We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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It appears that Sadr and his Islamo-fascist militia will be allowed to slip away from the Mosque of Ali in Najaf without further harm. Even if they are indeed disarmed (yeah, right) before they withdraw, the fact their organisational infrastructure will be left intact calls into question the whole point of opposing him in the first place.
It seems to me that there are really only two sensible ways to see this:
Either conclude that following a policy of using force to confront Islamic extremism is too bloody to stomach, leading inevitably to adopting a policy of withdrawal from wherever Islamic terrorism threatens modern global civilisation…
…or conclude that once a decision to use force is taken, it will be followed through robustly and ruthlessly with the intention of killing fundamentalists leaders like Sadr and ideally as many of his hardcore supporters as is practical as well.
In reality I expect neither clear conclusion will be reached in the corridors of power in Washington DC (and do not get me going about the buffoons who run the Foreign Office) and a middle-way fudge that is already being offered up in the established media will be the perceived wisdom as key elements of the political classes work to keep the world safe for Sharia, legally enforced burquas, clitoridectomy and judicial amputations.
Surely the best way to ensure the survival of a tolerable regime in Iraq is to fill the graveyards with as many Islamic extremists as possible. If that policy is not acceptable, then surely one has no business using force to begin with as it seems perverse to kill people unless you are willing to do so for a damn good reason… either fight a war or do not, the middle way just gets you the worst of both worlds: you are hated for the people you kill and held in contempt for the people you would not kill.
The opportunity was there to turn the mosque of Ali into a funeral pyre of Islamic political aspirations. Today was the very last chance to do exactly that but it looks like the opportunity will drift away by this evening.
What a pity.
Looks like the US is playing hardball and refusing to compromise with the Islamists in Iraq. All to the good, I suspect.
The best chance for a reasonable long term political settlement in Iraq will come when Moqtada al-Sadr and as many of his supporters as possible are dead. Getting there will require resolve in the ongoing attrition battle but if the casualty numbers are even close to accurate, then things are going as well as can be reasonably expected in such a grim business.
The fighting in Iraq has flared up again and most of the people getting killed appear to be Islamists, which is just fine by me. I cannot but wonder if the Islamists thought that if they just kept on slugging away, the Brits and US would just fold up and slink off, leaving them to impose an theocratic ‘paradise’ on Iraq. The fact that Moqtada al-Sadr is offering a return to a truce is both a good sign and an excellent reason to do nothing of the sort but rather escalate efforts to kill him and his supporters.
I suspect that is indeed what is going to happens and moreover I think that the US and UK governments will stay the course regardless of who wins the elections in the USA. Seeing Iraq ‘go Islamic’ would be too much even for the dismal Kerry to want to have happen on his watch. Likewise for the Tory party in Britain, should they somehow miraculously contrive to defeat Blair at some point in the future. Come to think of it, that is yet another reason not to bother voting next time: the hard decisions have already been made and the course is now set. The politics become even easier if another Al-Qaeda ‘leaker’ like September 11th gets through on either side of the North Atlantic.
The equally dismal Bush already did the heavy lifting in Afghanistan and Iraq and now it is just a case of taking on targets of opportunity. As for the Brits, I doubt any future Tory government would be any better or worse regarding the on-going hollowing out of Britain’s fading military capabilities, so no real choices are on offer there either.
The West, well the Anglosphere bits at least, will continue to oppose Islamists like Al-Qaeda for the foreseeable future regardless of the supine predilections of the Guardian, Independent and New York Times reading classes and it does not much matter whose face is on the portraits in the US and UK embassies.
Although not in the mainstream news as much as the story deserves, the thus far peaceful (from the student side at least) Iranian intifada is alive and well. Unfortunately the same can not be said for some of its members. The Mullahcracy continues to visit violence and imprisonment upon such supporters of liberty.
In response, some of the imprisoned are carrying out a hunger strike to gain international attention for their plight.
Several alarmed European MPs, such as, Andre Berry, Paolo Kazaka and Helmut Markoff have expressed their public support and expressed concerns on the fate of the strikers and the persistent rights abuses in Iran. Mr. Berry has written a public letter for the attention of the German FM by asking him to intervene due to his close relationship with the ruling mullahs.
My cynical side wonders if one who has a ‘close relationship with the ruling mullahs’ would help the students for reasons other than a belief in democracy and human rights.
Nah. These are civilized and nuanced European leaders.
How many of you grew up playing ‘RISK’? Yes, I see a bunch of hands up… no less than I would expect from a bunch of Samizdata readers. So… with everyone’s mind now in the proper context, I give you the before and after maps of the middle east and central asia created by American Digest.
Many of us have had this image in our minds as we wrote on the current world war over the last few years, but many in the general public have failed to put this together. This is not their fault. It is in the nature of headline news to lose connectedness betwixt events separated in time and space. Afganistan is one story, now fading; Iraq is another story; the war on terrorism is yet another story. Except they are not.
Let us imagine for a moment we are military attache’s from Epsilon Eridani. We know nothing about human politics. We have not evolved for religious belief. But… we do know our warfare. We know our tactical and strategical levels.
Now look at the map from before. Look at the map afterwards. Can anyone imagine a better move to more thoroughly disrupt one’s enemy?
I certainly can not.
The Government of the Philippines, like the Spanish government before it, has stared into the face of evil… and capitulated.
They are pulling their troops out of Iraq to appease terrorists and keep head on shoulders of one of their citizens. One can make many arguments pro and con about the decision they, as a sovereign nation, have made. I am not going to fight those one way or the other. I merely wish to point to consequences which will almost certainly follow hard on the heels of their decision.
Unlike Spain, the Philippines have not bought even a temporary respite by their action. They have a local flock of Islamist nutcases to worry about in Mindanao: the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). The MILF operate far to the south of Manila perhaps… but perhaps not far enough. This home team watches television, reads newspapers and follows the internet just like every other revolutionary group on this planet.
MILF leaders will already be pondering tactical changes. How much might they accomplish by kidnapping a few high profile persons? Would al Jazeera be willing to send a camera crew that distance for a beheading? How far will the government cave in? The government in Manila has made its choice. Now they must live it.
Actions have consequences.
I suddenly find myself writing more and more about the Middle East.
Kidnappers demand less corruption.
Only in Palestine…
You may remember this sad incident in the opening days of the Iraq Campaign: a US Patriot battery engaged and shot down a returning British Tornado. The official report on the incident is finally out:
IFF failure led to destruction of RAF Tornado
A Royal Air Force (RAF) Board of Inquiry investigating the destruction of an RAF Tornado GR.4A by a US Army Patriot missile during the March 2003 invasion of Iraq has concluded that the aircraft’s identification friend-or-foe (IFF) system had failed. However, it also criticised the missile-classification criteria used by the Patriot system, and the US Army’s Patriot rules of engagement, firing doctrine and crew training.
[Jane’s Missiles and Rockets – 28 June 2004]
If any of our readers has a link to a pdf of the original report – if such exists – I would be happy to include it here.
Editor: Kudos to Julian Taylor for the link to the MoD pdf file.
News of large scale arrests of criminals in Baghdad carried out by Iraqi police are welcome, provided there is due process and it is not simply a trawling operation. It does however demonstrate the differing priorities of an army of occupation versus a police force.
The International Herald Tribune article taken from the New York Times also mentions a drop in ‘spectacular’ terrorist attacks over the past three weeks. Those of us who consider that terrorist groups usually prosper in a climate of lawlessness will ponder the Iraqi situation and reflect on Northern Ireland.
There is little doubt that massive police activity will uncover some terrorist networks and disrupt potential attacks: for example raiding the home of a criminal can turn up equipment intended for terrorist actions.
In Northern Ireland all sorts of crimes, from welfare benefit fraud, fraudulent elections, fire insurance scams, drug dealing, protection rackets, unlicensed gambling and alcohol premises, contract killings and woundings, are tolerated on the grounds that the ‘peace process’ must be kept going.
For the first time in months, I get the sense that Iraq may be going in the right direction. I wish this were the case of Londonderry and Belfast. I have felt for a long time that the violence in Northern Ireland should be considered a law-enforcement problem, separate from politics.
At last. George W. Bush starts telling it like it is, instead of issuing defensive justifications that only reinforce the petty slights and slanders that give rise to them.
We removed a declared enemy of America who had the capability of producing weapons of mass murder and could have passed that capability to terrorists bent on acquiring them. In the world after September 11th, that was a risk we could not afford to take.
This is exactly what some of us have been saying for a long time. Finding WMDs was never the point. We knew Saddam had the capability, otherwise he could not have done this. We knew he could not be trusted on WMDs because he kept doing this. We knew he sensed no moral obligation to stay on his own ground because he did this. And we knew Bin Laden had declared war on the West, and we knew Saddam was sympathetic to that cause because… well,
Bin Laden: Any chance you could help out with this next big attack on the States I was thinking about, Mr Saddam?
Saddam: Certainly not! What you are suggesting is immoral! Live and let live, that’s my philosophy!
As if.
So I had a choice to make: either take the word of a madman or defend America. Given that choice I will defend America.
The only reason the game of Hunt-the-WMDs got so much publicity was that America used it in their attempt to appease the United Nations; Saddam’s non-compliance with weapons inspections was supposed to be the legitimate (ie UN-friendly) reason for launching war, therefore, finding WMDs after the event would have “justified” the invasion with hard evidence.
Bad idea. The UN is evil too. It issues terrorism-encouraging statements that inspire people to blow up public-transport users. The UN would not have approved war on Iraq if Saddam had invited the UN and Bin Laden round together for chicken a-la-king, raspberry pavlova and an after-dinner game of launch-the-nuke. It would have suggested waiting a bit longer in case the decimation of California was a mistake rather than a precedent.
No more Mr Nice Guy, please, Mr Bush. The UN is not our friend.
Chris Goodman revisits Waller R. Newell important 2001 article Postmodern Jihad: What Osama bin Laden learned from the Left and looks at from where the Islamists really draw their inspiration
It is noticeable that when followers of Osama bin Laden film themselves cutting off the heads of non-combatants, they seek to extinguish the still small voice of their conscience by shouting out the name of God [‘Allah’]. Either they believe Allah to be Satan or they do not believe that God – in the sense of objective goodness – exists. An act of moral goodness does not require you to blank out your conscience.
You could argue that they exist in such a primitive state of mind that they view the taking of life as worship. Indeed you do not have to go back very far in European history before you find people being burnt as offerings, and it is possible that they view exploding a bomb in a crowded night club, market, or bank as an act of devotion, possible but unlikely.
The people who decided to murder over 3,000 citizens of the world in New York came from the most educated strata of their societies. To seek to comprehend their actions with reference to a medieval religion is to neglect the extent to which they are a product of modernity.
The ideology that motivates the followers of Osama bin Laden is derived more from European Romantic Nihilism than it is in Islamic conceptions of God. I think that Waller R. Newell explains it well in an article that is available on the internet called Post-Modern Jihad: What Osama Bin Laden learnt from the Left which I have just read. → Continue reading: The western roots of Islamism
So the UN says that Israel’s wall is illegal, and demands they take it down.
That would be the same UN that Jacques Chirac is so fond of- the same Jacques Chirac who lately told off President Bush for having opinions about how other parts of the world should run themselves. That would be the President Bush who led the invasion of Iraq which the UN apparently did not approve of very much.
Oh well. Evidently they regard wall-building as a more serious humanitarian issue than Kurd-gassing, children’s prisons or helping out organisations that openly state their ambition to be the total destruction of civilisation and all who sail in it.
The court ruling said the barrier could become tantamount to an annexation of Palestinian land, and impeded the Palestinian right to self-rule.
Oh, the horror. Not to mention that-
…some of it juts into the West Bank, cutting Palestinians off from their farmland and dividing some villages.
Whereas, removing the barrier would only redouble terrorist attacks nine times over, thereby impeding the right of four year olds not to have their arms and legs blown off, etc. Which is irrelevant, because it’s just a vain claim unsupported by factual evidence;
[Israeli officials] argued it has already saved hundreds of lives since building work began.
Well, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs invents statistics for bombings that never really happened, obviously. No doubt they pay actors to lie around in the road covered with blood so there are pictures for the TV screens, too.
Still, could be worse.
At least nobody who works at The Hague has to live in Israel, right?
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