Samizdata

This news has been all over the place. I first found it here:

Saudi Arabia’s religious police have declared Barbie dolls a threat to morality, complaining that the revealing clothes of the “Jewish” toy – already banned in the kingdom – were offensive to Islam.

And God forbid anybody should be offensive.

In some previous discussions on failings of the American forces I received a firestorm of protest. I never backed down on my opinion that annoying decent Iraqi’s and shooting wildly is not a way to win hearts and minds.

I’m rather chuffed the Marines agree with me… and so do the 101st Airborne. Both have done magnificent jobs in their regions. They are largely unsung on the nightly news. Reporters ignore them because success does not fit the discourse they write within.

It is interesting to note the Marines running the Najaf region have not lost a soldier since May. [Note that all casualties are declining].

Marines give the CPA (“Can’t Provide Anything”) low marks, closely followed by the forces around Baghdad. I must admit the central region around Baghdad/Tikrit is where the most bad guys went to ground and is thus inherently more dangerous. The Army hasn’t bolloxed the job but I think the Marines would have done a better one.

So let the inter-service flame war begin!

I found the link at Instapundit and thought it well worth the attention of our readers.

Many in the blogosphere have said the al Qaeda hate us simply for what we are… free, wealthy and tolerant. Now we have confirmation from a top al Qaeda leader:

The author of “The Future of Iraq and The Arabian Peninsula After The Fall of Baghdad” is Yussuf al-Ayyeri, one of Osama bin Laden’s closest associates since the early ’90s. A Saudi citizen also known by the nom de guerre Abu Muhammad, he was killed in a gun battle with security forces in Riyadh last June.

Yussuf al-Ayyeri considers American democracy the last and greatest threat against Islam:

This form of “unbelief” persuades the people that they are in charge of their destiny and that, using their collective reasoning, they can shape policies and pass laws as they see fit. That leads them into ignoring the “unalterable laws” promulgated by God for the whole of mankind, and codified in the Islamic shariah (jurisprudence) until the end of time.

He is afraid the increasing wealth of a free society will breed a world in which young people won’t be willing to blow themselves to their heavenly virgins. The following paragraphs may well contain the explanation of the economic warfare going on in Iraq. It appears the al Qaeda goal isn’t just beating Americans. They must send Iraq back to the stone age. Iraqi’s must be left ignorant and starving:

The goal of democracy, according to Al-Ayyeri, is to “make Muslims love this world, forget the next world and abandon jihad.” If established in any Muslim country for a reasonably long time, democracy could lead to economic prosperity, which, in turn, would make Muslims “reluctant to die in martyrdom” in defense of their faith.

He says that it is vital to prevent any normalization and stabilization in Iraq. Muslim militants should make sure that the United States does not succeed in holding elections in Iraq and creating a democratic government. “If democracy comes to Iraq, the next target [for democratization] would be the whole of the Muslim world,” Al-Ayyeri writes.

The Turkish government should beware. They are also on the menu:

The al Qaeda ideologist claims that the only Muslim country already affected by “the beginning of democratization” and thus in “mortal danger” is Turkey.

“Do we want what happened in Turkey to happen to all Muslim countries?” he asks. “Do we want Muslims to refuse taking part in jihad and submit to secularism, which is a Zionist-Crusader concoction?”

Like most fanatics, he does not understand history:

Al-Ayyeri says Iraq would become the graveyard of secular democracy, just as Afghanistan became the graveyard of communism. The idea is that the Americans, faced with mounting casualties in Iraq, will “just run away,” as did the Soviets in Afghanistan. This is because the Americans love this world and are concerned about nothing but their own comfort, while Muslims dream of the pleasures that martyrdom offers in paradise.

Al-Ayyeri is perhaps not aware Americans have fought fanatical suicide bombers before. Oh yes, we know all about this form of warfare. The absolute abhorance for it is part of American cultural history. We have an ingrained visceral hatred for those who would do it.

Three thousand five hundred Japanese Kamikazi pilots attacked American ships at the end of WWII with devastating effect. Japan’s remaining industry was churning out two man human torpedoes for the final battle. They were testing catapult ground launch of the manned Baka rocket bomb. The mainland population was preparing to fight to the end as they had on islands leading up to Japan: islands on which masses of civilians threw themselves off cliffs into the sea rather than surrender.

Soldiers died with hand grenades primed and ready underneath them. Surrendering prisoners approached American lines with explosives ready to go. The priests of the Bushido code called upon the people of Japan to die for the Emporer. They were preparing to do so. The invasion would have nearly wiped out the Japanese population. It would have taken years and cost the lives of a half million or more American soldiers. So we did the Indiana Jones thing… we nuked them.

We know how to solve this problem if it ever comes down to “end game” again. If there is still anyone out there who doesn’t understand the seriousness of the threat, please read this very final solution manifesto very carefully:

“As far as belief is concerned, the absolutely final version is represented by Islam, which “annuls all other religions and creeds.” Thus, Muslims can have only one goal: converting all humanity to Islam and “effacing the final traces of all other religions, creeds and ideologies.”

Did you just catch that whiff of smoke from the incinerators?

Many thanks to James Taranto’s daily Opinion Journal email newsletter for the heads up on this story.

Victor Davis Hanson provides some insight into the relentless negativity regarding the current reconstruction of Iraqi society. It turns out that, when you get right down to it, turning Iraq into a free and prosperous nation would be bad for nearly every other regime on the globe, as well as a significant slice of the American political and chattering classes.

After dispensing with the obvious opponents of a free and prosperous Iraq – the Baathist bitter-enders and all the other nations of the Mideast – he moves on to more interesting prey – the UN, the Europeans, and the Democratic “loyal” opposition. Read the whole thing, of course, but his conclusion seems well-supported:

It is no wonder that we have almost no explicit voices of support. Most nations and institutions will see themselves as losers should we succeed. And the array of politicians, opportunists, and hedging pundits find pessimism and demoralization the safer gambit than disinterested reporting or even optimism — given the sheer scope of the challenge of transforming Afghanistan and Iraq from terrorist enclaves and rogue regimes into liberal and humane states.

What a sad commentary on the state of humanity at the dawn of the Third Millenium, that creating freedom and prosperity in a formerly oppressed nation should evoke such widespread opposition.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman gets it at least partially right with his latest column:

We are attracting all these opponents to Iraq because they understand this war is The Big One. They don’t believe their own propaganda. They know this is not a war for oil. They know this is a war over ideas and values and governance. They know this war is about Western powers, helped by the U.N., coming into the heart of their world to promote more decent, open, tolerant, women-friendly, pluralistic governments by starting with Iraq — a country that contains all the main strands of the region: Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds.

. . . .

In short, America’s opponents know just what’s at stake in the postwar struggle for Iraq, which is why they flock there: beat America’s ideas in Iraq and you beat them out of the whole region; lose to America there, lose everywhere.”

→ Continue reading: The big one

Absolutely appalling interview with Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm unearthed at the National Review Online’s bloggish Corner:

IGNATIEFF: In 1934, millions of people are dying in the Soviet experiment. If you had known that, would it have made a difference to you at that time? To your commitment? To being a Communist?

HOBSBAWM: This is the sort of academic question to which an answer is simply not possible…I don’t actually know that it has any bearing on the history that I have written. If I were to give you a retrospective answer which is not the answer of a historian, I would have said, ‘Probably not.’

IGNATIEFF: Why?

HOBSBAWM: Because in a period in which, as you might imagine, mass murder and mass suffering are absolutely universal, the chance of a new world being born in great suffering would still have been worth backing. Now the point is, looking back as an historian, I would say that the sacrifices made by the Russian people were probably only marginally worthwhile. The sacrifices were enormous; they were excessive by almost any standard and excessively great. But I’m looking back at it now and I’m saying that because it turns out that the Soviet Union was not the beginning of the world revolution. Had it been, I’m not sure.

IGNATIEFF: What that comes down to is saying that had the radiant tomorrow actually been created, the loss of fifteen, twenty million people might have been justified?

HOBSBAWM: Yes.

→ Continue reading: The face of the enemy