I suddenly find myself writing more and more about the Middle East.
Kidnappers demand less corruption.
Only in Palestine…
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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:
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. July 15th, 2004 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
 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. July 14th, 2004 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
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.
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? As if.
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. July 12th, 2004 | 37 comments - (Comments are closed)
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 July 10th, 2004 | 63 comments - (Comments are closed)
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.
Oh, the horror. Not to mention that-
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;
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? July 9th, 2004 | 39 comments - (Comments are closed)
The official Iranian delegation to the “Crans Montana Forum” in Switzerland were rather surprised by the special appearance of Reza Pahlavi, son of the late Shah of Iran. His speech on the “Risks of Doing Business with the Islamic Republic” This small sample will give you some idea how blunt the Prince was in his takedown of the mullahcracy:
July 7th, 2004 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
Many of the DOD press conference transcripts are yawn inducing… but not this one. On June 16th, Lieutenant General Thomas F. Metz, Commander Multi-National Forces-Corp Iraq gave one of the most candid and informative presentations I have yet seen. This is good stuff. Read and enjoy. July 7th, 2004 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
I am still catching up with my email backlog after a week in which my server was ‘under attack’ by a storm of spam. High on my ‘must read’ list are the transcripts of the various DOD press briefings. I found a gem in this briefing from Saturday, given by Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, Deputy Director for Coalition Operations; and Dan Senor, Senior Adviser, CPA. In the words of Dan Senor:
Virtually anyone who reads Samizdata would understand tax rates this low necessarily lead to economic growth and the betterment of all citizens. Could we perhaps borrow Paul Bremer for a year or two? I believe he may be in need of a job… July 6th, 2004 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
This has been on Fox News for a few days now, but it made me laugh: the individual behind the first WTC bombing, now under lock and key, is going on health-strike:
Still, things could be worse- at least the Sheik is not expecting retalliation about other, more significant wrongs. Being forced to drink Tetley’s rather than Twining’s is one thing, but not being able to leave the building in order to blow up places is another thing altogether. Really quite a serious constraint, when you think about it. I suppose if he was angry about bigger things than tea, Abdel-Rahman would be beating himself up even worse than by eating M&Ms. A few dozen Krispy Kremes, perhaps? The ones with lemon-custard inside are especially good. Then again, so are the raspberry jam ones. Tough call. Perhaps this sort of thing could become a trend as more major terrorists get arrested. On the one hand, we could be seeing suicide-bombers all over the place blasting people to smithereens because some mad old cleric wanted the central heating turned up a couple of degrees. On the other hand, there might be a drastic reduction in the costs of keeping said evil lunatics alive, if they all manage to kill themselves by refusing their blood-pressure medication and overdosing on tubs of lard. Coming soon: Saddam gets angry about being tried for murdering all those people, and shaves off his beard to incite retaliation against the US. While eating M&Ms and refusing to take aspirin for his headaches. July 5th, 2004 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
Paul Bremer has left the country… Two days earlier than was expected, he handed the administration over to the Iraqi government under Iyad Allawi. More than 100,000 foreign troops will remain as well as the funds voted for by the American Congress to finance the work of reconstruction. John Keegan offers a ‘meta-contextual perspective’ on what is “rotten in the state of Iraq” (and in Washington) with regard to the aftermath of probably the most successful war ever fought between a democracy and a dictatorship. The entourage of highly opinionated advisers, that have become known as “neo-conservatives” may be at the root of the problem with the ill-conceived nation-building in Iraq:
Although the journey to freedom and democracy in the former communist bloc has not been straightforward, the assumption that those who opposed the communist tyranny saw democracy as the natural alternative, was certainly correct.
John Keegan concludes that the real opposition force is religion. There are others opposing the American presence, such as the survivors of the Ba’ath Party, a strictly secular organisation, however, religion is the only force that can provide an ‘alternative’, however flawed, to the current state of affairs. He admonished the Americans for dissolving the Iraqi army or police or civil administration, regardless of the number of Ba’ath Party members they contained. Perhaps the current security problems in Iraq prove him right. I do not know whether using ex-Ba’athists in the post-Saddam Iraq would have prevented the deterioration of security in Iraq we have witnessed. I do, however, have a problem with moral implications of not purging the society of those who propped an oppressive regime. One man cannot sustain a totalitarian regime alone, it is the thousands of ‘little’ authoritarians that help to maintain the regime’s grip on its victims and destroy its opponents. I believe it was wrong (morally and politically) for the countries of Central and Eastern Europe not conduct a thorough ‘de-communisation’ of their political systems and societies. Similarly, I believe de-Ba’athification is desirable for the Iraqi society to find its footing. However, I also find it hard to disagree with Keegan’s parting shot:
June 29th, 2004 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
Having bombed some mosques, George W. Bush has built a Protestant mosque at Abu-Ghraib prison. Here, the Iraqi Moslems are taught that pork may be good for them and that the teachings of the Holy Koran are supposed to be subordinated to the teachings of Democracy, as represented by handpicked Iraqi exiles protected by American armor. As many people before him with a gleam in their eye and fervor in their speeches, George W. Bush wanted to do good. As many revolutionaries before him he fell victim to technology, too awesome to reveal its implications. Technology as the main cause of revolutions Martin Luther, George W. Bush’s intellectual predecessor, correctly sensed that thanks to improved manufacturing processes, people were becoming economically independent. They no longer wished to be led blindly, to be told to behave “just so” without being given a reason that they could intellectually accept. People were becoming literate, able to read the Bible by themselves, and to think about their lives in a more rational way. The Germans, British, and Dutch did not speak a Romance language, and now they wanted church services in their own language since they simply did not understand Latin. Suddenly, they had become mature enough to want their Mass to be more meaningful, that is, understandable, to them. And when the language of the Mass became an issue, there were other matters to discuss. The Catholic Church failed to account for the social change that manufacturing brought about, and Germanic peoples turned Protestant as a result. The French, Italians, Spanish, and Portuguese remained Catholic, since a Latin Mass was understandable to them. Thus the Protestant revolution reflected the fact that manufacturing technology had made people more self-sufficient, able to read and to think for themselves. → Continue reading: George W. Bush: Martin Luther for the Islamic world June 28th, 2004 | 30 comments - (Comments are closed)
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