Category Archives: Islam

UPDATED: Oh For Hussein’s Reign Again

Foreign Policy, History, Iraq, Islam, Jihad, Neoconservatism

What’s unfolding in Iraq, with ISIS, is no more than a progression along a predictable continuum, the starting point of which was an American invasion that unseated a very effective law-and-order leader: Saddam Hussein. The lawlessness we brought to Iraq with our messianic “faith-based initiative” has facilitated the manifestation of “divisions that have riven the region for four millennia.”

As much as I wanted to say something new about the predictable progression of Iraq, under American tutelage, from rogue state to Islamic state—I found most of what needed saying in a column dated December 2006, titled “At Least Saddam Kept Order”:

… If Iraqis appear ungrateful or disoriented, it is because they are busy … busy dying at rates many times higher than under Saddam. In the final days of Saddam’s reign of terror, i.e., in the 15 months preceding the invasion, the primary causes of death in Iraq were natural: “heart attack, stroke and chronic illness,” as the Lancet reported. Since Iraq became a Bush object lesson, the primary cause of death has been violence. …

Hussein’s reign was one of the more peaceful periods in the history of this fractious people. What a shame it’s too late to dust Saddam off, give him a sponge bath, and beg him to restore law and order to Iraq.

Secretly, that’s what anyone with a head and a heart would want. We could promise solemnly never to mess with him again—just so long as he kept his mitts off nukes, continued to check Iran (which he did splendidly), and minimized massacres. To be fair, Saddam’s last major massacre was in 1991, during which only 3,000 Shiites were murdered. That’s less than Iraq’s monthly quota under “democracy.”

No one is praising Saddam, yada, yada, yada. But even the Saddam-equals-Hitler crowd cannot but agree that Iraq was not a lawless society prior to our faith-based intervention. Even the war’s enablers must finally admit that under our ministrations Iraq has gone from a secular to a religious country; from rogue to failed state.

Put yourself in the worn-out shoes of this sad, pathetic people. Would you rather live under Saddam—who was a brutal dictator, but did provide Iraq with one of the foundations of civilization: order—or under a force made up of ideological terrorists, feuding warlords, and an “Ali Baba” element, all running rampant because they can, and where not even mosques provide a safe haven from these brutes and their bombs?

MORE.

Recommended: “INK STAINS AND BLOOD STAINS.”

UPDATE (6/13): There is one thing that is not allowed on the Facebook Timeline: adjudicating afresh the crimes against Iraq. I did serious time on this—years. And I feel very strongly about the distortion of this reality—still. The writings are archived, easily accessible for those who are still morally confused.
One of our Facebook Friends has used particularly bad language to describe the crimes against Iraqis. I don’t love Aditya’s language. I believe we do have younger, more impressionable Friends on the Timeline. But his passion is spot on. So his post stays, and he is asked to keep it cleaner next time. And frankly, what was done in Iraq by the US is immeasurably filthier than mere words.

‘Assad’s Pro-Zionist Grandfather and the Betrayal of the Alawites’

History, Islam, Israel, John McCain, Lebanon, Middle East, The West

Writing at Chronicles magazine, Eugene Girin offers a slice of Syrian history you won’t get from that moron McCain and his media acolytes:

“From 1920 to 1936, Syria’s Alawites enjoyed their own separate autonomous state in French-ruled Syria. First, it was known explicitly as the Alawite State and from 1930 to 1936, as Latakia Governorate. In response to pressure from the Sunni majority, France dissolved the Alawites’ state and forcibly incorporated it into the Sunni-dominated areas.”

“Needless to say, the Alawites (as well as the Christians and Druze) were appalled by France’s surrender to the Muslims and pleaded with the mandate authorities to protect them. In an eerie echo of today’s situation in Syria, 450,000 Alawites, Druze, and Christians signed a letter to the French authorities, part of which stated”:

“The ‘Alawis believe that they are humans, not beasts ready for slaughter. No power in the world can force them to accept the yoke of their traditional and hereditary enemies to be slaves forever….”

“Israel’s liberal Haaretz newspaper recently quoted part of another letter, sent by Alawite leaders to French Prime Minister Leon Blum in 1936. The French surrender to Arab Muslim demands was influenced by the bloody uprising of Muslims in British-ruled Palestine, led by the future ally of Hitler Haj Amin Al-Husseini. The Alawites alluded to the bloody revolt in their plea to the Jewish Blum”:

The condition of the Jews in Palestine is the strongest and most explicit evidence of the militancy of the Islamic issue vis-à-vis those who do not belong to Islam. These good Jews contributed to the Arabs with civilization and peace, scattered gold, and established prosperity in Palestine without harming anyone or taking anything by force, yet the Muslims declare holy war against them and never hesitated in slaughtering their women and children, despite the presence of England in Palestine and France in Syria.
Therefore we ask you to consider the dreadful and terrible fate that awaits the Alawites if they are forced to be annexed to Syria, when it will be free from the oversight of the Mandate, and it will be in their power to implement the laws that stem from its religion.”

One of the six signatories of that letter was Sulayman Assad, the father of Hafez and the grandfather of Bashar. …”

Read “Assad’s Pro-Zionist Grandfather and the Betrayal of the Alawites.”

And The Silent Conspirators in the Case Of Major Nidal Malik Hasan Are …

Islam, Jihad, Justice, Military, Multiculturalism, Terrorism

…The top brass of the US military, of course.

Major Nidal Malik Hasan, “the Jihadi who committed fratricide at Fort Hood,” was promoted at every step of the way by “the wise monkeys of the military,” who chose “to see no evil, hear no evil, and most certainly speak no evil of Holy Hasan.”

Hasan was convicted, Friday, of murdering 13 people and maiming 32 on that United States Army post.

Hasan’s conduct, as was observed in “Your Government’s Jihadi Protection Program,” was reviewed and dismissed the December prior to the attack by “no less than two Joint Terrorism Task Forces,” which determined that “Major Nidal Malik Hasan’s extensive correspondence with the infamous radical cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi” was but “an innocent exchange.”

Honest Hasan took every opportunity to inform his colleagues and classmates that he was a Muslim first, an American and an officer second, and that Islamic law usurped the Constitution. That minor tidbit failed to rattle the military.

During his secure career as a psychiatrist in the Army Medical Corps, Major Nidal, as he was known, openly proselytize for his faith. Preaching Islam to already traumatized patients did not hinder his rise through the ranks.

Since the Army was indifferent to Hasan’s place of worship ? “a mosque led by a radical imam said to be a ‘spiritual adviser’ to three of the hijackers who attacked America on Sept 11, 2001” ? it should come as no surprise that the FBI was equally unexercised about the man’s internet postings back in May of this year. On the Scribd.com website, user name “NidalHasan” compared “the actions of an American soldier who threw himself on a grenade in Iraq with those of Islamist suicide bombers.”

Hasan’s poor powers of reasoning ? the analogy doesn’t work! ? did not arise in a vacuum. Those “abilities” were hothoused in the military’s Jihadi-hospitable hospitals. Before unleashing Hasan at Fort Hood, his higher-ups had him practice his anti-kafir “craft” on damaged soldiers in the venerated VA system, the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, to be precise. A mother whose son was left to the mercies of the Major described him as scary, inappropriate and without empathy.

Instructed to “make a presentation on a medical topic of his choosing as a culminating exercise of the residency program,” Hasan came up with this: “The Koranic World View As It Relates To Muslims In The U.S. Military.” The Washington Post tells of how the man “stood before his supervisors and about 25 other mental health staff members and lectured on Islam, suicide bombers and threats the military could encounter from Muslims conflicted about fighting in the Muslim countries of Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Would that his supervisors had at least failed this incompetent for his curricular creativity. As witnesses now crawling out of the woodwork attest, the products of the Major’s lazy, one-track mind drew no more than “really upset looks.” Substandard professional performance would get one purged from the private sector. It did nothing to undermine Hasan’s employment status, rank, six-figure income, and secret security clearance in the military.

Major Nidal Malik Hasan’s calling card advertized his commitment. Besides typos, the card features the SoA acronym which stands for “Soldiers of Allah.” Perhaps his superiors thought Hasan was a fan of a Muslim rap group that goes by that moniker.

If you doubt that psychiatry is quackery, read on. In mulling over Hasan’s devotional zeal, Army psychiatrists concluded that while he might be delusional, he was not dangerous. As an antidote to his preoccupation with Islam, Hasan was prescribed, wait for this, a course of lectures on Islam, the Middle East and terrorism.

The Diversity Doxology is clearly instantiated in the umpteenth iteration of the psychiatric Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Duly, the Army’s voodooists accepted Hasan’s “areas of interest” as merely “different.” Difference, as you know, is to be cherished.

From YouTube footage we glean that the military minded not a bit that Hasan breezed about the base in his Jihadi jumpsuit. The wise monkeys of the military saw no evil, heard no evil, and most certainly spoke no evil of Holy Hasan. A Muslim driven by devotion ? a potential murderer to the men around him; a martyr to his ilk ? Hasan was being Hasan.

As an extension of government, I submit to you that so too was the military being true to itself. When Republicans and conservatives cavil about the gargantuan growth of government, they target the state’s welfare apparatus and spare its war machine. Unbeknown to these factions, the military is government. The military works like government; is financed like government, and sports many of the same inherent malignancies of government. Like government, it must be kept small.

Conservatives can’t coherently preach against the evils of big government, while excluding the military mammoth.

For all its faults and infractions, it is inconceivable that Blackwater Worldwide would, as a matter of policy, expose its warriors to a man like Major Nidal. No private security firm would subordinate the safety of its prized assets to the missions of left-liberalism.

Leave that to Lieutenant General Robert W. Cone, commander of III Corps at Fort Hood.

Manacled by multiculturalism, Cone was, moreover, careful to keep his grunts defenseless. “As a matter of practice, we don’t carry weapons here, this is our home,” he bragged about the “no-guns” policies on base. It remained for the victims at Fort Hood to wait for civilian police officers to rescue them from a lone gunman.

For 13 of the fragged men and women it was too late.

Grunts are not the only Americans who’ll soon be at the mercy of a dhimmi, DC-dominated, Jihadi protection program.Hasan was a medicine man ? a “healer” ? in a system governed by codified laws of non-discrimination and political correctness. Rest assured that B. Hussein’s hulking healthcare ministry will hot-house more such Jihad-prone practitioners.

If you doubt that military top dogs should have been in the dock with Hasan, read “Your Government’s Jihadi Protection Program.”

Hasan was “convicted Friday in the 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood, a shocking assault against American troops at home by one of their own who said he opened fire on fellow soldiers to protect Muslim insurgents abroad,” reports the bewildered Associated Press.

A jury of 13 high-ranking military officers reached a unanimous guilty verdict on all charges — 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder — in about seven hours. Hasan is now eligible for the death penalty.

A Made-In-America Generalissimo For Egypt

Foreign Policy, History, Islam, Middle East, Military

There’s a surprise. President Mohamed Morsi’s replacement is Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who was trained in a “prestigious and historic college in Pennsylvania”: “the U.S. Army War College, in 2006.”

The Daily Beast (whose website’s front-page is festooned with enormous icons and very little text) has an in-depth (and thankfully wordy) expose on Egypt’s new strongman, the “’American trained’ general.”

From “The Quiet General: What Does Egypt’s Ruler Want?”

… After Morsi’s election last summer, the new president moved quickly to change the dinosaurs of the Army. Outsiders marveled at the seeming lack of resistance from the high command, without realizing that this was a generational change—a revolution within the military itself, led by al-Sisi. Morsi appointed al-Sisi the new defense minister, seemingly believing that neither he nor the other generals would turn on him as long as he respected their economic privileges.

Whatever the scope of his original goals, al-Sisi reportedly started stealthily to maneuver himself into a much more ambitious position late last year. As Morsi started claiming more dictatorial powers, excluding rivals from his team, and declaring himself immune to rulings by the courts, bloody riots broke out. The country, once more, seemed to be spiraling toward chaos.

Even as security forces were called on to defend the increasingly unpopular regime, al-Sisi began to behave in public as a player independent of the Morsi government. The general called a meeting for talks among opposition groups, and military intelligence officers began to communicate secretly through intermediaries with those who wanted to force Morsi out of office, according to anti-Morsi sources.

In May, old-guard elites, including intellectuals and journalists, met with al-Sisi at a military event and encouraged him to act. “Don’t rush,” he said, in a way that suggested, according to one of those present, “all in good time.” …

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