The Shotgun Blog
« NORMAN'S SPECTATOR | Main | Anti-Christian bigotry »
Friday, February 04, 2005
Quote of the Day
Dr. Mohammed T. Al-Rasheed writing in the Arab News
"Everyone says that this is the first free elections in Iraq for fifty years. That is another lie. There has never been one single free election in the long history of the Arabs ever. This is the first one. It took the Americans to conduct it and force it down the throats of dictators, terrorists, exploding deranged humans, and odds as big as the distance between the USA and the Middle East. British guns and soldiers were in the area for so long yet did not care to look at the people. They waltzed with people Gerty and Lawrence (their colonial spies) baptized and were happy to see the nations slip into slavery. Likewise, the French could not bring themselves to see that the Arabs were good enough to cast a vote. And even when it happened in Algeria, the French orchestrated a putsch to annul it. On Sunday America vindicated itself to all doubters, including me...
....Perhaps in the coming weeks we will take issue with America again. But for today, I am celebrating by having a McDonald’s. I hate fast food, but for this day I will make an exception."
Via Winds of Change and crossposted to The Meatriarchy
Posted by Justin Bogdanowicz on February 4, 2005 | Permalink
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
https://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d834515b5d69e200d834702c9e69e2
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Quote of the Day:
Comments
It appears Dr. Al-Rasheed should celebrate while he can.
Steve Sailer writes:
"Free to Dance in Iraq" exults Charles Krauthammer over the Iraqi election.
Well, they better dance while they can, because in Ayatollah Sistani's Iraq they will only be able to hear (according to Sistani.org) "music which is not fit for diversion and play."
Look, Chuck, what the Shi'ites were celebrating was not the process of democracy, but their side's victory. The Bush Administration kept the results covered up for four days so the President could get through his State of the Union address before it dawned on the American public that we had just bought, at the cost of over 12,000 American casualties and counting, the election of a fundamentalist Ayatollah's slate!
I've said it before, but I have to keep it saying it again. Even more than most people, what Muslims want is not so much freedom for all as domination for themselves. Cruel history has taught them that the only way to avoid the bite of the whip is to crack the whip themselves. The Grand Ayatollah is perfectly happy to use an election now to gain power, just as his fellow Shiite ayatollah, Khomeini (remember him?), was happy to hold elections throughout the 1980s next door in Sistani's native Iran, as long as his boys could win the elections, which they did for quite some time."
Posted by: DJ | 2005-02-04 10:49:17 AM
DJ: The risk of Iraq turning into a fundamentalist Shia state is very real. One of the reasons I felt we shouldn't have gone into Iraq was the potential creation of an IRAN-IRAQ shia bloc.
I would have been happier if the US had worked to destablize and overthrow the Iranian theocracy first before Iraq. This could have been done without military force.
I wrote a long post about that called The Wrong Domino. You can find it at the Meatriarchy Classic site: http://meatriarchy.blogspot.com/2002_12_29_meatriarchy_archive.html#86947028
Posted by: The Meatriarchy | 2005-02-04 2:54:21 PM
DJ,
By your casualty figures, the American Forces in Iraq have been decimated. You will have to look up the definition of that word if you do not believe me. I do not have the latest casualtiy figures in Iraq but believe the fatality count is between 1400 and 1500. If wounded figures are classed as casualties there would have to be be somethng more than 10,500 wounded which I dont' believe. It is disingenous not to separate fatalities from wounded but typical for someone trying to make it sound like there have been ten times as many fatalities as there actually has been.
Posted by: Bob Wood | 2005-02-04 8:00:57 PM
Mr. Wood, According to dictionary.com decimated "originally referred to the killing of every tenth person, a punishment used in the Roman army for mutinous legions. Today this meaning is commonly extended to include the killing of any large proportion of a group." Using either meaning, does not support your assertion the casualty figures show that the US military has been decimated.
Casualty, from the same source, is defined as "One injured, killed, captured, or missing in action through engagement with an enemy."
This site - http://icasualties.org/oif/ list US wounded in action, according to the DOD, as 10,740. Americans killed in action are listed as 1,446. You may also make a donation to the Armed Forces Relief Trust at the above site.
Steve Sailer is very sincere. He does not see the value in incurring 12,000 US casualties to oust a monocrat and replace him with a Shi'ite theocracy with very close connections to an Iranian theocracy that allegedly sponsors terror and is in potential pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Mr. M, to his credit recognizes this -
"As history in this region shows there is a no guarantee that a radical Islamic fundamentalist party wont seize power through legitimate elections or through brute force. Slightly to the west of Iraq lies Iran, which was also ruled by a dictator until a violent revolution occurred. Yet as everyone knows this resulted in a repressive Islamic regime and not a democratic government."
It's not at all disingenuous for anyone who knows the meaning of the words.
Posted by: DJ | 2005-02-04 11:20:16 PM
"As history in this region shows there is a no guarantee that a radical Islamic fundamentalist party wont seize power through legitimate elections or through brute force."
That's why this strategy has been called "our world-historical gamble" by Lee Harris in his book "Civilization and its Enemies" and in the article that inspired it:
http://www.techcentralstation.com/031103A.html
As I recall from your posts over at Andrew Coyne's site, you were against waging this war on Islamic fascism and the states that sponsor it. Your delight in imagining doomsday scenarios is therefore unseemly, but unsurprising.
Posted by: surly | 2005-02-05 1:26:24 AM
There is no imagining of doomsday scenarios on my part, but simply a re-iteration of the Bush administrations assertions. Sailer's incredulity arises from naked disbelief that Moronica would carry out a foreign policy that plays into the hands of their enemies at the cost of 12,000 US casualties. Nothing unseemly there, except possibly on the part of this administration.
Kenneth Waltz, adjunct professor of political science and senior research scholar in the Institute of War and Peace attributes the relative peace of the last six decades to the availability of massively destructive weapons.
"It does not matter if Iraq, [Iran] or North Korea possess or develop weapons of mass destruction," because, he says, "Nuclear deterrence, will prevent either country from ever using them."
"Notice that no country with nuclear weapons [except one] has been able to do anything with them except use them for deterrence," says Waltz, who believes these weapons are the only effective form of preventing full-scale war the world has ever seen.
"Deterrence with conventional weapons has often failed; deterrence with nuclear weapons has always succeeded."
The threat is nominal but that's not the issue. The issue is Israel's fear that "if a Middle Eastern country becomes a nuclear power, it could forever lose its freedom of action in the Middle East. The specifics of such a scenario are not important because Israel will do everything in its power, including preemptive attacks, to make sure that no Middle Eastern country ever develops nuclear weapons." And the Israelis have already received 100 of the advanced F-161s from the US, capable of striking most Iranian targets. That begs the question, Why is the US fighting for Israeli regional hegemony?
Posted by: DJ | 2005-02-05 11:07:09 PM
Well, I guess it comes down to whom you want to believe...Kenneth Waltz, adjunct professor of political science and senior research scholar in the Institute of War and Peace, or Ayatollah Rafsanjani, ruling cleric of Iran:
"TEHRAN 14 Dec. (IPS) One of Iran’s most influential ruling cleric called Friday on the Muslim states to use nuclear weapon against Israel, assuring them that while such an attack would annihilate Israel, it would cost them 'damages only'."
http://www.iran-press-service.com/articles_2001/dec_2001/rafsanjani_nuke_threats_141201.htm
Sounds like they're willing to take crazy chances to me. Maybe they'd even chance passing a nuke to a jihadi heading for the West. You and professor Waltz may be willing to gamble my children's lives on a faulty comparison to Cold War stability; I'll stick with Bush, Blair and Howard.
By the way, Michael Ledeen explodes your "Iraqi Shi'ites = Iranian Shi'ites" canard over at "The Corner" today:
"It's hard to imagine the MSM getting stupider, but there they go again...a raft of articles today on the 'pro-Iranian Shi'ite list' in the Iraqi elections. It's totally wrong. The Iranians dread the Iraqi Shiites, because the Iraqis, from Sistani to Chalabi to Hakim and on down, all oppose the Iranian heresy of the 'Supreme Leader,' a cleric at the top of the state"
http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/05_01_30_corner-archive.asp#055418
So, yes, you are in fact imagining doomsday scenarios.
Posted by: surly | 2005-02-06 1:15:50 AM
Imagining them where they don't exist and ignoring them where they do, I might add.
Posted by: surly | 2005-02-06 1:18:54 AM
Talk is cheap and has been heard from petty monocrats like Castro before, however his Soviet cohorts were decidely conservative in their use of nuclear weapons. And how does a threat against Israel translate into a threat against North America? So you would rather let Bush/Blair gamble the lives of your children to ensure Israeli hegemony (code named promoting democracy in the M/E)? Or do you plan to let someone else do the fighting?
"This is the same Michael Ledeen, who, as a consultant to the Reagan-Bush Administration National Security Council in the mid-1980s, was a pivotal criminal figure in the Iran-Contra fiasco, covertly peddling weapons to the very Ayatollahs whom he is now plotting to overthrow. He is also the same Ledeen who now calls for the United States to wage war against Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Sudan, Libya because, he alleges, they are all "masters of terror." Yet in the 1980s, Ledeen was one of the biggest promoters in Washington of the so-called Afghansi mujahideen—including Osama bin Laden—whom he touted as "freedom fighters" and "champions of the democratic struggle against totalitarian communism." And the same Ledeen who is allegedly involved in the FBI investigation regarding passing US intelligence to the Israelis thru AIPAC.
A trustworhty fellow no doubt!
Hmmm... it appears Chalabi's 'dread' of the Iranians did not stop him from allegedly passing US intelligence to Iran.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/05/21/iraq.chalabi/
"Imagining them where they don't exist and ignoring them where they do," like Iraq and the Afghan/Pakistan border.
Posted by: DJ | 2005-02-06 5:06:56 PM
As the deeply compassionate person you obviously are, I'm sure that the Holocaust haunts you as it does me, and that you would support policies to prevent its repetition. You tacitly accept my point about Rafsanjani's threat of a nuclear holocaust by asking, "And how does a threat against Israel translate into a threat against North America?"
Do I understand you to mean, you, who no doubt support internationalism, that the international community ought not stop someone who has promised to nuke Israel?
And if you honestly don't see Islamic radicalism as a threat to North America, then there really is no point in debating. Those who are unmoved by the shouts of "death to America", the imams' calls to "strike down the Jews and infidels" and the funding of radical Wahhabism in the mosques of the West are debating completely unencumbered by the facts.
Finally, if your indictment of Michael Ledeen's past actions is meant as an indictment of the realpolitik school of foreign affairs, then we are in agreement. Yet you also condemn democratizing tyrannies. Perhaps you could enlighten us all as to your positive alternative to these two strategies. Or perhaps the problem as you see it isn't Islamic fascism and its genocidal intentions, but Jew-controlled Americans stomping on harmless Arabs.
Posted by: surly | 2005-02-06 6:38:03 PM
"Imagining them where they don't exist and ignoring them where they do," like Iraq and the Afghan/Pakistan border."
I'm not privy to DJ's views expressed elsewhere, but the above rebuttal to surly would require DJ to have been an early and ardent supporter of the war in Afghanistan. Did he?
Posted by: Jeff Eirich | 2005-02-06 7:14:36 PM
The comments to this entry are closed.