The Iconoclast

Barely 50% of the population of Iran is Persian. A Kurdish autonomous region, or even ideally an independent state, carved out of northern Iraq (with guarantees made by the Kurds to Kurdistan's guarantor, the United States, that a Chaldo-Assyrian enclave will be included in that state, and that the Kurds will allow the Christians to be armed, and to do nothing to harm them) would do much to disrupt the hold of the Iranian state over its Kurds, Azeris, Baluchis, Arabs.

That would happen in two ways. First, an independent Kurdish state would inspire Kurds in Iran, possibly aided with matériel from Kurdistan, to rise against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Aided by Kurds in Kurdistan, they would now have a much better chance. And at the same time, other minorities -- those Arabs in Khuzistan, those Baluchis, those Azeris -- might also be inspired by the behavior of the Kurds, and choose, possibly overlapping in time or at the same time, to rise up against the same enemy. How could the army of Iran, which hardly possesses an air force with planes that can fly, possibly deal with so many different rebellions simultaneously? It can't. And that should worry the Islamic Republic of Iran. And it should be carefully considered in Washington, where there appears to be very little thought going in to the matter of how to bring Iran to its heels, or to its senses.

Grim statistic: An average of 112 cars a day have been torched in France this year.

All together, youths (to the tune of Jan and Dean's "Surf City"):

Burned 34 Citroens, call it intifada
jihad, planet earth

And so bloody on.

Speaking of tribalism, just got back from viewing The Last King of Scotland, a very good film that will not go over big with the "We are the world, we are the children" / Brangelina crowd.  (If you go, bring an aging hedonist along, an expression of tough love.)

British bombers had Muslim plant at Heathrow to test security: WND 

In the meantime, Authorities at Charles de Gaulle airport have stripped several dozen employees — almost all of them Muslims — of their security badges in a crackdown against terrorism, a government official said Friday. (h/t JW)

Greg Myre reports on another peaceful Muslim pilgrimage in the New Duranty:

JERUSALEM, Oct. 20 — With Israel imposing tight restrictions on Palestinian movements, the holy month of Ramadan marks a rare occasion when large numbers of Palestinians from the West Bank can enter Jerusalem to worship at the Aksa Mosque compound, one of the most sacred sites in Islam.

On Friday, the last one before Ramadan ends, an estimated 180,000 Muslims from the West Bank and Israel filled the narrow stone streets of Jerusalem’s Old City and prayed at the compound. But it was no consolation for the thousands of West Bank men who were turned back at the city’s edge, some in scuffles with Israeli security forces.

Israel, citing security concerns, only permitted West Bank men over age 45 to enter Jerusalem and the mosque compound, while the Israeli security forces maintained a large presence at the crossing points along the nation’s West Bank security barrier.

On Jerusalem’s southern border with Bethlehem, Israeli security forces fired tear gas and lobbed stun grenades to drive back hundreds of Palestinian men who were not allowed to pass the security checkpoint through the 25-foot-high concrete wall dividing the cities...

Mufeed Dadoah, 39, has had a permit to work in Israel for the past 15 years, and enters Jerusalem daily for his job as a construction worker. But on Friday, he was prevented from entering in the morning because he was not 45.

“Today, Israel decides everything for us, but some day this will change,” Mr. Dadoah said.

When Jordan controlled Jerusalem’s Old City from 1948 to 1967, it did not permit Jews to enter and pray at the Western Wall.

Mr. Dadoah said he envisioned a day when Muslims would again rule the city and its religious shrines. He was asked if Jews would then be allowed to pray at their holy sites. “God willing, no,” he said...

Diana West responds to my post:

Your allegation is categorically untrue. Nobody can claim the copyright on common sense. "Let 'Em Kill Each Other" is a common-sensical and even banal notion that was ancient when Machiavelli put it in The Prince. It's only the most obvious rejoinder to the argument that if we leave Iraq, Sunnis and Shiites will kill each other. I hear it from my readers all the time. Take a deep breath, and remember we're supposed to be on the same side.
Diana West

The job of conservatives is to keep the Republican Party driving on the right-hand side of the road.

There are many ways we do this.  We argue, we publish, we lobby, we campaign for conservative candidates.

Another thing we do is, when the GOP goes off the rails on really key issues—size of government, the National Question, Wilsonian adventures—we stay home on election day.

Look, we're not ever likely to get a govt. that follows a purely conservative line on all issues.  We are an influence, that's all, and that's all we can reasonably hope to be.  But when faced with a GOP government intent on massively expanding the welfare state, on open borders, and on "nation-building" in remote places, we should acknowledge that we are being no influence at all.  We have gone from being an influence for good policies to being an enabler of bad policies.

The only thing we can usefully do then is to assert our existence as a voting bloc in the one way that's available to us: by not voting.  That lays down a warning to any future GOP administration that might be tempted to go as badly wrong on important conservative issues as this one has.

This nation survived Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton; it will survive Nancy Pelosi and Charlie Rangel.  Ten, fifteen, twenty years from now, when our kids are voters, some GOP administration and Congress might be tempted to violate core conservative principles as egregiously as this one has.  But they will hear key voices, the voices of party elders and wise commentators, warning: "Remember the Great Congressional Massacre of '06!  Let's not risk  that happening again!"  And Congress and the admin. will then turn the wheel to the right.

So stay home Nov. 7th—-Er, for the sake of the children. 

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush met with senior generals in Washington Saturday for face-to-face discussions on the war in Iraq.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld joined Gen. John Abizaid, the head of U.S. Central Command; Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and, via videolink from Baghdad, Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, for the White House summit.

No announcements followed the talks, which were described as routine by the administration, though sources said Friday the meeting had only been arranged in the past few days.

In his weekly Saturday radio address, broadcast after the meeting, Bush said the U.S. military's strategy on the ground is under constant review.

Bush called withdrawal a retreat that "would allow the terrorists to gain a new safe haven from which to launch new attacks on America."

Oh please, George, give up that line. So, we'll see if Rumsfeld survives the next few weeks. My bet is no.

From the Fjordman:


Would that the clock was being turned back only as far as the Middle Ages.

Under the headline, "Pace U. Gets Very Sensitive," this AP story in the NY Post:

On Oct. 13, the Muslim holy book was found in a toilet at the university's lower Manhattan campus. On Sept. 21, a copy of the book was found in a library toilet.

Also in October, someone scrawled racial slurs on a student's car at the university's Westchester campus and on the wall of a school bathroom in Manhattan.

From the Pace press release announcing these steps:

“Based on the input so far, this team has approved plans for an intensified program to be called ‘Not on Our Watch.’ It includes
• Sensitivity training for students and the President’s Council of senior university administrators (planning and execution will involve CAIR, the Pace Muslim Students Association and many other the diversity groups on our campuses)
• First-responder training on proper protocols for incidents of bias by the Regional Director of Community Relations Services for the US Department of Justice (Reinaldo Rivera) for security officers and a broader team that will respond to bias incidents.
• Public forums on our New York City and Westchester campuses with panelists, Q&A, and open mikes, probably during week of Nov 6th.
• Distribution of a wallet card listing phone numbers for the University Safety and Security Department, Deans for Students, Residential Life, Counseling center, Health care center, Affirmative Action Office and Ombuds Office. This responds to input from students who said they weren’t sure who to call in emergencies.

Just two questions:  What makes these folks assume students are the perps?  Who pays for all this?

I hesitate to write a post critical of someone “on our side” so to speak, and a loyal reader of Jihad Watch to boot, but I find I am compelled to do so in this case. Diana West, a person whose work I greatly admire, has written an article in the Washington Post called A Vote for Civil War in which she blatantly takes ideas developed by Hugh Fitzgerald, involving the exploitation of the Sunni-Shia split in Iraq, and puts them forward as her own. Fitzgerald has worked tirelessly over the last two years refining and developing this strategy and Diana West knows this very well.

 

Let’s look briefly at the time line. I distinctly remember Fitzgerald blogging on this subject late in 2004, but here are two of his early articles in which he explicitly puts forth this argument:

 The greatest Intelligence Failure of the Iraq War was not about WMD (Jan, 23, 2005)

The Adventure in Iraq (Jan. 28, 2005)

I, myself, took up the argument in these two articles:

 Fighting the Last War (May 7, 2005)

 Disengage, Contain and Constrain (May 14, 2005)

Then still later, in the Sept 26, 2005 issue of the American Conservative, the same argument was put forth by James Kurth in his article, Splitting Islam.

 

Now, I can forgive her overlooking my work. I can even forgive her overlooking Kurth, but I cannot understand how she could forget to attribute a major political and strategic war policy, originated, developed and refined for over two years, to someone whose work she obviously knows intimately.

  

In fairness to Diana, Fjordman has been even more blatant about it: see here.

Update: After doing some more digging, I now have in my possession Hugh Fitzgerald posts going back to Feb. 20, 2004 accurately predicting the exact situation we are in in Iraq right now. Hugh has never wavered in his stance and has patiently and methodically built up an entire geopolitical strategy for the "war on terror," an important part of which includes Iraq, and has tirelessly defended this policy from all comers for over two and a half years. I, too, have broadcast and defended this policy since the spring of 2005 when I formally began working at Jihad Watch to the best of my ability because I see it (both then and now) as our best, and indeed our only, hope for survival in this struggle. In fact, I debated John Derbyshire over this very issue (I advocated withdrawal from Iraq, John advocated "stay the course") on Joey Reynolds' Show on WOR in NYC last December. 

Well, a lot has happened in a year and a lot of people have changed their positions, but Hugh Fitzgerald has steadfastly maintained and refined his. He deserves credit for being the first public voice to advocate the only sensible position to take, not only on Iraq, but for his entire war strategy. I simply think it is ungenerous on the part of Ms. West not to acknowledge this. I didn't say it was illegal, or a copyright infringement,or anything of the sort, I simply think it is wrong not to give credit where credit is genuinely due, especially when it is so evident that Ms.West has changed her position on the war due (at least in part) to Mr.Fitzgerald's relentless and unceasing efforts.

Mudville Gazette reports new developments in CNN snuff video story: "The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee asked the Pentagon on Friday to remove CNN reporters embedded with U.S. combat troops, saying the network's broadcast of a video showing insurgent snipers targeting U.S. soldiers was tantamount to airing an enemy propaganda film."  MG comments:

For the record, I'll repeat my position once again:

But like it or not, Mr and Mrs Average American are involved in a propaganda war, the only battle of the war on terror currently being fought on U.S. soil - and those who choose not to be victims of that battle may wonder what the appropriate response should be. Perhaps just this - bear in mind the stated goal: "to throw fear into the American people's hearts", divide and conquer, weaken resolve, and defeat America. Be aware of the plan to reach that goal, and recognize it for what it is when next you see it in action, as you undoubtedly will. (And while you're at it, spread the word...)

When the New York Times is dead and buried--not as unlikely an event as it would have seemed just a few years ago--it is safe to say that the paper's publisher and top editors in their arrogant irrationality will not understand why it happened.  Further evidence, provided by Richard John Neuhaus:

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Police on Friday raided the office and home of a Republican congressional candidate after an uproar over a letter sent to Latinos saying it was illegal for immigrants to vote.

Candidate Tan Nguyen, a Vietnamese-American who has campaigned against illegal immigration, canceled a news conference amid pressure from Republicans to withdraw from the November 7 race.

1) Why are the police involved?? It IS illegal for illegal aliens to vote. So what?

2) Why are the Republicans pressuring him to step down, handing the seat to the Democrat? The people want the people's laws enforced! And that means no illegal immigrants voting. NONE.

I simply don't understand this.

From The Times article I linked to below.

 

The Times on the changing face of Dewsbury, home of the teacher in the veil row and notorious for its 7/7 links.  It is a strange co-incidence that the plane plot was hatched in Leyton, East London in a mosque I knew, and knew when it was a synagogue, and the London bomb plot was hatched in Dewsbury, an area where my husband once lived, and father-in-law worked.

SHE may have been covered in black from head to toe, but there was no disguising Aishah Azmi’s mood this week as she denounced those who would dare to challenge her right to wear a veil in the classroom.

At a press conference in a smart Leeds hotel after an employment tribunal’s rejection of her discrimination claim against the junior school that had suspended her, Mrs Azmi, 24, was flanked by a team of lawyers as she faced journalists and cameras. . . As her voice rose, her eyes sparkled through a narrow slit in the black cloth. Here was a woman basking in the attention and relishing the chance to score political points for Islam.

The storm over Mrs Azmi’s veil is merely the latest in a series of incidents during the past 18 months, including suicide bombers and terrorist arrests, that have turned an uncomfortable spotlight on the Muslim community of Dewsbury, West Yorkshire. . . Mohammad Sidique Khan, the leader of the July 7 terrorist attack on London, lived here with his wife, Hasina Patel.

The Times has learnt that Ms Patel, 29, worked at the same Church of England junior school, Headfield, as Mrs Azmi. My husband did not attend Headfield School but he knew it. Khan, 30, had links to the town’s largest mosque, the Markazi, which is the European headquarters of Tablighi Jamaat, a global Islamic missionary movement. Several of the suspects arrested in August over the alleged plot to blow up transatlantic airliners had attended meetings of Tablighi Jamaat, which French intelligence has labelled an “antechamber of fundamentalism”. The FBI says it is a fertile breeding ground for al-Qaeda.

Mrs Azmi’s father, Dr Muhammed Mulk, was named by Ofsted inspectors as the joint headmaster of an international Islamic seminary that is attached to the mosque. One of its students was Shehzad Tanweer, another of the July 7 bombers. In an unrelated matter, a 16-year-old Muslim schoolboy, who lived a couple of streets from the mosque, was arrested at his school in June and has been charged under the Terrorism Act with conspiracy to murder.

Are these merely a series of unhappy coincidences, or do they point to a small community that is somehow nourishing and nurturing a belief system containing a deep-rooted hostility towards the West? Saville Town, home to 5,000 people, is 88 per cent Asian, almost all of them Muslims with their roots in Pakistan or Gujarat, in India. And as each year passes, Saville Town moves closer to becoming an exclusively Islamic enclave. It is possible here for a Muslim child to grow up — in the family home, at school and in the mosque and madrassa — without coming into any contact with Western lifestyles, opinions or values.

Some local imams see this self-imposed apartheid as not merely beneficial, but essential. Only by removing the corrosive and corrupting influence of the kuffar (unbelievers’) culture can young Muslims be shown the purity of true Islam. One such scholar is the Dewsbury mufti Zubair Dudha. A gentle, polite and softly spoken man, he tells parents that allowing their children to mix with non-Muslims is an evil that is “bringing ruin to the holy moral fabric of Muslim society”.

This was my father-in-law’s experience he tells me. There are no Anglican churches left in the area although the schools remain. And no, they did not become Mosques; I believe that one is now under a car park.  The Imans rejected the overtures of welcome that the church extended in the early 70s when immigration started, making it clear, in contrast to the small number of Hindus that arrived in the early years, that they wished to keep themselves to themselves.

A “mark of separation” was the Prime Minister’s description this week of Mrs Azmi’s veil. A religion of separation is, arguably, the Islamic vision that dominates Dewsbury.

Its roots can be traced to the dusty town of Deoband, in northern India, home of a famous Islamic seminary, Darul Uloom, founded in 1866. Its graduates today run thousands of mosques and 30,000 madrassas across the world.

Twenty years ago, the majority of British Muslims and mosques were Barelwi, a brand of Sunni Islam that flourished in rural areas of India and Pakistan. Barelwis have a strong musical and dance tradition, enjoy many festivals, believe in mysticism and the intercession of saints and are traditionally regarded as moderate in their political outlook.

The Deobandis, by contrast, preach an uncompromisingly fundamentalist version of Sunni Islam. They are credited with moving adherents in a direction that is increasingly conservative and intolerant. . . At one extreme, this back-to-basics movement was partly responsible for the Taleban, whose leaders were educated at Deobandi seminaries on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. In Dewsbury, they — with Zubair Dudha among their number — are the dominant Islamic voice and run most of the town’s mosques. Tablighi Jamaat, nevertheless, was founded in 1926 by a Deoband scholar, Mawlana Muhammed Ilyas, and is seen as an intensified version of the Deobandi commitment to reshaping individual lives by following the example and lifestyle of the Prophet Muhammad. 

I've had more productive days.

 Bob Unruh writes at WND:

A man arrested as a terror suspect for allegedly trying to transport $340,000 from a group tied to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, and who reputedly had connections to Osama bin Laden, helped write the "Religious Expression in Public Schools" guidelines issued by President Clinton during his tenure in office.

And that could explain why students at a California school were told as part of their required classes they would become Muslims and pray to Allah – and a federal judge approved that, and why an Oregon school this year is delivering similar lessons to its students, as WND has reported.

Abdurahman Alamoudi, who was president of the American Muslim Council and a supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah, worked with President Clinton and the American Civil Liberties Union when the guidelines, launched by Clinton in 1995, were being developed, according to reports.

Those are the same guidelines that the ACLU's Nadine Strossen referred to for authority when supporting organization lawsuits to restrict Christmas celebrations and the removal of the Nativity from public display, the reports said.

read the whole disturbing story

"I find it such a shame that we are finding virtue in a police state, or that we are hoping that Islam will wipe itself out by virtue of making war against itself."
-- from a reader

The description of Tunisia as a "police state" was intended to startle, for most people have merely some vague idea that Tunisia is one of those soft, "progressive" places. "Progressive" in some Shari'a-departing sense it may be for a Muslim country, but the means necessary to assure the legal and to some degree even the social equality of women has required a one-party state (the party being that of Bourguiba and his heirs and assigns), and Ben Ali is no democrat, but he knows how to keep what some like to call "islamists" (that is, unswerving full-fledged Believers in Islam) in check. In the same way, Kemalism in Turkey depends in the end on the army, and on the army's willingness and ability to intervene. Sentimentality about "democracy" by Infidels will not do. Look at Tunisia. Look at Turkey. Look at the methods employed in Central Asia, including the destruction of mosques, in the 1920s and 1930s, and look at the results in such places as Kazakhstan, where a genuinely secular population (I'm talking about Kazakhs, not ethnic Russians, Volga Germans, ethnic Koreans, Jews, or any of the other peoples represented in Kazakhstan) was allowed to come into being.

No one here has written about "Islam wiping itself out." It's impossible. What can happen, however, is that the Western world, on the defensive along with many other non-Western Infidels (see India, see Thailand, see the Sudan, see Nigeria), can be sure to do nothing to discourage, and everything to exploit, the natural fissures -- ethnic, sectarian, and economic -- that can be identified within the Camp of Islam. That is quite different from some supposed intention to have "Islam wipe itself out."