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| 7/11 |
| 2005/10/14-15 [Politics/Foreign/MiddleEast/Iraq] UID:40096 Activity:moderate |
10/14 Why do we try so hard to ignore what our enemies say about
themselves?
http://victorhanson.com/articles/thornton101305.html
\_ Wow, what a lot of useless hot air. Maybe us motd trolls should
apply for jobs at the Hoover Institution so we can get actually
paid to bloviate. This guy, on the other hand earns his keep as
a writer:
http://www.exile.ru/2005-July-28/victor_hanson.html
\_ You mean the guy who wrote this idiotic rant? There's a
whole lot of unsubstatiated accusations in there, not much
else.
\_ The War Nerd is in the *entertainment* business. You read
crap like that in about a minute and a half, and are
slightly amused, that's the point. Dr. Professor fucktard,
on the other hand, is neither entertaining nor informative,
nor does he propose any usefull solutions to any problems.
\_ Victor Hansen's books on ancient history are all right.
His attempts at making 1 to 1 comparisons of ancient
military forces to current conflicts are really reaching
though, and I can't stand his widely published opinion
pieces in newspapers. It's also hard to say if
'War Nerd' is a real person, I am signed up to interview
his supposed boss in November, I am slightly afraid
to ask him. - danh
\_ http://csua.org/u/dq7 (juancole.com)
Professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History at UMich,
Ph.D. in Islamic Studies at UCLA, fluent in Arabic and Persian,
thinks letter is a forgery: "the mistakes are those a Shiite might
make when pretending to be a Sunni". |
| 7/11 |
|
| victorhanson.com/articles/thornton101305.html a letter from Al Qaedas number two leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, to Abu M usab al-Zarqawi, the head-terrorist in Iraq. This document repays carefu l reading, for it explodes much of the received wisdom many people rely on in making sense of jihadist terror. According to this standard interpretation, Islamic terror is the handiwor k of a fanatic minority that has highjacked and distorted Islamic doct rine. These medieval throwbacks gain traction from the political autocra cy and oppression that dominate the Muslim governments in the Middle Eas t, regimes that cannot provide the freedom and prosperity that would eli minate the frustration and despair breeding terrorist violence. The left ist variation of this analysis lays the blame on Israeli oppression of t he Palestinians, and Western, particularly American, imperialist and col onialist misdeeds in the region. Either way, the underlying assumption i s that jihadist terror is a sort of cultural neurosis arising in reactio n to political or material circumstances. Thus the cure for the terroris t disease must be found in improving those circumstances: installing d emocratic governments or compelling Israel to surrender Judea and Samari a (aka the occupied West Bank) so that a Palestinian state can be crea ted. Zawahiris letter, however, offers little that squares with this received wisdom. Its shrewd analysis and careful argument are the signs not of a wild-eyed religious fanatic but of a thinker shaped by his religions h istory and spiritual imperatives. Indeed, Zawahiri is very clear about t he traditional jihadist motivation, one that is not a mere reaction to W estern misdeeds or a distortion of Islam, but rather squarely in its his tory and traditional values: the eventual triumph of the true faith over atheism and polytheism, the latter term code for Christianity. Thus the struggle in Iraq is the site of the greatest battle of Islam in th is era, another in a long series of epic battles between Islam and ath eism. However, in Zawahiris analysis, the victory of Islam will never take place until a Muslim state is established in the manner of the Pro phet in the heart of the Islamic world. For only then can the caliphate ultimately be reestablished: The goal in this age, Zawahiri writes, is the establishment of a caliphate in the manner of the Prophet. The t error of the insurgents in Iraq is a large step directly towards that g oal. Rather than a localized response to American-Zionist imperial adventurism , then, the insurgency in Iraq according to Zawahiri is merely the means to achieving the first of several incremental goals aimed at the even tual establishment of the caliphate throughout the heart of the Islamic world, that is the whole Middle East. Note well: t he insurgents are murdering and maiming not in reaction to Abu Graib, no t to forestall Western control over oil reserves, not out of frustration with Israels defensive wall, not for any of the reasons we in the West cook up out of our own materialist prejudices, but for a spiritual goal : the fulfillment of Allahs will that the traditional lands once conque red by his armies and subjected to Islam be restored to rule by adherent s of the true faith. After this goal is achieved, the third stage will involve expanding th e jihad wave to the secular countries neighboring Iraq. And then will c ome the final stage: the clash with Israel. Zawahiris references to I srael are significant, and make clear that despite years of propaganda i n which Palestinian frustrated nationalist aspirations are trotted out as excuses for murder, it is Israels very existence, no matter what it does, that makes its elimination necessary. As Zawahiri puts it, Palest ine is the heart of a bird whose wings are Syria and Egypt. The West ern powers understood the strategic importance of this location for dest roying the unity of the Muslim-Arab world; In other words, Israel is simply a weapon in the war of the infidel again st Islam, an outpost of the West as much as were the medieval Crusader k ingdoms, a state established only to challenge any new Islamic entity. That is why Israel must go, not because it has prevented the Palestinia ns from creating a state. They have come to comprehend the goal of planting Israel in this region, and they are not misled in this, rather they have admitted their ignorance of the religious nature of this conflict. Nor is this interpretation the idiosyncratic obsession of a crank, as the existence of numerous Palestinian jihadist terror organizations attests . The Wests failure to recognize that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is an episode in the centuries-long spiritual struggle between Islam and the infidels continues to this day, as we see with the vast hopes pin ned on Mahmoud Abbas and democratic elections, all the while organizatio ns like Hamas, committed like Zawahiri to the destruction of Israel, con tinue to enjoy significant support among Palestinian Arabs and to functi on as an autonomous state-within-a-state. The creation of a Palestinian state, then, is merely a stage towards that eventual clash with Israel Zawahiri speaks of. Until we recognize this spiritual motivation and co mpel the presumed moderates who sincerely reject it to act on their be liefs more bluntly, to destroy the armed terrorists there will be n o solution to that crisis that does not leave Israel vulnerable. Zawahiri understands that the pursuit of this traditional Islamic goal mu st take place in a modern world in which the infidels have an overwhelmi ng military superiority. This means that the struggle must be carried on at the psychological and perceptual level as well. Suicide attacks on Shiites in Iraq, then, are condemned not on mora l or religious grounds, but as tactical errors in the battle for hearts and minds. Why a gory beheading when we can kill the captives by a bu llet. That would achieve that which is sought after without exposing our selves to the questions and answering to doubts. As we have seen repeat edly in Israel, terrorist murder is condemned on tactical, not moral, gr ounds. Always the larger goal, the restoration of Islamic dominance, is the only standard by which to judge any action. Finally, Zawahiri makes it clear that the Islamic arrogant assurance of i ts spiritual superiority and righteousness is validated by the correspon ding spiritual dysfunction of an American society that puts material com fort and security ahead of everything else. Zawahiris confidence that t he Americans will exit soon, as he puts it, and so planning should com mence for the political order that will arise upon their departure, is c onfirmed for him historically by Vietnam: The aftermath of the collapse of American power in Vietnam and how they ran and left their agents is noteworthy. Indeed it is, but not for the false quagmire analog y trotted out periodically by those opposed to the war in Iraq. Rather, the significance of Vietnam lies in how the United States, as a South Vi etnamese defense minister put it, snatched defeat from the jaws of vict ory. In other words, military power may have succeeded in turning back the Nor th Vietnamese, but political and moral weakness undid all the gains earn ed by the sacrifice of 60,000 American lives and millions of Vietnamese. As Zawahiri indicates, the lesson was learned by our enemies: make enou gh Americans uncomfortable, disturb their leisure and sensibilities with enough grisly images helpfully broadcast by their own media, and eventu ally they will cut and run. And indeed, if we were to abandon Iraq after suffering there about the same number of deaths as we did in two months in Vietnam, such abandonment would confirm for the jihadists their esti mation of our spiritual corruption. Over and over the jihadist enemy tells us why he wants to kill us, and ov er and over we dismiss his words or reduce them to our own categories. P aralyzed by our fear of being insensitive to cultural differences, and deluded by our materialist preconceptions that reduce religion to an ex pression of some more real cause, we refuse to name clearly the enemy: an Islamic faith that for centuries has kill... |
| www.exile.ru/2005-July-28/victor_hanson.html Next I've survived some terrible summers, but this is the worst. Fresno's been putting on a show, crunching a whole lifetime of stup id misery into a few hot months. I had figured this summer would be a little easier to handle now that I'v e shucked off a layer of blubber (I slimmed down a bit to try to ease my kidney situation). But no, God just made it a few degrees hotter to mak e sure I stay as sweaty and miserable as ever, cooking in my own fat. People here have been going crazy since it started heating up. In case you didn't read about it, what happened was this 11-year-old girl threw a ro ck at some kids who were splattering her with water balloons, so the Fre sno cops swooped down with three squad cars and a chopper. They wrestled her down, cuffed her and charged her with felony assault. She did a wee k in juvie isolation, with no access to even her parents, before they le t her go. Naturally her lawyers yelled racism, because she's Mexican. That's the key to understand ing what's happening in the world today: plain old cowardice. The cops who wrestled that little girl around were jus t like the cops you see on Reno 911, playing tough once they were sure t he suspect couldn't fight back. I drive past gang corners every damn day , and I never see the Fresno PD giving those bastards any trouble-they'r e too scary. So they wait till it's a little girl who defended herself a gainst a bunch of bullies, then they swarm her like a SWAT team. We've got this Fresno intellectual who likes to strut the same way in the local paper. He's one of these snotty assholes with three names: Victor Davis Hanson. This fool passes himself off as a military historian, writing columns abo ut Iraq and Afghanistan and everything else he feels like babbling about , but he doesn't have a clue about contemporary warfare. Every war nerd on the net knows more about what's happening in Iraq than he does. He teaches Classics, he's written a half dozen boo ks on ancient warfare, and he never lets you forget that he's a professo r and you're not. In his last column for the Fresno Bee, he sneered at people who don't hav e PhD's for daring to have opinions about the war in Iraq: "What do a talented Richard Gere, Robert Redford and Madonna all have in common bes ides loudly blasting the current administration? Cher may think George Bush is 'stupid,' but she-not he-didn't finish high school." Since I never even finished my AA degree, I took that kind of personally. I guess it's my fault for not getting into Yale on pure merit like Bush did. That column got me so furious I daydreamed about driving down High way 99 to Hanson's farm and setting all his orchards and vineyards on fi re. I kept thinking of what the Spartans said when one of their neighbor s threatened them: "Your cicadas will chirp from the ground," meaning, " We'll burn your fucking olive orchards if you mouth off again." Professor Hanson is one of these "back to the land" assholes who can affo rd to live on a farm because he's got tenure for life at Fresno State-th ey can't fire him for anything less than a major felony. It's classic we lfare state socialism that funds his estate, but that doesn't stop him f rom moralizing about the benefits of free market solutions. So he writes these columns from his farm in Selma, a few miles down the road from Fr esno, about the sanctity of private land and private enterprise and the life lessons of farming. According to his of ficial online bio, Hanson graduated from UC Santa Cruz in 1975. I don't know if you non-Californians understand what that means. UC Santa Cruz i s the official sex-and-drugs campus of the whole UC system. It's so hipp ie-cool and mellow it doesn't even give grades, which are just too bourg eois. The kids who go ther e are rich brats who don't have to worry about getting a job-because gra duating from there is like telling your future employers you were stoned for four straight years. I can only dream about what it m ust've been like to be a student at Santa Cruz back then, at the climax of the hippie days. I seriously doubt if anybody on that campus was un-s toned from enrollment to graduation, or un-laid for more than a week. So here's a question for you, Professor Hanson, Mister Morality: how many coeds did you screw when you were at UC Santa Cruz? But you know, I could take all Hanson's hypocritical pompous bullshit if he only knew something about contemporary warfare. All he kn ows is that he's in favor of Gulf War II, and to defend that mess he's w illing to slander Bush Sr's magnificent victory in Gulf War I This is i nsane, really insane-taking America's only outright strategic victory si nce 1945, our most glorious campaign since Inchon, and turning it into a defeat just so you can make Bush Jr's fiasco look a little better. Here 's Hanson's treasonous account of Gulf War I: "War I (January 17 to March 3, 1991) "The First Iraqi War : started over Saddam Hussein's August 2, 1990, inva sion of Kuwait. His occupation precipitated the American-led coalition's efforts to reclaim Kuwait through land and air attacks. Saddam's comple te capitulation was seen as satisfying the war's professed claim of rest oring the sovereignty of Kuwait. "But despite retreating from Kuwait and suffering terrible damage to his armed forces, Saddam, like the Germans in 1918, claimed that his armies had been repelled while on the offensive. So he passed off a setback as a draw against the world's superpower - and thus a win by virtue of his own survival against overwhelming odds. "In any case, we called off our forces before the destruction of the Repu blican Guard. we let rebellious Shiite s and Kurds be tragically butchered; Apparently the US wished to bow to the UN mandat es only to expel Saddam from Kuwait, or was worried about our Sunni part ners who wanted a lid on Kurdish tribalism and Shiite fervor inside Iraq ." There are so many evil lies here, I don't know where to start. First ther e's the phony comparison to Germany after WW I There's no comparison at all. Saddam's Kuwait invasion wasn't a nationalist war like WW I, and n o matter what Saddam said, every dog in the street in Baghdad knew perfe ctly well that the Iraqi army had been outclassed and savaged. Moreover, the Germans fought for four years and nearly won, whereas Saddam got hi s ass completely whipped in a three-day land war. Fact is, we did it rig ht in Gulf War I We neutered Saddam, destroyed his ability to threaten anybody, and left him in charge of his hellhole country. It was American diplomacy combined with military power at its finest. Hanson goes on to say that we "refused to go to Baghdad" because we wante d to please the UN. We used the UN to build a huge alliance (s omething Bush's idiotic son didn't think was necessary), and we stayed o ut of Baghdad because Powell and Bush Sr. knew what would happen if we t ried to occupy Iraqi cities. We're going through the consequences of tha t mistake right now; how can anybody pretend not to understand, by now, why it was a bad idea, and why Bush Sr. What's amazing is that Hanson is actually trying to blame Bush Sr. for no t jumping off the cliff first, before his idiotic son did. He proves his sleaze when he moves on to Gulf War II: "War IV. It was framed by the fact that the United States would not simply leave af ter toppling Saddam yet had never really gone into the Sunni Triangle in force during the three-week victory. War IV was waged by a loose allian ce of Wahhabi fundamentalists, foreign jihadists, and former Baathists a gainst the American efforts to fashion an indigenous Iraqi democratic go vernment." Here again, there's so many lies it's hard to know where to start. Like, what the hell does Hanson mean by saying we never attacked the Sunni Tri angle? The only reason he say s it is because he has to explain to himself how come the insurgency was able to come on so strong after we kicked ass in the conventional war. And see, Hanson can't admit to himself that there was a difference in th e kind of war being waged, a transition from conventional to urban-guerr illa warfare. If he once admitted that we're dealing with an urban gue... |
| csua.org/u/dq7 -> www.juancole.com/2005/10/zawahiri-letter-to-zarqawi-shiite.html Informed Comment Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan Friday, October 14, 2005 Zawahiri Letter to Zarqawi: A Shiite Forgery? The Arabic text of the recently released letter alleged to be by Zawah iri (al-Qaeda's number two man) to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq raises q uestions for me as to its authenticity. very first element of the letter is the blessing on the Prophet. I t says: al-salah wa al-salam ala rasuli'llahi wa a-lihi wa suhubihi . Because of the cultural influence of Shiism in South Asia , one does find that form of the salutation in Pakistan and India among Sunni Muslims. But before I went to Pakistan I had never, ever heard a Sunni Muslim add "wa alihi" (and his family) to the salutation. I associated it strongly with Iran and Shiism, and was taken aback to hear Sunnis say it on Pakis tani television. Certainly, I never heard that form of it all the time I lived in Egypt. I tried adding Qaida and got a Shiit e attack on Sunni extremism. I do not believe that an Egyptian like al-Zawahiri would use this phraseo logy at all. But he certainly would not use it to open a letter to a Sal afi. Sunni hardliners deeply object to what they see as Shiite idolatry of the imams or descendants of the Prophet Muhammad, for whom they made shrines such as Ali's at Najaf and Husayn's at Karbala. In fact, hard li ne Wahhabis from Saudi Arabia attacked and sacked Karbala in 1803. " the phrase "and his family" would be an insult to Zarqawi and to the hardline Sunnis in Iraq. Later he refers to Husain, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, as al-Im am al-sibt, "the Imam, the grandson". I do not believe that a hard line Sunni such as Zawahiri would call Husain an Imam. The letter then says how much Zawahiri misses meeting with Zarqawi. Zarqa wi was not part of al-Qaeda when he was in Afghanistan. And when he went back to Jordan he did not allow the Jordanian and German chapters of his Tawhid wa Jihad group to send money to Bin L aden. If Zawahiri was going to bring up old times, he would have had to find a way to get past this troubled history, not just pretend that the two used to pal around. But it could also come from Iran, since the mistakes are those a Shiite might make when pretending to be a Sunni. Or it could come from an Iraqi Shiite group attempting to manipulate the U nited States. |
| juancole.com Mick Bednarak admitted to AP that the Iraqi Army is not up to actually holding the neighborhoods in Baquba that US troops recently cleared, in hard fighting, of Salafi Jihadi guerrillas. So Baquba is a city of like 300,000 northeast of Baghdad, in Diyala Province. Diyala has a 60% Sunni majority, and it had a lot of Baath military bases in the old days. It is now ruled by the (Shiite) Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, which benefits from the province's proximity to Iran. The previous Iraqi military commander had to be fired because he was helping, behind the scenes, Shiite militias. They have a Shiite government in their province that they don't want, and they have a Shiite/Kurdish government in Baghdad that sends Shiite troops of the Iraqi Army against them. The Sunni Arab neighborhoods of Baquba have thrown up local militias, and they have made alliances with Baathi and Salafi Jihadi cells. They are just local guys or foreign volunteers who don't like seeing Sunni Arabs subjected to Shiite ayatollahs and secessionist Kurds. So after 6 days of hard fighting, in which US troops were killed and wounded, what do we have? An Iraqi army unable actually to hold the 'cleared' neighborhoods, which are likely to throw up more guerrilla leaders and campaigns. A continued dominance of Sunni Arabs in Diyala by a Shiite government completely unacceptable to them. A US commitment to upholding the Shiite ("Iraqi") government. So I am angry because this looks to me like we sent our guys to fight and die for a piece of political quicksand in which the entire endeavor is likely to sink. They detonated a bomb in the lobby of the al-Mansur Hotel during a meeting of tribal sheikhs, killing 12. Presumably these were leaders who had decided to fight the Salafi Jihadis or extremist Sunnis. AFP reports: ' An AFP correspondent said charred bodies of the victims and many of the wounded were lying near the reception desk in the rubble-strewn lobby, and that the ceiling had collapsed on the bodies. A hotel employee said a group of five or six tribal sheikhs had come into the lobby and ordered tea. As the employee headed back to the kitchen the explosion went off behind him. One of those killed was Fassal al-Gawud, an ex-governor of the western Sunni province of Anbar, where several tribal sheikhs have recently allied with US and Iraqi forces against Al-Qaeda, according to security officials. Hussein Shaalan, a Shiite MP from the liberal Iraqi National List of former pro-Western premier Iyad Allawi's political bloc and a tribal chief from the central city of Diwaniyah, was also killed along with his son and a bodyguard. "Chemical Ali" (Ali Hasan al-Majid), a high Baath commander and cousin of Saddam who spearheaded the Anfal campaign of using poison gas against the Kurds in the north. This was toward the end of the Iran-Iraq War, when the Kurdish political leadership had allied with Khomeini in its bid to secede from Iraq. The gas campaign was indiscriminate, hitting Kurdish villages far from the Iranian front, and taking on a racial and genocidal aspect. Many of the deadliest cells operating in Iraq are actually Baathists, not Salafi Jihadis (what the US press and military mostly inaccurately call 'al-Qaeda'). Though many Baathists have little use for Saddam or Chemical Ali, the prospect of further hangings of high Baath commanders by the Shiite Dawa Party of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and his Shiite allies is intolerable to them. Then guerrillas detonated a bomb near the governor's mansion in Hilla, the capital of the mixed Babil province south of Baghdad. Hilla is a largely Shiite city, and Babil is controlled politically by the (Shiite) Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, who is close to Iran. The northern reaches of Babil province, however, have a lot of Sunnis, who reject the new political situation. Meanwhile, the Sunni Arab blocs in parliament have announced that they are boycotting the national legislature until former speaker Mahmud al-Mashhadani is reinstated. He was recently dismissed at the insistence of the Shiites and Kurds, allegedly for abusing MPs and for making outrageous statements. It was not widely reported in the Western press, but some of his anger against the Shiite MPs came from the kidnapping by the Mahdi Army of members of his own security guard. Al-Hayat writing in Arabic says that PM Nuri al-Maliki has been exposed to vehement criticism from his own bloc (the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance) for his inability to provide security, and especially his inability to safeguard Shiite holy sites. He is also criticized for failing to put cabinet ministries to work, which have been vacant for months. One sign of the tension is that the Shiite vice president, Adil Abdul Mahdi, tendered his resignation early last week, but was prevailed upon by president Jalal Talabani to withdraw it. Al-Hayat says that the Iraqi parliament managed to muster a bare quorum of 140 members on Saturday, of whom 103 voted to extend the current session of parliament one month, until the end of July. The LA Times has more, and evinces optimism that the parliament will pass petroleum and revenue distribution bills. Al-Hayat says that the Iraqi legislature issued a statement on the knighting by Queen Elizabeth II of author Salman Rushdie: "At a time when we call for a dialogue of religions and civilizations, and work to combat terrorism in all its forms and wherever it exists, we express our amazement and our regret that the Queen of England has honored a person who has insulted Islam and millions of its adherents." Note to Iraqi parliament: if a religion is true, it cannot be insulted, and if adherents have faith, they will be undeterred by criticism. Only false rites and weak faith need be afraid of novels. Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that PM Nuri al-Maliki has appointed a security commission for Karbala province, headed by a high-ranking Iraqi officer from the ministry of the interior to increase security in the province. Some 2000 extra police are being dispersed throughout it. Badr Corps paramilitary of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, visited Karbala on Friday. He said that the Iraqis had battled the Saddam regime for 20 years, and that they are prepared to struggle for that long and more to take Iraq into the phase of progress, stability, democracy, and to forestall the return of dictatorship. He consulted with local officials on the city's security challenges. On Sunday, tribal chieftains will hold a congress in Karbala to discuss the best way to preserve its stability. In another Shiite holy city south of Baghdad--Najaf-- the Mahdi Army staged street marches for three days last week, ending on Friday. In the wake of these marches, the city saw assassinations and security disturbances. Turkey alleged that PKK guerrillas rammed a fuel truck into a police station in eastern Anatolia. Turkish troops are already massed at the Iraqi border to deal with PKK fighters who have been given refuge inside Iraqi Kurdistan. Syria is an economic basket case, with no prospects of moving away from a bloated, inefficient state socialist framework, and is a house of cards ready to fall at any moment? Abu Aardvark on why maybe we shouldn't expect too much from those tribal leaders in al-Anbar province who are allegedly uniting against the Salafi Jihadis there. Colin Powell and Condi Rice's staff are playing a key behind the scenes role in the push to shut down Gitmo. Steve doesn't mention, but I will, that it is no accident that African-Americans should be especially troubled about keeping people in cages with no formal charges and no right to a lawyer. Excerpts: ' HILLA - A car bomb killed two people and wounded 18 in the Shi'ite city of Hilla, south of Baghdad, police said. gunmen after an attack on an Iraqi army checkpoint near Khalis, 80 km (50 miles) north of Baghdad, on Wednesday, the US military said. Attack helicopters were called in after the gunmen fired on the checkpoint. SAMARRA - Three police commandos and one gunman were killed in clashes in Samarra, 100 km (62 miles) north of Baghdad, police said. BAGHDAD - Three people were killed and two wounded in... |