Welcome to the Islamist Middle East and It’s Not Going to Be Moderate
Ladies and gentlemen, liberals and conservatives, Obama-lovers and Obama-haters, no matter what your race, creed, gender, national origin, or level of unpaid college loans, two things should be clear to all of you:
First, to describe the Obama administration’s Middle East policy as a disaster — I cannot think of a bigger, deadlier mess created by any U.S. foreign policy in the last century — is an understatement.
Second, the dominant analysis used by the media, academia, and the talking heads on television has proven dangerously wrong. This includes the ideas that revolutionary Islamism doesn’t exist, cannot be talked about, is not a threat, and that extreme radicals are really moderates.
I won’t review all the evidence here, but it amounts to a retreat for moderates, allies of the West, and American interests coupled with an advance for revolutionary Islamists.
On the morning of July 23, 1952, the Middle East entered a new era. The Free Officers Movement took over Egypt and there followed more than a half-century of war, anti-Western hysteria, terrorism, repression, social stagnation, and the basic Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse type stuff in the Middle East. That was the Era of Arab Nationalism.
On February 11, or October 23, or November 28, 2011, the Middle East entered a new era. Whether you date it to the fall of Mubarak, the Tunisian election, or the Egyptian election, what do you think is going to happen in the next half-century in the region? This is now — I call it officially — the Era of Revolutionary Islamism.
There is a great deal that will ensure the Islamists aren’t triumphant in the end, but there’s nothing that can stop them now from being dominant ideologically in the region and politically in the majority of countries between Tunisia and Iran, probably Afghanistan, and possibly Pakistan.
As early as the 1980s these trends were visible but the outcome was not inevitable.
There were four key elements in this victory for the Islamists.
First, the long, failed reign of Arab nationalist regimes went on in a downward spiral of increasingly less effective demagoguery, losing wars, and poor economic development performance as a demographic explosion took place.
Yet as late as 2000 the prospects for the Islamists looked poor. Almost a quarter-century after Iran’s revolution, they had not taken over in any other country except remote Afghanistan.
Then, second, the September 11 attacks revitalized the movement. Osama bin Laden lies moldering in the sea, but his movement goes marching on.
But while bin Laden lacked strategic flexibility, other Islamists were more effective.
And so, third, from Turkey came the idea of what might be called “stealth Islamism”: just pretend to be moderate and the suckers will buy it. Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood guru, also contributed here: bin Laden is a fool, he said in effect, of course we should run in elections. We’ll win.
Right now in Turkey people are dying beneath the rubble because they refused Israeli help. in 1999 Israeli search and rescue and field hospital teams rescued over a dozen people there and gave medical care to many more.
Lives could have been saved. The teams were ready to go, are excellent in what they do, and could have been there in hours. Better let them die than have them touched by a Jew.
The Turks now officially hate the Jews more than they love their children. No cure for that sickness.
Turkey not only refuse Israeli help she also refused help from all her neighbors except Iran. The main reason for the refusal is that most of the victims of the disaster are Kurds. I’m sure if this happened in the western part of the country The Turks wouldn’t hesitate accepting help from Israel or any other country. When the real reason start to surface, The Good Islamist changed course in no time and now desperately accepting help from Israel and any other infidel.
stupidity abounds in our world. It is amazing that we have made it this far as a people…the middle east is a prime example. the people are uneducated, unknowing of the world…and the people at the top play on this.
I believe Obama and his handlers are at the base of much of the unrest. I also believe he is trying to bring it here.
Obama = Cloward/Piven. Unrest, tear it down, rebuild in a socialists frame.
All that we have worked for as a nation, a free people, a republic is on the line.
Obama will win again if conservatives are not very careful.
Democrats will vote democrat..whether it is right or wrong for our country.
HOWEVER,!
Republicans will be led astray by this candidate or that bias, a third part etc..they never stick together, and Obama will walk back into office.
It is disconcerting to know that the world is on fire and it’s all about power.
I think that most Americans don’t know..or care actually what is going on in the middle east..
You are correct Anne. If you study the Tyrants and Despots of the world, you find that the majority of them were educated in the Occident and went back to their back-water countries to keep their subjects in oppressed darkness and poverty. Example: The gang of six in China went to University in Paris just like the original members of the Baath Party of Iraq. The West likes to export education for a fee, but not morality.
When Katrina devastated New Orleans, mohammedans said it was allah’s revenge.
Are any of them saying that now? Revenge for the Mavi Marmara + IHH fiasco?
Revenge for Tayyip Erdogan Armenicide’s* bringing scorn to Turkey?
Revenge for the world focusing on Turkey’s attempts to wipe out the PKK,
and maybe the world coming to the aid of the Kurds?
*Mr TEA.
Few have suffered the agony of Qaddafi as he was crucified with a bayonet up his rear end. But he also experienced the ecstasy from knowing that one day he would be worshiped as a hero by the Libyan people.
Morris Wise,
Are you serious in your contention of how Qaddafi died?
Yes, also, there is a video made during the lynchage where we can clearly see it:
http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?desktop_uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D01sz_lrFNtc%26eurl%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fleblogdrzz.over-blog.com%252Farticle-je-dedie-ces-videos-de-kadhafi-frappe-suppliant-sodomise-puis-abattu-a-alain-juppe-87188%26feature%3Dplayer_embedded&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fleblogdrzz.over-blog.com%2Farticle-je-dedie-ces-videos-de-kadhafi-frappe-suppliant-sodomise-puis-abattu-a-alain-juppe-87188&feature=player_embedded&v=01sz_lrFNtc&gl=IT
Why should anyone take Rubin’s hyperbole in the face of his unqualified support for the Iraq war? If you want a “blunder” of a century that was it. A manchurian candidate, how about GWB? But I would not go that far. He was just a recovering alcoholic, so his mind was on booze not on the consequences of breaking a four century old status quo. Ask the self-proclaimed “expert” Rubin why he himself advocated so vociferously for a war against Iraq who meant no harm to US. Now, in those days there was one dissenting voice from a junior senator from Illinois but, it was drowned in shrill of war cries, it was Barak Hussein Obama. He was rightly cautioning against a US against Iraq for that would surely break Iraq and lever Iran up. So it was a recipe for quagmire for the US in ME. Indeed, to a large extent people elected Obama on his opposition to failing wars, and the faltering economy helped too. Make no mistake, Rubin and his neocon friends have contributed to this disaster. With their “phony” expert opinions they have convinced the political elite that Iraq war was both necessary and also a cake walk. Now they all attack Obama to pin now apparent disaster on him.
If you carefully analyze what Obama has been doing, you would clearly see that first and foremost he is avoiding new foreign policy initiatives. He is placing most of his efforts on cleaning up the mess Iraq war has created. To sum up, Rubin is not right person to give policy lessons to Obama. He should first own up to his mistakes.
Please back up your theory with quotes, otherwise I see a straw-man argument.
Your concept of Obama “avoiding new foreign policy initiatives” is excusing his ineptness as Obama allows the further empowering of dangerous people and the ruin of decades of efforts to keep the middle east from complete powder-keg status. We’re closer to powder-keg status by the day. It often seems deliberate but I still go with ineptitude.
At this stage, US does not have the leverage to affect the evolution of Arab Spring for the simple reason Arab masses won’t listen to US. They are revolting against tyrants who had been supported by US. These events have their own dynamics that are largely immune to outside intervention. It is about dignity and liberty Arabs feel had been denied to them by tyrants who were supported by the west. These mass movements are genuine and deep rooted. Whether they will eventually lead to functioning democracies depends a lot on the posture of the regional countries as well as on the attitudes of major powers such as US. The last thing the outsiders should do is to “own” this process which would definitely torpedo the modernist forces as the traditionalist would again point out that US does not respect their free will, their sovereignty. Best strategy to adopt here is that of a benign neglect. Like a caring parent who encourages his siblings to experiment with learning new ways, Arabs should also be encouraged to adopt democracy as a means to solve their social problems. Instead of paternalizing and talking down, they should be encouraged to experiment with democracy. What if Islamist won elections. So be it, in a democracy at the end of the day, it is how you run daily life, how you manage the economy that is what it counts. As long as, political power and military power are separated, and the rules of the game fair to all, it is worth the try. My hunch is that after few set backs they would get the hang of it. Actually, at this point there is no other alternative. I don’t believe any one could have predicted these events. Obama was first unwilling to acknowledge that his tyrant was toast, but he quickly learned. Libya is a distraction, as the uprising against Ghaddafi was more personal and tribal. Syria will be the toughest as the polity there is fractured along ethnic and religious lines. The rebellion could easily transform into a civil war. Again, outside well wishers would not exacerbate those fragilities.
mstr: Your naivety preceeds you.
“What if Islamist won elections. So be it”
Hamas won the first (and last) election in Gaza back in _2006_.
mstr,
You write like an Islamist. Does the kind of experimenting you would have us encourage the Egyptians to engage in include the mass murder of Christians?
“Again, outside well wishers would not exacerbate those fragilities.”
Would ‘well wishers’ refer to the 12th imam, due next year, on Mahdi Gras?
What you lack in quantity, you ascend in vanity.
what you lack in the azz, you have it in your mouth.
By cleaning up the mess of the Iraq war I assume you mean withdrawing all our troops so that Iran can establish hegemony.
Obama adopted Bush policies in Iraq. Complete troop withdrawal was negotiated by Bush and Maliki in 2008. Was there anything Obama could have done to reverse the course of events in Iraq? I personally believe not. Unfortunately, it all started with the sham “shock and awe”. Belittling your enemy is the worst mistake you can make next to not knowing what you are dying for.
mstr, sometimes I find it interesting that the comments of a moron like you elicit nearly as much comment as the article itself. Please try to accept that Bush has been gone for a while now and Obama bears the responsibility for his decisions.
Obama’s foreign policy could be summed up pretty neatly as: “Making The World Safe For Islamic Jihad”.
thank you chuck for your kind words.. but only a moron like yourself would comment on the words of a moron like myself.. keep on chucking..
mstr, From one moron to another thank you for your kind words as well. I can keep chucking and you can keep mstring and no one is harmed by either of us, but the Moron in Chief currently in the White House is causing damage that is truly incalculable and may eventually cost millions of lives.
Oh Please. Obama is doing all he can to see that the Muslim Brotherhoods Manifesto comes to fruition. I guess he is waiting for the 12 th Imam too…
Seek God while He can still be found. Allah’s a punk
“…..the consequences of breaking a four century old status quo.”
I suppose the Iraqi attack on Kuwait was part of that “status quo”. Just as was the attack on Iran, previously. There was a pattern forming. Hussein was becoming the Hitler of the Middle East. And any idiot can tell you that Hussein would have been forced to get nuclear weapons only to defend himself from the “status quo” of Iran presently acquiring nuclear weapons. That would have really made the Middle East stable, two idiots with nuclear weapons and the third idiot in the White House, with one finger up his butt and the other in his mouth trying to decide what to do.
There’s only one way to answer your post and not be crude..
You’re so darned dumb it even hurts my dog…
You forgot one thing about Obama – he has officially banned the telling of the truth about Islam, jihad and the Qur’an. All training materials will be changed to reflect his ban. This means we will be powerless to stop the next wave of jihad attacks. Welcome to the new world order.
The Muslim Brotherhood will take over most, if not all, of the six countries mentioned, since Obama just gave them the incentive to take action.
You neocons are responsible for the Islamization of the Middle East…and what is going to happen in the Middle East.
It is ironic that the neocons who support Israel have actually endangered Israel with their policies…
Another name for mstr.
I don’t think you should waste your time arguing with him. I once did, the first time I saw a comment of his, but he continues to use the same arguments time and time again even after they’ve been debunked. I’m not going to waste my time repeating myself and refuting the same arguments over and over again. And I don’t think you should start. Just ignore him and he’ll eventually go away. It’s one thing to seriously debate with someone who has an opposite opinion from yours, but bothers to read and understand what you write and what Barry Rubin writes. It’s another thing to feed a troll that just uses this platform to repeat disinformation every chance he has.
Typical leftist socialist cowardice YOU NEOCON!
Honi Soit Qui Malinse Pense
Exactly Tim, you get it.
Please define “neoconservative”.
Neocon, as defined by the New American Left Dictionary, 2nd edition.
History. From Arabic, by way of French,
first attested in the editorial pages of the New York Times,
in early 2003.
Etymology. Original Arabic form is al-Niwu al-Qunu, roughly translated
‘dirty Jew’. (See Ikhwan Ministry of Education, The Dangers of Zionism,
vols. 2-6, especially vol. 4, and the contributions by the Czarist Security Service
and Said Qutb.) In some dialects, elision occurs, and pronunciation
approaches (al-)Niwu qun. (Cf. Patrick Lang, Dual Loyalty, p. 666.)
There is debate as to whether the elided form is to be understood as two words or one.
Cf. ‘Damnyankee’
Root meaning. al-Niwu < N'W*, with loss of glottal stop in unstressed syllable,
meaning 'fetid' or 'stinking', cognate to Persian `niu',
'fit to be wiped off or erased' (See, e.g., Dr. Ahmedi Nejad,
Collected Works, passim.)
al-Qunu < Qawn*, with monophthongized due to unknown cause, originally a toponym,
most probably an ancient name for Khaybar, an oasis in western
Arabia, until its destruction in the early 7th century C.E. (Cf. Ibn Ishaq,
Sirat al-Nabi, vol. 2, pp. 33ff.)
Usage. Adjectival, general anti-semitic slur, can be applied
people, places, ideas, things. Examples, `The neocon Kristol used to drink the blood of gentile babies
on the Sabbath.' 'Max Boot is a money grubbing neocon.' Sometime the term is used as a general
term of disapprobation (e.g., 'Bush hates old people and has a neocon plan to make them eat cat food.')
That was hilarious. Thanks.
That’s right, “YouNeocons,” Salafi/Muslim Brotherhood muslims and Shia Khomeinists – who BOTH believe in revolutionary jihad to establish islamic theocracies (having arrived at that conclusion independently of one another per their shared “holy” book) – have decided they want to establish islamic theocracies governed by islamic law because of ISRAEL AND THE US. The solipcism and naivety of the liberal mind knows no bounds.
They just have it backwards. The Islamists gave rise to the Neocons, not the other way around. That is why they invent conspiracy theories about 9/11 and the nefarious Israel Lobby. It is the only way to create facts to fit the conclusions.
It was the Islamists who created the conditions for the Iraq war and also the conditions for the poor outcome of that war.
Biggist Neocon mistake was liberal idealism. Bush & Co. actually believed in the universal goodness of man. They thought concepts like liberty, tolerance, civil rights, responsible government and basic human decency were universal traits if only given the chance. They thought Sadam and Bin Ladin were outliers. We have since learned differently. Not all of us, Obama is infected with the same virus.
“Biggist Neocon mistake was liberal idealism. Bush & Co. actually believed in the universal goodness of man. They thought concepts like liberty, tolerance, civil rights, responsible government and basic human decency were universal traits if only given the chance.”
Exactly! We should forget about the notion that ideas and values that evolved throughout millennia in the Western ideological environment of Judeo-Christian spirituality and Greek rationalism are universal. Some of these ideas exist in some other cultures in some form, others don’t. Some cultures might successfully adopt them because cultures learn from one another, but other cultures might have their own ideals, such as believing the law of Allah is the ultimate turth and should be the law of the land everywhere. Many of our thinkers make the mistake of believing values like freedom, tolerance and gender equality are the primordial natural order, and the pre-modern actual order was an artificial distortion resulting from evil conspiracies by evil men, but they’re wrong – the pre-modern order closely follows the social order one can see in many social species in nature. It’s the modern order that is our invention and design. Therefore the assumption that if you’d only rid the people of the evil men in power they will automatically become a liberal democracy because this is human nature is wrong. They will only become a liberal democracy if they see its values as their ideals.
The neoconservative foreign policy of George W. Bush rested on several pillars: support of Israel, invasions to oust enemies in Afghanistan and Iraq, and U.S. occupations to rebuild and convert these nations into democracies.
Bush declared at his 2005 inaugural that his goal was to “end tyranny in our world,” and called for elections in the Middle East, he got the results his policies had produced.
In “Palestine”, Hamas swept to power. In Lebanon, Hezbollah made such gains it was brought into the Lebanese government it eventually brought down. When Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak allowed some electoral districts to be contested, the Muslim Brotherhood won most of them. In Iran in 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected. In the Iraqi elections of 2010, the big winner was the anti-American Muqtada al-Sadr.
The message from the Middle East has been consistent and clear: When elections are held, or monarchs and autocrats overthrown, the masses will turn to leaders who will pull away from America and stand in solidarity with the Palestinians.
The kings of Morocco, Jordan and Saudi Arabia (and Mubarak) are more reliable friends than any regime that might come out of one-man, one-vote elections. One-man, one-vote democracy across the Maghreb and Middle East is almost certain to strengthen the Muslim Brotherhood and to empower Islamists… Why, other than ideology, would a leader demand that a friendly regime hold elections if it were a near certainty the regime to come out of those elections would be more hostile to one’s own country?
The Tunisian Islamists are not moderates or democrats. They are sounding moderate to secure power for themselves. In the past century, the Nazis and Communists used democratic guises and moderate rhetoric to divide and to destroy their domestic opposition and to secure complete power for themselves.
The Islamists will do the same in Tunisia and Egypt. They don’t want to take over complete power yet. But when they do, they will extinguish democracy in all but name. A pluralistic facade might be kept, like in Turkey but there would be no doubt who would be running the show.
It would be an unmitigated disaster for the West and a tragedy for the Middle East. But Western elites don’t see now what is happening and averting it while there is still time.
Islam is the present danger in this century – it threatens free societies as Nazism and Communism did in the last century. We ignore it to our own peril.
“But Western elites don’t see now what is happening and averting it while there is still time.”
I don’t think it can be averted anymore. You can’t change what happened in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Lebanon, Gaza, Turkey and Iraq. What’s done is done. I think the most iportant reaction now should be to try and limit their power to cause harm. For starters to stop arming them. But that makes too much sense to be adopted by leftists.
“They are sounding moderate to secure power for themselves…….”
…….and all sorts of aid from the US and Europe – financial, military and humanitarian.
We are watching the biggest strategic miscalculation of West in the last five hundred years…
“Strategic miscalculation”? Hahaha… This has been planned out for a long time by George Soros, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter, Hillary Clinton, Obama, and the New World Order… Laugh at your own peril… It will become clear even to the biggest fools over the next few months…
Maybe it is not such a catastrophe. What better way to keep the Arab Islamic world weak, poor, ignorant and ineffective than letting the people there control their own destiny?
Maybe we should keep pulling our forces out of Iraq and Afghanistan, fire off a parting volley of bombs and missiles at the Iranian nuclear, naval and airforce assets and just sit back and watch the show.
As Golda Meir once said when asked about the Iran-Iraq war “I wish them both success”
That depends on how much oil you continue buying from them, how much weaponry you continue selling to them, and how much nuclear firepower you allow them to have (it’s not just Iran, but also Pakistan that already has it in pretty large quantities and others who are trying or will try to develop it).
That depends on how much oil you continue buying from them
illustrates the total stupidity at play here where the US sits on an independent supply of fossil fuel but gives trillions to buy from the enemy, to maintain a few elk or is it moose limbs intact and some trees upright, at the actual expense of America.
I think Syria is out of place on Barry’s list. Short of a NATO intervention that grounds the Syrian air force and prevents Assad from using his armor and long range artillery, it’s hard to see how the opposition topples him. Both Lebanon and Iraq are friendly to Assad, and Israel would probably prefer an Alawite-ruled state where the Sunnis are now openly and violently opposed to the Alawites and Assad no longer has any real reason to feign animosity at Israel and Jews in general. It will be interesting to see if the Alawite regime convinces Sunnis to leave Syria via threats and intimidation, much as ethnic Germans were purged from Eastern Europe after WWII.
The one significant advantage the pro-Iranian terrorist supporting Assad regime might have over an Islamist regime is that since 1973 his father and he didn’t directly go to war against us. They use terrorist proxies. An Islamist regime will also use terrorism, but because they don’t have the experience of war with Israel they might also join a regional Islamist front that will start a full scale military confrontation on all our borders like in the “good old days”.
I do not know which is worse, listening to this or what the mullah says. They are both saying the same thing.
“And so, third, from Turkey came the idea…just pretend to be moderate and the suckers will buy it.”
“And if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain’t gonna make it with anyone anyhow…”*
*J.Lennon
To me, Lebanon was always the bitterest pill to swallow out of all of this. Here was a country that actually had a shot at a decent, western-style, parliamentary form of government. The people in Lebanon even had the nerve to rebel against the Syrians and their horrible intervention in that country. Remember the days of the “Cedar Revolution?”
Then came Hezbollah. Within a brief few years all of this progress was thrown away. Both the Bush and the Obama administrations did very little to prevent Hezbollah, that terrorist organization, from taking over the country. Now, not only do we have radical Islamic jihadists running the country, but that country is on the border of Israel with major weapons pointed directly at it. We should have done a lot more to save Lebanon, now it is almost impossible to pull it away from Hezbollah, given how strong that organization is in that country. And with Obama’s policy of doing absolutely nothing inside any of these countries, except for supporting radical Islamists, nothing will happen to Lebanon in the near or distant future. It’s a shame, because Lebanon has a large Christian population that would be a good ally to a country like Israel and to the United States. It also would have been a good refuge for Christians leaving Egypt after the Muslim Brotherhood takes over next month. This never should have happened and the Obama administration never should have let it happen.
The actions of Baker and Weinberger in 1983 saw the establishment of the Iranian Foreign Legion when instead of hitting those who blew up the Marines the US forces, in Iranian eyes, turned tail and left Lebanon.
They refused to permit Arafat’s removal from the scene by the Israelis in 1982, and mothballed him to be later used in so called “Peace Talks”.
Iran of course realised that it could use Hezbollah at will and the West would do nothing. Not even the French, the so called godfather of Lebanon, did anything and they did not push Syria, the Iranian disciple, on its intervention in the country.
They showed up the Brits in Iraqi waters, the US refused to do anything about Syrian complicity permitting insurgents to enter Iraq, and to all intents and purposes the West was and is a giant paper tiger.
All the time the US and NATO countries berated the Israelis about the Palestinians, Hezbollah “operatives” were doing R&D against Israeli tanks in Gaza, thanks to the tunnels and Egypt’s blind eyes, and turned their efforts to bloody use in Iraq against Americans.
Then came Rice with the useless UNSC resolution in 2006, because the US was not willing to enforce it, and Hezbollah now had, along with military force, the political capital to proceed in dethroning Lebanon.
Did Helen Thomas give them any covert help?
“Reinforcing this, and fourth, came the idea of adapting Western rhetoric and public relations methods. After decades of bragging about how they would conquer and murder all their enemies, nothing changed in Arabic. In English, however, they spoke about being pitiable victims of imperialism, Zionism, Western racism, and so on. A key pioneer here was Edward Said, a man who hated the Islamists. They proved to be his best students.”
This is an older story than the recent Islamist rising.
One of its main practitioners in the past was Yasir Arafat. While he was busy schmoozing with Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, et al., in-between pious pronouncements of “civility” in English in the White House, he was writing op-eds for newspapers across the Arab world exhorting everyone to join him in “driving the Jews into the sea”. He just wasn’t writing them in English, apparently operating on the belief that the “enemy” (i.e., the West) was full of supposedly “enlightened” people who not only had an exaggerated faith in his good intentions, but who also could not read Arabic.
He was very probably right on both counts. After all he received the Nobel Peace Prize for this exercise in duplicity. I am still trying to decide whether the Nobel Committee is cynically anti-Western, or just clinically thick.
Either way, whenever an Islamist “spokesman” starts talking about “moderation”, it’s a good first approximation that he’s very probably lying. And it is also a constant that suckers in the West (mostly among the “enlightened elite’”) are ready to buy the scam.
clear ether
eon
One man one vote one time. While no one like what a dictator does, he keeps the wackos in check. Saddam, Mubarak, Gaddafi, and Assad now the middle east burns. These people have no knowledge of Hobbes, Locke or Rosseau. They don’t have their own Adams, Franklin or Jefferson. They only know what they have memorized from the Koran how could have expected a different outcome.
Obama has been bowing and scraping before every tin pot dictator saying the US is nothing special. We have squandered any influence we had there. We can only let it burn and inoculate ourselves so it’s contagion doesn’t reach our shores. And come 11/12 hold our nose and vote for anyone but Obama
The biggest mistake we have made in that region is putting troops on the ground to try and protect Muslims from killing one another. That’s what it all boils down to in every conflict, be it Iraq, Kuwait or Afghanistan, it’s all about protecting Muslims from one another. A thankless, costly and pointless task. I am all for coming to the aid of non-Muslim countries who are threatened by jihad, but using American armed forces to fight in the service of sharia compliant countries, and all Muslim countries are sharia compliant to one degree or another, is just plain wrong and immoral.
Divide et impera used to work well. Before post-modernism and the demise of historical knowledge, together with common sense.
“There is a great deal that will ensure the Islamists aren’t triumphant in the end”
I think Iran would greatly disagree!
Iran sees itself as the central moving force and binding glue of the future ‘Global United Islamic State’
I don’t see anyone trying to stop them…and Mr. Obama is their greatest ally
Think positive, think about the positives and not the negatives
It is the 1968′s Tet all over.
The cockroaches are coming out of their holes all in the same time.
This will make easier to kill them all together instead to play whack-a-mole.
The only way to discredit Islam(ists) is to allow them to rule. To get the government and screw big time their own people.
Think Iran, after twenty years of religious rule, they have the lowest mosque attendance of all Islamic world, the lowest bird rate. The regime exist only because it can use the $$$ from the oil to buy the goons to keep the people down and enough food to let the people to have something to lose if the try to overthrow the government. Not much and not for long, anyway.
In the next few days, Rossi will test his 1 MW LENR steam generator in Bologna.
Others are not much so behind in the same enterprise (exploiting LENR). If it work, if it is successful, it will be an economic blow to the enemies of the western civilization.
Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood guru, also contributed here: bin Laden is a fool, he said in effect, of course we should run in elections. We’ll win.
Al-Qaradawi has been lauded by the (former) head of the Ground Zero mosque project, imam Rauf.
Qaradawi is a disgusting individual
And then there are the New York Times and BBC headlines on the Tunisian elections telling us it is a victory for “moderate Islamists.”
Wishful thinking from self-anointed intelligentsia. Haven’t these so called journalists, pontificating from on high, read or heard a single word coming from “Islamists” ?
Do they think all the shouts of allahu akbar at the killing of Ghadafi were just exuberance run amok ?
“Moderate Islamist” and “Arab democracy” are oxymorons.
And al Qaradawi is a hate filled,ugly old man
I hope that the Jewish vote in 2012 will take all this into consideration.
(And they shouldn’t forget the anti-Semitic slogans and signs of the OWS either. The OWS that are so much loved by the same Friend-of-the-Muslim-Brotherhood-in-Chief.)
They don’t know the anti-Semitic slogans and signs of the OWS, like they don’t know many other things, because they aren’t reported in the leftist media which is all what most of them read.
Mr. Rubin must have hit the nail on the head with this one. Soros’s trolls are out in force. Let’s try to ignore them.
Wow!!
Who could have seen this coming; if there was only something we could have done. They don’t all hate us…right!!
Absofreakinlutely incredible!!!!
Ladeen, Rubin, McCarthy, Geller, Horowitz, Spencer, VD Hanson, Gert Wilders, Van Gogh, Hersi-Ali, Sultan, et.al The Neo-Churchills of our day.
If it is any consolation…I believed you all since 9/11 and cemented my belief with Daniel Pearl and Nick Berg.
Drill here, drill everywhere, and do it now!!
No student visas.
No tourist visas.
No business visas.
Leave them in their self inflicted darkness; and bomb Iran!!!
Lord have mercy on the women and children because allah will not.
The era of revolutionary Islamism? I think I would call it the Islamic Awakening. Perhaps the muslim version of the reformation? I don’t know who would qualify as their Martin Luther, but it seems to me they’re going back to their traditional roots, getting back to basics, that sort of thing. Only here for the modern moderate muslim the entire West and infidel world are the catholics. The only question given the technology and weapons available today is how quick the violent process will go down; I surmise it wont take centuries.
Islam = Making Muhammad proud. What did Muhammad do?
A. Love his enemies?
B. Teach reading, and writing?
C. Grow crops?
D. Murder thousands, and tell his followers to hate those who are apes, and pigs?
Exellent article , yes this is it , the Middle East is done , Islamists will rule and the word MODERATE doesn t exist in their dictionnary …and I dont think the Islamic governements will be removed , from what we see when they come they never go ..I think the Middle East still have to pay the price for freedom like all theother countries..I just wonder why the USA and Europe were encouraging this mess ….it will be blood bathes …thank you Medias who described the Islamists as moderate, you didn t know very well your subject and you dont have the right to fool your readers..now it is tooo late the readers will be the viewers and they will know but too late that you were giving worng information.
Thank you for the exellent article.
The word does, actually, exist, and is important in Brotherhood legal writings, for instance.
Qaradawi constantly speaks of wasatiyah lit. middle-ness. He argues that
Islam must always cling to this middle and avoid extremes.
One must steer a middle course, say, between al-Azhar and al-Qa’idah.
It’s this moderate form of Islam that came to power earlier in Sudan, under Turabi,
and in Gaza, under Hamas, and may soon come to power in Tunis, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and so on.
The large numbers of corpses they vomited up have provided
some excellent data points, and we now understand wasatiyah pretty well.
Try to tell a devotee of Hama that he’s an extremist and he’ll protest,
“No, no, we’re moderate.”
To illustrate, consider the following exchange from Goldberg’s “Letter from Gaza” (New Yorker, 2006):
> I asked these men if they thought that Al Qaeda had a role to play in the
liberation of Palestine. They ridiculed the idea.
> Al Qaeda kills civilians,” Abu Obeidah said.
> “So does Hamas,” I said.
> “We do not,” he answered. “We only target Jews.” (Hamas’s position is
that all Israelis — whom it refers to simply as Jews — including Israeli
children, are combatants.)
> He became more agitated. “How can you say Hamas and Al Qaeda in the same
statement? How can you say the names of Hezbollah and Hamas in the same
moment? There is no comparison between Hamas and these groups.”
> His unhappiness at the comparison with Al Qaeda seemed motivated by genuine
doctrinal disagreement: Hamas, unlike Al Qaeda, has the finite goal of taking
Palestine.
In sum, killing no Jews is extreme and trying to kill all non-Muslims is extreme. The moderate
seeks to kill just Jews — at least for now, pace Goldberg.
Watch out Spaniards. You all are living on occupied territory.
Andalusia is an eternal Muslims waqf, until the day of resurrection.
Comforted?
#
Was it Socrates who said, “No man willingly sins?” Mutatis mutandis, no man is willingly an extremist.
No doubt OBL used to comfort himself at night, “It’s not like I’m an extremist or anything.”
A corrective note: sharia has been the main source of Egyptian law for decades and is enshrined in their constitution; the coming fight will be to keep it that way and not introduce it.
Another thing to consider which I rarely see written about whether you think it right or wrong. Many muslims in the middle east fear democracy because they fear gay pride parades on their streets, they fear hookers walking around every major city street at night like on the HBO specials, they fear strip clubs and XXX rated stores, they fear their 16 yr old daughters running around dressed and acting like whores, they fear 12 yr. old kids mimicking sex while doing a high school cheerleader basketball halftime show.
They want the good part of democracy without succumbing to what they feel are those bad parts and don’t know how to do it. They feel that in our urge for freedom that we have gone too far and are self-destructing as a society and it is hard to argue we are not.
Because of these fears, baseless or otherwise, it is hard for proponents of a civil society rather than a religious one to find voters and friends; what is economic success worth if your culture lies in tatters?
Of course the real problem in the middle east is that they have outgrown their ability to feed and employ themselves from sheer weight of numbers; add to that endemic corruption, military Mafias who like their money and power, religious leaders who live in la-la land and you have, not an Arab Spring, but an Arab Winter, with the same old societal problems on top on which is now thrown millions without jobs or a future but who insist on big families. Don’t expect anything good to come out of this region for a long, long time.
Another question that should be asked back in America is: is 300 million people too unwieldy to govern effectively and should immigration be stopped? We cannot expand indefinitely and we at some point will have to learn to thrive with a shrinking, not growing economy and now, when things are relatively good, is a good time to start.
India, China and Brazil are disasters in the making. India, which has plenty of coal, already has outstripped its ability to deliver it into the economy. Result: electrical brownouts and factory closings. Take a page from the disaster of the Third World: shrink our population.
Surely this is the best news for the USA?
Now they can quit interfering in Middle Eastern affairs and go home to mind their own business.
What is wrong with that?
Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia are the most influential countries in the region. Iran does not want to lose it’s leverage over Syria. Turkey and Saudi Arabia however, wants to have more control over Damascus, one of the key capitols of the Middle East, by encouraging and supporting the people to overthrow the government. Iran has the backing of Russia and China, while Turkey as a NATO member has the advantage of having the west with her. Turkey wants to use it’s military and economic power, backing of NATO, while trying to keep the Arab League on her side. NATO approval may cancel out a UN resolution requirement and Arab League support means green light from the region for more serious actions against Assad.
But there is one big problem here. The Emirs and Sheikhs of the oil rich Arab countries know that their turn will come sooner or later. Siding with the west may not help always, because the west is not so reliable when the talk is about the oil and energy. Here comes our Weapon of Media Coverage or WMC.
Read more here…
http://rencadesign.com/wp/2011/11/who-is-the-regional-power-of-the-middle-east-iran-turkey-or-al-jazeera-channel/