THE MESOPOTAMIAN
TO BRING ONE MORE IRAQI VOICE OF THE SILENT MAJORITY TO THE ATTENTION OF THE WORLD
Sunday, August 14, 2005
PAJAMA WAR GAMES
Hi,
Today is the beginning of another working weak in the year of 2005 of our Lord, as a chronicler of old might have said. I am a busy man, yet I cannot help stopping everything to write this, which means that I think it is more important than even the struggle for daily bread.
I do believe that the modern advanced nations, such as the U.S.A. employ people and resources to investigate scenarios on conflicts and wars as part of the effort of Defense and National Security work. So let us try this game in our own humble way and share it with others thanks to this wonderful democratizing invention of the Internet and blogging, the ordinary mans’ medium of expression.
The game that we are going to play is about our situation in Iraq, as you might have expected. But I would like to say that it seems to me that we don’t really need computers and strategy wizards to play this game as the predictions and permutations are really quite limited and mostly quite obvious. Needless to say that it is a game, so the starting positions are hypothetical and may or may not take place in reality.
So here we go:
Day 1: The American and other Multinational forces have almost completed withdrawing hastily, the decision having been taken by the U.S. administration to “cut and run” as it is said.
Day 2: The Anbar province - whole formations of Saddam’s previous organizations emerge from their holes and take control of the streets: Presidential Guards, Mukhabarat, Fedayeen Saddam, General Security, Private Security, Military intelligence, Party Units, etc. etc. ; in addition to Al -Qaida and various assortments of “Isalamists”. The whole of the province falls very quickly even before the last American soldier leaves Baghdad. The takeover takes place without any serious resistance apart from assassinations and murder of all those who are not entirely to the taste of the abovementioned. This takeover takes place over the entire western region right down to Abu Ghraib and Ghazaliya and other suburbs in Baghdad. Some fighting takes place in certain areas of Al-Anbar, but those tribes who were considered insufficiently hostile to the Americans and their friends, are quickly subdued with much bloodshed. In short the regime that is going to take over the country quickly takes shape in this region.
Other Parts of the Sunni Triangle: Similar situation develops in other areas such as Mosul, Tikrit, Sammara etc. in the North but with varying degrees of resistance and bloodshed, however the balance of force is in favor of the “insurgents”.
Diala Province: In the east considerable fighting and sectarian bloodshed, all civil services are disrupted and fighting continues.
South of Iraq: Badr Brigades, the Mahdi Army and various assortments of armed groups take to the streets and considerable fighting takes place near the southern approaches to Baghdad (the triangle of Death Latifya-Usufiya-Mahmodiya etc.) between Shiaa and Sunni groups, without any definite results initially.
Baghdad: All the middle class new neighborhoods start to be taken over by various armed groups with much looting and arson. This will be directly influenced by the speed of the U.S. army withdrawal; in particular the western part of Baghdad starting from Abu Ghraib right down to the up-scale Mansur Area.
The Mahdi Army and other Shiaa militias and tribal armed groups appear in the streets of Sadr City, Kadimiya and other neighborhoods with clear Shiaa majorities. In other mixed areas street fighting, looting ravaging and murder of families in their houses takes place on a large scale under various pretexes..Those who are weak and unarmed suffer most.
The little of electricity, water supply, sewerage and other municipal services, that there is comes to a complete halt. All shops, markets etc are closed and start to be looted.
Day 3:
The well defined main provincial areas, from the sectarian point of view, have quickly come under control of the various sectarian forces, Sunni ones in the Sunni areas and Shiaa in the Shiaa regions, and the most dangerous and destructive civil war in the history of Iraq has formally started, a war that will continue for many years and bring the country to a state worse than what followed the Mongol Invasion of Hollako in the 13th century. Ethnic and sectarian cleansing is going on within these areas with large scale movements of refugees from the various regions in all directions.
Days 4,5,6 etc.; and subsequent weeks, months and years.
It has become clear to everybody that the U.S. and other western powers are not going to come back, therefore the arena is free for all, so to speak. The Kurds withdraw into their mountainous region, and then decide to make a dash on Kirkuk. Fierce fighting erupts in and around Kirkuk, but the Kurds, being better organized and determined; initially succeed in controlling the town. Turkey cannot allow that so the Turkish army pours in from the North and the war starts between the Kurds and the Turks. The Turkish army advances quickly on Kirkuk through Mosul and after very bloody battles wrests control from the Kurds in the city. The Kurds retreat to the Mountains and start a classic guerilla war against the Turks. Turkey in effect occupies most of Northern Iraq.
Meanwhile vicious sectarian battles between Shiaa and Sunnis rage in and around Baghdad with tremendous bloodshed and huge numbers of civilians caught up in the fighting. Due to shut down of water supply the population of Baghdad starts to become desperate, and is under serious threat of thirst, so they leave their houses and flock to rivers, all that in the middle of raging battles in the streets. Organized gangs go around peoples’ homes checking identities and murdering whole families just because they happen to be Shiaa, Christian or Kurd (this is already actually happening, by the way, in a low key way in some areas).
Initially, the Sunni forces score some successes against the less organized and less experienced Shiaa forces in the Baghdad zone and south of it, despite the fierceness and carelessness about death of the latter. Hard pressed and threatened with extinction and having been abandoned by the West, the Shiaa’s have no other alternative but to turn towards the Iranians for protection. Iranian Revolutionary Guards start to pour in tens of thousands across the border to join the fighting. Soon the Iranians will be in virtual control of the entire south of Iraq and many parts of eastern Iraq. Likewise, the Kurds have no option but to turn to the Iranians in the face of the Turkish onslaught. On the other hand the previous trickle of arab terrorists and religious fanatics across the western and southern borders from Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia turns into a veritable torrent with tens and hundreds of southands pouring across to join their Sunni brothers. Turks, Iranians, Arabs, Sunni Iraqis, Shiaa Iraqis and Kurds all join in an infernal orgy of fighting destruction and death the like of which has seldom been seen.
All activities connected with oil exports from Iraq come to a complete standstill resulting in a world crisis and the rocketing of oil prices to above $ 100 a barrel at the least. Some oil fields burn and black smoke starts to spread all over the country reaching neighboring countries. The oil supplies in the entire region are jeopardized as fanaticism sweeps the region.
Al Qaeda and its affiliates and sympathizers throughout the world are jubilant, elated and drunk with the euphoria of a resounding victory against the U.S., Crusaders, Zionists, the Kafirs, the Shiaa and all other apstates. They transfer their entire cadres to the Sunni controlled areas of Iraq and establish themselves not as fugitives and underground movement but as an established force on the ground. Ripples are spread throughout the world and cells are preparing themselves to bring the battle to the very heartland of the Crusader Kafirs in The U.S. and Europe.
The U.S.A and her allies are completely discredited, and no one will ever think of putting any trust in them anywhere in the world in the future. In particular all factions involved in the fighting in Iraq will be vehemently anti-American and anti-western, especially erstwhile allies and friends who feel particularly betrayed and treacherously abandoned.
The U.S. and allied nations look on this general conflagration and explosion in the M.E. region with helpless dismay. It would take not 130 000 troops, nor one division or two or three to control such situation. All the resources of U.S., despite their tremendousness, will not suffice. It is then, that the American and Western people realize with shock and belated remorse, that if some considered the War on Iraq to be a mistake; the precipitate withdrawal and retreat is an infinitely worse error.
Well, that was a War game, don’t forget; and heaven forbids that it may come to pass. We would all rather die and be gone long before witnessing any such tale of woe.
# posted by Alaa : 12:13 AM
Under US noses, brutal insurgents rule Sunni citadel
Guardian gains rare access to Iraqi town and finds it fully in control of 'mujahideen'
Omer Mahdi in Haditha and Rory Carroll in Baghdad
Monday August 22, 2005
The Guardian
The executions are carried out at dawn on Haqlania bridge, the entrance to Haditha. A small crowd usually turns up to watch even though the killings are filmed and made available on DVD in the market the same afternoon.
One of last week's victims was a young man in a black tracksuit. Like the others he was left on his belly by the blue iron railings at the bridge's southern end. His severed head rested on his back, facing Baghdad. Children cheered when they heard that the next day's spectacle would be a double bill: two decapitations. A man named Watban and his brother had been found guilty of spying.
With so many alleged American agents dying here Haqlania bridge was renamed Agents' bridge. Then a local wag dubbed it Agents' fridge, evoking a mortuary, and that name has stuck.
A three-day visit by a reporter working for the Guardian last week established what neither the Iraqi government nor the US military has admitted: Haditha, a farming town of 90,000 people by the Euphrates river, is an insurgent citadel.
That Islamist guerrillas were active in the area was no secret but only now has the extent of their control been revealed. They are the sole authority, running the town's security, administration and communications.
A three-hour drive north from Baghdad, under the nose of an American base, it is a miniature Taliban-like state. Insurgents decide who lives and dies, which salaries get paid, what people wear, what they watch and listen to.
Haditha exposes the limitations of the Iraqi state and US power on the day when the political process is supposed to make a great leap - a draft constitution finalised and approved by midnight tonight.
For politicians and diplomats in Baghdad's fortified green zone the constitution is a means to stabilise Iraq and woo Sunni Arabs away from the rebellion. For Haditha, 140 miles north-west of the capital, whether a draft is agreed is irrelevant. Residents already have a set of laws and rules promulgated by insurgents.
Within minutes of driving into town the Guardian was stopped by a group of men and informed about rule number one: announce yourself. The mujahideen, as they are known locally, must know who comes and goes.
The Guardian reporter did not say he worked for a British newspaper. For their own protection interviewees cannot be named.
There is no fighting here because there is no one to challenge the Islamists. The police station and municipal offices were destroyed last year and US marines make only fleeting visits every few months.
Two groups share power. Ansar al-Sunna is a largely homegrown organisation, though its leader in Haditha is said to be foreign. Al-Qaida in Iraq, known locally by its old name Tawhid al-Jihad, is led by the Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. There was a rumour that Zarqawi, Washington's most wanted militant after Osama bin Laden, visited early last week. True or not, residents wanted to believe they had hosted such a celebrity.
A year ago Haditha was just another sleepy town in western Anbar province, deep in the Sunni triangle and suspicious of the Shia-led government in Baghdad but no insurgent hotbed.
Then, say residents, arrived mostly Shia police with heavyhanded behaviour. "That's how it began," said one man. Attacks against the police escalated until they fled, creating a vacuum filled by insurgents.
Alcohol and music deemed unIslamic were banned, women were told to wear headscarves and relations between the sexes were closely monitored. The mobile phone network was shut down but insurgents retained their walkie-talkies and satellite phones. Right-hand lanes are reserved for their vehicles.
From attacks on US and Iraqi forces it is clear that other Anbar towns, such as Qaim, Rawa, Anna and Ramadi, are to varying degrees under the sway of rebels.
In Haditha hospital staff and teachers are allowed to collect government salaries in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar, but other civil servants have had to quit.
Last year the US trumpeted its rehabilitation of a nearby power plant: "The incredible progress at Haditha is just one example of the huge strides made by the US army corps of engineers."
Now insurgents earn praise from residents for allegedly pressuring managers to supply electricity almost 24 hours a day, a luxury denied the rest of Iraq.
The court caters solely for divorces and marriages. Alleged criminals are punished in the market. The Guardian witnessed a headmaster accused of adultery whipped 190 times with cables. Children laughed as he sobbed and his robe turned crimson.
Two men who robbed a foreign exchange shop were splayed on the ground. Masked men stood on their hands while others broke their arms with rocks. The shopkeeper offered the insurgents a reward but they declined.
DVDs of beheadings on the bridge are distributed free in the souk. Children prefer them to cartoons. "They should not watch such things," said one grandfather, but parents appeared not to object.
One DVD features a young, blond muscular man who had been disembowelled. He was said to have been a member of a six-strong US sniper team ambushed and killed on August 1. Residents said he had been paraded in town before being executed.
The US military denied that, saying six bodies were recovered and that all appeared to have died in combat. Shortly after the ambush three landmines killed 14 marines in a convoy which ventured from their base outside the town.
Twice in recent months marines backed by aircraft and armour swept into Haditha to flush out the rebels. In a pattern repeated across Anbar there were skirmishes, a few suspects killed or detained, and success was declared.
In reality, said residents, the insurgents withdrew for a few days and returned when the Americans left. They have learned from last November's battle in Falluja, when hundreds died fighting the marines and still lost the city.
Now their strategy appears to be to wait out the Americans, calculating they will leave within a few years, and then escalate what some consider the real war against a government led by Shias, a rival sect which Sunni extremists consider apostasy.
The US military declined to respond to questions detailing the extent of insurgent control in the town.
There was evidence of growing cooperation between rebels. A group in Falluja, where the resistance is said to be regrouping, wrote to Haditha requesting background checks on two volunteers from the town.
One local man in his 40s told the Guardian he wanted to be a suicide bomber to atone for sins and secure a place in heaven. "But the mujahideen will not let me. They said I had eight children and it was my duty to look after them."
Tribal elders said they feared but respected insurgents for keeping order and not turning the town into a battleground.
They appear to have been radicalised, and condemned Sunni groups, such as the Iraqi Islamic party and the Muslim Scholars' Association, for engaging in the political process.
The constitution talks, the referendum due in October, the election due in December: all are deemed collaboration punishable by death. The task now is to bleed the Americans and destabilise the government. Some call that nihilism. Haditha calls it the future.
ยท Omer Mahdi was in Haditha for a Guardian Films project before security precautions forced it to be suspended.
Draft Iraq constitution calls country "federal"
(Reuters, August 22, 2005) - A draft of Iraq's constitution to be put to parliament later on Monday calls the country "federal" but does not define the concept in detail, a copy of the text seen by Reuters says.
The document describes Iraq as a "republican, parliamentarian, democratic and federal" state, but does not define specifically the degree or nature of the federalism that Kurds and some Shi'ites are seeking in parts of the country.
The lack of definition would appear to offer a compromise to the Sunni Moslem community, in an effort to ensure the constitution is approved. Sunnis are staunchly opposed to federalism, particularly for Shi'ites in the south.
Some Sunni Muslims said they continued to be adamantly opposed to the constitution despite the softer wording, but their protests looked unlikely to be able to prevent the draft being presented to parliament.
The draft must be approved by a simple majority of the 275- member National Assembly. Hussain al-Shahristani, the deputy speaker of the assembly and a Shi'ite, said earlier that he expected it to pass by "much more" than that.
If the document is approved, it must be put to a referendum by October 15. If any three of Iraq's 18 provinces reject the referendum by two-thirds or more, the constitution will be rejected.
Some Sunnis have already said they plan to mobilise their community to try to have the constitution rejected in October.
... They used one source, an Iraqi, to obtain information about Saddam's WMDs, chemical and biological weapons. Nothing was confirmed by US intelligence, but Bush, Chaney, and Powell used that information to get congress to approve the war.
May 19,1996: Bin Laden leaves Sudan – after escaping at least one assassination attempt -- significantly weakened despite his ambitious organization skills, and returns to Afghanistan where he establishes al Qaeda training bases.
[1996 fatwah excerpts]
Our youths believe in paradise after death. They believe that taking part in fighting will not bring their day nearer; and staying behind will not postpone their day either.
These youths believe in what has been told by Allah and His messenger (Allah's Blessings and Salutations may be on him) about the greatness of the reward for the Mujahideen and Martyrs; Allah, the most exalted said: {and -so far- those who are slain in the way of Allah, He will by no means allow their deeds to perish. He will guide them and improve their condition. and cause them to enter the garden -paradise- which He has made known to them}. (Muhammad; 47:4-6). Allah the Exalted also said: {and do not speak of those who are slain in Allah's way as dead; nay -they are- alive, but you do not perceive} (Bagarah; 2:154).
[1998 fatwah excerpt]
I have been sent with the sword between my hands to ensure that no one but Allah is worshipped.
The attacks on September 11 kill almost 3,000 in a series of hijacked airliner crashes into two U.S. landmarks: the World Trade Center in New York City, New York, and The Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. A fourth plane crashes in Somerset County, Pennsylvania.
The night of 9/11, the President broadcast to the nation that we will not distinguish between terrorists and those who harbor them.
The night of 9/20, the President Bush broadcast to the nation and to a joint session of the Congress that: our enemy is a radical network of terrorists, and every government that supports them; that it is civilization’s fight to punish this radical network; and that we ask every nation to join us in this fight.
On 10/25, the pre-9/11 draft presidential directive on al Qaeda evolved into a new directive, National Security Presidential Directive 9, now titled "Defeating the Terrorist Threat to the United States." The directive would now extend to a global war on terrorism, not just on al Qaeda. It also incorporated the President's determination not to distinguish between terrorists and those who harbor them. It included a determination to use military force if necessary to end al Qaeda's sanctuary in Afghanistan. The new directive -- formally signed on October 25, after the fighting in Afghanistan had already begun -- included new material followed by annexes discussing each targeted terrorist group. The old draft directive on al Qaeda became, in effect, the first annex. The United States would strive to eliminate all terrorist networks, dry up their financial support, and prevent them from acquiring weapons of mass destruction. The goal was the "elimination of terrorism as a threat to our way of life."
The al Qaeda aligned, Ansar al Islam, was formed in northern Iraq in December 2001 and included some of those fleeing the US, October 20, 2001, invasion of Afghanistan . At the beginning of the US March 20, 2003, invasion of Iraq, the al Qaeda aligned, Ansar al Islam, controlled about a dozen villages and a range of peaks in northern Iraq on the Iranian border.
When the US invaded Iraq, it attacked the al Qaeda aligned, Ansar al Islam, training camps in northern Iraq, and this organization's leaders retreated to neighboring countries. When the war in the north settled down, the militants returned to Iraq to fight against the occupying American forces.
[2004 fatwah excerpt]
No Muslim should risk his life as he may inadvertently be killed if he associates with the Crusaders, whom we have no choice but to kill.
… eight reasons for global jihad. These include the restoration of Islamic sovereignty to all lands where Muslims were once ascendant, including Spain, "Bulgaria, Hungary, Cyprus, Sicily, Ethiopia, Russian Turkistan and Chinese Turkistan. . . Even parts of France reaching 90 kilometers outside Paris."
Letter to a young Republican
Gilliard:
Walking point in Ramadi is not the same as writing a policy paper at the Heritage Foundation.
What you need to be told, repeatedly is that it is disrespectful in the extreme to compare such work to serving in combat. It trivializes and demeans those who risk their lives daily in Iraq.
Claiming you support the military while demeaning their service with your facile comparisons indicate the opposite.
Thomas Paine supported the Revolution with a rifle as an infantryman.
He didn't support it from Starbucks over a nasty blog post.
These fools don't support the troops for the troop's life, they support the troops for their policy agenda.
The fact that Iraq is in the toilet only makes things worse for them. Like a cultist the day after the world was supposed to end according to their "leader" they hold fast, having so sold themselves to the notion that to abandon it, means abandoning all their words of advocacy, it means accepting they were wrong, that they were fools.
You can make an individual do all sorts of things, but unless they are actually faced with brute force, they will never humiliate themselves. Not having to put their life on the line, or being threatened in any real substantive way, the stakes are raised for others but not them. They will hold to their ideology come what may, and when it is shown (as it is being shown) to have been both foolish and craven they will not abandon it, for rationality goes out the window, just like a cult. To preserve their status, their self-worth, they will not accept being wrong. They will look for scapegoats -- and those scapegoats are almost ALWAYS the folks that were correct from the beginning.
At the time the Statue of Saddam fell down, Andrew Sullivan was busy questioning our patriotism for doubting the Iraq invasion. Now that "Mission Accomplished" is nearly two and a half-years gone and the war worse than ever, he still clings to the notion that it was a worthy cause. He cannot remove himself from the notion that he staked so much credibility, wrongly, on the lying and manipulative Bush Administration. To do so means that he, Andrew Sullivan, accepts that he applauded as 1,863 Americans and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis were killed because of people like him enabling it. He accepts that he enabled more than 15,000 Americans to be permanently wounded physically for his cheerleading...God only knows how many Iraqis.
Power Cut Shuts Down Iraq Oil Exports
Monday August 22, 10:42 am ET
By Abbas Fayadh, Associated Press Writer
Iraq's Oil Exports Are Shut Down by a Power Cut That Darkens Parts of Central and Southern Iraq
BASRA, Iraq (AP) -- Iraq's oil exports were shut down Monday by a power cut that darkened parts of central and southern Iraq, including the country's only functioning oil export terminals, Iraqi and foreign oil officials said.
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Exports through the country's other main route, the northern export pipeline to Turkey, have long been halted by incessant sabotage.
Iraqi officials said sabotage was also responsible for Monday's blackout, which prevented oil from being pumped into tankers waiting at berths.
A port official and an employee at the South Oil Co., which runs Iraq's southern oil fields, said workers stopped pumping stopped at 7 a.m. Monday. Both men spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to talk to media. They gave no further details.
A tanker agent with a shipping company in Jordan confirmed that exports from southern Iraq had ceased due to the power cut.
"Oil terminals have completely stopped exports from Basra and Khor al-Amaya," said Mohammed Hadi, head of Iraq operations for Norton Lilly International. "Both terminals use the same power source."
Hadi said the shutdown, which costs Iraq some $4.25 million per hour, would probably push up the price of oil while curtailing the chief revenue source for Iraq's government.
Electricity was cut across Baghdad and many parts of Iraq early Monday after an attack on a major electricity feeder line between Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad, and the capital.
Government spokesman Laith Kubba said Sunday the attack occurred two days ago, "and this will, of course, affect the power supply in Baghdad." He said repairs were underway.
The power failure in southern Iraq occurred after a shutdown of the Khor al-Zobayr power plant outside Basra, the chief supply for Basra and the oil terminals, Hadi said. The failure there triggered other power plant shutdowns, Hadi said.
There was no electricity Monday morning in Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, or the port city of Umm Qasr, Hadi said.
By late morning, after power had been off for seven hours, Hadi estimated the loss of revenue from exporting an average of 65,000 barrels per hour at $29.5 million.
Iraq exports about 1.5 million barrels a day from the south.
Exports from the northern oil fields around Kirkuk have long been interrupted due to sabotage on the pipelines. Officials at the Northern Oil Co., which runs the northern fields, said that every three or four months there is some limited pumping of about 250,000 barrels to the Ceyhan port in Turkey.
But no shipments are currently being made to Ceyhan, the officials said.
Associated Press correspondent Jim Krane contributed to this report from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Fatwa Frenzy
The Muslim backlash against terrorism has begun with many Muslim groups speaking out, but are they being heard?
by Joseph Loconte
08/18/2005 12:00:00 AM
THE VICIOUS TERRORIST ATTACKS over the last 18 months--in Spain, Egypt, Great Britain, and Iraq--appear to have Muslim organizations in the West on the defensive. It's not unusual anymore to hear clerics in Europe and America say they're prepared to expel extremists from their mosques. More Islamic authors and organizations are condemning terrorism without a string of qualifiers. There's even support in some Muslim quarters for the tough anti-terrorism laws proposed this month by Britain's Tony Blair. The doctrine that the intentional killing of civilians is always wrong seems to be winning a new level of rhetorical support.
None of this can be equated with a serious campaign against extremism, of course. Influential clerics in the religious centers of the Islamic world continue to equivocate, even about Osama bin Laden; many if not most muftis, or jurists, endorse the terrorist activities of Hamas and Hezbollah. Nevertheless, ordinary Muslims in the West are growing impatient with their leaders' silence or hedging on terrorism.
Over the last six months, Muslim authorities have issued several self-described "fatwas," unenforceable legal rulings, condemning violence against civilians. These statements--from the Islamic Commission of Spain, the British Muslim Forum, and the Fiqh Council of North America--all cite the Koran to condemn the taking of innocent life.
The Spanish fatwa, issued a year after the Madrid train bombings, takes the unusual step of condemning Osama bin Laden as an apostate. It reads in part: "The terrorist acts of Osama ben Laden . . . that entail the destruction of buildings or properties, that entail the death of civilians, like women and children, or other similar things, they are prohibited . . . within Islam." The ruling also rejects as a "fraud" the terrorists' claim to be "defending the oppressed nations of the world or the rights of Muslims."
Less than two weeks after the July 7 bombings in London, the British Muslim Forum announced a fatwa that "strictly, strongly and severely" condemns the use of violence against civilians: "Suicide bombings, which killed and injured innocent people in London, are haram--vehemently prohibited in Islam--and those who committed these barbaric acts in London are criminals, not martyrs."
Most recently, the Fiqh Council of North America issued an "absolute condemnation" of terrorism. "Islam strictly condemns religious extremism and the use of violence against innocent lives," wrote the 18-member council. Given the unsavory past rhetoric and affiliations of many of the 130 organizations and leaders who have endorsed it, this statement cannot be taken at face value. That the council felt compelled to issue it, however, is worth noting.
"I think there's a little more clarity in these fatwas than any past effort," says Husain Haqqani, who teaches international relations at Boston University. "But . . . will they be reiterated on a day-to-day basis in Muslim discourse?" Others complain that the rulings don't come from the centers of gravity of the Islamic world--from authorities in Mecca or legal scholars at al-Azhar University in Cairo. Mamoun Fandy, a fellow at the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, puts it dryly: "A fatwa from Brooklyn or the National Press Club--that's not where Muslims go to get their fatwas."
AS FANDY AND OTHERS ARGUE, unless "extreme pressure" is applied on Muslims everywhere to treat terrorists as pariahs, very little will change. In this sense, it is important to watch the Islamic response to Tony Blair's anti-terrorism initiative. Among other things, it will make it easier for the government to deport foreigners who are "advocating violence" and it will criminalize the "condoning or glorifying" of terrorism. Since Muslim organizations have failed to police themselves, Blair seemed to suggest, the government will now do it for them: A list will be drawn up of extremist websites, bookshops, networks, and organizations of concern.
"I'm glad that . . . the government is finally taking action to deal with this menace," says Omar Farooq, of the Islamist Society of Britain, in response to Blair's proposal. "Day after day these lunatics, on our behalf, go into the broadsheets, on to the televisions screens, and are really messing up our lives here. We don't want that to happen."
Neither do younger Muslims such as Shadi Hamid, a Fulbright Fellow in the United States who joined an August 4 panel discussion on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. "When a lot of Muslims argue that the immorality and illegality of these killings is contingent upon certain political considerations . . . we enter a very dangerous, slippery slope." Salim Mansur, a professor from the University of Western Ontario, agreed. "It is a Muslim reformation we have to talk about," he said. "Muslim conduct, Muslim behavior has to change." Three of the four Muslim panelists on that show called for an end to equivocation on terrorism.
Until such views seize the spiritual and intellectual strongholds of Islamic influence, the death cult of al Qaeda will probably have little trouble finding new recruits.
Joseph Loconte is the William E. Simon Fellow in Religion and a Free Society at the Heritage Foundation and editor of The End of Illusions: Religious Leaders Confront Hitler's Gathering Storm.
This is why the War Hawks will never admit they were wrong. They can't. Cycloptichorn
They can't admit they were wrong when so much has been sacrificed for nothing. How they sleep at night is another matter.
No, it isn't unacceptable. It's impossible to eliminate the malignancies. This has been demonstrated to you many times. You are as hard-line as those you seek to exterminate. Cycloptichorn
Ican wrote "While we have so far failed"
yes you have failed ican. I will hence forth refer to you as Ifukkeditup.
False! This is bunk! Repetition of bunk will not change bunk from being bunk.
So, I'll repeat truth!
While we have so far failed to exterminate malignancy in both Iraq and Afghanistan, we must nonetheless persevere until we learn how and do exterminate it. Failure to do so is unacceptable!
...
The third bomb was about a week away from being dropped on Japan when they surrendered.
This is a fiction, according to contemporaneous reports after the war. A third atomic bomb was not 7 days but more like 7 months away.
We would have had another seven bombs by November 1st, 1945.
Would have ???
And in December of 1945 our bomb production rate would have increased to at least seven a month.
Would have ???
