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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.
It is common sense that you cannot possibly stop every terrorist attack. The terrorist choses the time and the place out of all possible times and places. They watch and probe for exactly the place and time where the opposing forces are not to be found.
Anyone who believes that any force, no matter how large and ruthless, can stop dedicated groups from blowing something up is simply a moron. All the defenders can do is take the losses stoicly while they drain the swamp, kill the croc’s and try their best not to create conditions conducive to breeding a new batch.
Not all terrorist attacks succeed. Against an aware opposing force many will fail. If the population is also against them… most can be stopped. Perhaps the recent mosque bombing was a wakeup call to the Iraqi populace. They can not sit complacently and expect someone to take care of them. “Let George do it” is something that just doesn’t work in a free society. Your liberty and your security are largely your own responsibility.
It is with interest I read of an attack thwarted by the Iraqi police. (Link via Glenn Reynolds.)
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.
I don’t believe the popular line that attacks on Coalition troops in Iraq take place because the Iraqis are angry about lacking electricity, water and other services. That theory certainly doesn’t explain the dreadful bombing of a mosque a few hours ago.
But there’s no denying that when you are trying to win over a country, it doesn’t help if nothing bloody works.
This story from Stephen Pollard made me think that some loyal US bureaucrats might as well go out and slit a few of their own soldiers’ throats. In a hot country like Iraq with intermittent electricity supply and a dodgy phone system, mobile phones make a tremendous difference. They save time, inconvenience and sometimes lives. So here’s how the State Department has gone about getting this great aid to the restoration of normality up and running:
Compounding the impact of the US’ military overstretch on security has been the State Department’s crippling bureaucratic mindset. Rather than recognising the exceptional nature of the Iraqi situation, officials have insisted at every point in applying the full rigour of US health and safety requirements, licensing procedures and other sundry impediments to progress. Take the mobile phone network. The sensible solution would have been to pick the most able and cost-effective operator and let them get on with it. But instead, the decision was taken to go through a full competitive tendering process, which takes an inordinate amount of time. One day, however, people suddenly found their mobiles working; a network had decided, to immense acclaim, to ignore the process and, indeed, get on with it. They were swiftly shut down, encapsulating just why things have been moving so slowly in Iraq: beauraucracy ahead of common sense.
They had it! They had one of the prizes they should have been striving for actually in their hands – and they let it slip through their fingers.
In the first years of the last century Count Peter Stolypin raced against time to enrich the Russian people fast enough to stave off revolution. The race ended with his assassination in 1911. Tough luck, Russia. What an irony if Stolypin’s counterparts in modern Iraq survive the assassins who are undoubtedly after them – only to be defeated by regulation.
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
Last week we had a rather stiff debate on the downsides of Coalition policing in Iraq here, here and here.
In this post Salam Pax responded to a recent email. He could just as well have been reading and responding to the comments of many of our readers. Go read it.
As for me, the more I read, the more I like the guy. I hope someday we will either have the honour of his presence at a Samizdata London Blogger Bash, or an opportunity to sit an afternoon in a Baghdad cafe with him… sipping only culturally allowable beverages of course!
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
From the manner in which our governing elites regulate, restrict, control, prohibit and monitor every jot and tittle of our lives, it is probably reasonable to infer that they imagine themselves to be presiding over a motley and sordid collection of cut-throats, gangsters, thieves, perverts, racists, conmen and every other manner of low and untrustworthy creature.
This is the diametric opposite of the truth. On the whole, the British are civil, law-abiding and touchingly decent. Personally, I put this down to our common law heritage.
How strange, then, that there appears to be no public concern whatsoever about an organisation based in this country and whose members clearly feel confident enough to openly publish and distribute such disturbing sentiments:
Two years on then, it seems that during their customary 1 minutes silence in NewYork and elsewhere on September the 11th 2003, Muslims worldwide will again be watching replays of the collapse of the Twin Towers, praying to Allah (SWT) to grant those magnificent 19, Paradise. They will also be praying for the reverberations to continue until the eradication of all man-made law and the implementation of divine law in the form of the Khilafah – carrying the message of Islam to the world and striving for Izhar ud-Deen i.e. the total domination of the world by Islam.
Well, at least they’re not going fox-hunting (I assume).
I remain a passionate advocate of free speech. I think these people should be able to say whatever they want to say. However, and by the same token, other people are free to draw from it whatever conclusions they see fit.
[My thanks to the crew at Gene Expression for the link.]
I have several items in my list of ‘stories to watch’ on the Iraq campaign. The silence on two of them has been deafening. They are dogs ‘that didn’t bark’.
- What is the story on the Iraqi Salman Pak training facility? That is where an old Boeing 707 airframe was seen from overhead photography. Ground truth reports said it was used to train terrorists in the fine art of hijacking. What has been found there? Why hasn’t it been reported on? Why hasn’t someone from the army of Baghdad news correspondents been out to the suburbs to tell us?
- Where in hell are those ships? You know the ones I’m talking about. Osama’s fleet. In March we heard how they were floating around the world’s oceans and changing name and flag in mid voyage. Other reports suggested they might carry weaponry Saddam wanted both preserved and not found.
The latter seems to have slipped entirely into the black world. Did a Navy Seal team board and sink them with all hands dead?
Stories don’t go away in the blogosphere. They aren’t forgotten. They’ll keep popping up until satisfactory answers are found. Perhaps someone in ‘big media’, someone with resource enough for real intelligence work, can dig for the facts.
The truth is out there.
There appear to be no good days in the Middle East, just varying degrees of bad day. How does today rate on the scale, I wonder?
In Baghdad, a bomber in a truck blows up the UN Headquarters: death toll 16 and rising.
In Jerusalem, a bomber blows up another bus: death toll 20 and rising.
It is conceivable (though by no means inevitable) that the attacks were co-ordinated in some way.
I often wonder about the future of that region and, every time I do, the vista just grows darker and darker. Some might say that that prognosis is simply a product of my pessimistic tendencies.
Is it?
Reuters reports that Saddam Hussein’s former vice president, Taha Yassin Ramadan, has been captured by U.S. Kurdish allies in northern Iraq, U.S. and Kurdish officials. Ramadan was No. 20 and the 10 of diamonds in a deck of cards issued to U.S. troops hunting the 55 most wanted members of Saddam’s administration.
Ramadan, who is in his 60s and originally from the Mosul region, was one of the most hawkish members of Saddam’s inner circle and one of the only surviving plotters of the 1968 coup that brought the Ba’ath Party to power. His capture will fuel speculation that U.S. forces may be closing in on Saddam himself.
Ramadan is alleged to have been involved in crimes against humanity for his role in suppressing Kurdish rebellion in the north in the 1980s and against the Shi’ite revolt in southern Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War. A man of blunt words, he told Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister to “go to hell” during the U.S. invasion when the minister suggested that Saddam should step down.
Reuters
A new letter from Basra, this time adding a bit of colour (or new shades of grey) to the black and white picture of Iraqi society.
I promised you a description of Basra society. The most important division is not religious or tribal but between the top 20% and the bottom 80%. The top 20% is the educated class that run the country. It was a totally technocratic country, with the highest percentage of PhDs per capita in the world, and it shows. The educated 20% are scared stiff of Islamic fundamentalism, Iranians and extremists.
They want to see a modern, comparatively secular state, so they tend to be pro-CF [ed. Coalition Forces] as a bulwark against all of the above, and because they have the most to lose from a breakdown in law and order. They are also terrified of mob rule. They are appalled by the current crime, which is not simply old Basra without Saddam, but Basra with the worst scum from across Iraq deliberately released into it just before we arrived. They want security above all from CF and are frightened of not getting it. Talk of the Badr corps, Iranian trained Iraqis, is everywhere.
The top 20% are usually tainted ex-regime to some degree although they also include those most vehemently opposed to the old regime, as they tended to have suffer more personally – they were important enough for the regime to bother to deal with. Most have also quickly switched to CF as the resident power and will switch again just as easily. There are plenty of genuine patriots and some humanitarian idealists, but most look to see how the new regime works and how they can manipulate it. They now want to get on and get ahead with their fairly typical middle-class aspirations, but most are held back to some degree by Ba’ath Party connections. And some are involved in the crime in the sense of general managerial corruption.
Authority – many people, especially at the top defined themselves by their positions. This has all gone, creating a social vacuum and loss of identity. The top 20% provide the main support of the secular political parties, i.e. INC, CINU, etc. Influences on the top 20% in rough order of importance are the CF, the political parties, western aspirations, ex-regime connections, tribes, and religion.
Amongst the poorer 80% only 40% of the total population count, as only the men count politically. Women have a lot more sway within the homes than western stereotyping realises but not outside of it. (Women in the top 20% have professional status just as in the West.) Their sources of information are primarily their local Imams. They all go to the Mosque on Friday and listen to the sermon but they do not necessarily agree with what they are told (if they did, there would not be so much crime…) In addition, if they do not like the message they simply swap mosques.
The small educated part of the bottom 80% tend to be religious scholars, anyone else who is educated gets immense respect, i.e. any doctors, lawyers. Otherwise, people listen to radio in crowds in markets and barber shops. They are 80% illiterate, but those who can read pass on whatever they read in pamphlets, leaflets or papers, inevitably putting their own spin on it and increasing the power of rumour. There is a popular local saying Egyptians write, Lebanese print, Iraqis read…
Tribal connections are becoming more important in urban Basra than in the past, as they provide the only available means of security – the police are frightened of being attacked, but a tribe is big enough and violent enough to protect you. The police are not willing to kill your enemies, the tribe is. To a lesser extent religious political groups try to fulfil the same function. This part of the population is very localised and rely upon local community links. Their other options are to join or work for a crime gang.
The bottom part of the population is used to being told, not so much what to do, as what will happen. They are desperate for direction and basic security and basic infrastructure, i.e. immediate water and electricity and fuel to cook. By way of comparison Saddam Hussein got the infrastructure back up and running in a month in 1991 after Basra was far worse damaged. He did it largely by threatening to shoot looters. The influences at this level are the Imams, who also act in effect as local social workers, tribes, and crime gangs.
That’s enough for now. Things have actually improved on the security front because of the ops [ed. operations] we have done, mostly VCPs [ed. vehicle checkpoints]
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