52 Christians were killed in a Baghdad cathedral. The massacre began when al-Qaeda "militants" wearing suicide vests and armed with grenades attacked the Iraqi stock exchange before turning their attention to the church. Whom are these people fighting? Capitalist speculators? Iraqi Christians? Or makes no difference?
36 comments:
There must be an entire subculture in Iraq dedicated to mayhem and mass murder. I'm glad we do not have to deal with these animals, and only with the relatively civilized Palestinians.
It's not a SUBculture.
They are fighting against modernity and the West. They want to bring the world back to the Dark Ages. All "Western" institutions are their target.
K
But there is a stock exchange in Saudia too. Trade (and caravan robbing) is allowed in the Quran. And Christians are supposed to be tolerated. These al Qaeda fellows must be mighty confused.
The Koran (not unlike the Torah) contains all sorts of vague and contradictory edicts which can be interpreted in different ways...you and I with our uncovered heads are Jews and so are the Haredi in Mea Shearim. Same thing is true in Islam, except that Islamic extremists are more violent - Jews of all stripes always "choose life" as they are commanded. Certain parts of Islam are a death cult and they are even proud of this.
K
>Jews of all stripes always "choose life" as they are commanded.
Not always in history. I'm thinking of the sicarii.
As far as the AQ guys are concerned, their approach makes sense. You can't have an Islamic society coexisting with satellite TV with Lady Gaga/the internet with every kind of porn imaginable. The existence of an independent West guarantees these things will continue to be available and even more appealing to the average Yusuf. Since it is unimaginable at this stage that the Islamic world, even united, could win against the West in a conventional conflict, the only strategy available to those desiring an Islamic state is to use a combination of asymmetric warfare (terrorism) and soft power (a la CAIR) to enervate their enemies, while trying to come to power in the Muslim countries through democratic means like Erdogan did.
They are on a roll. They know that very few people will actually die to save the West, and Western politicians will always take the money.
This is their big chance in history to control, infiltrate and replace the West.
Anon.
The Christians were living under the radar while Saddam was around. It may not have been much but they had some security being the group least likely to harm the Tikkriti clan. Since the 1990s and possibly earlier wherever American arms go, Christians suffer. I have to say that all GWB's war succeeded in doing is to entrench the power of Iran. The Democrats got that much correct.
Anon-plenty of people are willing to die to save the West, and the politicians are more about getting re-elected than they are about receiving some mythical CAIR funding. The problem is inherent in the dominant political narrative of the West (Progressive Post-Christianity,) with no competition in sight.
Ivan-this is kind of true. Ditto the Yezidis. Of course, we could have easily brought peace and stability to Iraq within the first year or two of occupation, but...see above re: narrative. We don't want to be colonialists; oh, no! We want the Iraqis to freely, of their own will, decide to build a post-Muslim Progressive society. Just like us. We want them to drive their Subaru Outbacks to Whole Foods and so forth.
B, from where I'm sitting I see a lot of our elite promoting the narcisso-materialist replacement for Christianity; borrow and spend, faux-entitlements, no future orientation, outgroup altruism, suppression of dissent, the whole ugly package.
I am not optimistic.
Ordinary people are not clever enough to resist the siren call of clever mountebanks pushing something for nothing until it really hits the fan.
Which arguably, in the USA, it just has.
Anon.
B, the disparity in firepower and combat ability between the US and Iraq meant that the Iraqi Army could be taken apart by a couple of divisions. That was all the Americans were aiming for, topple Saddam and pray that in his wake a kinder, gentler Iraq would evolve. Among other things this was to be a demonstration that Iraqi moms and dads desired the same things as the Americans. At the root of this misadventure is the inability or more likely unwillingness to acknowledge that bloodthirsty militant Islam rather than doe-eyed Sufi-Goofy mysticism is the doctrinally purer form of Islam. Iman Bush was sold a bill of goods by the roving DC Muslim set.
B, the Iraqis should be able to choose the vehicles they drive to Whole Foods of their own free will, but one would hope that with the right government incentives to guide them, they could be persuaded to buy Priuses.
Anon - today is election day. We'll see how dumb the American people really are or whether they are beginning to realize the bankruptcy of the left-liberal scheme.
Ivan - Americans are fundamentally nice people who believe that everyone else is like them too, so they really didn't have a good understanding going in of what wild animals the Iraqis were. Also, as B says, PC attitudes so clouded our minds that we were incapable of running an occupation the way we did against the Japs and Germans. In those days we were racist, sexist, imposed our culture, blah, blah, and the occupation went smoothly and Japan and Germany emerged strong and peaceful. The US has really lost the thread. The Empire State Bldg was built in 1 year - the WTC site is still a hole in the ground 9 yrs later.
K
K, there enough Americans who haven't lost the plot as far as Islam is concerned. As you say Americans are a kind and forgiving people, but they are keeping the powder dry for some threshold to be crossed. GWB quite deliberately did not want to turn war on Terror into a war on Islam. Unfortunately all too many Muslims don't realise it.
"keeping the powder dry for some threshold to be crossed."
3,000 dead in Lower Manhattan was not enough? Do they have to nuke LA?
K
To be fair apart from unwittingly hosting peripatetic jihadis, Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11.
There was no real causus belli in Iraq. Violations of airspace exclusion zones do not merit killing all their leaders and converting the people to Christianity a la Ann Coulter.
>Americans are fundamentally nice people who believe that everyone else is like them too
Oh, hell, fuck, no. Americans have always been willing to incinerate enemy civilians given the proper propaganda incentive. Those peace-loving hippies were discussing how many people they would have to send to the camps when they took power at the same time as they were protesting against the Vietnam war. We haven't changed. The discourse has.
Not to refight an old fight, but even without WMD, Al Qaeda, whatever, there was ample reason to get rid of Saddam - he was a bad man and the job of the US as the policeman of the world (because no one else will do it) is to get rid of bad men. This is a lesson to all future bad men - try this and someday you'll get a rope around your neck too. Now just as capital punishment does not prevent all murders, this does not work 100% either but it definitely has a deterrent effect.
Our mistake was not in getting rid of Saddam but in having absolutely no plan for a post-Saddam Iraq and no willingness nor the cultural confidence to run a proper occupation. We did not need to convert the Iraqis to Christianity - we didn't try to do this in Japan. But when we occupied Japan our brains were not yet muddled by multi-cultural crap and we, without any shame, set out to remake Japan along American lines, which were, we thought, without any post-modern irony, a fine role model for anyone to follow. If they followed our model, they would grow rich and peaceful and prosperous. Oddly enough, this turned out to be true.
Once upon a time, when a local explained to a British officer in India that it was the local custom to throw widows onto the funeral pyre of their husbands, the British officer did not not sympathetically and say that while this was different than the English custom it was neither better nor worse. Instead he said that it was the English custom to shoot people who participated in such things. Upon learning this, it turned out that the Indians were not so wedded to this custom after all.
K
Since no one else wants to be the health inspector of the world or its postmaster, should we do that, too? Why should there even be a policeman of the world?
ANY Arab leader is going to be a bad man by our standards. The question is merely whether we choose to care.
Policeman of the world is not a job that the US chose - it was thrust upon us in two world wars and as a consequence of Europe's moral and economic collapse. The world (especially today's shrunken world where a FedEx package from Yemen is only a few hours away from Chicago) needs a policeman (and a health inspector) because the epidemic that starts in Somalia will be South Bend too pretty soon. It used to be that the US sat behind two giant moats called the Atlantic and Pacific and we could more or less ignore the rest of the world, but that day is long over.
K
When you look at the Progressive line of thinking of which Woodrow Wilson was a prime representative, it becomes obvious that the world's policeman is something we specifically got involved in those two wars to be. In fact, rather than using the Atlantic and Pacific as a moat, we spent the first half of the 20th century fucking with people across the latter, culminating with Japan, whose oil imports we embargoed, launching Pearl Harbor.
As far as FedEx packages from Yemen are concerned, the solution is simple-don't order shit from Yemen. Or, if you absolutely, positively need your khat, order it through a reputable shipper that checks it for unwanted additions.
Epidemiologically, there is NO value added by our role as the world's policeman. The Black Plague spread handily from the steppes of Inner Asia to London via international war and trade routes-how is it possible to stop something similar by having hundreds of thousands of Americans deployed to Afghanistan and rotating home constantly?
US has always swung like a pendulum between isolationism and foreign involvement. We were in a relatively isolationist phase up until 9/11 - we really didn't give a shit about al Qaeda - most people had never even heard of al Qaeda, until they came to us. Before 9/11, we were content to "contain" Saddam - after 9/11 we were no longer willing to take that chance. So once Osama bin Laden gets to hell to join Saddam, Saddam can "thank" him.
Our legs are a pendulum-like device, but they move us in a specific direction when we use them to walk. Our isolationism in the 1990s was much more interventionist than our most interventionist interventionism in the 1890s.
Our legs are more like a spring buffer. We walk falling ahead and our legs stop us and propel us ahead.
We in Israel need a strong America with a strong President. Patrolling the seas and punishing the evildoers.
I must object: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walking
http://books.google.com/books?id=9CcDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA58&lpg=PA58&dq=movie+cameras+our+legs+are+pendulums&source=bl&ots=GM0R0arFce&sig=btyE8i1SpL5Ax5K20A3xYBJ1JQA&hl=en&ei=UtrSTLGVE5GisQOR4rzqCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false
http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=397389
Our legs ARE pendulums.
As far as Israel needing a strong US-the USG should exist to serve the needs of the American people. Not those of Israel. But, if it's any consolation, I'm sure that if we took our thumbs off both sides of the Middle East scale, you guys would be doing better vs. your neighbors.
B, this is a false dichotomy - Israel and the US can have a mutually beneficial relationship where each serves the interests of the other. The American people do get a benefit from having a stable democracy as an ally in the heart of the Middle East. It may yet be that Israel will do America's dirty work for it by taking out Iran's nuclear capability.
K
K,
A mutually beneficial relationship with such a disbalance of power is one of patron/client. Is this something we should strive for? What benefit does having a stable democracy in the ME give us? As far as other countries doing our dirty work-I'm not a huge fan. How is Israel taking out Iran's nuclear capability going to help us, anyway? Iran is not going to launch on us. Not that I would mind the Israelis bombing Natanz-it just isn't a concern of mine as an American. Furthermore, since the issue is more emotional than strategical (you don't need centrifuges to make a dirty bomb or other WMD's, and no first strike capability Iran will ever realistically develop will stop us from wiping them off the face of the earth in retaliation,) where does this thinking stop? Should we seek somebody to do our dirty work to any country that isn't a fan of ours and has the potential to develop dirty bombs, sarin gas, etc.? This is circular reasoning, anyway.
So you are saying no relationship - a strict neutrality with no preference between Israel and Iran is in America's best interest if we look at this coldly? I disagree. The US is not Switzerland, it is the keystone of the world order and the leading empire of our day (at least for now). A "hands-off" approach would lead to disaster in the long run. The alternative to the current system is not some airy fairy land where each nation tends its own garden in peace and neutrality but a dark ages filled with chaos until a much more ruthless power takes the reins. Power abhors a vacuum.
K
I am saying that I would prefer neutrality a la George Washington. If Israel wants to trade us something-hey, great! A situation where Israel is dependent on us and we dictate its policies (or do you think that they just brought Arafat back from Tunisia for internal reasons) strikes me as distasteful. I also see no reason for us to give Israel and its best friends and neighbors like Egypt and Saudi huge amounts of aid every year, or to concern ourselves with their internal policies and foreign relations. As far as the US being the keystone of world order and the leading empire of our day-here, you are arguing that the US should be the world's policeman because it is the world's policeman.
I see no sign of China wishing to take on this mantle-their foreign policy seems to be strictly pragmatic. Who else is going to take on the Ring if we take it off? France? The DRC?
All this, of course, is strictly academic. The people who maintain the current policy and are in charge of the narrative are the ones whose financial existence depends on it-the NGOs, think tanks, lobbies and pundits are not going to declare themselves unnecessary any time soon.
If the US is to be the guarantor of world peace in general and the existence of Israel in particular, it follows that the health and vitality of the US should be a matter of concern to all of us in general, and to Israelis and US Jewry most particularly.
Anon.
It certainly is. Israel is America's most fervorous and faithful ally. Coming from Latin America, where anti-Americanism (see Hugo Chavez and fellow dictators) is rampant, it is always amazing that you can hear not one negative word in Israel about America - not from the Israeli left and certainly not from the right.
Anon,
That's the whole point-I don't think that it's the US' place to be the guarantor of "world peace in general." I don't think that such a thing is even possible. As far as Israel's existence-while I of course strongly desire Israel's continuing existence as an independent state, being Jewish, at the same time I do not see anything in the US Constitution that puts the US in the role of that existence's guarantor. Israel can handle any conventional threat in the region on its own, and as far as the unconventional ones-you really think that Obama would nuke Iran over a strike on Israel?
J-without this partnership, Arafat would have died in Tunisia instead of coming back to start the second Intifada. If they didn't have the assurance that the US would step in as a referee and break up the fight, Hezballah probably wouldn't have started the latest war. And so on.
B, it is interesting to speculate whether "Obama" would strike Iran, either pre-emptively or after an Iranian first strike on Israel.
Firstly, I don't think Obama would actually be the one making the decisions, given the sudden need for an adult in the White House. Obama himself, I suspect, if left in situ, would actually strike against Israel, in order to prevent the Israeli retaliation which would incinerate many of his good friends in the Middle East.
That aside, I think the US would retaliate, since failure to do so would unleash Pakistan against India, North Korea against South Korea and China against Taiwan, and the voters against whoever made the decision in the US; and may in fact lead to a coup d'etat in the US.
Whether that retaliation would be nuclear is another question, but it would be massive and categorically end the regime in Teheran. But this would, by that time, be cold comfort in Israel which is a geographically small place, however big its heart.
Prevention is the only strategy that makes sense and if one lets things deteriorate to the extent that the only preventative option is a pre-emptive physical strike of some sort, then one has failed. The only posture, IMHO, that will prevent things getting to this point, is to strike immense fear in one's adversaries, and frankly, the narcissistic child-Obama and his pinko constituency are the last people on earth to strike that sort of fear in anybody.
Now don't ya miss Nixon?
Anon.
A few days ago I saw a bumper sticker that looked like a normal presidential campaign bumper sticker but said Nixon/Agnew.
I would swap Nixon for this clown in a heartbeat.
Agnew, however, I never really warmed to.
Anon.
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