THE US, THE UN AND IRAQ VI

Quote:

Under the medieval caliphate, and again under the Persian and Turkish dynasties, the empire of Islam was the richest, most powerful, most creative, most enlightened region in the world, and for most of the Middle Ages Christendom was on the defensive.

the key words in this paragraph are:

Quote:

Under the medieval caliphate, and again under the Persian and Turkish dynasties, the empire of Islam was the richest, most powerful, most creative, most enlightened region in the world,

.

I doubt Lewis is speaking of Christendom's fate under a military threat, instead I would venture he is speaking about the differences between the role of learning and innovation under Islam and Christianity, respectively. This opinion has also shifted recently. The "myth of peaceful co-existence" that was popular from the 1960s-1980s has been repaced by an acknowledghement that internecine warfare was the norm in most regions, with alliances shifting along power structure lines, rather than strict ideological lines. Similarly, the role of Islam in ressurrecting the tradition of education isn the west has undergone some clarification with the acknowledgement that education never really ceased in the west, and that the exchange of ideas was actually bilateral rather than unilateral.

It is also helpful to balance Lewis' cold war era views with the views of someone who has been active more recently, like David Nirenberg.
I would also avoid Lewis' post 1990 works, which became polemics in support of his friend Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" theory.

Quote:

Perhaps though, my allegations of a Muslims onslaught were a little more...overstated...than they should have been.

You are not the only one to make this mistake. It seems a popular misconception at the moment. I am just a bit surprised to see this view represented by someone who is usually a progressive.

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Quote:

Yes, yes, I am aware the Barbers were pirayes...aware you were refering to the Moors when you cited the Almoravids...ect. My intention, again, was only to prove that there had been "a history of conflict" and that this conflict has involved successfull Muslim incursions into Christian lands for roughly a millenium.

There is a significant amount of debate going on at the moment as to just how "Christian" the Iberian Penninisula was in the 8th century. Certainly Isadore of Seville's frequent polemics against the Jews and the Arian christians would suggest that Orthodoxy held a very precarious grip on the region. In addition, the Celtic Church in Ireland had been planting monasteries in many parts of Europe, including Iberia, for the last century. In addition, Moorish records indicate that many Germanic and Roman cults still had strong support from the populace, many of which were probably Visigothic in origin.
Considering this evidence, might you modifiy your opinion to one of early Islam reaching the limit of its natural expansion?

I would also suggest that the battle of Poitiers was less a Frankish victory, or Muslim defeat, than a mutual stalemate, but that is my own personal opinion from reading various contemporary sources, rather than the version set into print in westrern civ textbooks.

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"Duh" from Wolfowitz

Quote:

IN APRIL OF 2001, Richard Clarke said he raised the specter of Adolf Hitler with Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to explain how serious a threat Al Qaeda was. In his book "Against All Enemies" Clarke said he told Wolfowitz, "sometimes, as with Hitler in `Mein Kampf,' you have to believe that these people will actually do what they say they will do." Clarke said Wolfowitz responded, "I resent any comparison between the Holocaust and this little terrorist in Afghanistan."

This week, in his testimony to the commission on the 9/11 attacks, Wolfowitz said, "I can't recall ever saying anything remotely like that. I don't believe I could have. In fact, I frequently have said something more nearly the opposite of what Clarke attributes to me. I've often used that precise analogy of Hitler and "Mein Kampf" as a reason why we should take threatening rhetoric seriously, particularly in the case of terrorism and Saddam Hussein."

Even as he denied the specific charge, Wolfowitz reconfirmed the general obsession. The administration was so bent on demonizing Saddam Hussein that it may have missed an opportunity to focus on the masterminds of 9/11 who turned commercial flights into weapons of mass destruction.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/03/26/a_fatal_distraction/

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(sidebar)

IronLionZion

I just happened to read your signature. May I impose on you to explain your interpretation of its meaning, and why it holds such importance to you as to be quoted in this forum?

s

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sumac wrote:

(sidebar)
IronLionZion

I just happened to read your signature. May I impose on you to explain your interpretation of its meaning, and why it holds such importance to you as to be quoted in this forum?

I thought it was an amusing (unintentionally) statement from my new best friend, Reality Checker. The fact that 'misandristic' doesn't seem to be word doesn't bother him. To reciprocate with a question of my own: why was that thread locked?

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IronLionZion wrote:

"Muslim hatred [is] cranked up" is roughly the same extent that Christian violence towards Muslims has occured whenever possible.

You made your point clearly and effectively. I agree with it.

Religious fanatics of all persuasions have existed and perpetrated over centuries their murderous evils. These include Christian, and Jewish fanatics, as well as Muslim fanatics. However, we are currently facing in this century Muslim fanatics or jihadists who are a threat to all humanity. They must be forcibly stopped and destroyed before they destroy the rest of us. Such use of force is called war and this current such use of force is WWIII Exclamation

War is a horrible trade off between the worst, appeasing and allowing the killing of millions of innocents, and the least worst, killing both the guilty people using those innocent people as pawns and shields and hostages, plus thousands of innocent people.

Would it be better if we could simply sit down and negotiate away our mutual distrusts and hatreds ? Yes of course that would be better, if it worked. But is doesn't work. The historical evidence is considerable that negotiating with jihadist fanatics, like negotiating with any other fanatics, encourages rather than discourages their hatred and lust for power. These jihadists are like the Nazis and Shintoists of WWII. They'll be pleased to accept whatever we offer them to stop murdering us, but murder us anyway (e.g., Hitler, Arafat).

It's been said that one indication of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result each time. Too many of us repeatedly try appeasing fanatics even to the extreme of blaming ourselves for their fanaticism. We know what works in stopping fanatics. Killing them is what works; appeasing them does not work. Appeasing fanatics enourages them to greater fanaticism; it does not discourage them; it does not dissuade them; it excites them to perpetrate greater horrors in order to appease their self-induced hatred with greater power.

IronLionZion wrote:

Where is the evidence of a Hussien/Al Qaida link?

The evidence exists in the same place as the evidence of almost 3,000 people killed by Terrorists in the US. The evidence exists in the same place as evidence of Hussein aiding and abetting Palestinian jihadists against the Israelies with weapons and monetary rewards to families of jihadists. The evidence exists in the same place as the evidence the US went into Afghanistan. The evidence exist in the same place as evidence the US went into Iraq. The evidence exists in the same place as evidence that there are jihadists murdering innocents in Iraq. The evidence is in the same daily news reports that have brought us all this other news.

Oh, yes the evidence of Hussien/Al Qaida links is overlooked or minimized by the self-appointed, self-annointed, experts. But the evidence is plainly there daily in the news for those capable of a modicum of independent logical thought that enables them to continually draw logically obvious implications. It's said by the self-annointed that all these jihadists in Iraq are new arrivals after Hussein's regime removal. Yeah, right Exclamation

While there are many new arrivals, a large cadre of pre-regime-Saddam aided and abetted jihadists existed and exist in Iraq to welcome and organize the new comers to help them avenge the removal of their former ally, Saddam Hussein. Why are these jiadists killing innocents as well as soldiers in Iraq? They are killing innocents in Iraq as in Palestine and elsewhere to discourage innocents from joining those who want to improve their lives by destroying jihadists everywhere.

The Iraqi jihadists are all newcomers, the self-annointed claim. They think we are all stupid enough to believe that.

IronLionZion wrote:

I never questioned your math. Rather, I noted it is irrelevent, as an unacceptable number - 10,000 is a conservative estimate - of innocent civilians have died in Iraq. The percentages you quote are utterly irrelevent numbers you wrap yourself in to avoid comprehending the human cost of the war.

You are wrong again Exclamation

I think any killing of innocents, whether done by the perpetrators of evil or by those attempting to destroy the perpetrators of evil, is horrible. But it is clear to me, if not to you, that those guilty of the murder of that child are the perpetrators themselves and not the would be destroyers of perpetrators. If not for Saddam and the jihadists, that child would probably be alive and well today. If we had not removed Saddam, that child and many many more would be murdered by the time they reached adulthood, if that long. Crying or Very sad

The jihadists and their aiders and abettors must be destroyed before they destroy the rest of our children.

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Scrat wrote:

nimh wrote:
But if Saddam's Iraq really was a threat to the US, that should surely be easy to prove, no?

No. Go back to September 10th, 2001 and prove that Al Qaeda was a threat to the US. PROVE it. Not knowing what we know today, but knowing what we knew then.

Ehm ... USS Cole mean anything to you? Or the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Africa?

There'd been a crescendo of Al-Qaeda attacks against the US. There hasnt been any attack by Iraq on the US or US citizens in a decade. Now who should the US government have focused on, even before 911?

Scrat wrote:

But let's see if we can agree on this: Saddam's Iraq was more of a threat to the US than was Karadzic's Bosnia.

But then nobody claimed we were attacking the Bosnian Serbs because they were a threat to the US. Noone even tried that spin.

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Now I'll admit to writing "a decade" because I understand that Iraq has been alleged to be involved in the 1993 WTC bombing. I've also read that this theory has been largely discredited by anti-terrorist experts. But since I dont know where I read which of the above and I'm really not knowledgeable enough about it to claim to know one way or another, I bypassed it. And reasonably so, I'd say. Al-Qaeda had been on a crescending ("crescending"?) campaign of violence against US targets even in the three years directly preceding 9/11. Iraq hadnt been attacked in at least a decade or longer (depending on your take of the 1993 attack). Whence, then, the obsession with Saddam even the very days after another enemy perpetrated the largest single direct attack on the US in half a century or longer?

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Iraq taught us a valuble lesson: when a dictatorial nation funds terrorism and 15 of its citizens crash planes into the World Trade Center, America will be there to to defend justice and freedom by invading the country next to it.

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Has anyone been keeping track of the accounting project happening in Iraq? It seems that in order to get any contracts in Iraq, a contractor had to have a lot of kickbacks that went directly to Saddam and allowed him to get around the oil-for-food embargo's.

It seems France and Russia were the leading contracters in this process.

This was on the radio last night, so I do not have a link handy. Anyone else hear about this?

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McGentrix wrote:

Has anyone been keeping track of the accounting project happening in Iraq? It seems that in order to get any contracts in Iraq, a contractor had to have a lot of kickbacks that went directly to Saddam and allowed him to get around the oil-for-food embargo's.

It seems France and Russia were the leading contracters in this process.

This was on the radio last night, so I do not have a link handy. Anyone else hear about this?

I don't think that this is news to anyone. Nor is it news that the same system is in place, except in this case kickbacks are going to people asssociated with the Bush administration, as well as to membrrs of the IRC.

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ican711nm wrote:

IronLionZion wrote:
Where is the evidence of a Hussien/Al Qaida link?

The evidence exists in the same place as the evidence of almost 3,000 people killed by Terrorists in the US. [..] The evidence exists in the same place as the evidence the US went into Afghanistan. The evidence exist in the same place as evidence the US went into Iraq.

That doesnt even make sense grammatically, I think, let alone logically.

Even GWB has admitted that there is no evidence for a Saddam/911 link.

ican711nm wrote:

If we had not removed Saddam, that child and many many more would be murdered by the time they reached adulthood, if that long.

Now I dont want to belittle Saddam's atrocities, but ... mass murder of children? Mass murder, in fact, of such a scope that we can safely assume that this child, too, would have been murdered before reaching adulthood?

You gotta wonder how, after some 25 years of Saddam dictatorship, plus another 11 years in which, as vice-president, he was responsible for the secret police, there are still 24,6 million Iraqis alive today.

(That's 2 million more than in 2000, when, according to the CIA, Iraqi life expectancy was 66,5 years).

ican711nm wrote:

While there are many new arrivals, a large cadre of pre-regime-Saddam aided and abetted jihadists existed and exist in Iraq to welcome and organize the new comers to help them avenge the removal of their former ally, Saddam Hussein.

You haven't got any credible source or evidence for that, do you. Just the stuff that's "plainly there daily in the news for those capable of a modicum of independent logical thought", I guess. Funny how there's practically noone outside the American supporters of George Bush who is capable of such a "modicum of independent logical thought", apparently.

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Nimh, you're not suggesting that Saddam had no links to terror organizations or is not guilty of mass murders, are you?

I just want to be clear about this as it would be out of character for you.

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IronLionZion wrote:

Iraq taught us a valuble lesson: when a dictatorial nation funds terrorism and 15 of its citizens crash planes into the World Trade Center, America will be there to to defend justice and freedom by invading the country next to it.

lol

btw, damn ... are you people typing all those Bernard Lewis quotes over into your computer? Or is there some "concise Bernard Lewis online"? ;-)

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nimh - Saddam had tried to have Bush Sr. assassinated. Is that not terrorism against the US? The thing is, people have argued that just because Saddam did that then doesn't mean we needed to fear him now. Well, applying the same standard to Al Qaeda, the fact that they had attacked us previously shouldn't constitute proof that they remained a threat.

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Scrat wrote:

nimh - Saddam had tried to have Bush Sr. assassinated. Is that not terrorism against the US?

Saddam is alleged to have tried this but it falls outside of the time frame nimh was speaking of.

That's an even older allegation.

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McGentrix wrote:

Nimh, you're not suggesting that Saddam had no links to terror organizations or is not guilty of mass murders, are you?

I just want to be clear about this as it would be out of character for you.

No, I'm not - why, did you see me write that anywhere?

I havent seen much convincing evidence of a Saddam link to Al-Qaeda, though. The fact that those who believe in it keep coming back to the long irrelevant Atta/Prague link, for example, doesnt greatly help. In long discussions with Timber, he finally showed me that someone, of whom we know that at a later time, he was (or became) an Al-Qaeda prominent, once had a crucial operation in a Iraqi hospital, suggesting some kind of link of privilege. Then again, the guy was largely seen as something of a terror freewheeler, a self-made man so to say, so we dont know in reference to what contact or acts he got that single privilege. In any case, it still doesnt make for much of a convincing argument about any long-standing tie or co-operation.

I tend to think that if even the conservatives here cant do better than come up with Atta/Prague and this guy's operation, the full scope of the co-operation can't have been anywhere near the scope of Al-Qaeda's ties to, say, Saudi-Arabia or other regimes in the region ... and thus provides barely a justification for attacking Iraq.

And there is no evidence for a Saddam/911 link, period. The only thing of note I've seen yet was when the Weekly Standard (I believe) came up with a leaked collection of raw intelligence data that suggested all kinds of links that could have been there. But the administration had it be known that this was indeed raw data - ergo, unchecked , unconfirmed, unproven. Now you have a tendency to state your belief in the government's competence, so I'm sure you'll agree that if there had been anything in there that would have still been left standing after checking it and confirming it, we would have known by now.

As for mass murder, yes, Saddam committed mass murder. Ethnic mass murder in fact, against the Kurds, back in 1987-89. You know the story: it didnt stop Bush Sr from lending Saddam another billion dollars afterwards. He vetoed a Congress resolution condemning it and urging sanctions, in fact. That would have been a prime time to intervene, imho. Saddam was thereafter again guilty of mass murder, against the Shi'ites, directly after the Gulf War. But since? His was a gruesome dictatorship, that routinely chucked dissidents and those mistaken for dissidents in the torture jails. But homeboy here is trying to make out like we're talking Pol Pot here - mass slaughter of children, an average Iraqi child wouldnt have seen his 18th birthday if we hadnt intervened ... that is the stuff of sheer ridicule.

There are many countries as harshly dictatorial as Saddam's in the world, even if fortunately not as many as there used to be. We can't invade all of them. If we want to salvage the concept of "humanitarian intervention" at all, we have to somehow keep a benchmark of acute triggers in place - attempted genocide, mass deportation of entire peoples, occupation of other countries - otherwise the whole concept will sink in the confusions and abuses of power politics. Call that cynical if you like.

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Bravo nimh.

Although it is somewhat wasted on McGentrix.

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Oh, no, it was quite informative. I asked because unlike posters like your self, ILZ, Nimh is well spoken, backs up his claims and rarely, if ever, resorts to posts like yours.

I had read something more into one of his posts and he clarified for me.

*edited to hide my embarrassment* Embarrassed

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McGentrix wrote:

I had read something more into one of her posts and she clarified for me.

Which, in itself, is a testament to your abysmal reading comprehension, hence my comment that you have consistantly demonstrated that you are not worth the effort.

Toodles.

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THE US, THE UN AND IRAQ VI

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