A Snake that Eats its Own Tail

Zeyad, an Iraqi dentist blogging from Baghdad, on the recent suicide bombings:

Suicide attacks are carried out by you-know-who. This is Bin Ladens gift to his fellow Iraqi Muslims. Didn’t he say it himself a while ago? I demand that all Iraqi diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia and Syria cease immediately. I demand that we expel all foreign Arabs from Iraq until further notice. A little firmness is necessary. We can’t just sit and wait for the next attacks. Iraq should resign from the Arab League which is just a symposium for dictators. Who the hell needs it anymore? They didn’t even officially show sympathy for Iraqis after the attacks. They should be considered the enemy unless they act promptly to secure their borders and ensure that no Mujahedeen sneak through to Iraq daily. They are the ones to blame. We all know they have an interest in keeping up the attacks and the chaos. They are aware of the fact that they are next on the list after Saddam. They will pursue every possible effort to make the Iraqi example fail. When attacks are carried out in other Arab countries they consider it terrorism, but in Iraq it is resistance against the occupying Americans.

From an earlier post last week:

Someone has been writing graffiti all over Baghdad threatening to kill children who accept the new schoolbags that are to be gifted to them by UNESCO for the new school season. Also warning that any hand waving to the infidel Americans will be cut.
Are these people sane? I mean what are they thinking? Is this our latest form of ‘resistance’? Threatening our own children for getting some shiny new schoolbags. I am trying very hard to understand. This so called resistance is getting hated more and more by Iraqis everywhere. I’m sure this will only add to that scorn exponentially. They are losing any sympathy they may have had earlier. The terrorists have turned out to be MUCH dumber than I thought.

I am not a religious person. I don’t believe in any tangible thing called Evil, at least not in the Satanic or Biblical sense.
That aside, there is no better word to describe the thugs who are wreaking destruction in Baghdad. They are evil. I’m also with Zeyad on this. They’re dumb. They’re made blindingly stupid by their own evil. Utterly incapable of winning popular support, they thrash about violently consuming themselves and others around them. It is no way to win a popularity contest. If we faced a genuinely popular insurgency in Iraq, we’d have one hell of a serious problem. But this crowd is the absolute scum of the earth, and most Iraqis know it. If we don’t run away, they are not going to win.