Has The War In Iraq Helped Germinate A Rebellion In Iran?

Christopher Hitchens:

"...it is very hard to overstate the significance of the statement made last Saturday by the Association of Teachers and Researchers of Qum, a much-respected source of religious rulings, which has in effect come right out with it and said that the recent farcical and prearranged plebiscite in the country was just that: a sham event. (In this, the clerics of Qum are a lot more clear-eyed than many American "experts" on Iranian public opinion, who were busy until recently writing about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the rough-hewn man of the people.)

Which begs the question...

"...Did the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime, and the subsequent holding of competitive elections in which many rival Iraqi Shiite parties took part, have any germinal influence on the astonishing events in Iran? Certainly when I interviewed Sayeed Khomeini in Qum some years ago, where he spoke openly about "the liberation of Iraq," he seemed to hope and believe that the example would spread. One swallow does not make a summer. But consider this: Many Iranians go as religious pilgrims to the holy sites of Najaf and Kerbala in southern Iraq. They have seen the way in which national and local elections have been held, more or less fairly and openly, with different Iraqi Shiite parties having to bid for votes (and with those parties aligned with Iran's regime doing less and less well). They have seen an often turbulent Iraqi Parliament holding genuine debates that are reported with reasonable fairness in the Iraqi media. Meanwhile, an Iranian mullah caste that classifies its own people as children who are mere wards of the state puts on a "let's pretend" election and even then tries to fix the outcome. Iranians by no means like to take their tune from Arabs—perhaps least of all from Iraqis—but watching something like the real thing next door may well have increased the appetite for the genuine article in Iran itself."

The Ayatollahs

"It is a mistake to assume that the ayatollahs, cynical and corrupt as they may be, are acting rationally. They are frequently in the grip of archaic beliefs and fears that would make a stupefied medieval European peasant seem mentally sturdy and resourceful by comparison."

Christopher Hitchens.

State-sponsored Madrasah

Christopher Hitchens has an interesting take on GITMO in Slate:

"Suppose that you were a secular or unfanatical person caught in the net by mistake; you would still find yourself being compelled to pray five times a day (the guards are not permitted to interrupt), to have a Quran in your cell, and to eat food prepared to halal (or Sharia) standards. I suppose you could ask to abstain, but, in such a case, I wouldn't much fancy your chances. The officers in charge were so pleased by this ability to show off their extreme broad-mindedness in respect of Islam that they looked almost hurt when I asked how they justified the use of taxpayers' money to create an institution dedicated to the fervent practice of the most extreme version of just one religion. To the huge list of reasons to close down Guantanamo, add this: It's a state-sponsored madrasah."

"Al Qaeda in Iraq has been subjected to a battlefield defeat at our hands"

Christopher Hitchens:

If it is true, as yesterday's three-decker front-page headline in the New York Times had it, that "U.S. Considering Stepping Up Pace of Iraq Pullout/ Fall in Violence Cited/ More Troops Could Be Freed for Operations in Afghanistan," then this can only be because al-Qaida in Iraq has been subjected to a battlefield defeat at our hands—a military defeat accompanied by a political humiliation in which its fanatics have been angrily repudiated by the very people they falsely claimed to be fighting for. If we had left Iraq according to the timetable of the anti-war movement, the situation would be the precise reverse: The Iraqi people would now be excruciatingly tyrannized by the gloating sadists of al-Qaida, who could further boast of having inflicted a battlefield defeat on the United States. I dare say the word of that would have spread to Afghanistan fast enough and, indeed, to other places where the enemy operates. Bear this in mind next time you hear any easy talk about "the hunt for the real enemy" or any loose babble that suggests that we can only confront our foes in one place at a time.

This is not the least of what he says. Note his three points with regard to those who argue Iraq as a "war of choice," versus Afghanistan as a "war of necessity."

Mainstream Islamic Imperialism

Christopher Hitchens:

When I went to Ramadan's event in the Palazzo d'Arco, I had just finished reading Osama Bin Laden's latest anniversary prose-poem. Here, too, are signs of an act being cleaned up. He brags of the murders of Sept. 11, of course (thus inconveniencing all those who attribute them to Mossad or some mysterious other agency), but he does not forget to cite Noam Chomsky, CIA maverick Michael Scheuer, and the Oliver Stone theory of the JFK assassination. He also exhibits concern for the global-warming crisis, the fate of American Indians, and even the recent collapse of the subprime mortgage market. Everything he says about the war in Iraq, right up to the affected concern for the civilian and military casualties, is presented as if he had hired one of Michael Moore's screenwriters as a consultant. Most unctuous of all, he reminds his audience that the Quran has a whole section in praise of the Virgin Mary, an ecumenical point that I had noticed before. (It is typical of monotheisms to plagiarize each other's worst features, from Abraham onward.) I think that this pitch is probably too crude and crass to work, but it's exactly the crudeness and crassness of Bin Laden that require the emergence of more "credible" middlemen to allay anxiety and offer reassurance. Only six years on, and already the soft mainstreaming of Islamic imperialism is under way.

New Hitchens Interview On Iraq

Christopher Hitchens gave an interview to the Hoover Institution on August 23rd. Thomas P.M. Barnett also quoted a Hitchens piece and praised his analysis recently.

Hot Air's Bryan is more ambivalent:

I find Christopher Hitchens to be more than a little frustrating. One the one hand, he’s a ghoul to feast on the corpse of Mother Teresa and her faith crises, doubts that show a human side that we never saw when she was alive. In fact, Hitchens’ obits betray a ghoulishness that seems to permeate his character. And then there’s his continued misunderstanding of Vietnam and the lessons of failure there. It almost seems accidental that he’s on the right side of the war in Iraq.

However, right now he's an ally:

But the fact is, Hitchens is on our side and he’s probably the war’s most articulate advocate, so we’re cheering him on.

I've always been impressed by the breadth of Hitchens' knowledge and learning. The vigor and clarity of his spoken and written word is unmatched by any of his peers. One need only pick up a Chomsky book and try to get through a chapter. Then turn the pages of a Hitchens text, enjoy his wit, appreciate the organization of his thoughts, and bring your dictionary.

Reading Hitchens, his opinions always seem to be his own, and he cannot easily be classified within the socialist, right wing, hawkish, neocon, or communist camp.

Certainly, he is an atheist, but that is one of the few labels that can be applied to Christopher Hitchens.

H/T the corner.

Three Iraq Wars

Christopher Hitchens:

When people say that they want to end the war in Iraq, I always want to ask them which war they mean. There are currently at least three wars, along with several subconflicts, being fought on Iraqi soil. The first, tragically, is the battle for mastery between Sunni and Shiite. The second is the campaign to isolate and defeat al-Qaida in Mesopotamia. The third is the struggle of Iraq's Kurdish minority to defend and consolidate its regional government in the north.

Read the rest.

Thomas P.M. Barnett agrees:

When people say surge works, they speak of AQM, and when they say it doesn't, they speak of Sunni v. Shiia.

Meanwhile. Kurdistan remains the untold success story increasingly under fire.

Hitchens Blasts Bush On Vietnam

Hitchens: To invoke Vietnam was a blunder too far for Bush

A rare criticism of Bush's Iraq war policy by Christopher Hitchens.

In this real-world argument, there is a very strong temptation for opponents of the war to invoke the lessons of Vietnam. I must have written thousands of words attempting to show that there is absolutely no analogy between the two conflicts.

Hitchens then proceeds to lay out 13 reasons why the two wars are incomparable.

However, I believe he is arguing over the details, rather than the metaphor Bush sought to express, which is: We are losing the war at home, and retreat spells a humanitarian disaster which would make today's Iraq look like a bad Friday night B-movie compared to the biblical mountains of corpses which would result from a precipitous U.S. withdrawal and loss of will to fight.

H/T Hot Air.

The World Will Hate Us For Naming Islamic Terror

Joe Conason says the next GOP President could be worse than Bush... when it comes to how much the world loves us: If you think they hate us now:

During the last Republican debate, on Aug. 5, Rudolph Giuliani eagerly provided an example of this syndrome when he attacked the Democratic presidential candidates for failing to describe terrorism as Islamic. "During four Democratic debates," he complained, "not a single Democratic candidate said the word [sic] 'Islamic terrorism.' Now, that is taking political correctness to extremes." To him, the absence of that phrase in their speeches, no matter how tough their stance against terror, proved that Democrats are guilty of "weakness and appeasement." The other Republicans, again except for Paul, agreed -- although as John Dickerson of Slate has pointed out, that phrase is also assiduously avoided by the Bush White House.

There is an obvious reason not to say "Islamic terror," which stupidly suggests that terror is indeed Islamic, as the ideologists of al-Qaida would argue. There is also an obvious reason to say that same phrase -- if you believe that we are careening toward a war of civilizations and your aim is to inflame.

My initial reaction: "Who cares? There are other things to worry about."

What Conason is saying is that in other words, if the next President is not politically correct enough, and does not pander sufficiently, the world will thumb its nose at us. Because "Islamic terror" cannot possibly describe one form of terror, much unlike "Drug-Cartel Terror," or Spain's nationalist "ETA Terror," our Presidential candidates must keep it simple for the American people by dumbing it down.

Perhaps Conason is comfortable avoiding the truh. One can only hope our next President will not be that comfortable, and will not feel the need to let to the American people, or try to pull the wool over their eyes.

Apparently, Democrats are more comfortable with that strategy. Should we appease Islam like Europe? Like Italy, YouTube, and George Mason University? Look at the consequences of appeasement on Europe's women.

Rather, let's take Christopher Hitchens' advice to heart:

The enemies of intolerance cannot be tolerant, or neutral, without inviting their own suicide.

Hitchens: Resistance To Jihadism

Christopher Hitchens - God-Fearing People:

It is often said that resistance to jihadism only increases the recruitment to it. For all I know, this commonplace observation could be true. But, if so, it must cut both ways. How about reminding the Islamists that, by their mad policy in Kashmir and elsewhere, they have made deadly enemies of a billion Indian Hindus? Is there no danger that the massacre of Iraqi and Lebanese Christians, or the threatened murder of all Jews, will cause an equal and opposite response? Most important of all, what will be said and done by those of us who take no side in filthy religious wars? The enemies of intolerance cannot be tolerant, or neutral, without inviting their own suicide. And the advocates and apologists of bigotry and censorship and suicide-assassination cannot be permitted to take shelter any longer under the umbrella of a pluralism that they openly seek to destroy.

Same old Hitchens, same old brilliance.

Hitchens and Hitchens on Afghanistan

Hot Air has the video of a debate in which Christopher Hitchens and his brother debate the efficacy of the British presence in Afghanistan.

Hitchens wins the debate. Christopher Hitchens

Hitchens on former President Jimmy Carter

Titled Peanut Envy [Excerpt]:

In the Carter years, the United States was an international laughingstock. This was not just because of the prevalence of his ghastly kin: the beer-sodden brother Billy, doing deals with Libyan President Muammar Qaddafi, and the grisly matriarch, Miz Lillian. It was not just because of the president's dire lectures on morality and salvation and his weird encounters with lethal rabbits and UFOs. It was not just because of the risible White House "Bible study" sessions run by Bert Lance and his other open-palmed Elmer Gantry pals from Georgia. It was because, whether in Afghanistan, Iran, or Iraq—still the source of so many of our woes—the Carter administration could not tell a friend from an enemy. His combination of naivete and cynicism—from open-mouthed shock at Leonid Brezhnev's occupation of Afghanistan to underhanded support for Saddam in his unsleeping campaign of megalomania—had terrible consequences that are with us still. It's hardly an exaggeration to say that every administration since has had to deal with the chaotic legacy of Carter's mind-boggling cowardice and incompetence.

Whew.

Don't get on this guy's bad side.

Classic Hitchens

On Falwell:

"A Star Wars Bar Scene"

What, me worry?

Pat Dollard: What Does Muslim Immigration Cost Europe?

Lawyer Ann Christine Hjelm, who has investigated violent crimes in one court, found that 85 per cent of the convicted rapists were born on foreign soil or by foreign parents. Swedish politicians want to continue Muslim immigration because it boosts the economy, yet the evidence so far indicates that it mainly boosts the number of gang rapes.

He also notes that Terror Fears Grip Europe :

German government warns Australians to stay away. New “Al Qaeda In The Lands Of The Villains” cell expected to strike soon.

…a very disturbing new tape, featuring a new European branch of Al Qaeda called “Al Qaeda In The Lands of The Villains” started making the international rounds on May 1. May Day. The tape features armed gangs practicing assaults on everything from buses to military installations, and lots and lots of IED making. Topographical analysis indicates it was shot in Eastern Europe, perhaps Chechnya.

The tape’s narrator lays out three specific priorities for Al Qaeda in Europe

1. A general worldwide jihadi recruitment campaign extolling the fun and virtues of killing Americans in Iraq, Jews in Palestine, Hindus in India. In other words, off-continental killing.

2. The training of believers to fight the infidels, namely the Christians and Jews living in Europe.

3. The establishment of separate Muslim states-within-states in Europe, ie the strongest admonition against culturally integrating into Western Societies. The need to remain both separate and jihadi in preparation for the ultimate conquest of the continent.

Well, I sure hope you don't rely on Daily Kos for a warning:

The German Terror Plot Media Scare [Translation of German Article Inside]

Better that you pay attention to Chrisopher Hitchens: Londonistan Calling

Until he was jailed last year on charges of soliciting murder and inciting racial hatred, a man known to the police of several countries as Abu Hamza al-Masri was the imam of the Finsbury Park Mosque. He was a conspicuous figure because, having lost the use of an eye and both hands in an exchange of views in Afghanistan, he sported an opaque eye plus a hook to theatrical effect. Not as nice as he looked, Abu Hamza was nonetheless unfailingly generous with his hospitality. Overnight guests at his mosque's sleeping quarters have included Richard Reid, the man in whose honor we now all have to take off our shoes at the airport, and Zacarias Moussaoui, the missing team member of September 11, 2001. Other visitors included Ahmed Ressam, arrested for trying to blow up LAX for the millennium, and Nizar Trabelsi, a Tunisian who planned to don an explosive vest and penetrate the American Embassy in Paris. On July 7, 2005 ("7/7," as the British call it), a clutch of bombs exploded in London's transport system. It emerged that one of the suicide murderers had been influenced by the preachings of Abu Hamza, as had two of those attempting to replicate the mission two weeks later.

In fact, the British jihadist is becoming quite a feature on the international scene. In 1998, six British citizens of Pakistani and North African descent along with two other British residents were arrested by the government of Yemen and convicted of planning to kidnap a group of tourists and attack British targets in the port of Aden (scene of the near-sinking of the U.S.S. Cole two years later). One of the youths was the son of the tireless Abu Hamza, and another was his stepson. In December 2001, Richard Reid made his bid on the Paris–Miami flight. By then, two or three Britons had been killed in Afghanistan—fighting on the side of the Taliban. The following year came the video butchering of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, whose abduction and murder were organized by another Briton—a former student at the London School of Economics—named Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh. And the year after that, two British-passport holders, Asif Mohammed Hanif and Omar Khan Sharif, took part in a suicide attack on Mike's Place, a Tel Aviv bar.

The British have always been proud of their tradition of hospitality and asylum, which has benefited Huguenots escaping persecution, European Jewry, and many political dissidents from Marx to Mazzini. But the appellation "Londonistan," which apparently originated with a sarcastic remark by a French intelligence officer, has come to describe a city which became home to people wanted for terrorist crimes as far afield as Cairo and Karachi. The capital of the United Kingdom is, in the words of Steven Simon, a former White House counterterrorism official, "the Star Wars bar scene," catering promiscuously to all manner of Islamist recruiters and fund-raisers for, and actual practitioners of, holy war.

and

It's impossible to exaggerate how far and how fast this situation has deteriorated. Even at the time of the Satanic Verses affair, as long ago as 1989, Muslim demonstrations may have demanded Rushdie's death, but they did so, if you like, peacefully. And they confined their lurid rhetorical attacks to Muslims who had become apostate. But at least since the time of the Danish-cartoon furor, threats have been made against non-Muslims as well as ex-Muslims (see photograph), the killing of Shiite Muslim heretics has been applauded and justified, and the general resort to indiscriminate violence has been rationalized in the name of god. Traditional Islamic law says that Muslims who live in non-Muslim societies must obey the law of the majority. But this does not restrain those who now believe that they can proselytize Islam by force, and need not obey kuffar law in the meantime. I find myself haunted by a challenge that was offered on the BBC by a Muslim activist named Anjem Choudary: a man who has praised the 9/11 murders as "magnificent" and proclaimed that "Britain belongs to Allah." When asked if he might prefer to move to a country which practices Shari'a, he replied: "Who says you own Britain anyway?" A question that will have to be answered one way or another.

I would argue the merits of depicting this as mere hyperbole.

Fred Thompson History Lesson

He obviously reads Hitchens:

...Congress refused to act directly against the Barbary pirates for years. Eventually, between 10 and 20 percent of U.S. revenues would be paid annually without ever buying actual safety for Americans. In the end, Thomas Jefferson acted on his own, sending forces into harm’s way. America entered into its first and protracted foreign war. From beginning to end, in fact, the conflict lasted approximately 14 years. I couldn’t tell you, by the way, if the Barbary wars were ever described as a “quagmire” or "lost."

More here.

Jefferson Versus the Muslim Pirates

By Christopher Hitchens

How many know that perhaps 1.5 million Europeans and Americans were enslaved in Islamic North Africa between 1530 and 1780? We dimly recall that Miguel de Cervantes was briefly in the galleys. But what of the people of the town of Baltimore in Ireland, all carried off by “corsair” raiders in a single night?

Very good reading.

Hitchens on the definition of al Qaeda and Islamic Terrorism

Christopher Hitchens the verbose, the technical, the precise:

Now put the case of al Qaeda. Its supporters do not live under a foreign occupation, even if you count the apparently useless and now embarrassing American bases in Saudi Arabia. It is partly a corrupt multinational corporation, partly a crime family, partly a surrogate for the Saudi oligarchy and the Pakistani secret police, partly a sectarian religious cult, and partly a fascist organization. One of its taped proclamations, whether uttered by its leader or not, denounces Australia and celebrates the murder of Australians - for the crime of assisting East Timorese independence from "Muslim" Indonesia! But this doesn't begin to make the case against bin Ladenism. What does it demand from non-Muslim societies? It demands that they acknowledge their loathsome blasphemy and realize their own fitness for destruction. What does it demand for Muslim societies? It demands that they adopt seventh-century norms of clerical absolutism. How does it demand this? By a program of indiscriminate attacks on the civilian population of both. (Yes, both: The Afghan population was reduced by as many Hazara Shiites as the Taliban could manage to kill.) This is to demand the impossible, and to demand it by means of the most ruthless and disgusting tactics. - p. 25, A Long Short War

This is not the sort of group that should be left the spoils of a restless and chaotic Iraq to further plunder its riches, maim its citizens, and rape any and all vestiges of humanity and decency.

Remember the Past, Prepare for the Future

What constitutes regret? The wish to undo or reverse an action? What if someone would instead choose to do something differently today than they had done in the past? Does that constitute regret? I have a tattoo. If I could go back, I probably would not have gotten it, but I would not say that I regret getting it. I hope that does not appear to be specious reasoning.

Today, I witnessed two very strange, yet very different things on the New York City subway. These two things happened within minutes of each other, although they were both totally unrelated to one another.

Late this afternoon I rode a packed subway car from 50th street to 34th street. The C train was running late, no doubt due to the severe flooding that has effected the entire region. Standing with my back to the subway car doors, I faced dozens of pairs of eyes, the young, the old, people getting off work, and people out touristing for the day in the rain. Everyone showed signs of the weather; umbrellas, damp hair, soggy shoes, chilly pink cheeks. Despite the crummy weather, it was strangely enjoyable to jog down Manhattan streets, jumping puddles, ducking umbrellas and feeling the wind and rain with an iPod blaring Interpol in my ear.

I was too lazy to retrieve an umbrella from my car in the morning. The rain wouldn't be that bad I thought, the weathermen and women are always wrong, right? Wrong.

Mulling these thoughts over in my head, cognizant of my squishy shoes and drippy hair, I noticed a young woman standing in front of me, her left arm clasped around a metal aluminum bar attached to the subway car, which provides riders with support while the train naturally jostles in motion.

The woman, perhaps 20, perhaps 24, was black, with light creamy skin, long curly hair, big brown eyes, a colorful red and blue T-shirt, and a gray zipper-down hooded sweatshirt. As I scanned the subway car during my train ride, my eyes passed over her a few times, finally noticing something odd about her wrist. Below the palm of her left hand, which was grasping the metal bar, I saw a tattoo. The placement of the tattoo did not strike me, however. Rather, the words etched into her skin puzzled me and I questioned myself. Without trying to be too obvious, I fixed my eyes closer to her wrist to get a better look. On closer inspection, I confirmed to myself that the tattoo was written in Arabic, as I suspected on first glance.

Looking back upon the young woman's face, I questioned her ethnicity. Was she black? Or Egyptian? Maybe Persian? Possibly. But she was with a tall black young man. And below her wrist, she also wore a rainbow colored bracelet that looked like the yellow "Live Strong" bracelets Lance Armstrong popularized, only hers read "Diversity".

The train had just left 42nd street, and I knew 34th was at best two minutes away. As my mind raced, I questioned whether or not I should speak to her. With each passing second, my stop crept closer, and the window for opportunity was closing. I'm not one to intrude on people's conversations, and this woman was deep in discussion with her friend. However, I couldn't help myself. I broke in:

"Miss?"

She kept talking, unaware I was speaking to her.

"Miss? Excuse me, Miss?" I repeated.

She paused, halting her conversation, and turned to me - a sloppy, somewhat dejected-looking white guy holding his iPod earphones in his hand.

"Yes?" She asked questioningly, but curious at the same time.

"I'm sorry to interrupt, but your tattoo - is it written in Arabic?"

"Yes, it is."

"Would you mind if I asked what it means?"

She pulled her left hand down from the bar, and pointed to her wrist:

"This one means 'Remember the Past,' and this one" she pointed to her right
wrist, "means 'Prepare for the future'"

My mind raced, trying to process this, but just then the train stopped and the doors opened. This was my stop.

"Thank you" I said to her, and exited the train.

Which brings me to the second strange occurrence of the day:

Before I could process the woman's tattoo, which left me incredulous, I got a cold shower. Walking out of the subway car, I was doused with frigid water that spewed unseen from an area above the train car. Apparently, the deluge outside overwhelmed the city subway's irrigation system, leaving gallons of rain water to fall in huge sheets along the station's ceiling, directly parallel with the subway car doors. I managed to snap two pictures with my camera phone, which do not do it justice.


Shortly after, Tool's Aenema rang out in my head as I walked and listened:

Some say a comet will fall from the sky... followed by meteors showers and tidal waves... followed by fault lines that cannot sit still... followed by millions of dumb-founded dip sh-ts...

And some say the end is near, some say we'll see Armageddon soon... I certainly hope we will.. I sure could use a vacation from this...

Stupid Sh-t...

Stupid sh-t...

...

F*ck all these gun-toting hip-gangster wannabes

... f*ck your tattoos, f*ck all you junkies and f*ck your short memory

Cause I'm praying for rain, I'm praying for tidal waves...

The music was oddly cathartic given the situation. Waiting for the train back to Jersey, my thoughts remained on the young woman's tattoos. After twenty minutes of deep thought (perhaps I was over-thinking), I came to a conclusion. Without the ability to question the woman about her motives, I could only speculate as to the reasons why she chose to permanently scar a very visible part of her body with Arabic writing. I fell back on three possible reasons...

Reason Number One:

(This is certainly a possibility, and plausible). The young woman, in perverse, but perhaps noble reverence, tattooed her body with 'Remember the Past' and 'Prepare for the Future' to pay tribute to a mother, father, sister, brother, cousin, aunt, uncle, or friend who died as a result of the 9/11 terror attacks. This constant reminder to Remember the Past and Prepare for the Future was a promise she kept to herself, enshrined in the Arabic language of her fallen comrades' killers.

Reason Number Two:

The young woman is an Islamic fundamentalist sycophant, possibly entranced by the fashionable America-hating, death to Israel crowd. Her tattoo serves to ensure that she has a daily remembrance to the accomplishments of the martyrs she worships.

Reason Number Three:

She is blissfully ignorant of the geopolitical implications of 9/11. She is further ignorant of the steady march of Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East. She also doubts and downplays the impact of Western culture on the mindset and psyche of the terrorists. The presence of Muslim radicals and theocratic nihilists, as Christopher Hitchens calls them, is as foreign a concept to her as planes piloted by radical terrorists smashing into American buildings. All that matters to her is that she has two cool-looking tattoos in Arabic on her wrists, and so what if they contain somewhat idealistic, innocuous, jingoistic, or even profoundly religious language? People ask her about them all the time when she's, say, riding on the subway.

It was unclear to me which category the young woman fell under, although I feel she qualified for one of the three possibilities that I laid out. Personally, I favor the third option as her modus operandi. Upon further reflection, it further occurred to me that this woman in a way represented the present dichotomy among Americans and 9/11.

I have discerned two distinct reactions to 9/11, neither of which will appear a shocking analysis to the well-informed reader. I have been guilty of both reactions, and currently suffer? from the latter.

Firstly, many Americans reacted to 9/11 with not only horror and disgust, but also contempt for America the victim. It was the reckless government of the United States that brought this ghastly act upon itself. How dare we have military bases in Saudi Arabia? How dare we support Israel, which has snubbed its nose at the United Nations? The United Nations! Why should the U.S. export its hedonistic, superficial culture via Brad Pitt movies and Snoop Dogg gangsta rap? As horrible as these attacks were, America undoubtedly brought this upon itself. The continued failed policies of successive American administrations has fostered this hatred upon the western world.

Secondly, many Americans felt an opposite emotion equally as strongly. Who the hell were these base cowards? How dare this stateless entity, this 'al Qaeda' perpetrate such violence upon so many innocent people? The United States is a benign great power that can annihilate its enemies if it wishes, let alone a rag-tag group of fanatics. These masochistic zealots picked the wrong fight, and now they need to be taught a lesson.

The first reaction is commonly seen among the left of center audience. The second, among the right, naturally. Neither is entirely accurate or righteous, for we cannot lay down our arms and apologize any more than we can bomb the region into the stone age.

But I hold one particular conviction with certainty. Any fashionable trend that purports to convert Islamic hate into materialistic chic is a dastardly perversion of the principles we are fighting, bleeding and dying for right now in the Middle East. It is far too simple for us to latch on to a popularized notion that the expression of commonality alone will suffice for world peace. That is a naive, distorted and overly simplistic view of the world. A view that is not backed up by history past, present, or future.

Enemies do not lay down their arms after a victorious attack, which 9/11 was for terrorists. Similarly, our enemies will not go away if the same environment which fostered their creation continues to foster chaos and religious insanity with impunity. We will suffer these attacks in perpetuity unless left and right, restraint and force, courage and conviction, are brought to the table.

This is not what we see now from Washington, certainly not in the deep divisions among our nation's leaders. A house divided will not stand, a great American once said. Republicans and Democrats alike need to pick up the pieces and work out their differences before the enemy renders all judgement moot.

Stop Genocide in Rwanda and Sudan, but not Iraq

Intervention in Rwanda. Yes. Intervention in Sudan. Yes.

Intervention in Iraq. No. We must pull out now.

On March 25th, 1998, former President Bill Clinton told Rwandans that "the international community had failed to act to prevent the country's genocide in 1994." He continued:

"All over the world there were people like me sitting in offices who did not fully appreciate the depth and the speed with which you were being engulfed by this unimaginable terror," Clinton told the audience of several hundred assembled, including many survivors of the genocide.

"Genocide can occur anywhere. It is not an African phenomenon. We must have global vigilance. And never again must we be shy in the face of the evidence," Clinton said.

Samantha Power wrote in Bystanders to Genocide:

...in a series in The New Yorker, Philip Gourevitch recounted in horrific detail the story of the genocide and the world's failure to stop it. President Bill Clinton, a famously avid reader, expressed shock. He sent copies of Gourevitch's articles to his second-term national-security adviser, Sandy Berger. The articles bore confused, angry, searching queries in the margins. "Is what he's saying true?" Clinton wrote with a thick black felt-tip pen beside heavily underlined paragraphs. "How did this happen?" he asked, adding, "I want to get to the bottom of this." The President's urgency and outrage were oddly timed. As the terror in Rwanda had unfolded, Clinton had shown virtually no interest in stopping the genocide, and his Administration had stood by as the death toll rose into the hundreds of thousands.

It gets worse. Power continues:

In reality the United States did much more than fail to send troops. It led a successful effort to remove most of the UN peacekeepers who were already in Rwanda. It aggressively worked to block the subsequent authorization of UN reinforcements. It refused to use its technology to jam radio broadcasts that were a crucial instrument in the coordination and perpetuation of the genocide. And even as, on average, 8,000 Rwandans were being butchered each day, U.S. officials shunned the term "genocide," for fear of being obliged to act. The United States in fact did virtually nothing "to try to limit what occurred." Indeed, staying out of Rwanda was an explicit U.S. policy objective.

Does this sound familiar? Troop pullouts? Cutting funds? Wait, there are more parallels:

The signs of militarization in Rwanda were so widespread that even without much of an intelligence-gathering capacity, Dallaire was able to learn of the extremists' sinister intentions. In January of 1994 an anonymous Hutu informant, said to be high up in the inner circles of the Rwandan government, had come forward to describe the rapid arming and training of local militias.

Rapid arming and training of local militias? The name Moqtada al Sadr comes to mind. Power continues, invoking the U.S. retreat from Somalia after the death of eighteen Americans:

On receiving word of these events, President Clinton cut short a trip to California and convened an urgent crisis-management meeting at the White House. When an aide began recapping the situation, an angry President interrupted him. "Cut the bullshit," Clinton snapped. "Let's work this out." "Work it out" meant walk out. Republican Congressional pressure was intense. Clinton appeared on American television the next day, called off the manhunt for Aideed, temporarily reinforced the troop presence, and announced that all U.S. forces would be home within six months. The Pentagon leadership concluded that peacekeeping in Africa meant trouble and that neither the White House nor Congress would stand by it when the chips were down.

Power goes on to outline the series of American efforts to evacuate and avoid the conflict through ignorance, willful dismissal, or carelessness in the ensuing weeks and months. Upon the evacuation of U.S. personnel from Rwanda, Bill Clinton had this response:

In the three days during which some 4,000 foreigners were evacuated, about 20,000 Rwandans were killed. After the American evacuees were safely out and the U.S. embassy had been closed, Bill and Hillary Clinton visited the people who had manned the emergency-operations room at the State Department and offered congratulations on a "job well done."

As for when the U.S. knew there was genocide:

both the testimony of U.S. officials who worked the issue day to day and the declassified documents indicate that plenty was known about the killers' intentions.

and

From April 8 onward media coverage featured eyewitness accounts describing the widespread targeting of Tutsi and the corpses piling up on Kigali's streets. American reporters relayed stories of missionaries and embassy officials who had been unable to save their Rwandan friends and neighbors from death.

The UN General on the ground, Romeo Dallaire, begged for more troops:

When the killing began, Romeo Dallaire expected and appealed for reinforcements. Within hours of the plane crash he had cabled UN headquarters in New York: "Give me the means and I can do more."

Despite the small numbers, some UN peacekeepers exemplified incredible courage:

Although some soldiers hunkered down, terrified, others scoured Kigali, rescuing Tutsi, and later established defensive positions in the city, opening their doors to the fortunate Tutsi who made it through roadblocks to reach them. One Senegalese captain saved a hundred or so lives single-handedly. Some 25,000 Rwandans eventually assembled at positions manned by UNAMIR personnel.

However, at UN headquarters, nothing but cowardice:

By coincidence Rwanda held one of the rotating seats on the Security Council at the time of the genocide. Neither the United States nor any other UN member state ever suggested that the representative of the genocidal government be expelled from the council. Nor did any Security Council country offer to provide safe haven to Rwandan refugees who escaped the carnage.

Rwanda was a Civil War. Is not Iraq?

Whatever the inevitable imperfections of U.S. intelligence early on, the reports from Rwanda were severe enough to distinguish Hutu killers from ordinary combatants in civil war.

France to the rescue. France!

It is not hard to conceive of how the United States might have done things differently. Ahead of the plane crash, as violence escalated, it could have agreed to Belgian pleas for UN reinforcements. Once the killing of thousands of Rwandans a day had begun, the President could have deployed U.S. troops to Rwanda. The United States could have joined Dallaire's beleaguered UNAMIR forces or, if it feared associating with shoddy UN peacekeeping, it could have intervened unilaterally with the Security Council's backing, as France eventually did in late June. The United States could also have acted without the UN's blessing, as it did five years later in Kosovo.

For his part, Bush has said:

"I don't like genocide," Bush said in January of 2000. "But I would not commit our troops."

In comparison to Bill Clinton's post-Rwanda contrition, Barack Obama has spoken out on Sudan. In the Los Angeles Times, Niall Ferguson wrote this past February of "Obama's muddled stance on foreign intervention. On one hand, he wants troops out of Iraq by next year. On the other, he believes the U.S. should ensure the world's security."

Ferguson continued to lay out an excellent case for Obama's Hypocrisy:

Take a look at Obama's arguments for a speedy U.S. withdrawal. Last month, he asserted that "redeployment remains our best leverage to pressure the Iraqi government to achieve … political settlement between its warring factions." The key is "to give Iraqis their country back" because "no amount of American soldiers can solve the political differences at the heart of somebody else's civil war."

But Obama's claim that a U.S. withdrawal would somehow "pressure the Sunni and Shia to come to the table and find peace" is a fraud. Withdrawal is much more likely to lead to an escalation of the internecine conflict that is tearing Iraq apart. In a devastating 2006 paper for the Brookings Institution, Daniel L. Byman and Kenneth M. Pollack pointed out that "the only thing standing between Iraq and a descent into a Lebanon- or Bosnia-like maelstrom is 135,000 American troops."

In fact, Iraq has already matched the level of violence witnessed in the Lebanese and Bosnian civil wars. And it could get much worse. If the U.S. pulls out, as Obama recommends, Byman and Pollack predict "a humanitarian nightmare" in which we should expect "hundreds of thousands (conceivably even millions) of people to die."

Obama's call for rapid withdrawal from Iraq would make some sense if he were an isolationist. But he's not. His memoir-cum-manifesto, "The Audacity of Hope," insists that, out of both self-interest and altruism, the U.S. has no alternative but to "help make the world more secure." Looking back on the Rwandan genocide, he reflects that "an international show of force … might have stopped the slaughter."

Obama also has accused the Bush administration of doing too little to stop the murderous policies of the Sudanese government toward the people of Darfur. In an article in December 2005, he went so far as to urge the deployment of "a U.N.- or NATO-led force."

Wait a second. Here are two civil wars, each likely to spiral out of control. But in one (Sudan), Obama recommends intervention, while in the other (Iraq), he recommends military withdrawal. Am I missing something?

Hollywood & Obama on Darfur: Clooney, senators urge action on Darfur

The three urged more attention across the board -- by the United States, other nations and world institutions.

"What we cannot do is turn our heads and look away and hope that this will somehow disappear," Clooney said.

Are tens of thousands not dead in Iraq at the hands of vile Islamic extremists?

The crisis in western Sudan's Darfur region has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and the displacement of nearly 2 million people since February 2003, when people there began to rebel against state authority.

Amidst this backdrop - A history of world negligience in Rwanda and Sudan, that many American politicians and activists strive for the U.S. pullout of Iraq. To this, Christoper Hitchens responds: Rushing for the Exit

To say that "exit strategies" from Iraq have become the flavor of the month would be to exaggerate the situation to the point of absurdity. Exit strategies are not even the fall fashion. They are the regnant topic of conversation all across the political establishment and have been for some time.

By "some time," one need not ponder for very long what Hitchens implies. As stated, Rwanda and Sudan are clear examples of the consequences of inaction by countries that have the power to act. Hitchens then outlines the numerous Iraqi victories and successes:

I am glad that all previous demands for withdrawal or disengagement from Iraq were unheeded, because otherwise we would not be able to celebrate the arrest and trial of Saddam Hussein; the removal from the planet of his two sadistic kids and putative successors; the certified disarmament of a former WMD- and gangster-sponsoring rogue state; the recuperation of the marshes and their ecology and society; the introduction of a convertible currency; the autonomy of Iraqi Kurdistan (currently advertising for investors and tourists on American television); the killing of al-Qaida's most dangerous and wicked leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and many of his associates; the opening of dozens of newspapers and radio and TV stations; the holding of elections for an assembly and to approve a constitution; and the introduction of the idea of federal democracy as the only solution for Iraq short of outright partition and/or civil war. If this cause is now to be considered defeated, by the sheer staggering persistence in murder and sabotage of the clerico-fascist forces and the sectarian militias, then it will always count as a noble one.

Thousand of Iraqis have perished since the start of the Iraq war. The estimates range from 60,000 to the outlandish 300,000+ of many now discredited studies. On the face of it, the Sunni/Shi'ite Civil War and al Qaeda insurgency taking place in Iraq may not necessarily constitute genocide to some, although as Samantha Power noted, there is a fine line between diplomatic casuistry and the realities on the ground, which mere labels cannot transcend.

If we should have acted in Rwanda, as former President Bill Clinton has regrettably stated, then why not Iraq?

If we should now act in Sudan, as Senator Obama, George Clooney, and countless others have fervently demanded, then why not Iraq?

There can be only one answer to that question in my mind: Spite and Politics. Spite for the Bush administration's bold (and despised, ridiculed, criticized) lead into war, and Politics for the Democratic opportunists now pandering to their base on the backs of now and future dead Iraqi civilians.

If the U.S. were to withdraw from Iraq, would not genocide ensue, if that is not what is taking place already? Does any logical, reasonable person honestly believe that Iraq's problems will disappear along with American troops?

That is fallacious reasoning at best. That is politics. That is spite.

And that is what is going on right now.