in employee with British Airways is banned from wearing a small Christian cross but Muslim and Sikh employees may wear turbans and the hijab. Little wonder, then, that Munira Mirza is so refreshing. This young woman, reared as a Muslim, says it's time to scrap multiculturalism and to stop defining people as members of a minority group. Specifically, it's time for our political leaders to stop engaging with Muslims as Muslims. They are citizens; no special rules apply.
Mirza pulls few punches when exposing the West's cultural surrender. We all know the problem. Free speech in the polite West is a little clogged up these days. A Dutch film-maker, Theo van Gogh, is slain for making Submission, a movie critical of Islam. The scriptwriter, Dutch political activist Ayan Hirsi Ali, is forced to live under threat of death. Amateurish Danish cartoons of the prophet Mohammed unleash orchestrated madness across the globe. A nun is killed in Somalia because local Muslims don't like the Pope musing about Muslim attitudes to violence. A French teacher is hiding, under police protection, after describing Mohammed as a "merciless war leader". And so it goes on.
When it's easier to stay quiet for fear of provoking violence from some Muslims or attracting accusations of racism from Western appeasers, then the West is already living under the shadow of Islamic fascism. We're stuck with silent feminists who prefer cultural rights and the burka over women's rights and the silly noise of some on the so-called progressive side of politics marching to the tune of "We're all Hezbollah now".
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
10/18/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[3 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Mirza told The Australian that multiculturalism "encourages groups to claim exclusion in order to get attention. In order to get resources, you have to prove your weakness."
As per John Fonte's transnational progressism, the current dominant western ideology, at least among the Enlightened Elites.
#2
The problem is also that multicultis have elevated multiculturalism above all else including enlightenment values.
So where there is a conflict between the two, enlightenment values lose.
EG: freedom of speech vs 'right' to be offended by mohammad cartoons because it's Islamic and we're different to you.
Muslims win.
EG: right to equality between woman and men vs traditional muslim 'right' to force relatives into marriage/discriminate
winner: muslims. Police Departments everywhere have been trained in 'community' policing including in Australia where police were told to respond to Islamic domestic violence complaints differently, involving the local imam and extended family in the process with 'dialogue'. Great for a battered women! No support for her absolute right to not be beaten there. Don't know if that one came in but it was certainly talked about.
Similarly 'racism' slur immediately ends all public argument in the way 'witch' did hundreds of years ago. It trumps everything and it shouldnt.
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.
At long last, the debate on Islamism as politics, not Islam as religion, is out in the open. Two weeks ago, Jack Straw might have felt he was taking a risk when publishing his now notorious article on the Muslim veil. However, he was pushing at an open door. From across the political spectrum there is now common consent that the old multicultural emperor, before whom generation of politicians have made obeisance, is now a pitiful, naked sight.
Today, television producers, columnists, preachers, and politicians have the pivotal role in deciding how well the West fights. This shift has deep implications. 
It's hard enough to bear the timidity of our civilian leaders - anxious to start wars but without the guts to finish them - but now military leaders have fallen prey to political correctness. Unwilling to accept that war is, by its nature, a savage act and that defeat is immoral, influential officers are arguing for a kinder, gentler approach to our enemies. 
If I hadn't observed Sen. Kerry's incoherent ramblings during the 2004 presidential campaign, I would have been shocked by his indecipherable utterances on "Fox News Sunday" regarding President Bush's foreign policy. 
Senator Reid, the Democratic Party's leader in the Senate, will reimburse his campaign fund for $3,300 that it spent on Christmas bonuses for workers at the Ritz-Carlton luxury condominium where he lives in Washington, the Associated Press reported yesterday. 
