Category Archives: Jihad

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.

Praying To The Military Moloch

Foreign Policy, Government, Jihad, Military, Terrorism, The State, War, Welfare

“Praying To The Military Moloch” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

“… At the center of the Bowe Bergdahl contretemps—a story that grows in the telling—was a passion to ‘learn about other cultures.’ This motivated him to join the army. Poor Pashtuns are certainly more interesting than the generic granny from the Midwest. Our soldiers, after all, are groomed as ‘citizens of the world.’ ‘We pay their wages,’ this column ventured in ‘The International Highway to Hell,’ ‘but their hearts belong in faraway exotic places with which Main Street USA can hardly hope to compete” for their affections.

There’s a problem with the American military’s sentimental flirtation with internationalism: The Constitution these men and women swear to obey brooks none of this stuff!

Who then grooms this army of avowed internationalists? Aided by the military’s upper echelons, Uncle Sam does. Commanded constitutionally by the commander-in-chief, the military does the government’s bidding. Although limited-government advocates refuse to consider the military as a division of Leviathan, it is just that. As was further argued in ‘Your Government’s Jihadi Protection Program,’ ‘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. Conservative can’t coherently preach against the evils of big government, while exempting the military mammoth.’

Better still, if the military is government—and it is—fanatical militarism is a facet of statism. And if the military is government—and it is—then the missions on which the government sends the military must be questioned. An equally distinctive characteristic of the current military statism is to extend the worship of The Man in Uniform to His Mission. We worship the men and women in uniform and their mission without question.

Conservatives question government programs. War is a government program. … ”

Read the rest. “Praying To The Military Moloch” in now on WND.

UPDATED: Here Mark Levin prays to “our beautiful, precious, wonderful men and women in uniform.” Two minutes and 12 seconds into the monologue come these words of worship. Now, there was certainly one gorgeous man among Ggt. Bowe Bergdahl’s platoon members, interviewed by Megyn Kelly. But they aren’t all wonderful beauties.

Where’s Mohammad The Metrosexual?

Jihad, Terrorism

I must say, the Gitmo Five released in exchange for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, look frightening. The five senior Taliban commanders are Mullah Mohammad Fazl, Mullah Norullah Noori, Abdul Haq Wasiq, Khairullah Khairkhwa, and Mohammed Nabi Omari.

Don’t worry. “… the Qataris,” writes Eli Lake, [will] “keep them under house arrest.”

Couldn’t Obama find a gentler-looking bunch to release from Gitmo? A few friendly metrosexuals called Mohammads?

Paltry Prison Time For Premeditated, Public Execution? Probably.

Britain, Crime, GUNS, Individual Rights, Jihad

British prosecutors are currently hammering home how Drummer Lee Rigby, a solider, was carved up on a south-east London street by homeboys Michael Adebolajo, 28, and Michael Adebowale, 22. I believe I am correct when I say that 30 years is the longest this detritus is likely to remain in a British prison. In progressive Britain there is only paltry prison time for such a premeditated, public execution. What is termed “a whole life order” is seldom meted out.

A “whole-life order” may be meted out for multiple murder, murder of a child as well as to repeat offenders. I believe the two butchers do not quality, not that this zero-information, TIME-magazine report has touched on sentencing.

Murder involving a knife, which is applicable, nets 25 years.

Via Wikipedia:

In England and Wales [where capital punishment was suspended in 1965] life imprisonment is a sentence which lasts until the death of the prisoner, although in most cases the prisoner will be eligible for parole (officially termed “early release”) after a fixed period set by the judge. This period is known as the “minimum term” (previously known as the “tariff”). In some exceptionally grave cases however, a judge may order that a life sentence should mean life by making a “whole life order.” There is currently no “first degree” or “second degree” murder definition.

MORE.

About the crime in “Disarmed Brits Can Only Shoot Savage … With A Camera”

A “frenzied machete attack.” “The most appalling crime.” “Sickening.” “Barbaric.” “A deluded, deranged act of violence.” “Gruesome and shocking.” These were press-cited descriptions of the butchering of a British soldier by a black man with a meat-cleaver, on a south-east London street.
By the sound of the killer’s common vernacular and accent, he, too, was British. The slaying occurred in Woolwich, just yards from the Royal Artillery Barracks.
Not content with carving up his countryman on the pavement, the savage also managed to carve out for himself a Speakers’ Corner, away from the famous, and once so civilized, corner in Hyde Park. Slick with the blood of his victim—and befitting the YouTube era—the killer then asked a passerby to film his splenetic screed. The result was a mini-manifesto, delivered to the world, as the still-warm body of the grunt loomed in the background.
The butchered soldier, Drummer Lee Rigby, was reported to have been wearing a “Help for Heroes” T-Shirt, the equivalent of America’s “Wounded Warrior” project. Same wars, waged by the same politicians, to the detriment of the same people at home and abroad.
Before finishing him off on foot, his assailants had run Drummer Rigby over by car. Since this occurred in barbaric Britannia, where a man’s right to life is purely nominal or theoretical, the victim was defenseless.