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Claire Berlinski, a professor at Niccolo Machiavelli University, has some fresh Swiftian thinking that could really crack some ice in the Middle East. We are privileged to publish a preview of a working paper she has written for the Bilderberg Trilateral Commission Council on Foreign Relations… well we’d rather not say actually
SADDAM, LET’S THINK outside the box for a change.
We know you don’t really give two shits about the Palestinians, and you sure as hell don’t give a rat’s ass about Islam, either. And we know you’re a practical kind of man. So here’s a little suggestion that might meet both of our needs.
Here’s the way it is. Unless we make some kind of arrangement here, we’re going to have to turn all of Iraq into a pane of stained glass. It’ll be an ugly business; everyone in the world will get their panties in a wad about it, and we’ll all have to waste a lot of our valuable time and energy holding useless press conferences explaining things we’d rather not explain. We will, that is. You won’t, because you’ll be dead. You can take Israel with you, sure, but you’re still going to be dead as a dodo, and there ain’t no 72 virgins in Paradise waiting for you. Take my word for it, we know from the pleasures of the flesh in our country.
Now here’s what we suggest, Saddam. This might come as a surprise to you, but we’ve been giving it some thought, and lately it occurs to us that the Iraqis and the Americans might actually have more in common than we first thought. You know that book about what to do when someone moves your cheese? Well, we’ve read it too, and it really spoke to us. It’s time to look at that cheese again.
For one thing, we’ve noticed lately that we really don’t feel a lot of love for the Saudis, and it just doesn’t seem to us that they’re running those oil fields as responsibly as they could. And you know the Kuwaitis? Well, we were wrong, you were right, and we’re man enough to admit it. They’re repulsive little ingrates and they’re too damned cowardly to have a country of their own. Hell, they probably were stealing your oil.
So you know what, Saddam?
Go ahead.
Yep, you heard us right. That was the green light, just like the one you thought you got from that Glaspie woman, only this time we mean it. Take Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia too. It would take you what, three days? Go ahead and butcher the Al Sabahs and the whole Saudi royal family. Have at it. Any dissent? We know you know how to handle it, just don’t tell us about the details. Let Noam Chomsky worry about it.
And hell, Saddam, you want a free hand over Iran? We see no problem with that either. We know they gave you a bit of hassle the last time around, but after 23 years under the Ayatollahs, this time they’ll probably be throwing roses at your tanks. As far as we’re concerned, you can have the whole Persian Gulf. All of it. You can even keep your WMD program. We’ll sell you the damned Trident missiles if you like, just as long as you keep them pointed toward the right people. Oh, and we’ll give you a free hand to slaughter all the Islamic fundamentalists you want – in Saudi Arabia, outside Saudi Arabia, in Iran, Yemen, wherever. We know you’re dying to do it anyway; heck, you love killing people. Give ’em a taste of what the Kurds got. Like I said, we don’t want to know the details. Kind of like we said to the Indonesians back in the day. Let Robert Fisk worry about getting the scoop. (Oh, and if something unfortunate were to happen to him, you didn’t hear it from us, but you know – accidents do happen. The will of Allah and all that.)
Way we see it, Saddam, there’s really no reason the two of us should go to war when we really have a lot of common emotional needs. Sure, we think you’re a little ruthless, a bit of a homicidal maniac, but you know, we managed to see the bright side of Stalin when we needed to, and in retrospect, it’s a fine thing what those Russians did at Stalingrad – that could have been our boys taking losses like that. We think we might have sort of a similar situation here. Let’s face it, we Americans just don’t have the stomach to do what it really takes to wipe out these Islamic lunatics. And they seem awfully serious about wanting us all dead. So why not give the job to a man who has both the appetite to do the job right and the expertise?
We just have a few little things we’d like in return. Lay off of Israel, stop sending money to those idiotic suicide bombers, and keep the price of oil below nine dollars a barrel – forever. The way we see it, everyone ends up happy, except maybe the Al Sauds, and frankly, at this point, their happiness is just not our number one priority. You get what you always wanted – total control of the Gulf. We get what we always wanted – – cheap oil and the assurance that every fundamentalist maniac in the Middle East will enjoy your excellent vacation facilities and your trademark Iraqi hospitality. We can be buddies again, just like we were during the Cold War. Remember the good times we had together back then?
What are the Europeans going to say about it? They’re the ones who keep blathering on about how they don’t want us to antagonize you, so they should be thrilled by the announcement of the Iraqi–American Peoples’ Alliance for Peace. And figure this: We lift the sanctions, you control all the oil in the Gulf, you start pumping it out like there’s no tomorrow, and within a week you’ll be able to feed all those poor little starving Iraqi children and keep your palaces maintained in the fashion to which you’ve become accustomed. No more of this undignified slinking from house to house every night to escape detection – you could really live in style. And a constant supply of nine–buck–a–barrel oil will do wonders for this unpleasant little economic slump we’ve been facing here. It’s a win-win situation.
So that’s really the deal, Saddam old buddy. It’s simple, isn’t it? Lay off of Israel, do the needful with the terrorists, and the Gulf is yours. We tried to do the right thing by the Kuwaitis and the Saudis, but you know, there comes a point in every relationship where you have to ask – “Am I giving more than I’m getting here?” And honestly, we think that point came and went a long time ago. It’s like they say in the books about healthy relationships. We feel like one of those women who love too much. Have you read that one? It really spoke to us, all that stuff about being co–dependent and all. Always bailing out some penny–ante, Jew–hating Gulf potentate whenever he gets himself into some stupid mess, and getting no thanks, none at all, not one word, just more abuse about how we’re such bullies and warmongers.
Well, we’ve talked it over with our therapists and we’ve seen that we’re worth more than that. It’s all about Toughlove now. If they think they don’t need us, fine – let them go it on their own, just don’t come crying to us when the Republican Guards start yanking out the plugs on those tiny widdle incubating babies. They had their chance.
Nine dollars a barrel. Lay off of Israel. Do whatever it is that you do best with the Islamic Fundamentalists. And the Gulf is yours forever. Tell me you don’t see the beauty in it, Saddam.
And of course, remember the alternative.
Claire Berlinski
One of the great things about the blog phenomenon is that it gives we humble writers the chance to subject the frequently idiotic views of newspaper columnists to systematic criticism. In the past, the best we could hope for would be a letter published in an editorial page. Blogs often contain line-by-line dissections of an article which shred an argument in a way that reminds me of a particularly rigorous university seminar.
Step forward Pejman Yousefzadeh for this brilliantly detailed take-down of Brian Whitaker, a writer for the British daily, the Guardian, who wrote a sneering piece about the website MEMRI, a site charting the often violently anti-semitic content of certain Arabic-speaking newspapers. The wretched Whitaker, in accusing MEMRI of being a shady organisation and therefore of dubious value, only fuels precisely the kind of mindset which MEMRI is determined to highlight. Pejman’s piece of Fisking is a must-read.
I’ve actually waited some time and thought a great deal about posting the local angle on the Middle East. I find it sad when a community I am close to sides with my enemies.
Yes, you heard me right. I have known for some time there is considerable sympathy in West Belfast towards everyone in the Middle East who hates the US. I’ve been in heated arguments with dear friends over it and they and I just let it drop.
The sympathy seems to have moved beyond words in the last few months. A source close to me said there were Palestinian fund raisers at a local Republican bar the last time he spent an evening there. Those of you in Boston, New York, Pittsburgh and other heavily Irish cities who remember Republican fund raisers for NORAID should know the model. I never took part in any such myself but I knew well enough about them. A girlfriend bartended one spot North of Pittsburgh that ran them. I also remember being offered a genuine souvineer Derry Rubber Bullet while ordering in my own local of some 20 years standing. Funny enough, that pub was in a Jewish and Academic area of Pittsburgh, so go figure.
If anyone is reading this who actually did “help the cause” back then, I think you should be aware the same people are now using the same techniques to raise money for people who want to see you dead. If the American side of Republicanism has any influence whatever over here, I think a very loud message should be sent back to just “knock it on the head” and send our enemies back where they came from.
I do not wish to classify all Palestinians as my enemy: only those who celebrate the deaths of my countrymen and who support brutal and unhuman tactics of war. Whether the fund raisers are from the suicide bomber tactions or not I do not know. Perhaps someone on the inside can find out.
And yes, I do know a Palestinian or two and they are very decent people thank you. I define my enemies by their actions, not by broad labels.
I ran across this article from my old home city of Pittsburgh. A local unit was called to active duty in May. I was of course interested because the unit is based near my home town of Coraopolis, But I’m sure anyone should see the implications. A large medical unit was called up and sent off “somewhere”.
I would take it as an expectation of some serious ground combat, and if I were to make a really good stab at where they are going I’d put southern Turkey (by a wide margin) on the top of the list and northern Saudi Arabia as the number two.
I think September 11th would be a lovely day to hang Saddam, don’t you?
The other day I made my humble effort at trying to make the case for why we (the U.S., Britain and a few other Anglosphere nations) should boot out the odious regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. I must confess it is a tough call for a minarchist verging on anarcho-capitalist to make.
Well, Mark Steyn in the British weekly magazine, the Spectator, has penned what is for me the best argument for why deposing Hussein is necessary and will trigger off beneficial consequences in the Middle East, and by extension, everywhere else. It is a must-read.
Further proof also, I reckon, that Mark Steyn is the best columnist around. And he regularly refers to bloggers in his articles, showing he knows where the real intelligent action is.
It is nice to think that the lure of filthy lucre might help spread the capitalist bug around the planet to even the most inhospitable regions. In a story which caught my eye, Reuters reports that a host of western banks are gearing up to cash in on growing demand in Islamic countries for bank services.
Ok, the banks will have to negotiate their way around the thicket of prohibitions on interest payments and so forth, but even so, if commercial ties spread, I think that is a good thing. And over time customers may even get to realise that interest – damned as wicked usury in the Islamic credo – is in fact no more than the price attached to deferring current spending over future gain. It is another chink in the armour of ignorance about business, another step in that great and glorious thing – globalisation. Who knows, one day Muslim investment bankers will be holding conferences on “how to spread business to backward statist economies in Europe”? You read it here first.
The arguments are intensifying at the highest levels about whether the U.S. and its closest allies could or indeed should, oust Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Let me get straight to the point – I am not 100 percent convinced, if it were ever possible, that moving against Saddam is top priority in the war against terror as opposed to say, moving against Saudi Arabia (where most of the September 11th hijackers came from), Iran (a major sponsor of terror), or for that matter some other nation/body which is potentially posing a lethal threat to our civilisation. However, as I will argue below, I think crushing Saddam is a vital necessity, though one fraught with risks.
Of course, as has occasionally been noted on this blog, some of those who would oppose military action against Iraq are idiots who dislike any such action, usually out of a desire to see America’s face ground into the dust. Their arguments can be dismissed as self-evidently malevolent in intent. The Robert Fisks, John Pilgers and most of the Left fall into this camp, albeit with honorable exceptions.
There is another camp of war sceptic, represented by such intelligent and good souls like Jim Henley of Unqualified Offerings who doubt the efficacy of military action and who also fear it may trigger off even worse crises, as well as swell the bureaucratic monster of the State and further erode remaining civil liberties. I have a good deal of sympathy with that view, given that war has almost always been attended by serious loss of liberty, often never to be reversed.
And there are those who argue that all we need to do is to contain Saddam and his ilk rather than pre-emptively crush his regime. Into this category falls former top British defence civil servant Sir Michael Quinlan, writing a critique of such action in today’s Financial Times.
His is one of the most closely argued cases against invading Iraq I have read so far. But reading the article through finally convinced me that we do need to take out Saddam’s regime. And he does this, ironically enough, with the opening paragraph of his article:
“Saddam Hussein is a malign tyrant with a history of aggression against his neighbours. He almost certainly has chemical and biological weapons and would like to get nuclear ones, in breach of United Nations Security Council edict. We can place no trust in his denials or his current manoeuvering.”
Well, Sir Michael, if that is the case, then clearly the U.S. and its allies have a clear duty to their citizens by taking this man out of circulation, seizing/destroying his stocks of weapons of mass destruction, and attempting to place a form of government less likely/able/willing to menace its neighbours! Of course the problem is that Saddam is not uniquely evil and there are other potentially lethal regimes (China springs to mind) which we could act against, but for the much greater risk. But just because we cannot take out all the world’s monsters in one go does not mean we should not move against some of them. At least doing so can deter others.
The bulk of Sir Michael’s argument becomes one, long eloquent case for doing, well, nothing. Apparently, poor old Saddam has no hostile intent, it is just that he is frightened of what other terrible folk next door will do to him. You know, like Joe Stalin invading half of Europe because he was worried someone would want to invade his socialist paradise:
“Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction, unconscionable thought it is, is entirely capable (entirely?) of explanation as an act of defiance, a bid for prestige (gotta kill those Kurds, impresses the ladies) and an insurance against mortal attack.”
The clincher argument for me is this – if Saddam has or is trying to get horror weapons, he is going to use them sooner rather than later. The evidence exists. He has used them before. He has invaded his neighbours, brutalised his people and sponsored terrorism abroad. We haven’t got time to wait for the monster to die of old age. I wish we could. I wish we could worry about school vouchers, restoring the right to trial by jury in full and ending the Nanny State. But priority Numero Uno right now is getting rid of regimes that could make our humble ruminations so much blather and radioactive dust.
Alice Bachini analyses the nature of the threat from Islamic cultures.
I caught a strange TV programme about USSR state secrets coming to light last night on ITV, narrated by the fruity-voiced Roger Moore. After showing us shocking films of agents being forced to have sex with gorgeous women in hotel rooms, Mr Moore started telling us about the unknown numbers of nuclear bombs, some of which are apparently dinky enough to fit into your Louis Vuitton luggage, which are floating around the world’s second-hand weaponry markets looking for Dr Evil-style homes. Apparently again, they are difficult to use without the instructions, but there are very likely one or two ex-Soviet scientists who can’t get jobs at McDonalds and who may well offer helpful how-to guidance in return for a reasonable fee.
Now, I dont know how reliable Mr Moore is on these matters, but it seems to me that if NYC gets nuked, everyone will probably be as surprised as they were by 9/11, even though, in retrospect, it was only a matter of when and how those bastards did it. I hope the next set of bastards aren’t at Yale University right now on a Nuclear weapons and how to use them course module, but it wouldn’t surprise me very much if they were.
The other thing that struck me was that Bin Laden (whom Mr Moore reliably informs us is still alive – perhaps he has some tracking gadgetry left over from his salad days of saving the world, I dont know) and people like him are absolutely right that vicious jihad attacks were and are inevitable.
Of course the Muslim world feels persecuted; it is, and should be treated ‘unfairly’ by the West, because its values are evil and if we don’t stop them they will destroy our better ones. We don’t have to bomb the hell out of them for them to feel persecuted; we only have to treat them like the dodgy, unreliable and dangerous societies that they are.
Does making an agreement with the West about not having nuclear weapons make it any more likely that Saddam will stop causing trouble? Of course not. It just makes it more likely that he will hide them better and hate us all the more. And terrorist groups are forces of potentially worse evil than bad governments, precisely because they are underground and festering. We ignore the sub-governmental level of evil at our peril. Freedom isn’t just about getting rid of governments; it’s about getting rid of the evil that threatens freedom. This is why countries get the governments they deserve, why X per cent of Afghan women are still walking round in burqas, why we shouldn’t trust the Saudis, and why we are still so complacent that we will be shocked if NYC is nuked.
At least the cold war was cold. The next set of conflicts is about the nastiness that comes up from the bad memes of repressive cultures. Until we understand that, we are never going to understand the nature of the evil we are facing. And until we understand our enemy, we are never going to be able to defend ourselves adequately from it.
(See Sarah Lawrence’s “Is that a burqa on the bedroom floor?” and “War, Free Trade and Liberty – Strange Bedfellows?” at www.sarahlawrence.org)
Alice Bachini
As long as young people feel they have got no hope but to blow themselves up you are never going to make progress.
-Cherie Blair
Certainly compared to the even handed measured words from the delectable Queen Rania of Jordan, the remarks by Tony Blair’s wife Cherie Blair, were crass and appallingly framed, coming as they did a few hours after the latest massacre of the innocent by psychopathic Palestinian suicide bombers. Not a mention from her lips of the horror visited on Israelis and the suffering of their civilian populations. A simple preface to her comments abominating Hamas was all she needed to do to completely change the context of her remarks.
Yet in spite of the cack-handed delivery and timing, the fact is her remarks are patently true in and of themselves and so much of the reaction to what she said was simply a cheap political shot by her husband’s many enemies. Of course I very much doubt that an advocate of force backed collectivism like Cherie Blair actually has any useful solutions to square that particular circle, itself a poison construct of the collectivist mindset.
Yes, Cherie Blair is right that young Palestinians need hope, but it is not going to come from fuzzy thinking collectivists like her. As David Carr said in his earlier post, it is back to the drawing board time. Israel’s demonstrably ineffective military response brings them no closer to victory over the terrorists and the terrorists’ slaughter of Isreali children at bus stops and pizza parlours brings them no closer to a Palestinian state.
Diplomatic and easy on the eyes
Not
Steven Den Beste provides what I think is a plausible analysis of thinking behind the latest Israeli tactic of occupying more of the West Bank in response to terror attacks on Israeli Civilians; a sort of ‘You bomb, We conquer’ strategy.
Steven takes the view that the purpose behind the strategy is to make the Palestinians pay a price in land for every attack, even to the point of rolling them into reservations and keeping them there. Given that the bombers are prepared to sacrifice their own lives they will have to consider the well-being of the families and communities they leave behind who will be even worse off after they have carried out their mission i.e. plenty of pain, no gain.
To be fair to Steven, he expresses doubts as to whether this strategy will work but he still rather too bullish about it in my view.
If the aim is to stop the bloodshed then a prolonged occupation of the whole of the West Bank will only lead to more. Israel simply does not have the resources to maintain such an operation and, in trying to do so, the IDF will be stretched to the limit. The Palestinians are far more radicalised than they have ever been and are hardly likely to accept such occupation with equanimity. They, too, are now well-versed in the art of urban warfare and will wage it fiercely as well as sending as many ‘martyrs’ into Israel proper as they can. Expect lots more Jenins and French Hills.
The Drawing-Board calls.
Another bombing attack in Israel has left 19 people dead, many of them children. Scores have been maimed and blinded by the bolts and ballbearings that are always packed into the explosive mix just to press home the indiscriminately homicidal intent. This is unleashing of hell by instalments.
The Israeli government has promised a response and, as I type these words, tanks are once again rolling into the West Bank. But to what end, I wonder? To what purpose? What is this squadron of Merkavas going to achieve by trundling around Jenin or Tulkarm boldly seeking an enemy that has no intention of engaging on the battlefield? How long, this time, until those same tanks come lurching back to their base like snarling, frustrated guard dogs that have just watched an intruder clamber over the perimeter fence to escape them?
There is a ‘Groundhog Day’ feeling about all this. Bomb attack followed by rolling tanks, followed by withdrawal, followed by bomb attack and so on and…well, that seems to be the emerging pattern.
How strange that a military force so famous for its elan and innovation appears to be so leaden-footed, paralysed even, in the face of this new war? I cannot help but think that Israel’s current crop of leaders, veterans of ’67 and ’73, are still fighting the last war; as if they are waiting for the Palestinians to don uniforms and march on Jerusalem for a turkey-shoot.
Well, that ain’t going to happen because this is a whole new ball (bearing) game. Hamas wants Israel to bleed and she will continue to do so unless Sharon and his cabinet get it into their heads that Soviet-backed Syrian infantry divisions are yesterday’s news.
I don’t know much about MEMRI, and I don’t know who David Tell is except that he writes about MEMRI’s activities in a way that strikes me as illuminating:
IF THERE WERE JUSTICE in the universe, the Middle East Media Research Institute would already have been awarded some kind of special-achievement Pulitzer Prize. MEMRI has pioneered the careful translation, and dissemination to European and American audiences, of print and broadcast news sources in the Arab world. The group’s work now pops up everywhere; here in the States, hardly a week goes by when some major daily or cable news show doesn’t make use (generally without attribution) of a MEMRI translation. And the cumulative effect of such translations is–or ought to be, at least–roughly analogous to the body blow struck against European philo-communism by the first Western publication of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s novels in the 1960s. Here, really for the first time, non-Arabic speaking Westerners are being given a direct, first-person look into a previously unseen gulag. Only this time there is no barbed wire, the prisoners all serve by choice, and the anti-Semitism is no longer ancillary but central, basic, and paramount. It turns out that the Islamic Middle East, just as the Israelis have been begging us for years to figure out, has got itself trapped in a deep, deep swamp of near-psychotic Jew hatred.
I got the link to this from Instapundit (Thursday), and what Glenn Reynolds was interested in was what followed, which is a report of a video exchange involving a small Muslim girl who is being brought up as a nice respectable anti-Semite. So if that’s the sort of detail you’re looking for, follow the link and enjoy. Me, I love to look at the big picture, and Tell’s introductory paragraph above says a lot about that to me. Any short but well-done compare-and-contrast job on the similarities and differences between the Cold War and the present confrontation between the West and Islam gets my complete attention whenever I encounter it.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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