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Post by Moses on May 16, 2004 22:14:33 GMT -5
Sharon's 'final solution: Road map to hell
By Pepe Escobar <br> 03/26/04 "Asia Times" -- By creating a shaheed (martyr) through the assassination of Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Yassin, Israel may have signaled a war not only against all Palestinians, but against all Islam. This is the essence of the "clash of civilizations" as dreamed by American neo-conservatives and endorsed by the Likud Party in Israel. <br> Sharon's 'final solution' Beirut in 1982 is the blueprint for the current strategy of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Gaza and the West Bank. The objectives are straightforward: to destroy the Palestinian Authority (PA); to prevent the emergence of any credible, secular Palestinian leadership; to perpetuate chaos in the West Bank; and then to apply "transfer", expelling the indigenous Palestinian population to Jordan or, better yet, to an Iraq under American watch. Since 2001, everything in Palestine has been subjected to a hellish cycle of violence: a Sharon provocation is followed by a string of suicide bombings, which is followed by revenge attacks. The second intifada, the destruction of Yasser Arafat's government infrastructure, the massacre at the Jenin refugee camp, Arafat's house arrest - all these developments are hostage to the same cycle and serve the same logic: the destruction not only of Arafat and the secular, nationalist PA, but also of any hope of a Palestinian state. The assassination of Yassin is designed to increase the pressure. <br> In the eyes of Israel and the United States, Yassin is a terrorist. For the Arab and Muslim world, he is a resistance fighter and a spiritual leader. Early this year, Yassin told the German media that Hamas was ready to accept a "temporary peace if a Palestinian state is created in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip". Hamas up to then had wanted a Muslim state from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River and denied the right of Israel to exist. Yassin said Hamas was prepared to stop its operations if Israel ended the occupation and stopped killing innocent Palestinians. <br> On the road to Sharon's "final solution", the assassination of Yasser Arafat was supposed to be the final provocation - as Sharon himself announced it last year. But Palestinian sources tell Asia Times Online that at the first signs of Hamas steering toward negotiations, Sharon chose to target Yassin instead. Sharon knows very well that a Hamas movement consumed with anger and vowing revenge through suicide bombings could not be a better enemy to be fought in all-out war; certainly much more convenient than a moderate, secular Palestinian government, or Arafat himself. But now even these considerations are marginal. Everybody and his neigbor apparently is on Sharon's hit list. <br> Anyway, the "elimination" of Arafat - which would have to be approved by Washington - remains the icing on the cake in Sharon's "final solution": after that, there will be no moderate, secular, pragmatic Palestinian leader, or organization for that matter, with the necessary political authority to speak or negotiate in the name of all Palestinians. <br> Islam's response <br>The big question is how Hamas will rise to the challenge. The first reaction was predictable: Khaled Mashaal, Hamas political bureau chief, said that "Sharon has been targeted by Palestinian resistance men and al-Qassam Brigades, in retaliation for the assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin." Hamas also distributed its own deck of cards - American-style - with the names of targeted Israeli officials. But it's crucial to point out that Hamas so far has not succumbed to the provocation of widening its targets to include the US. Mashaal said that the focus remains Israel until the end of the occupation. <br> Hamas may be originally an Islamic movement. But this is now also marginal, as far as the wider Palestinian resistance is concerned. Political and religious factions alike are now stressing solidarity. <br> The reaction in the wider Islamic world is much more complex. The Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, promptly reacted in the name of al-Qaeda, via a letter emailed to the Arab media. Abu Hafs al-Masri was an al-Qaeda leader killed in the 2001 American bombing in Afghanistan; the brigades are now a trademark signature of practically every al-Qaeda communique to its worldwide cells, as after the bombings in Madrid. The message reads: "We call on all the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades to avenge the sheikh of the Palestinian resistance by striking the tyrant of the age, America and its allies." The message calls for "strikes against this Jewish-crusader snake". Historically, al-Qaeda couldn't care less about the Palestinian struggle, but the assassination of a Sunni spiritual leader like Yassin moves the battle up one notch: for al-Qaeda, now the jihad in Palestine must be totally integrated with the jihad in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Chechnya, Central Asia and elsewhere. <br> Top Islamic scholars and spiritual leaders stress the support of all Muslims for the Palestinian resistance, with the emphasis on unity. Yassin himself was betting on increasing political unity between different Palestinian factions and Lebanese and Iraqi groups. Sheikh Hamid al-Bitawi, the imam of al-Aqsa mosque and head of the Palestinian Scholars League, said: "We the Palestinians will not throw in the towel for the Zionists. We will not give up ... we are the natives of this homeland." The mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Ekrema Sabri, stressed the importance of unity of the Arab world: "If the Arab rulers took a unified stance, the Israeli occupation would not dare to commit such crimes against the Palestinians." <br> But some key spiritual leaders go one step further. For them, there's only one answer: jihad - more or less what al-Qaeda is saying. In Cairo, the Grand Sheikh of al-Azhar, Mohammad Sayed Tantawi - one of Sunni Islam's highest authorities - said: "This is a heinous crime that must not go without punishment." <br> Sheikh Yousef al-Qardawi, who conducts his extremely popular talk show Sharia and Life on Qatar-based al-Jazeera television, said that "only force and jihad work with those aggressors". He insisted that "all Palestinians should now unify ranks and heal rifts to avenge the killing of Yassin and his companions". Al-Qardawi added that Yassin as a resistance leader was a powerful symbol not only for Palestinians, but to 1.3 billion Muslims all over the world. And right on cue, from Najaf in Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the supreme Shi'ite religious authority, called on "the sons of the Arab and Islamic nations to close ranks, unite and work hard for the liberation of the usurped land and restore rights". <br> Yet the key question remains: how powerful will be moderate Islam's answer to Sharon's provocation? The assassination may be leading to something unforeseen in the Islamic world - and indeed very powerful: a convergence of all national liberation movements against occupation. This has nothing to do with violent, global jihad. Call it peaceful jihad - but a jihad none the less. <br> Silent Washington
From calls to unity to calls to jihad, the Islamic world is reading the assassination of Sheikh Yassin as the ultimate provocation to force Palestinian despair to the limit, creating appalling conditions that would allow Israel to break the will of Palestinian civil society. In this context, the silence of approval in Washington is being interpreted by the Islamic world as another nail in the coffin of American credibility and moral leadership in the "war on terror". There could not be better propaganda for al-Qaeda, the International Islamic Front and the global jihad. <br> Copyright 2004 Asia Times <br>
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Post by Moses on May 16, 2004 22:44:01 GMT -5
www.homelandsecurityus.com/March 23, 2004. Why is Al Qaeda issuing statements for Hamas? by Laura Mansfield, [neo-con] Analyst Earlier today, the Yahoogroup that disseminates official announcements and publications on behalf of Al Qaeda issued a statement on behalf of Hamas regarding the death of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. [Give me a break, Yahoo, an American company, would permit "terrorists" to discuss their attack plans with each other over their network? al-Qaeda would really be so obvious to use a Yahoo forum for this?] This appears to be a significant development, and is indicative of the close relationship between the two organizations. The statement is translated in its entirety below. The message declares the start of a new campaign by Hamas called ìThe Metamorphosisî, which appears to be designed to destroy Israel. "The cowardly enemy believes that the assassination of the sheikh will be an assassination of Hamas and of the nation and the movement but what these cowards did not know is that the assassination of the sheikh is an assassination of the Zionist entity and it is the beginning of the end, therefore the project ìThe Metamorphosisî, God willing." It is clear from this, and other messages, that Hamas is threatening Israel. What is more compelling is that the relationship between Hamas and Al Qaeda, which has long been suspected [by rabid Zionists], appears to be emerging into full view. The Global Islamic Media group is the official media arm of Al Qaeda. It has over 5,000 subscribers, and sends out messages almost daily from Al Qaeda and its affiliated groups. It is said that nature abhors a vacuum, and in an organization there is inevitably a rush to fill the absence of a leader. At this point, it isnít apparent who will fill the role held by Sheikh Yassin within Hamas, and the Palestinian population. Hamas has resources that would be extremely valuable to Al Qaeda. The steady stream of young men and women who are willing to strap on bomb belts and blow themselves up in the name of Palestine and Islam is something that Al Qaeda would love to leverage. The people, especially the youth, in the Palestinian territories are extremely vulnerable to this exploitation. They have been indoctrinated for nearly forty years with an ever-increasing hatred of both Israel and the United States. Al Qaeda would quickly turn this hatred into action, and point the homicide bombers to the United States, given the opportunity. A response from Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement Regarding the assassination of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin From the believers, men were truthful what they promised Allah it then from them who he spent its death and from them who he waits and what they changed a change The Hamas Islamic Resistance Movement announces to our Palestinian nation and the Arab Nation and the Islamic nation and the fighting brothers, the death of our leader in Palestine and the founder of the Hamas Islamic Resistance Movement, the elderly blind imam Ahmad Ismail Yasin and his brothers, the martyrs. After the sheikh completed the dawn prayer on Monday in the mosque of the Islamic complex in Gaza that was established in first days in pursuit of Allah's pleasure and the love of the jihad, the prophets killers set out to assassinate of Palestinian Sheikh and Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) founder, the sheikh Ahmad Ismail Yasin and his companions: The fighting martyr / Ayoub Ahmad Ata Allah The fighting martyr / Khalil Abd Allah Abu Giab And a multitude from the benevolent prayers The martyr / Mu'min Ibrahim Alyazori (Dr. Ibrahim Alyazori's son is one of the founders of the Hamas movement) The martyr / Khamis Sami (Sheikh Ahmad Yassin's brother-in-law) The martyr / Ahmad Abd Al-Aal The martyr / Rabih Abd Al-Hai Abd Al-Aal The martyr / Rateb Abd Al-Raheem Alaalol The cowardly enemy believes that the assassination of the sheikh will be an assassination of Hamas and of the nation and the movement but what these cowards did not know is that the assassination of the sheikh is an assassination of the Zionist entity and it is the beginning of the end, therefore the project ìThe Metamorphosisî, God willing . Hamas will spend all of the fighting resources of the movement, and she will continue the March that its sheikh started, and the Arab Nation and the Islamic one should meet its responsibilities in the defense of Palestinian land and of the blessed Al Aqsa Mosque, and the support of the nation of Palestine. I fasted, O our sheikh, you were the leader in your life and the day of your martyrdom. And to Allah in the immortals with the prophets and the honest one and the martyrs and the virtuous one and these became good a companion. The Islamic Resistance Movement - Hamas 1 Safr 1425* 22 March, 2004 The international Islamic media center Global Islamic Media Centre (*Safr is the second month of the Islamic calendar)
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Post by Moses on May 16, 2004 22:53:31 GMT -5
www.capitalonline.com/cgi-bin/read/2004/04_02-26/GOVBy VAISHALI HONAWAR, Staff Writer A county delegate known for ultra-conservative views on religion yesterday generated a wave of protest among state lawmakers by e-mailing an essay that portrays Islam as promoting hatred and militancy. Del. Don Dwyer, D-Glen Burnie, sent copies of an essay written by his eighth-grade nephew, Alex Dwyer - titled "Is Islam really peaceful?" - to delegates and senators. Writing for his history class, Alex wrote that Bible references support the view that Islam "is not a peaceable religion." He quotes Islamic scriptures to show that the Sept. 11 attacks stemmed from Muslims' general proclivity to violence. "In contrast to Christ, Islam is quite the opposite in that it says that you are to do to others as they do to you, whereas Christ tells us to repay evil with good, and to not repay evil with evil. Thus, Islam is a much more self-satisfying religion and the exact opposite of Christianity." In a note attached to the e-mail, Mr. Dwyer wrote that the essay is a "compelling explanation of the facts related to the question." The e-mail, which appeared to shock some members, didn't surprise many. Even in Annapolis, where members start their sessions with prayer, Mr. Dwyer's strident emphasis on Christianity stands out. A copy of the Ten Commandments hangs in his office, and he arranged earlier in this session for a visit from the former Alabama chief justice. Judge Roy Moore was removed from office for refusing to remove the Ten Commandments from the state Supreme Court building and now enjoys cult-hero status among conservatives. This year Mr. Dwyer has sponsored or co-sponsored legislation that would allow schools to post patriotic material with religious references and bills restricting undocumented immigrants. One liberal Democrat from Montgomery County this morning called on Mr. Dwyer to resign. "(The e-mail) was clearly something that said to me that this delegate is not worthy of sitting in the General Assembly as a representative of any group of people," Sen. Sharon Grosfeld said. She said she was "disgusted, appalled and outraged" after reading the e-mail. "It had my blood boiling that he would convey such hate through the e-mail system, using his nephew as his shield to present what he obviously believes in," she said. Mr. Dwyer couldn't be reached for comment this morning. But yesterday he said he didn't intend to cause a controversy with the e-mail. He said his nephew's essay "revealed facts that are documented in history, in religion." "Everyone is entitled to an opinion," he said. "I am tolerant of all religions." House Speaker Michael E. Busch, D-Annapolis, called Mr. Dwyer's e-mail "divisive." Sources said some other lawmakers had asked Mr. Dwyer to take them off his e-mail list. --- vhonawar@capitalgazette.com
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Post by Moses on May 16, 2004 23:44:18 GMT -5
Neocons Seek Islamic 'Reformation' They've already subjugated certain sects of Christianity to their perverse form of Judaism and now they want Islam, too. www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=2273by Jim Lobe One thing that can be said about U.S. neo-conservatives is they do not lack for ambition. "We need an Islamic reformation," Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz confided on the eve of the US invasion of Iraq last year, "and I think there is real hope for one." Echoing those views one year later, another prominent neo-conservative, Daniel Pipes of the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum (MEF), recently declared that the "ultimate goal" of the war on terrorism had to be Islam's modernization, or, as he put it, "religion-building." Such an effort needs to be waged not only in the Islamic world, geographically speaking, added Pipes, who last year was appointed by President George W. Bush to the board of directors of the US Institute for Peace (USIP), but also among Muslims in the West, where, in his view, they are too often represented by "Islamist (or militant Islamic)" organizations. Pipes is currently seeking funding for a new organization, tentatively named the "Islamic Progress Institute" (IPI) [very Orwellian], which "can articulate a moderate, modern and pro-American [read: pro-Israel] viewpoint" on behalf of US Muslims and that, according to a grant proposal by Pipes and two New York-based foundations obtained by IPS, can "go head-to-head with the established Islamist institutions." Daniel Pipes "Through adroit media activity and political efforts," says the proposal, "advocates for a supremacist and totalitarian form of Islam in the United States ñ such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) ñ have effectively established themselves as the spokesmen for all Muslims in the country." "This situation is fraught with dangers for moderate Muslims as well as for non-Muslims," the proposal continues, adding, "Islam in America must be American Islam or it will not be integrated; there can be no place for an Islam in America that functions as a seditious conspiracy aimed at wiping out American values, undermining American interfaith civility, and, in effect, dictating the form of Islam that will be followed in America." [wow, these neo-cons are good at projection. I have known Arabic Muslims here in the U.S. and none wanted to take over the U.S. or subjugate it to their will, but I know of some Zionist Jews who do and already are doing just that] Leaders of the three groups named by Pipes strongly deny his characterizations of their views, and stress that they, like Catholic, Protestant and Jewish groups in the United States that promote the interests of their members are neither more nor less radical or chauvinistic in their political or theological views than their non-Muslim counterparts. "We are nonsectarian" said Sayyid M. Syeed, ISNA's secretary general, who said his group has had leaders from both the Shi'a and Sunni currents of Islam and whose current vice president is a woman. "If we were Saudi-oriented, we would never have a Shi'a president or a woman in such a role," he said, adding that his group is also actively engaged in many "interfaith partnerships." CAIR's spokesman, Ibrahim Hooper, said his organization strives to represent the views of all US Muslims, and pointed to a new survey of the views of mosque leaders and congregants in Detroit, which has one of the largest Muslim populations in the country, as an example of the fundamental moderation of US Muslims and those of his group. The survey, carried out by the Michigan-based Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, found that only about eight percent of the leadership and members of Detroit's 33 mosques described themselves as adherents of a fundamentalist, "salafi" approach to Islam of the kind that is identified with the "Wahhabi," or "Islamist" views of concern to Pipes and other neo-conservatives, who have said that as many as 80 percent of US mosques preach Wahhabism.
The vast majority of both mosque leaders and participants, according to the Detroit survey, were registered to vote and supported active engagement in the political process; wanted to engage in civic and educational activities with people of non-Muslim faiths; and even took part in public school or church events designed to teach others about Islam.
"Detroit mosques are not isolationist ... and very few mosque participants hold Wahhabi views," said Ihsan Bagby, who conducted the survey and teaches Islamic Studies at the University of Kentucky.
Pipes, who has written four books on Islam and taught Islamic studies at several leading universities, came to national prominence after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and the Pentagon. While he has long insisted that there is nothing inherently violent about Islam, "moderate Muslims," in his view, have been intimidated by radicals both in the Islamic world and in the United States.
"While Muslims in some Muslim-majority countries (like Turkey) have demonstrated a commitment to moderate Islam, [read: have bent to the will of Israel]" he writes in his grant application, "Muslim communities in the United States, Canada and Western Europe are dominated by a leadership identified with Wahhabism and other radical trends, such as the Muslim Brethren and Deobandism ...they seek a privileging of Islam and intimidate their critics."
Within the United States, "all Muslims, unfortunately, are suspect," Pipes wrote in a recent book, which called for the authorities to be especially vigilant towards Muslims with jobs in the military, law enforcement, or diplomacy.
Last year, he cited as evidence of this insight the arrest on suspicion of espionage of Muslim chaplain James Yee at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility that houses hundreds of prisoners from Bush's "war on terrorism." The Yee case later fell apart.
Pipes is also the founder of Campus Watch, a group that monitors university professors of Middle Eastern and Islamic studies and exposes them for alleged anti-American or anti-Zionist views .
That effort, which has been denounced by leading Middle East scholars, has become the basis for a far-reaching bill pending in Congress that would provide unprecedented government oversight of regional studies programs in universities.
Pipes has also criticized Bush for meeting with, and thus he argues legitimizing, the leaders of major Islamic organizations, including CAIR and ISNA, which he believes are pursuing radical, if partially hidden, agendas that he attempts tirelessly to expose on his personal website [more projection; maybe if we didn't have a whoring media they could spend time exposing Zionist Jews in our government with hidden agendas]. CAIR has called him "the nation's leading Islamophobe."
Like many of his fellow-neo-conservatives, Pipes has also been an outspoken supporter of positions taken by the governing Likud Party in Israel, to the extent even of opposing the U.S.-backed "road map" designed to lead to an independent Palestinian state.
To encourage "moderation" among Palestinians, he has written, "the Palestinians need to be defeated even more than Israel needs to defeat them." [this should show how sick neo-cons like Pipes truly are]
In his grant proposal, Pipes writes that he is working on launching the IPI with "a group of anti-Islamist Muslims," whom he does not identify.
Contacted about the proposal, Pipes told IPS, "I can't confirm anything. MEF doesn't talk about its proposals. We don't talk about projects that have not been announced. We don't talk about internal matters to the press."
In a trip to Cleveland in February, Stephen Schwartz, a writer and former Trotskyite activist who claims to have converted to Islam in the mid-1990s, and Hussein Haqqani, a former Pakistani government official now with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, unveiled plans for a new "Institute for Islamic Progress and Peace" (IIPP) of which Schwartz identified himself as executive director.
Schwartz, who has praised Pipes' work and claims to be personally close to Wolfowitz, has published articles in The Weekly Standard and other neo-conservative publications, where Pipes' writings also appear regularly. Schwartz was quoted by the Cleveland Jewish Press saying that the new group would serve as a "platform" for "people who view Islam as a private faith."
"This is a unique chance to change the position of the Muslim community in America," he said. "If we don't do it, no one else will." Schwartz and Haqqani also did not return messages left at their offices.
Muslim leaders say they are not worried their membership will desert them for either new group.
"There's a big difference between organizations that emerge organically from a community in response to the demand of their constituencies and one which is manufactured for political reasons by people who dislike what the consensus views of that community are," said Hussein Ibish of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, which has also been a target of Pipes.
"For Mr. Pipes to create an organization that purports to represent the community that he makes a living systematically defaming demonstrates an amazing degree of effrontery."
"It's a free country," said CAIR's Hooper. "If Pipes and his friends think they can gain legitimacy in the Islamic community, good luck, but I wouldn't hold my breath."
(Inter Press Service)
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Post by Moses on May 16, 2004 23:48:53 GMT -5
www.suntimes.com/output/otherviews/cst-edt-pipes14.htmlHistory shows Islam, democracy unlikely to mix in Iraq April 14, 2004 BY DANIEL PIPES The current insurrection in Iraq was discernible a year ago, as I already noted in April 2003: ''Thousands of Iraqi Shiites chanted 'No to America, No to Saddam, Yes to Islam' a few days ago, during pilgrimage rites in the holy city of Karbala. Increasing numbers of Iraqis appear to agree with these sentiments. They have ominous implications for the coalition forces.'' [Wow, Pipes is so, so, so...prescient! That sentence clinches it for me; Pipes foresaw the current insurgency and he's an authority on Iraqi society now!] The recent wave of violence makes those implications fully apparent. Two factors in particular made me expect Iraqi resistance. First, the quick war of 2003 focused on overturning a hated tyrant so that, when it was over, Iraqis felt liberated, not defeated [yeah, who could forget those scenes of Iraqis throwing flowers at the soldiers last year]. Accordingly, the common assumption that Iraq resembled the Germany and Japan of 1945 was wrong. Those two countries had been destroyed through years of all-out carnage, leading them to acquiesce to the postwar overhaul of their societies and cultures [are all the neo-cons rewriting history now? It wasn't "years of all-out carnage" that caused the Japanese to surrender. Truman knew the war could drag on for many more years had he sent ground forces to capture Japan because the Japanese weren't ready to give up. It was Truman's decision to drop two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that ended it]. Iraq, in contrast, emerged almost without damage from brief hostilities [100,000 dead and no infrastructure to speak of is "almost without damage" in my book too!], and Iraqis do not feel they must accept guidance from the occupation forces. Rather, they immediately showed a determination to shape their country's future. Second, as a predominantly Muslim people, Iraqis share in the powerful Muslim reluctance to being ruled by non-Muslims. This reluctance results from the very nature of Islam, the most public and political of religions [projection! Pipes was bound to do this at some point]. To live a fully Muslim life requires living in accord with the many laws of Islam, called the sharia. The sharia includes difficult-to-implement precepts pertaining to taxation, the judicial system and warfare. Its complete implementation can occur only when the ruler himself is a pious Muslim (although an impious Muslim is much preferable to a non-Muslim). For Muslims, rule by non-Muslims is an abomination, a blasphemous inversion of God's dispensation. This explains why one finds a consistently strong resistance to rule by non-Muslims through 14 centuries of Muslim history . Europeans recognized this resistance, and in their post-Crusades global expansion stayed largely away from majority-Muslim territories, knowing these would awesomely resist their control [did they? I seem to recall a lot of Christians invading predominately Muslim lands and killing Muslims and other Christians during the Crusades].
The pattern is striking: For more than four centuries, 1400-1830, Europeans expanded around the world, trading, ruling and settling -- but distinctly in places where Muslims were not, such as the Western Hemisphere, sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia and Australia [Ummm, does Morocco or the Moors in Spain ring a bell?]. In a clear pattern of avoidance, the imperial powers (Britain, France, Holland and Russia especially) took control of faraway territories, while carefully avoiding their Muslim neighbors in North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia.
Only in 1830 did a European power (France) find the confidence frontally to confront a Muslim state (Algeria). Even then, the French needed 17 years just to control the coastal region.
As European rulers conquered Muslim lands, they found they could not crush the Islamic religion, nor win the population over culturally, nor stamp out political resistance. However suppressed, some embers of resistance remained; these often sparked a flame of anti-imperialism that finally drove the Europeans out. In Algeria, for example, a successful eight-year effort, 1954-62, expelled the French colonial authority.
Nor was the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq the first Western undertaking to unburden Muslims of tyrannical rule [wow; it just leaves you speechless when they say things like this]. Already in 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte appeared in Egypt with an army and declared himself a friend of Islam who had come to relieve the oppressed Egyptians of their Mamluk rulers. His successor as commander in Egypt, J.F. Menou, actually converted to Islam. But these efforts to win Egyptian goodwill failed, as Egyptians rejected the invaders' proclaimed good intentions and remained hostile to French rule. [Duh, because Napolean was a dictator and most of Europe resisted his rule, too]
The European-run ''mandates'' set up in the Middle East after World War I included similar lofty intentions and also found few Muslim takers [Imagine that! People don't like outsiders coming in, conquering them, subjugating them against their will and telling them what to do! Pipes seems almost shocked at how ungrateful these Muslims are].
This history suggests that the coalition's grand aspirations for Iraq will not succeed. However constructive its intentions to build democracy, the coalition cannot win the confidence of Muslim Iraq nor win acceptance as its overlord. Even spending $18 billion in one year on economic development does not improve matters.
I therefore counsel the occupying forces quickly to leave Iraqi cities and then, when feasible, to leave Iraq as a whole [but what about the oil?]. They should seek out what I have been calling for since a year ago: a democratically minded Iraqi strongman, someone who will work with the coalition forces, provide decent government, and move eventually toward a more open political system [In other words, let's install another U.S. puppet dictator for taxpayers to support].
This sounds slow, dull and unsatisfactory. But at least it will work -- in contrast to the ambitious but failing current project.
Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum.
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Post by Moses on May 16, 2004 23:51:50 GMT -5
Going Back Where They Came From www.antiwar.com/pat/by Patrick J. Buchanan "If we have to make common cause with the more hawkish liberals and fight the conservatives, that is fine with me," William Kristol has told the New York Times.
The Weekly Standard editor added that the neoconservatives may just abandon the Right altogether and convert to neo-liberalism.
Alluding to his father Irving's definition of a neoconservative as a liberal who has been mugged by reality, Kristol describes a neoliberal as a "neoconservative who has been mugged by reality in Iraq."
Ranking his political preferences, Kristol added, "I will take Bush over Kerry, but Kerry over Buchanan....If you read the last few issues of The Weekly Standard, it has as much or more in common with the liberal hawks than with traditional conservatives."
Yes, it does. But as John Kerry backs partial birth abortion, quotas, raising taxes, homosexual unions, liberals on the Supreme Court and has a voting record to the left of Teddy Kennedy, how can Kristol prefer him to other conservatives? Answer: War and Israel.
Like Kristol, Kerry wants more U.S. troops sent to Iraq where they can advance the neocons' project for empire. And at a fund-raiser in Juno Beach, Fla., Kerry declared eternal fealty to Israel: "I have a 100 percent record ñ not a 99, a 100 percent record ñ of sustaining the special relationship and friendship that we have with Israel."
Kristol's warning that the neocons could break with the Right and go to Kerry is an admission of what many conservatives have long argued. To neocons, Israel comes first, second, and third, conservative principles be d**ned.
The day after Kristol said he preferred Kerry to conservatives skeptical of committing more troops to Iraq, this item appeared in The Wall Street Journal:
"Mr. Kristol thinks Mr. Bush should use the revelations [from the Woodward book] to shake up his war cabinet by firing Mr. Powell...along with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who has pushed for smaller deployments of U.S. forces than some critics, including Mr. Kristol, think wise."
Set aside the suicidal folly of Bush dynamiting his war cabinet in an election year by firing its most famous members, and consider the ingratitude, the ruthlessness, and the cynicism on display here.
When it was launched in 1995, The Weekly Standard called on Colin Powell to run for president and offered its endorsement. Purpose: Hook up with the most popular man in the GOP who could restore the neocons and Kristols to preeminence and power. Powell rebuffed the offer. Ever since, he has been a target of abuse for having repelled the boarding party.
As for Rumsfeld, he has been a hero of neoconservatives for two decades. He co-signed the neocons' 1998 open letter to Clinton urging war on Iraq. He brought Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith into his Pentagon in the No. 2 and 3 slots. He put Perle in charge of the Defense Review Board. After 9/11, according to Richard Clarke, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were making the case for attacking Iraq immediately, even before Bush had ousted the Taliban enablers of Al Qaeda and Bin Laden.
Agree or disagree with the defense secretary, Rumsfeld has been a lion in the neocon cause. To see the Weekly Standard snake on him like this brings to mind that wretched crowd in Yankee Stadium that took to booing Joe Dimaggio at the end of his career.
With Iraq turning into the Mesopotamian morass some of us warned it would become, the neo-Jacobins have decided they are not going to be the ones to ride the tumbrels.
In times like this character comes through. By turning on the men they persuaded to go to war, by fabricating alibis and inventing excuses to absolve themselves of culpability for what they labored to create, they have revealed themselves for what they are: hustlers and opportunists devoid of principle, driven by an ideology of power and a passionate attachment to a nation not their own.
The Old Right curmudgeons who warned us against giving these vagabonds food, shelter and a warm place by the fire were right. We should have put them back out on the street.
President Bush should have listened to his father who kept the neocons at some remove, and he had best beware, because they have a major card yet to play. That card is escalation.
With the situation in Iraq deteriorating, the neocon agenda is to widen the war into Syria, Iran and perhaps Saudi Arabia, and convert it into "World War IV," the war of their dreams, a war of civilizations, an Armageddon, with America and Israel on one side and Islam on the other.
Exiting Iraq with honor and avoiding the wider war for which the neocons are even now scheming is the first duty of patriots.
COPYRIGHT CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
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Post by Moses on May 16, 2004 23:56:33 GMT -5
May 11:
WEEKLY REVIEW
[Image: Lost Souls in Hell, 1875.]
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld apologized for the torture of Iraqi prisoners and said that there are "many more photographs and indeed some videos" of American soldiers engaging in "blatantly sadistic, cruel, and inhuman" behavior; Rumsfeld took "full responsibility" for the abuse but still refused to resign. "It's going to get a good deal more terrible, I'm afraid." Specialist Sabrina Harman, who faces court martial because of her role in the torture, said in an email that she never even saw a copy of the Geneva Conventions until recently. "I read the entire thing," she said, "highlighting everything the prison is in violation of. There's a lot." Harman said her job was to "soften up" prisoners for interrogation. American soldiers allegedly put a harness on an elderly Iraqi woman and rode her like a donkey. New charges included rape, murder, and child molestation. "The system works," Rumsfeld told the Senate. President Bush, who authorized his staff to leak the fact that he had privately rebuked Donald Rumsfeld for failing to tell him about the torture photographs, apologized on Arab television; British Prime Minister Tony Blair also apologized, though there were questions about the authenticity of the British images. President Bush continued to maintain that the Abu Ghraib torturers were un-American, but human-rights advocates pointed out that similar abuse takes place in U.S. prisons all the time, especially in Texas. The Council on American-Islamic Relations reported that anti-Muslim bias incidents are up 70 percent, and a new Justice Department report warned that Al Qaeda is recruiting supporters in American prisons. Someone desecrated the grave of James Byrd Jr., the black man who was dragged to death behind a pickup in Texas, for the second time. It was reported that CACI International, the company that employs one of the accused Abu Ghraib torturers, also sells the Bush Administration ethics training tapes. "Don Rumsfeld is the best secretary of defense the United States has ever had," said Vice President Dick Cheney. "People ought to let him do his job."
The Bush Administration was trying to persuade European and other leaders to support Ariel Sharon's plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, even though Sharon's own Likud Party rejected it. Sudan, where government-sponsored Arab militias called Janjaweed have been slaughtering black farmers, was elected to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights over the objections of the United States. One Sudanese diplomat scoffed at the U.S. objection and pointed to the American atrocities in Iraq. U.S. officials postponed the release of this year's international human-rights report because the timing was somewhat embarrassing. Ethnic violence continued in Nigeria between the Taroks and Fulanis. The prime minister of Nepal resigned after weeks of violent street protests against the king. President Akhmad Kadyrov of Chechnya was killed along with a dozen more officials in a bomb attack at Dynamo stadium in Grozny, where a celebration of the defeat of Nazi Germany was under way. Russian legislators hired a Siberian shaman to purge the parliament building of "negative energy." Sheikh Abdul-Sattar al-Bahadli, an aide to Moktada al-Sadr, offered rewards for the capture or killing of British soldiers; he said that female soldiers could be kept as slaves. Alabama police were chasing a gang of cross-dressing car thieves, and Al Gore and a group of investors bought a cable television news channel they plan to market to young people. Chile legalized divorce.
A German ornithologist discovered that urban nightingales, forced to compete with noise pollution, can sing so loud they break the law. The loudest recorded was 95 decibels, which is as loud as a chainsaw. Brazilians were worried that President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva drinks too much. The Congressional Research Service said that Bush Administration officials broke the law when they ordered the Medicare actuary to withhold information on the true cost of the new Medicare law from Congress. A new federal building was dedicated in Oklahoma City. Osama bin Laden offered a reward of 10,000 grams of gold for the head of L. Paul Bremer, and at least ten people died in a suicide bombing at a Shiite mosque in Karachi, Pakistan. Brooklyn police arrested a forty-three-year-old armless man for raping and beating one of his fellow nursing-home inmates. Haitian farmers have been reduced to eating the seed that they should be planting, a German aid agency said; other Haitians were eating biscuits made out of butter, salt, water, and dirt. Fifteen Chinese warehouse workers were crushed to death by an avalanche of garlic. World grain carryover stocks were at a 30-year low, it was reported, well below the 70-day consumption level that is considered the minimum for basic food security. The Pentagon was thinking about setting up a new office to plan postwar operations for future wars, and the Selective Service System proposed requiring women to register for the draft. The Walt Disney Company refused to distribute a new Miramax documentary by Michael Moore called "Fahrenheit 911," which is highly critical of President Bush. African clawed frogs were invading San Francisco. It was discovered that Paroxetine, an antidepressant, helps relieve irritable-bowel syndrome, and a new study found that Americans get substandard medical care most of the time, despite the fact that they spend about $1.4 trillion a year for it. Marijuana use was up in the United States. Chinese researchers found evidence that SARS is spread by sweat, and scientists announced that women with large breasts and narrow waists are especially fertile.
--Roger D. Hodge
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Post by Moses on May 17, 2004 1:04:07 GMT -5
story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=2&u=/nm/20040511/ts_nm/iraq_abuse_general_dcTue May 11, 6:19 PM ET Add Top Stories - Reuters to My Yahoo! By Andrea Shalal-Esa WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Army general under investigation for anti-Islamic remarks has been linked by U.S. officials to the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal, which experts warned could touch off new outrage overseas. A Senate hearing into the abuse of Iraqi prisoners was told on Tuesday that Lt. Gen. William Boykin, an evangelical Christian under review for saying his God was superior to that of the Muslims, briefed a top Pentagon (news - web sites) civilian official last summer on recommendations on ways military interrogators could gain more intelligence from Iraqi prisoners. Critics have suggested those recommendations amounted to a senior-level go-ahead for the sexual and physical abuse of prisoners, possibly to "soften up" detainees before interrogation -- a charge the Pentagon denies. Congressional aides and Arab-American and Muslim groups said any involvement by Boykin could spark new concern among Arabs and Muslims overseas the U.S. war on terrorism is in fact a war on Islam. [Geez, how much longer will it take them to figure this out? It's a war about the extermination and subjugation of Muslims and Arabs to the House of David] "This will be taken as proof that what happened at Abu Ghraib (prison) is evidence of a broader culture of dehumanizing Arabs and Muslims, based on the American understanding of the innate superiority of Christendom," said Chris Toensing, editor of Middle East Report, a U.S.-based quarterly magazine. [This ignores the Israeli interrogation tactics adopted by Feith and others in the Pentagon] One Senate aide, who asked not to be identified, said any involvement by Boykin could be explosive. "Even if he knew about the abuse, that would be a big deal," he said. Boykin has declined comment, and defense officials could not say what the extent of his involvement or knowledge about the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners might have been. Boykin touched off a firestorm last October after giving speeches while in uniform in which he referred to the war on terrorism as a battle with "Satan" and said America had been targeted "because we're a Christian nation." He said later he was not anti-Islam or any other religion. President Bush (news - web sites) distanced himself from Boykin's remarks, but the Pentagon said it would not fire the general, who played a role in the 1993 clash with Somali warlords and the ill-fated hostage rescue attempt in Iran in 1980. CALLS FOR REASSIGNMENT Hussein Ibish, communications director for the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee, said his group and others had repeatedly called for Boykin to be reassigned to a less sensitive job until the Pentagon inspector general completes his investigation of Boykin's remarks. Senate Armed Services Committee (news - web sites) Chairman John Warner and congressional Democrats have also urged Boykin to step aside, but the Pentagon has defended his right to free speech. Defense officials said the IG investigation, begun last fall, was nearly done and a report could be issued next month. "I'm not saying Boykin is directly responsible. ... But there is a collective failure here," Ibish said. "There is a tolerance in our society, in our government, in our media for hateful rhetoric when directed against Arabs and Muslims. [Bingo! Now we must question and expose those who have propogated this rhetoric] "It definitely contributes to a climate in which these young MPs apparently felt it was ... OK to abuse Muslim and Arab men like this." Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American Islamic Relations, chided the Pentagon for not acting promptly to discipline Boykin and the delayed engagement of top military leaders on the prisoner abuse scandal. "It creates a climate in which ... the perpetrators believe they're carrying out the policies of those above them, whether those policies are explicit or not," Hooper said.
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Post by Moses on May 17, 2004 1:19:32 GMT -5
Why we fight While Americans were guilt-ridden over the abuses at Abu Ghraib and holding hearings to determine who was responsible, our enemies took a young electronics contractor who had no responsibility whatsover for what happened and cut off his head. To be sure, we must not become barbarians like the barbarians we are fighting. But what they did to Nick Berg should bring back some clarity to this particular war. He was killed by Al-Zarqawi, the head of an Al-Qaeda stronghold that has been in Iraq for years, well before the war. Despite what liberals keep saying, we are fighting the same Islamic jihadists who were responsible for 9/11. These people believe they are earning eternal life by killing us. If you are an opponent of the war, they want to kill you too. If you want us to pull out of Iraq immediately and unconditionally, as many on the left are now demanding, they will come here in order to kill us. The primary reason we must fight--and have no choice about fighting--is to defend ourselves against people who want to cut off our heads. Posted by Veith WWW.worldmagblog.COM/archives/004345.html
Dr. Edward Veith The Cranach Institute Office LU124 <br>Phone 262-243-4208 E-mail edward.veith@cuw.edu Fax 262-243-4493 Picture Unavailable Gene Edward Veith, Jr., is Professor of English at Concordia University Wisconsin, where he has also served as Dean of the School of Arts& Sciences. He is the author of The Gift of Art: The Place of the Arts in Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1983), ReformationSpirituality: The Religion of George Herbert (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1985), Loving God With All Your Mind (Westchester, IL: Crossway, 1987), Reading Between the Lines: A Christian Guide to Literature (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1990), State of the Arts: From Bezalel to Mapplethorpe (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1991), Modern Fascism: Liquidating the Judeo-Christian Worldview (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1993); Postmodern Times: A Christian Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1994); with Andrew Kern, Classical Education: Towards the Revival of American Schooling (Washington, D.C.: Capital Research Center, 1997); The Spirituality of the Cross: The Way of the First Evangelicals (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1999); with Christopher Stamper, Christians in a Dot. Com World (Wheaton: Crossway, 2000); with Thomas Wilmeth, Honky Tonk Gospel: The Story of Sin and Salvation in Country Music (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2001); Painters of Faith: The Spiritual Landscape in Nineteenth-Century America (Regnery, 2001); and a number of articles for magazines, journals, and collections of essays. His book Postmodern Times received a Christianity Today Book Award as one of the top 25 religious books of 1994. He was named Concordia's Adult Learning Teacher of the Year in 1993 and received the Faculty Laureate Award as outstanding faculty member in 1994. He was a Salvatori Fellow with the Heritage Foundation in 1994-1995 and is a Senior Fellow with the Capital Research Center. He is the General Editor of Crossway’s Focal Point series. He is currently the director of the Cranach Institute at Concordia University, a center devoted to the study of Christianity and culture. He is the cultural editor of World magazine. Veith was born in Oklahoma in 1951. He graduated from the University of Oklahoma in 1973 and received a Ph.D. in English from the University of Kansas in 1979. He has taught at Northeastern Oklahoma A&M College and was a Visiting Professor at Wheaton College in Illinois. He was also a Visiting Lecturer at the Estonian Institute of Humanities in Tallinn, Estonia. He and his wife Jackquelyn have three children and live in Cedarburg, Wisconsin.
Veith is a neo-con -- wrote a book about how he went from liberalism to evangelical Christian. Alot of these "christian" pundits who whip the Christians political beliefs went to this Wheaton College in Illinois. Does anyone know anything about it? <br>
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Post by Moses on May 17, 2004 7:13:36 GMT -5
www.intellectualconservative.com/article3441.htmlAn American Is Beheaded and the Media is M.I.A. by Bonnie Chernin Rogoff 15 May 2004 On the two days following the execution, ìAll the News thatís Fit to Printî did not print one editorial or op-ed expressing misgivings about Mr. Bergís death. Rather, the New York Times page led off with ìThe Abu Ghraib Spin.î<br> The headline came from CNN.com: ìThree Arab states condemn Americanís beheading: Saudi Arabia, Jordan, UAE decry ëbarbaric act.íî The only reason these states ñ along with the terrorist group Hezbollah ñ feign anguish about the gruesome execution of Nicholas Berg is because they were afraid of losing a potential public relations coup. After all, when it comes to media attention, the mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib canít compete with the beheading of an innocent Jewish American civilian. As it turns out, the terrorists need not worry. On the two days following the execution, ìAll the News thatís Fit to Printî did not print one editorial or op-ed expressing misgivings about Mr. Bergís death. Rather, the New York Times page led off with ìThe Abu Ghraib Spin.î This was followed with ìWhat Happened to Emmett Till?î about new investigations into the 1955 murder of a black Mississippi teenager. ìYounger Americans find it difficult to believe that black people in this country were once murdered in plain public view for seeking the right to vote or testifying against a white person in court,î the editors explain. When an American gets decapitated by our enemy in plain public view ñ thatís not news. The Timesí leading headline story on May 13, 2004 condemns the C.I.A. for using ìharsh methods of interrogationî against al-Qaeda terrorist operatives. Two editorials rail against tax cuts, and another is about computerized clothes. For balance, Sulzberger & Co. today paid their editorial respects to Mr. Berg with a perfunctory note on his beheading. The remaining space attacked the Bush policies while decrying abuse of Muslims. ìThey are cynically trying to use the images of Mr. Berg to wipe away the images of Abu Ghraib, turning the abhorrence for the murderers into an excuse for demonizing Arabs and Muslims, or for sanctioning their torture.î<br> No one should downplay the fact that the images from Abu Ghraib are disturbing. However, writers who jumped to conclusions by calling the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners ìtortureî ñ and I regretfully include myself among those ñ should choose their words with care in light of what has happened to Nicholas Berg. [All these neocon fascists practice moral relativism] Consider what would have happened had he been rescued. Had our military been aware of Mr. Bergís location they could have moved in and killed his captors, and he would still be alive. A blitz of media questions would follow. Did the dead militants intend to kill Mr. Berg, or were they mistreated prisoners taken by our soldiers? Did our soldiers plant the knife? Were the killings justified, or should our troops simply have taken them into custody? What did President Bush and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld know about Mr. Berg and his captors and when? In Israel, jihad is a daily ritual of Hamas. Women and children are blown to bits and while their body parts are still warm, the mainstream press blames Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for the Hamas homicide bombings [what the hell is she talking about? The mainstream press always portrays a sucide bombing as sympathetic to Israelis]. After the massacre of hundreds of Israelis and three thousand Americans, liberal commentators remain outraged by the bad behavior of a few American soldiers. The Boston Globe even published fake photos of G.I.ís allegedly participating in gang rapes, originating from a porno website. The media is determined to destroy President Bush and will put our soldiersí lives in jeopardy to accomplish their goal. The New York Times and Boston Globe have lost all credibility. It is beyond our comprehension, but Muslim terrorists enjoy killing innocent people on behalf of their twisted religion [now why is this still permitted? Stereotypes that Muslims like violence or only understand it; we know what would happen if someone wrote an editorial saying all Jews' loyalty to the U.S. should be questioned, or all Jews are cheapskates or all Jews are accountants or lawyers?] . We need to enhance our military presence in Iraq supported by a draft. Every healthy high school graduate should be conscripted for military or civilian service for a period of three years. With our troops spread so thin we lack the manpower needed to defeat our enemy. We should stop worrying about Iraqi civilian casualties and prisoners. President Bushís biggest mistake was using the WMDís as grounds for invading Iraq. The only reason should have been the ousting of Saddam Hussein. Weapons of mass destruction donít kill unless monsters of mass destruction use them. Several months ago, cartoonist and Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau wrote a strip that showed a reporter questioning President Bush during a news conference. To every question, President Bush gave the same response: "9-11." The reporter then asks if 9-11 will be his answer to everything, and the President replies, ìYes, itís 9-11, 24-7.î The reporter asks, ìUntil when?î Mr. Bush answers, "Until 11-2," to which the reporter replies in disgust, "10-4." The truth is, President Bushís answer would always be 9-11, 24-7 and that answer will continue long past 11-2-04. Copyright 2004 by Bonnie Chernin Rogoff. All rights reserved. Bonnie Chernin Rogoff is the Founder of Jews for Life and reports on a variety of subjects including pro-life issues and politics. __________________________________________
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Post by Moses on May 17, 2004 18:57:17 GMT -5
April 10 2004: One of my favorite Washington Post columnists, Colby King, has culled some thoughts from Colin Powell, about a war that never should have been fought. Quoting Powell's biography, some thoughts about Vietnam: <br> <br>" 'No one starts a war, or rather no one in his senses should do so,' Clausewitz wrote, 'without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to achieve it.' Mistake number one in Vietnam. Which led to Clausewitz's rule number two. Political leaders must set a war's objectives, while armies achieve them. In Vietnam, one seemed to be looking to the other for the answers that never came." <br>"I recently reread Bernard Fall's book on Vietnam, 'Street Without Joy.' Fall makes painfully clear that we had almost no understanding of what we had gotten ourselves into. I cannot help thinking that if President Kennedy or President Johnson had spent a quiet weekend at Camp David reading that perceptive book, they would have returned to the White House Monday morning and immediately started to figure out a way to extricate us from the quicksand of Vietnam. <br>"I had gone off to Vietnam in 1962 standing on a bedrock of principle and convictions. And I had watched that foundation eroded by euphemisms, lies, and deception." -- "My American Journey," Colin Powell <br>King concludes: "Iraq one year later: more than 600 Americans dead; casualties rising; billions of dollars out the door; fighting raging; no weapons of mass destruction. What about now? What about now?" Indeed. Remember, we went Blind into Baghdad. <br>April 9 2004 Compare the tone of these two arguments. You may have seen this quote by that famous Nazi, Herman Goering – it's been floating around the internet, and it has been verified as authentic at Snopes.com. <br>Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country. <br>Victor David Hanson of National Review has picked up on that exact argument: "We are at war with horrific enemies who wish to end our civilization, and who cannot be bought off or talked to, but only defeated, and yes, often killed," he wrote. <br>Despite the horrific barbarism in Fallujah and the gun-toting and killing by the Shiites, the United States is ever so steadily establishing a consensual government of sorts under impossible conditions in Iraq… The courage and sacrifice of thousands of American soldiers now determine whether those who dream of freedom step forward boldly into the light, or retreat meekly into the shadows — and whether we will be safe in our own homes....Out of all the recent chaos emerges one lesson: Appeasement of fundamentalists is not appreciated as magnanimity, but ridiculed as weakness — and, in fact, encourages further killing. <br> Everything that the world holds dear — the free exchange of ideas, the security of congregating and traveling safely, the long struggle for tolerance of differing ideas and religions, the promise of equality between the sexes and ethnic groups, and the very trust that lies at the heart of all global economic relationships — all this and more Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and the adherents of fascism in the Middle East have sought to destroy: some as killers themselves, others providing the money, sanctuary, and spiritual support. <br> We did not ask for this war, but it came. In our time and according to our station, it is now our duty to end it. And that resolution will not come from recrimination in time of war, nor promises to let fundamentalists and their autocratic sponsors alone, but only through the military defeat and subsequent humiliation of their cause. So let us cease the hysterics, make the needed sacrifices, and allow our military the resources, money, and support with which it most surely will destroy the guilty and give hope at last to the innocent. www.republicansforkerry.org/ <br>
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Post by Moses on May 20, 2004 6:47:56 GMT -5
Remarks by President Bush After Cabinet Meeting P.R.Newswire, 5/19/2004 13:09
ADVERTISEMENT WASHINGTON, May 19 /PRNewswire/ -- The following is a transcript of remarks by President Bush after a cabinet meeting:
The Cabinet Room
12:04 P.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you for coming. I've just met with my Cabinet to discuss a variety of issues. We spent a lot of time talking about the situation in Iraq. I detailed our plan and our strategy to transfer full sovereignty to the Iraqi people on June the 30th. I reminded them that a lot of progress has been made already toward that transfer. Eleven ministries are now run by Iraqi citizens -- I might add, capably run by Iraqi citizens.
I discussed with the Cabinet the plans of Mr. Brahimi, the U.N. representative who is consulting with Iraqi leadership and Iraqi citizenry, as well as our own government officials there about the interim government and who will occupy the positions of responsibility in that government. I anticipate in the next couple of weeks decisions will be made toward who will be the president and the vice presidents, as well as the prime minister and other ministers.
Thirdly, we talked about the U.N. Security Council resolution, which is -- the Secretary is moving forward. He's in consultations with Security Council members -- a Security Council resolution which will embrace the new interim government, and the need to provide security so that free elections will happen as promised to the Iraqi people.
We've got hard work to do. I told my Cabinet we've got hard work to do. After all, we saw the vivid savagery of the enemy; the decapitation of a U.S. citizen reminds us all about the barbaric nature of those who are trying to stop progress toward freedom. We understand the nature of that enemy. We also understand the nature of our brave troops. They're motivated, they're skilled, they're well-trained. They will accomplish the mission.
Then I talked about the economy. We're pleased with the economic progress here in America. After all, the growth rates are high. New jobs are being created; 1.1 million new jobs since last August have been created by the entrepreneurs and small business owners and risk-takers of America. And that's positive.
I am concerned about the price of gasoline at the pump. I fully understand how that affects American consumers, how it crimps the budgets of moms and dads who are trying to provide for their families, how it affects the truck driver, how it affects the small business owner.
I anticipated this three years ago. I asked my team to put together a strategy to make us less dependent upon foreign sources of energy. I submitted that plan to the United States Congress. Now we want people to have it both ways, just like they've tried to have it both ways over the last couple of years. On the one hand, they decry the price at the pump, and on the other hand, they won't do anything about it. They won't take action. Congress needs to pass the energy plan.
We had a very interesting discussion about capacity. For example, had ANWR been passed -- had it not been vetoed in the past, we anticipate an additional barrels of oil would have been coming out of that part of the world, which would obviously have a positive impact for today's consumers.
And so it's time for some action here to get us less dependent. They need to pass that which I have submitted to Congress, so this country will become less dependent on foreign sources of energy.
All in all, we're upbeat about the spread of freedom and peace and the ability for our fellow citizens to find work.
Let me answer two questions, starting with Lindlaw.
Q Thanks, Mr. President. You've called for maximum restraint from both sides in the Middle East. Today, Israel's military acknowledged they fired four tank shells, machine guns, a missile into a crowd of demonstrators. One, was it justified? Two, what are you telling them and what are you hearing?
THE PRESIDENT: I continue to urge restraint. It is essential that people respect innocent life, in order for us to achieve peace. And we'll get clarification from the government. I haven't had a chance to speak to the government; I'll be briefed. But I am -- I will continue to speak out about the need for all parties to respect innocent life in the Middle East.
Karen.
Q Sir, Senator Kerry has suggested halting shipments to the emergency oil reserves. Your energy bill is a long-term strategy. What are some short- term steps that can be taken?
THE PRESIDENT: If people had acted on my energy bill when I submitted it three years ago, we would be in a much better situation today.
Secondly, we will not play politics with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. That Petroleum Reserve is in place in case of major disruptions of energy supplies to the United States. The idea of emptying the Strategic Petroleum Reserve plays -- would put America in a dangerous position in the war on terror. We're at war. We face a tough and determined enemy on all fronts. And we must not put ourselves in a worse position in this war. And playing politics with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve would do just that.
Thank you.
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Post by Moses on May 21, 2004 11:13:51 GMT -5
"We must be aware of the superiority of our civilization, a system that has guaranteed well-being, respect for human rights-and in contrast with Islamic countries-respect for religious and political rights, a system that has as its values understandings of diversity and tolerance," -- Silvia Berlusconi, giving premise for Iraq War.
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Post by Moses on May 24, 2004 8:31:58 GMT -5
For several weeks now, right-wing talk radio hosts Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage have been hammering home the idea that our enemies are subhuman and, therefore, deserving of torture and death.
For observers familiar with the rhetoric that dominated Rwandan airwaves during the 1994 genocide, hate-filled American talk radio sounds a troubling echo.
In April 1994, Hutu-controlled Radio Television Libre des Mille Collines repeatedly characterized Tutsis as "thingyroaches" calling on patriotic Rwandans to “kill these non-humans”. By July 1994, approximately 800,000 Rwandans -- most of them Tutsis -- had been slaughtered.
In May 2004, Clear Channel syndicated radio host Michael Savage [nee Weiner] called Arabs "non-humans" and asks President Bush to "drop a nuclear weapon" on a random Arab capital. “I think these people need to be forcibly converted to Christianity,” Savage told millions of listeners on May 12. “It's the only thing that can probably turn them into human beings." Limbaugh (also Jewish), for his part, likened the torture at Abu Ghraib prison to a "Skull and Bones" fraternity initiation, with American soldiers just having a good time and "blowing off steam."
War propaganda -- as a rule -- involves dehumanization of the enemy to the point where killing and torture seem not only justified but also downright patriotic.
By downplaying the torture and murder of Iraqis, Hannity, Limbaugh, Savage and others of their ilk have falsely fashioned themselves as defenders of American ideals, when, in fact, they represent nothing of the sort.
mfd@mediachannel.org
Hannity show director e-mail: Phil.Boyce@abc.com Michael Savage e-mail address: paulreveresociety@yahoo.com
The "Paul Revere Society"?!! That's blasphemy against America.
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Post by karpomrx on May 24, 2004 12:11:13 GMT -5
When I was in 'Nam, the most common term for the people was "gook". This was a catchall name which was derisive and filled the bill as a term for beings who were really just "in the way" as we operated in their country. I was talking to some combat vets recently and we all discovered that we all knew how to ask for I.D. in vietnamese, but not one of us could remember how to say "please" or "thank you".
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