Original Article: Renegade Cleric Launches Fresh Verbal Attack on U.S.
Note from Robert Spencer:
This news from Fallujah via Scotsman.com. The U.S. Marines, one of world's most feared
fighting forces and part of history's most impressively equipped military , could have easily leveled
this mosque and this city, but did not.
Ethelred Note:Below is not only Hugh's post, but further give and take
Why are marines in Fallujah? Why are there soldiers in Iraq at all
at this point, now that the regime has been defanged? We are there,
we are told, to bring "democracy" to Iraq, a place riven by tribalism,
by sectarian and ethnic differences. It is possibly the last place in the
world where a democratic nation-state can be put together -- or rather, it
can be, over many decades, if we make it our American project, akin
to a Science Project in high school, our weekend hobby into which we
keep pouring men, money (huge sums, which of course the Iraqis will be
happy to pocket), and our attention -- while the Jihad will continue all
about us, everywhere else in the world. We have many other things to
focus on, including winning back the self-corrupted "Euro-Arab Dialogue" countries of Western Europe
(saving France from itself will take some doing -- vaste programme, monsieur!), or
seizing the southern Sudan (it would not take much, and could help to
fortify black Christian Africans from the onslaught of Arab Islam, as well as
showing that we are quite capable of taking away from dar al-Islam the
territory it had seized, and the blacks it thought it could so easily
reduce to the worst dhimmitude). We can end foreign aid to all Muslim
states, but especially to Egypt, that malevolent center of anti-Americanism (a few days
after leaving Washington, Mubarak, then in Paris delivered himself of a violent attack
on the United States--he apparently thinks he can get away with anything). Ditto
the unpleasant little king Abdullah of Jordan, who runs a client state that
unfortunately, gets to keep all the American money without having ever to behave
like a client. Time to cut the pursestrings. Finally, if it is at
all feasible, shoot down or otherwise put out of effective operation the ARABSAT
which makes murderous propaganda from Al-Jazeera and suchlike possible. Deny Al Qaeda and
company their major weapon -- propaganda. Will the Arabs shriek to high heaven?
Of course they will. So what? Once it is clear that the war
of self-defense is one a tous azimuths, that there is an end to
American turning-the-other-cheek and sweetness-and-light (which, until now, has been the policy), and that
the constraints, for example, on a wide range of policies (including a complete
ban on Arab leaders being able to send their children to the West
for education, or counting on Western medical care -- they cannot be allowed
to cherry-pick what they take from the West, while they make our own
lives much more unpleasant, difficult, expensive, and dangerous. And anyone who gives it
a week's thought can no doubt come up with many ways to defeat
the Jihad, or limit its impact, other than this quixotic project of making
Iraq something it never has been, and is the most unlikely candidate for
ever being.
The Light-Unto-the-Muslim-Nations Project, born of insufficient attention to Islam (no, Bernard Lewis is
not the last word on Islam; he is keenly aware of, and disinclined
to offend, Muslim colleagues, friends, and patrons such as Prince Hassan; he has
consistently misunderstood the significance of dhimmitude, and minimized its harshness; he has also
sanitized the history of modern Iraq, and attempted to give the Hashemite Feisal
a retroactive glow that is false, perhaps to help the candidacy of that
same Prince Hassan (who, honey-tongued and false as he is, is a real
menace in the correct understanding of Islam -- a "dialogue of civilisatons" man
who will not tell the truth about Islam). Lewis, who was a great
promoter of the Oslo Accords (and now angrily admits it, but will not
discuss the reasons for his folly) has been taken as the fount of
all wisdom. This is partly understandable. Those who have attacked him, such as
the late Edward Said and the still-present John Esposito, are poor scholars, propagandists,
apologists. One naturally wants to support those they attack -- and Lewis is
their bete noire. Further, he is, in a sense, the only one left
standing. Kedourie has died. J. B. Kelly and A. K. S. Lambton --
neither of whom share Lewis' need to be liked, or to simultaneously address
both an Infidel and a Muslim audience (which fatally vitiates, at key moments,
that which Lewis says). One still does not know to what degree the
folly of the "democracy in Iraq" project is owed to Lewis, but those
who were completely behind the smashing of Saddam, and especially of his military
power, and then for a quick withdrawal to leave Iraq to whatever the
people in it could make of it, have been vindicated. It is through
chaos and confusion and collapse, and only thus, that within the Muslim world
there will be a slow recognition that Islam itself is the problem, not
the solution, that Islam itself is the political, economic, moral, and intellectual failure
that, without Western foreign aid or OPEC money, it would be seen to
be. And without de-islamization (that is, constraint on Islam, not an impossible-to-attain change
in the texts of Qur'an or hadith) no "democracy" will ultimately be possible,
for whatever such "democracy" is worth -- for it is not self-evident, and
indeed contradicted by history, to believe that "democracy" in Muslim countries will render
them any less hostile to the Infidels. If the quasi-democracy of Turkey is
less hostile, that is because that democracy only came after thirty years of
Kemalism under Ataturk and then Inonu; it was only in the early 1950s
that something akin to democracy arrived; it remains forever shaky, for the vigilance
of the secularists cannot let up for one minute.
The above post evokes this response:
Hey Hugh! Wise up! If we weren't still in IZ without military might,
there would be even more chaos with the Iranian-backed Shia kickin' it up
with the millions of petro-Rials being pumped in from Tehran to support Sadr
and his group of thugs!
Then you have the non-attributable Sunni terrorist threat in the triangle around Fallujah.
I bet ol' Zaqawi is holed-up somewhere in the vicinty, too, eh?!
So, yes we are there for the oil...to protect and keep it from
being used and abused by those who would...additionally, yeah, we have a vested
interest in positioning. Wedged in between IR and Sy we could go in
any...and I mean any...direction to find non-friends. Is that a euphamism for foe?
Imagine that! So, yeah the long term goals are valid but we need
more guns...eh, it's an American thing! You wouldn't understand.
As always, history is written by the conquerers...but past conquerers did not give
access to the enemy into their own camp...yup, al Jazeira! They interpret it
the way they want, as does any news service...all have a vested interests
and alterior motives to persue - religious, economic or otherwise!
So, get off yer high-horse and see the merde for what it is...sometimes
a cigar is just a cigar!
Ciao! Chico!
Posted by: Non-Dhimmi Marine at April 30, 2004 01:58 PM
Non-Dhimmi Marine:
1)I am an American citizen.
I am following events in Iraq closely. America has not "failed"; the
Iraqis have failed -- failed to exhibit any gratitude, any decency, or anything
like civilized behavior. Some simply hate us; others just want to pocket everything
we do for them, with their "wake-me-when-it's-over" attitude. They have not exactly earned
our respect or affection. You can imagine my reaction whenever I see one
of those frenzied or animated mobs dancing around a burnt American corpse or
a burnt Humvee.
3) Divide and conquer is the oldest principle of war. You mention the
Iranian Shi'a helping "Sadr and his thugs" -- I worry that in worrying
about the essentially trivial Sadr, we are ignoring the need to bomb Iran's
nuclear installations, which in turn, would help in the overthrow of the Iranian
regime. Sadr is trivial.
4) in Iraq, Islam is the problem. "Democracy" or something like the Kemalist
version, can come only once Islam has been thoroughly tamed. It cannot be
done by Infidels. But, by leaving Iraq to its own devices -- and
chaos and confusion there, and inter-ethnic strife, are not to be deplored or
prevented by the United States, for properly handled, they will work to our
advantage. It is crazy to expend men, materiel, money, and political capital keeping
together three former Ottoman vilayets, in spending tens of billions on people who,
save for the Chaldeans and, to a lesser extent, the Kurds, do not
wish us well. Electricity grids, roads, schools, hospitals all rebuilt, courtesy of American
taxpayers -- why should we? What good will that do in limiting the
Jihad? How does that cut down on the madrasas and mosques that everywhere
represent a threat to all Infidels?
5) You are a Marine, I take it from your email. There are
plenty of things better than keep Iraq together (let it dissolve--as long as
it is no military threat, let it become like Somalia today -- the
only thing to worry about is HOW we leave it to its own
mess, which is to say -- a departure MUST be accompanied by a
series of actions to show that the Americans understand that the world-wide Jihad
is the problem, including demographic conquest of Europe, the building of mosques and
madrasas, the spreading subjugation of non-Muslims within Muslim-dominated countries, and so on.
5,000 Marines could seize southern Sudan, protect the non-Muslim black population that has
suffered 20 years, and 2 million victims, of Arab Muslim genocide. The oil
wealth is in the south. Split off into an independent country, the southern
Sudan would be a place that would demonstrate American humanitarian intevention (the Arabs
can't really claim that they have some kind of divine right to kill
the black non-Muslims in the south, can they?) It would encourage the Christians
of East and West Africa, against the steady encroachments of Islam. It would
be economically self-sustaining, given the oil wealth. It could be a real base
for the United States, one which could help it, for example, should it
need to prevent Egypt from attacking Ethiopia over the latter's diversion of Nile
waters; it would also be close enough to threaten Saudi Arabia, should that
country become even more hostile and unpleasant, if such were possible, to non-Muslims than it is.
Think about that. And then ask your commanders to ask Washington to see
if they can figure out a way to shoot the Arab satellite out
of the sky, or otherwise put it out of commission.
A further response:
I agree Hugh. We're throwing good money after bad in Iraq. Iran is
our greatest threat--we cannot allow the Iranians to possess a nuclear weapon.
What's your thoughts on splitting Iraq into thirds? Would it work?
It worked for ancient Gaul.
When you write "work" I assume you mean work for American national interests.
If a Kurdistan in the north were to be satisfied with taking territory
from Syria and Iran, this would eat into countries we do not, and
should not, wish well. Turkey, or rather "Kemalist" Turkey, does require some solicitude,
but only so long as it remains secular and there is no Erdogan-wavering.
And if the Shi'a and Sunni get along, fine. If they don't, perhaps
even better. Was the Iran-Iraq war a good thing, or a bad thing,
from the viewpoint of Infidels? Surely it was a good thing, and to
the extent that Iran were to help Iraqi Shi'a (not at all certain,
given the low prestige of Islam in Iran now), and the Gulf Arabs
or even the Alawi military dictatorship in Syria (in an attempt to prove
that the Alawis are full-fledged Muslims) coming in to help the Sunnis --
is that, from the viewpoint of American national interests, desirable or undesirable?
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