US AND THEM: US, UN & Iraq, version 8.0

McGentrix wrote:

[...a passing comment I made to McTag in reference to his rather silly statement about the structure of the WTC.

Several people have jumped on me for this, taking my comment deliberately out of context.

Tico said the 9/11 attack was worse: I contend that is nonsense. The air crash killed a few hundred people. The collapsing buildings killed a few thousand. The buildings collapsed before the firemen could deal with them, because they were inadequately built. Fact. A collision from an aircraft containing aviation fuel was a predictable hazard.

No, the Japanese attack was worse. Japan had already declared war. Smirking George still had the choice to take a better decision. He blew it.

You too post the samething over and over again.

Okay, I admit it, a dozen guys with knives mounted a worse attack than the Japanese Navy and Air Force could muster.

It's a silly argument, and rather than prolong it, I withdraw.

Quote:

You too post the samething over and over again.

Incorrect. I challenge you to find posts of mine in which I duplicate the EXACT SAME WORDS in the fashion in which you do, constantly.

I agree! You do not post "the EXACT SAME WORDS in the fashion" that I do constantly (i.e., my repetitions are usually minimal edits fom post to post). Rather, you repeatedly make the same arguments using different words and/or different word orders and/or different spacings and/or different emphasises.

While I respect your opinion and ability to debate, I don't respect the way you spam the thread up with the same useless garbage about meaningless acronyms designed to remove any semblance of humanity from the situation under discussion.

I do not think that what I post is "useless garbage about meaningless acronyms designed to remove any semblance of humanity from the situation under discussion." I do not think that what I post is "spam."

Here's what I do think. I think my choice of acronyms and labels aids avoidance of use euphemisms to mask reality. What I post is highly relevant to the point of this thread. It so relevant that it bears repeating over and over ... and over again. The acronyms and other labels I select are designed to convey concepts in as clear and unmistakeable and unambiguous manner as I am able.

LALL is an appropriate acronym for the label of the doctine Live and Let Live , and LOL is an appropriate acronym for the label of those people who are lovers of liberty, and whose doctrine is LALL.

DAMD is an appropriate acronym for the label of the doctine Die And Make Die, and the word malignancy is an appropriate label for those people who mass murder civilians and for those people who are accomplices to those who mass murder civilians, and whose doctine is DAMD.

It is not the labels or acronyms that themselves remove "any semblance of humanity." It is the acts against humanity that are themselves so horrible that they remove "any semblance of humanity" from those who perpetrate those acts. Some say we should try to understand what such perpetrators want before judging them. We already know what they want. Malignancy told us what they want many times. They have told us they will die making us die if we don't give them what they want. I believe them! If we are determined to not give them what they want, then we have no choice but to exterminate malignancy.

Is what I argue debatable? Of course it is? So is what you argue debatable. What is not debatable because it is irrelevant, is who and what either of us are and what motivates either of us.

Cycloptichorn

malignancy = people who mass murder civilians and people who are accomplices of people who mass murder civilians.

malignancy pursues the doctrine of DAMD (i.e., Die And Make Die).

Lovers-of-liberty pursue the doctine of LALL (i.e., Live And Let Live).

malignancy must be exterminated before they exterminate lovers-of-liberty.

No one has a god-given-right to any area of the earth. One's rights to an area of the earth are governed by the prevailing human rule of law in that area.

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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."
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I have been sent with the sword between my hands to ensure that no one but Allah is worshipped
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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.
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Corruption pervades government in Basra
Islamists faulted amid killings

The insurgency roiling much of Iraq has not taken hold in this southern metropolis, where Shi'ite Arabs hold sway and religious law is firmly ensconced. Basra is facing a different threat: pervasive, murderous, gangland-style corruption.

News of unsolved killings and vanished public funds vie for attention in the conservative Shi'ite Muslim heartland, where three rival Islamist religious parties -- all of which ran for office on a platform of using Islamic values to root out corruption -- dominate the provincial government.

On Tuesday night, American journalist Steven Vincent was kidnapped and killed after he wrote a series of articles denouncing corruption and accusing police hit squads controlled by Islamic clerics in a rash of unsolved slayings. Two weeks ago, the deputy governor was killed; the rumor on the streets of Basra was that he was about to expose financial improprieties on the provincial council.

''You can't describe it with words, they are so corrupt," said Dr. Adel Makee al-Yassiry, a cardiothoracic surgeon and deputy director of Basra's 10-story teaching hospital, describing the Islamist political parties in the provincial government. ''They have militias, and they will kill those who show documents exposing corruption," he said. ''People are afraid they will be murdered if they expose corruption."

. . . Corruption is so rife that even though the government has awarded new contracts to collect garbage, there is more trash on the streets of Basra now than at the end of the punishing three-week siege of Basra during the US-led invasion in March 2003.

. . . According to coroner's records, 1,176 homicides were committed in Basra in the past nine months. Witnesses say many of the killers are wearing police uniforms and driving police cars, and they often assassinate their targets in broad daylight.

. . . All the parties with a share of power agree that Basrans are losing patience with the parade of political parties, all of them swearing to the same values, which seem incapable of changing their economically dismal lot in life.

''We cannot create miracles," said Ali al-Kana'ani, the political director of the Supreme Council, the Islamic party that governed Basra from April 2003 until February and that still has the largest bloc of voters and political leaders.

Corruption, he said, was the cornerstone of Hussein's rule, and no new party, Islamic or not, can change that in just a few years, he said. ''Before, administrative corruption took place behind a curtain. Now that curtain has been lifted," Kana'ani said.

Stay the Course, Mr. President
By Frederick W. Kagan
Los Angeles Times

Publication Date: August 8, 2005

Despite what you may have read, the military situation in Iraq today is positive--far better than it ever was when we were fighting guerrillas in Vietnam, or when the Soviets were fighting the Afghan mujahedin, or in almost any other major insurgency of the 20th century.

With few exceptions, the insurgents in Iraq are not able to undertake militarily meaningful attacks on U.S. troops. They cannot prevent U.S. forces from moving wherever they want in the country nor can they keep U.S. forces from carrying out the operations they choose to pursue aggressively. This situation contrasts markedly with both the Vietnam and Soviet-Afghan wars, in which insurgents actually besieged U.S. forces at Khe Sanh and isolated a large Soviet garrison at Khost for nearly the entire conflict, among other incidents.

Yes, the Iraqi insurgents have inflicted a steady stream of casualties on U.S. troops with improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, and car bombs, but they are not able to hold ground or attack prepared U.S. forces and fight them toe-to-toe as the North Vietnamese and mujahedin did regularly.

Another piece of good news from Iraq is that the insurgents are offering a mainly nihilistic message. Most skillful revolutionaries promise concrete benefits from their victory. Insurgents frequently work not only to terrorize local villagers but to help improve their lives in small ways.

The Iraqi insurgents offer only fear. They oppose formation of the new Iraqi government but have not offered any alternative. In January 2004, insurgent leader Abu Musab Zarqawi said, "We have declared a bitter war against the principle of democracy and all those who seek to enact it." Eight million Iraqis defied him and voted instead. Today, most Iraqis remain committed to finding a way to make the new government work.

One reflection of this is that Iraqis continue to wait in long lines to join the nascent Iraqi army and police forces, despite a campaign by the insurgents to explode bombs at recruiting stations. Not all recruits are idealistic--many are simply seeking work or the prestige of being a member of the army or police. But their presence at the recruiting stations proves that the insurgents have neither offered them an alternative, terrorized them sufficiently nor de-legitimized the government enough in their eyes to keep them away.

Perhaps the best news from the region these days is that the Iraqi army is finally producing units able to fight on their own.

According to Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, there are now more than 170,000 "trained and equipped" Iraqi police and military personnel, and more than 105 police and army battalions are "in the fight." Over the next few months, tens of thousands more Iraqi troops will be able to take the field in the struggle against the insurgency. They should number around 250,000 by next summer.

By waging a terrorist campaign, the insurgents have designed a war they can sustain for a long time. Obtaining explosives, making bombs and setting them off does not require much skill, money or even courage. The next year will probably not see a significant reduction in the number of explosions, and it's possible, as the Palestinian intifada and the three-decade-long campaign of violence by the Irish Republican Army show, that this situation may last for many years. It is thus unwise to measure progress in Iraq by the number of deaths or bombs in a given period. Progress must instead be measured in the establishment of a stable and legitimate government and the creation of state structures able to function even in the face of attacks.

One big problem, however, is the paucity of coalition troops. Commanders, as a result, are required to make hard choices among such critical tasks as sealing borders, keeping critical lines of communication clear, defending their own troops, training indigenous forces, clearing insurgent-infested areas and attacking promising insurgent targets.

If the U.S. were to keep its troop levels constant over the next 18 months, the manpower available to perform all of these critical tasks would increase dramatically as Iraqi forces became available to handle basic security functions.

Unfortunately, it does not appear that the Bush administration favors such a course. Repeated rumors--including a report about U.S. plans to withdraw, leaked by the British Ministry of Defense recently, and statements by the new U.S. ambassador to Iraq--indicate that the administration would prefer to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq as Iraqi forces become available in larger numbers.

Understandable though that desire is, it is wrongheaded. Now, above all, is the moment when determination and perseverance are most needed. If the U.S. begins pulling troops out prematurely, it runs the risk of allowing the insurgency to grow, perhaps becoming what it now is not--a real military threat to the government.

If, on the other hand, Bush stays the course and pays the price for success, the prospects for winning will get better every day.

Frederick W. Kagan is a resident scholar at AEI.

The Right Time for An Islamic Reformation
By Salman Rushdie
Washington Post
Sunday, August 7, 2005; Page B07

When Sir Iqbal Sacranie, head of the Muslim Council of Britain, admitted that "our own children" had perpetrated the July 7 London bombings, it was the first time in my memory that a British Muslim had accepted his community's responsibility for outrages committed by its members. Instead of blaming U.S. foreign policy or "Islamophobia," Sacranie described the bombings as a "profound challenge" for the Muslim community. However, this is the same Sacranie who, in 1989, said that "Death is perhaps too easy" for the author of "The Satanic Verses." Tony Blair's decision to knight him and treat him as the acceptable face of "moderate," "traditional" Islam is either a sign of his government's penchant for religious appeasement or a demonstration of how limited Blair's options really are.

Sacranie is a strong advocate of Blair's much-criticized new religious-hatred bill, which will make it harder to criticize religion, and he actually expects the new law to outlaw references to Islamic terrorism. He said as recently as Jan. 13, "There is no such thing as an Islamic terrorist. This is deeply offensive. Saying Muslims are terrorists would be covered [i.e., banned] by this provision." Two weeks later his organization boycotted a Holocaust remembrance ceremony in London commemorating the liberation of Auschwitz 60 years ago. If Sir Iqbal Sacranie is the best Blair can offer in the way of a good Muslim, we have a problem.

The Sacranie case illustrates the weakness of the Blair government's strategy of relying on traditional, essentially orthodox Muslims to help eradicate Islamist radicalism. Traditional Islam is a broad church that certainly includes millions of tolerant, civilized men and women but also encompasses many whose views on women's rights are antediluvian, who think of homosexuality as ungodly, who have little time for real freedom of expression, who routinely express anti-Semitic views and who, in the case of the Muslim diaspora, are -- it has to be said -- in many ways at odds with the Christian, Hindu, non-believing or Jewish cultures among which they live.

In Leeds, from which several of the London bombers came, many traditional Muslims lead inward-turned lives of near-segregation from the wider population. From such defensive, separated worlds some youngsters have indefensibly stepped across a moral line and taken up their lethal rucksacks.

The deeper alienations that lead to terrorism may have their roots in these young men's objections to events in Iraq or elsewhere, but the closed communities of some traditional Western Muslims are places in which young men's alienations can easily deepen. What is needed is a move beyond tradition -- nothing less than a reform movement to bring the core concepts of Islam into the modern age, a Muslim Reformation to combat not only the jihadist ideologues but also the dusty, stifling seminaries of the traditionalists, throwing open the windows to let in much-needed fresh air.

It would be good to see governments and community leaders inside the Muslim world as well as outside it throwing their weight behind this idea, because creating and sustaining such a reform movement will require above all a new educational impetus whose results may take a generation to be felt, a new scholarship to replace the literalist diktats and narrow dogmatisms that plague present-day Muslim thinking. It is high time, for starters, that Muslims were able to study the revelation of their religion as an event inside history, not supernaturally above it.

It should be a matter of intense interest to all Muslims that Islam is the only religion whose origins were recorded historically and thus are grounded not in legend but in fact. The Koran was revealed at a time of great change in the Arab world, the seventh-century shift from a matriarchal nomadic culture to an urban patriarchal system. Muhammad, as an orphan, personally suffered the difficulties of this transformation, and it is possible to read the Koran as a plea for the old matriarchal values in the new patriarchal world, a conservative plea that became revolutionary because of its appeal to all those whom the new system disenfranchised, the poor, the powerless and, yes, the orphans.

Muhammad was also a successful merchant and heard, on his travels, the Nestorian Christians' desert versions of Bible stories that the Koran mirrors closely (Christ, in the Koran, is born in an oasis, under a palm tree). It ought to be fascinating to Muslims everywhere to see how deeply their beloved book is a product of its place and time, and in how many ways it reflects the Prophet's own experiences.

However, few Muslims have been permitted to study their religious book in this way. The insistence that the Koranic text is the infallible, uncreated word of God renders analytical, scholarly discourse all but impossible. Why would God be influenced by the socioeconomics of seventh-century Arabia, after all? Why would the Messenger's personal circumstances have anything to do with the Message?

The traditionalists' refusal of history plays right into the hands of the literalist Islamofascists, allowing them to imprison Islam in their iron certainties and unchanging absolutes. If, however, the Koran were seen as a historical document, then it would be legitimate to reinterpret it to suit the new conditions of successive new ages. Laws made in the seventh century could finally give way to the needs of the 21st. The Islamic Reformation has to begin here, with an acceptance of the concept that all ideas, even sacred ones, must adapt to altered realities.

Broad-mindedness is related to tolerance; open-mindedness is the sibling of peace. This is how to take up the "profound challenge" of the bombers. Will Sir Iqbal Sacranie and his ilk agree that Islam must be modernized? That would make them part of the solution. Otherwise, they're just the "traditional" part of the problem.

The writer is a novelist and essayist whose works include "The Satanic Verses."