Awesome site in honor of those serving www.imservingmycountry.com

The most deceptive misconception is that foreigners come to America "for our freedom", and that Muslims hate Americans "for our freedom". It is not true at all. Except for the few refugees, the majority of people come for either jobs or higher education. Those that come for higher education usually end up staying so that they can make a chunk of money to take back home- but then find themselves in the rat race, unable to really get ahead and ultimately end up staying indefinitely. Even those "who hate us" because of the economic foreign policies and the political/militant foreign policies which affect their home countries come anyway hoping to make a quick buck.

I am not directly criticizing democracy here, but one must realize that there are psychological and social side effects to every political system, and the side effect of the American system is rugged individualism and independence (as well as a sense of entitlement from the system), which supercede for most people the sense of social and even familial responsibility. American is young, and even until the mid-19th century Americans still identified and called themselves by the country from where they or their ancestors came- German Americans, Irish Americans, Italian Americans etc.. The only groups who have retained this fierce sense of identity are the Chinese, Italians and the Jews, which are groups that show remarkable social and familial structure and stability.

Especially after WWII there was a serious attempt to get Americans to abandon past labels and to adopt a new label "American". Civics education flaundered in the 60's and the 70's, and anyone younger than a baby boomer really has no idea what any of their "civic" responsibilities are. Everyone has rights, but no responsibilities. Everyone grew up with freedom but no one can appreciate it because they have never experienced anything different. And the relative shortness of American history doesn't help add to the sense of identity. It is showing. Nowhere in the world have people been both as ignorant of, or as interested in, their geneologies like as what has swept through America in the last 10-15 years.

There are still a few groups whose identities are an identity of confusion, abuse, and in some cases total loss- Native Americans and African Americans. They are also the least stable and the most disenfranchised.

What I have seen in the Salafi mosques in the US is that the clean majority- I am talking 80-90%, are AMERICAN CONVERTS. More specifically, African American converts. Not black Muslims, not any kind of weird Nation of Islam or Nubian or any other sect, but plain African Americans with Protestant backgrounds. They are lower-middle class, at least have high school degrees (maybe half have higher degrees), and are very intelligent and articulate. An unbelievable majority work in the professional social services sector, especially social work, drug rehabilitation, and working with difficult youth and in prisons. The minority is filled with Caucasian converts and a few Arabs.

Most of the African Americans will admit that they first became interested in Islam as some kind of search for identity, or because they knew someone who was Muslim. They will also tell you that it was a combination of theology and racial equality, as well as the social guidance and life skills which ultimately converted them. Because they don't come directly from Islamic backgrounds, they have no connection to any specific Islamic culture, and have adopted Salafiism because it is the most pure and the most tolerant and inclusive of the systems (versus Muslims who rigidly adhere to their madhab and their tribe and do not tolerate anyone who is different). It also was attractive because it helped support and justify the condemnation of the system which had, and continues to, disenfranchise them.

It is interesting to note that in England, the Salafi mosques are filled with 2nd and 3rd generation south Asians as well as Caucasian and a few Caribbean converts.

Salafiism though has taken a sharp turn. Salafiism SINCE 9-11 has become an intolerant, self-righteous and EXCLUSIVE social club in the West. It has caused a mass exodus from Birmingham to London, with all of the bridges burned from behind. In the US, the majority of the educated middle-class converts have left. They however have no place to go since they are labeled as "Salafi extremists" by the Arabs at the other mosques even though they abandoned their mosques to escape the extremism.

What is left are the few of the most ignorant and most uneducated of the disenfranchised, and the most angry. They believe they were abandoned by their (theocratic) tribe, their ethnic tribe, and have become defensive, stubborn, and extreme in what they mistakingly believe is their unwavering adherance to cause of the religion. These are the ones whose parents were (orthodox) Muslims from the 60's on, who hate America the most, the ones who have no real sense of American identity or responsibility. They are, literally, the dangerous ones. Most are not Arabs, they are not immigrants, they were not raised militantly, they are not shocked by Western materialism. They grew up in the West and they hate it but cannot get out. The irony is that while these people hate America so much, they are so completely American in their individualism that they have sold out the religion and the people who they claim to share their tribe with. They don't follow the guidance of the Islamic religion or the values of the American system. They are lone warriors, stewing in stubborn hate.

Extremism is not spread by missionaries or Saudi state-funded literature and education or by coercion. Extremism is built when already exiled or disenfranchised persons, or persons with a weak sense of identity and who refuse to follow anyone else's advice (including narcissists), become aggrivated by life obstacles or oppression. There isn't too much of a difference between the anger and lack of reasoning in going postal or becoming a suicide bomber. In the former case, the warrior is truly alone and in the latter case, the warrior is sent off alone by the beat of someone else's war drum (usually someone who too chicken to do it themselves). In either case they feel they are self-righteous, justified, and doing something noble for themselves or their community. It doesn't really matter if anything will actually be accomplished, or even if their actions are approved of in their communities (though at least in Palestine there is a culture of glorified unjustifiable martyrdom). They THINK they are doing something, and that is all that matters.

Dalrymple tells the tale that must be told. Killing the terrorist in foreign lands will not be enough. The terrorist who lives next door will also need killing. You may wait until many more peaceful citizens are killed by the terrorists before acting. You may not. It is clear what they will do if not stopped. The choice is how and when to respond to the ongoing threat.

"Extremism is not spread by missionaries or Saudi state-funded literature and education or by coercion. Extremism is built when already exiled or disenfranchised persons, or persons with a weak sense of identity and who refuse to follow anyone else's advice (including narcissists), become aggrivated by life obstacles or oppression."

Absolute nonsense! Where is your evidence? This is an outstanding bit of psycho-babble as I have ever seen. Misionaries have been spreading the word for thousands of years. From Zorzsters to Jews to christians, Muslims, Jahovha's Witnesses, and the latest, Sciencetology (sp? I read the article were Hubbard explains Dianetics was joke and he had no idea a bunch of kooks would take him seriously). I claim that thousands of years of religous examples and hundreds of religions show that there is NO such thing as a 'Natural' religion. ALl ______ chillins need to be brought to _______ (Insert Favorite Deity's name in blank). Some use sweet reason, some use the sword. Islam finds the sword more persuasive. Or, in modern terms, the Suicide bomber.
While most Muslims are NOT terrorists, most terrorists ARE muslims. Please provide an explanation for this FACT that doesn't involve a murderous religion that is spread thru acts of violence. A religion that is learned.
Meanwhile, Paris is burning. It must be time for the French to withdraw their troops from Iraq.

Most terrorists are Muslims? The IRA is Muslim? The Basque separtists are Muslim? Maoists in Nepal are Muslims? The Han Chinese who invaded and stole Tibet and continue to torture the people are Muslim? Neo-Nazis in Germany are Muslim? Are any members of the KKK Muslim? Is November 17 Muslim? Were any of the Contras Muslim? Are there any Serbs who are Muslim? Are there any Cambodians who are Muslim? Is Aum Shinrikyo Muslim? Are the Israelis, who singularly have made more terrorist attacks against the US than any other group, Muslim? Was Tim McVeigh Muslim? How about Ted Bundy, he certainly terrorized Americans long enough. Was he a Muslim? Does the British Empire have a secret no one knows about?

The biggest mass-murderers in modern history:
Hitler and Stalin... were either of them Muslim? Were any of the Popes Muslim? Was Alexander, Chosroes, or Ceasar Muslim? I know, maybe the French mob in 1789 were all Muslim!

Just because there are freaks out there who want to kill everyone out of paranoia doesn't make them Muslim. After all, it's your tax dollars which have funded and trained many of them. The CIA even knocked off a few democratically elected leaders on the side. If every narcissist and paranoid nut case who thinks God is talking to him in the world was Muslim, I'd have to wonder what politically-correct name we'd have to come up with to describe every trigger happy redneck, Christian fundamentalist, or racist in America.

wht does it mean to be American?
What does it mean to be Christian?
Most people havent had to REALLY answer these questions in their lives unless theyve served in the military or lived overseas and can tell you difference.
There is a flux factor here because there have been so many versions exclaimed but arent we entering a period again when the question is being asked and an answer, a focussed and precise answer, must be given?

We have a free society precisely because we get to anwer the question our own way with some limits, right? but the answer is evolving as we speak and our culture says that's ok as long as you keep the chain going. Is that tradition vulnerable to islam and perishing? Is threr really a "muslim question" jsut like a "german question" or are we just overreacting to the fact that no one has ever really had the chance to really look into islam becuase we were too busy dealing with that whole soviet union thingy?

My dad showd me the crime statistics from detroit a hundred years ago and they were soo much worse than they are now. People used to carry knives and regularly chop each other up onthe street. WE have had it so easy for so long and now its our trun to pay some dues and you want question the entire American experiment? Why?
Maybe because you want to feel so special all over again?
reductive thinkers cant move beyond dependence/indepedence and see interdepence. it wont work in their minds.
instead of seeing civilization coming to an end maybe try seeing civilization finally reaching places that we didnt even speak of before and as it apreads there are growing pains.

very interesting post chester, great blog action!

wht does it mean to be American?
What does it mean to be Christian?
Most people havent had to REALLY answer these questions in their lives unless theyve served in the military or lived overseas and can tell you difference.
There is a flux factor here because there have been so many versions exclaimed but arent we entering a period again when the question is being asked and an answer, a focussed and precise answer, must be given?

We have a free society precisely because we get to anwer the question our own way with some limits, right? but the answer is evolving as we speak and our culture says that's ok as long as you keep the chain going. Is that tradition vulnerable to islam and perishing? Is threr really a "muslim question" jsut like a "german question" or are we just overreacting to the fact that no one has ever really had the chance to really look into islam becuase we were too busy dealing with that whole soviet union thingy?

My dad showd me the crime statistics from detroit a hundred years ago and they were soo much worse than they are now. People used to carry knives and regularly chop each other up onthe street. WE have had it so easy for so long and now its our trun to pay some dues and you want question the entire American experiment? Why?
Maybe because you want to feel so special all over again?
reductive thinkers cant move beyond dependence/indepedence and see interdepence. it wont work in their minds.
instead of seeing civilization coming to an end maybe try seeing civilization finally reaching places that we didnt even speak of before and as it apreads there are growing pains.

very interesting post chester, great blog action!

Not long ago I heard a description of a blog as a "living thing" and visiting one's own like stepping out into a greenhouse to see what has popped up over night. How true! I'm away for two days and see quite a discussion has sprung up. I'll have to address it this evening.

sorry for the double post!
sorry for the double apology!
seen this yet?

http://www.city-journal.org/html/12_4_the_barbarians.html

question? will euro socialist experiment failure CotW efforts in ME?

>no one has ever really had the chance to really
>look into islam becuase we were too busy dealing
>with that whole soviet union thingy?

That's pretty much the point. For whatever the reason, the United States has always needed to have an enemy, real or perceived. The idea of the Islamic enemy is not new.

I just did a google search, and this pretty much sums up my argument:

From:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/STR407B.html
Inventing the Enemy
by Dave Stratman

http://www.axisoflogic.com/ and newdemocracyworld.org., 26 July 2004
www.globalresearch.ca 28 July 2004
The URL of this article is: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/STR407B.html

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It used to be said during the Cold War that, "If the Communist threat did not exist, the US would have to invent it." The threat of nuclear war and the notion of a Communist (or capitalist) under every bed provided American and Soviet ruling elites excellent means to frighten and control their own citizens, justify enormous arms expenditures, and legitimize power projection abroad in the name of saving the world from Communism (or capitalism).

The same thing can be said now with a good deal more accuracy of political Islam, which the US ruling class has been courting and nurturing since it first allied in 1947 with the House of Saud. The line of strategic relationships between the US and political Islam runs through Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, Bosnia, Afghanistan, and now Iraq. If the US did not actually invent modern political Islam, for over half a century it has encouraged it, promoted it, funded it, trained it, armed it, and furnished it with a political rationale for its existence.

US ruling circles and reactionary forces acting in the name of Islam are in a co-dependent relationship: they need each other and work together covertly, even while they publicly attack each other in word and deed. This relationship is part of grand strategy, in which US rulers are playing for the highest of stakes: their continued control over the American people, as well as elite domination of the world. Ruling elites in Muslim nations use political Islam and the threat from the US to control their own people with an iron fist concealed in a glove of religious fervor.

THE PERFECT ENEMY

Political Islam perfectly suits the needs of America's rulers for an enemy. The lands of the Middle East and Central Asia occupied by Muslims are the most strategically important regions of the world, sitting astride the world's largest reserves of oil and gas; the US could never justify attacking these nations without first convincing Americans that Muslims need either to be attacked -- because they are dangerous terrorists -- or liberated. Seeing Islam as the enemy also supports Israel's role as an outpost of Western colonialism in the Middle East; according to this script, Christians and Jews supposedly share a common Judeo-Christian heritage which is meant to exclude Muslims, and we are encouraged to support a Jewish state based on savage ethnic cleansing against Islamic fanatics.

The greatest benefits to America's rulers of political Islam as the enemy, however, are ideological: religious demagogues like Osama bin Laden and Iranian mullahs channel the poor and oppressed of the Muslim world into politically reactionary rather than revolutionary formations and legitimize the power of elites acting in the name of Islam; at the same time, they make the ugly face of contemporary capitalism look by way of contrast almost desirable to non-Muslims and many Muslims, in much the same way that Soviet Communism did. US rulers would like the world to perceive the choice before it in effect to be between an admittedly decadent capitalist civilization with unlimited freedom to do your own thing and a pre-modern theocratic state.

Political Islam derives much of its effectiveness from the failure of communism as a revolutionary ideology. That failure left widespread despair in the Middle East and around the globe and an ideological void which militant Islam, assisted by the US, has rushed to fill.

A HISTORY OF COLLABORATION: IRAN

The US= s favored antidote to revolutionary ideology among desperate workers and farmers in the turbulent Middle East, Central Asia, and Muslim Africa, especially since 1979, has been the idea that God's will as expressed in the Koran requires people to submit to 'holy' dictatorships. That pivotal year marked the overthrow of the Shah of Iran, the most powerful US client except Israel, and also the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In both cases the US turned to Islamic fundamentalism to achieve its strategic goals.

The Iranian revolution was capable of establishing a secular, anti-capitalist revolutionary democracy and sweeping the Middle East. Instead TIME= s 1979 Man of the Year, Ayatollah Khomeini, and the mullahs successfully channeled the mass popular movement into a right-wing theocracy, using nationalism and religion to crush the revolution and consolidate the class nature of Iranian society.

There has been a strong collaborative relationship between the theocratic rulers of Iran and US rulers ever since. In November, 1979 Iranians took over the US Embassy in Tehran, taking 50 Americans hostage. Focusing on the Great Satan allowed the Ayatollah Khomeini to put up a show of radicalism to satisfy his followers while he liquidated tens of thousands of worker and student revolutionaries in the spring and summer of 1980. In October, 1980 emissaries of the Republican Party met secretly with the Ayatollah's regime and persuaded it not to release the hostages until the election was over, thus guaranteeing the defeat of Jimmy Carter. From 1983 through 1988 the Reagan Administration, in collaboration with Israel, sold arms to the Khomeini regime in Iran and sent the proceeds to CIA-supported Contras fighting the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, in defiance of Congress.

AFGHANISTAN

In 1979 the US began another remarkably ambitious collaboration with Islamic fundamentalists after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. With Jimmy Carter's express approval, under CIA direction, and with massive funding from the US and Saudi Arabia, the US undertook to recruit, train, and arm over 100,000 mujahadeen -- Islamic freedom fighters, as President Reagan styled them -- from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan, to make war against the Soviet invaders. The US funded madrassas -- Islamic religious schools -- in Pakistan and Afghanistan to promote political Islam and it set up camps to train the mujahadeen in guerrilla tactics and terrorism. A key CIA asset in the struggle was a man of the fundamentalist Wahhabi Islam sect from Saudi Arabia, Osama bin Laden. The US-backed Islamic fundamentalist movement was successful. In 1989 it drove the USSR from Afghanistan in ignominious defeat, a loss from which the USSR never recovered. On September 27, 1996 the Taliban, an Islamic fundamentalist guerrilla organization backed by the US, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, took control of the Afghan capital, Kabul.

BOSNIA AND KOSOVO

In the mid-90s, with explicit approval of the Clinton Administration and the assistance of the Pakistani ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) and Osama bin Laden, the US channeled Iranian arms, Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Iranian intelligence agents, and thousands of mujahadeen from around the Islamic world to the Muslim government in Sarajevo during the fighting in Bosnia, greatly enhancing Iranian and fundamentalist influence in the region. The US, working closely with Osama bin Laden, then supplied the Kosovo Liberation Army with funding, arms, and Muslim fighters. Prof. Michel Chussodovsky of the University of Ottawa sums up the alliance between the US and Islamic militants: A major war supposedly against international terrorism has been launched, yet the evidence amply confirms that agencies of the US government have since the Cold War harbored the Islamic Militant Network as part of Washington's foreign policy agenda. (http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO110A.html )

PAKISTAN

The US has covertly championed Islamic power in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan under a succession of leaders, most recently ex-General Musharraf, who led a military coup against the elected government in 1999 and proclaimed himself president. US military forces and the CIA have maintained particularly strong ties with the Pakistani military and with ISI, the Pakistani intelligence service, which played a major role in directing Islamic mujahadeen against Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s and continues to have strong ties with the Taliban. The military and the ISI threw crucial support to the six-party Alliance of Islamic parties, the Mutahidda Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), enabling it to triumph in the October, 2003 Pakistani elections. Ahmed Rashid writes:

[T]he Islamicists see their moment to turn Pakistan into a theocratic state. The MMA are banking on their support within the army and the intelligence services. They have gone out of their way to revile Musharraf as a stooge of the Americans, while praising the army's commitment to Islam. Emboldened by its successes, the MMA has also declared that it will demand that the government impose Sharia law throughout the country....[US policies] will only hasten Pakistan's turn towards Islamic fundamentalism as the MMA gets stronger and more strident in its demands. (http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=1766&page=1 )

IRAQ

This desire to bolster militant Islam may explain why US military forces have been producing with every atrocity new guerilla fighters with which to frighten the American people and to make the war on terror and threat of terrorism more convincing. Anonymous, a CIA analyst for 22-years who has just published Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror, writes that the United States has "waged two failed half-wars and, in doing so, left Afghanistan and Iraq seething with anti-U.S. sentiment, fertile grounds for the expansion of al-Qaeda and kindred groups." He adds that "There is nothing that bin Laden could have hoped for more than the American invasion and occupation of Iraq."

Before the first Gulf war, Iraq had been a secular state, with the highest standard of living in the Middle East. Health care was free, as was education up through secondary school. Iraq had a high degree of equality between the sexes, with laws against gender discrimination; there were more female than male university students. (http://www.michaelparenti.org/DefyingSanctions.html ) After two wars and 12 years of U.N. sanctions, with its infrastructure in rubble, millions of its people malnourished, and 70% unemployed, the living standards of Iraqis have gone dramatically backwards. Iraqis have been subject to savage US attacks on civilians and widespread torture and humiliation of a sort calculated to make even those Iraqis most initially supportive of the removal of Saddam Hussein see America as an enemy.

The US has succeeded in consolidating the Iraqi resistance--the only future leadership with any legitimacy in popular eyes--increasingly under militant Islamic leadership, virtually guaranteeing an Islamic future for once secular Iraq. The US strategy of encouraging Islamic fundamentalism may explain what otherwise seem like incomprehensible blunders in the war on Iraq, not to mention the invasion itself.

For example, the US apparently deliberately provoked the Shi'ite uprising in southern Iraq in April, 2004 and thrust radical Islamic leader, Moqtada Sadr, into the position of being a national hero to Iraqis. Sadr is a Shi'ite Muslim, the same sect as that of the late Ayatollah Khomeini. In April, 2004, when Israel assassinated Shaikh Ahmed Yassin, Sadr's newspaper gave the story prominent coverage and promised to act as a wing of Hamas in Iraq. The US promptly shut down Sadr's paper, arrested thirteen of his top aides, and, through an Iraqi court, issued a warrant for Sadr's arrest for murder. Though Sadr had a militia of his own, the Mahdi Army, it had never acted violently towards any Americans. Juan Cole, Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan, asked,

How did the CPA [Coalition Provisional Authority] get to the point where it has turned even Iraqi Shi'ites, who were initially grateful for the removal of Saddam Hussein, against the United States? Where it risks fighting dual Sunni Arab and Shi'ite insurgencies simultaneously, at a time when US troops are rotating on a massive scale and hoping to downsize their forces in country? Someone in the CPA sat down and thought up ways to stir them up by closing their newspaper and issuing 28 arrest warrants....This is either gross incompetence or was done with dark ulterior motives that can scarcely be guessed at. (http://www.antiwar.com/cole/?articleid=2246 )

Naomi Klein, reporting from Baghdad, reacted with wonderment at the US deliberately provoking a Shi'ite uprising. In an article titled The U.S. Is Sabotaging Stability in Iraq, she wrote:

Mr. al-Sadr is the younger, more radical rival of the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, portrayed by his adoring supporters as a kind of cross between Ayatollah Khomeini and Che Guevara. He blames the U.S. for attacks on civilians, compares U.S. occupation chief Paul Bremer to Saddam Hussein, aligns himself with Hamas and Hezbollah and has called for a jihad against the controversial interim constitution. His Iraq might look a lot like Iran. (Globe and Mail, Canada, 4/5/04)

Klein calls the U.S. provoking of an uprising in Shi'ite southern Iraq mystifying, and reckons that the CPA is trying to create chaos in the south to make the handover of power impossible. More likely, however, is that the U.S. is trying to create what Professor Cole calls a Shi'ite International, as demonstrations erupted throughout the Shi'ite world, including Lebanon, Bahrain, Iran and Pakistan, against continued U.S. fighting in Karbala, a key holy city for Shi'ite Muslims....Bush is in the process of turning the Shi'ite world decisively against the U.S. (http://www.antiwar.com/cole/?articleid=2642 )

After claiming that it would defeat Sadr and wanted him dead or alive, the US backed down and negotiated with him. One of the concessions was that Sadr would order his militia fighters to return to their homes; meanwhile Sadr announced his intentions to form a political party and run in the elections scheduled for January, 2005. (http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/world/8939749.htm?1c ) This arrangement, one analyst put it, would signal that the United States has just christened the newest Islamic theocracy in the World. (http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/duarte/2004/0710.html )

The pattern we see developing in Iraq is familiar. The US covertly encourages militant Islamic opposition movements throughout the Muslim world. This means that US-backed Islamic movements often find themselves in opposition to US-backed governments. When Islamic forces eventually become powerful enough to take over, then secular allies can be dispensed with. This was the pattern in Iran, and it is the developing pattern in Pakistan and Iraq, both of which will likely become theocracies on the Iran model. In Iraq, given the former power and prestige of the secular and socialist Ba=athist Party, it has taken an invasion and brutal occupation to remove the secular leader and develop Islamic forces; still the model is the same.

I should point out that the US is not alone in funding Islamic militants. Israel funded and promoted the Islamic terrorist group Hamas in the 1970s and 1980s and may still. Israel funded Hamas to undercut the popularity of the secular PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) and the Palestinian cause, which it has done very effectively with suicide attacks on Jewish civilians in Israel. (http://www.upi.com/print.cfm?StoryID=18062002-051845-8272r. )

Shellie, I see you prefer quanity over quality.
I think you are mistaken in what this word means;

Main Entry: 4most
Function: pronoun, singular or plural in construction
: the greatest number or part

It doesn't mean all, or only. They are different words.

http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/pgtrpt/

Between 1980 and 2000, there were 4700+ attacks on Americans and or American interests. Most (there is that word again) were by muslims. The State Department URL above has the raw data. The last time I looked there wasn't a data base, so I can't tell you the exact numbers and percentages. IIRC,the summary said it was on the order of 90 + percent.
While most muslims are NOT terrorists, most terrorists ARE muslims. That is a fact. Your list of exceptions proves my point.
BTW, this war is about 1400 years old from the Ilsamic Jihadist POV. The Koran states that there are no nations, just two 'houses'. The world has two parts, Islamic and non-islamic. Believer and unbeliever.

"We don't make a distinction between civilians and non-civilians, innocents and non-innocents. Only between Muslims and unbelievers. And the life of an unbeliever has no value. It has no sanctity."
-Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad

"the general aim of the jihad and the mujahadeen is to strike at the foundations and infrastructure of the Western colonialist program or at the so-called world order.... Their defeat means, simply, the elimination of all forms of nation-states, such that all that remains is the natural existence familiar to Islam, the regional entity under the great Islamic state."
-Osama bin Laden

"We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you."
-Hussein Massawi, former leader of Hezbollah,

Is that clear enough for you? What don't you understand?

Meanwhile France is burning. Paris wasn't enough. Soon it will be all of europe.
I have some thoughts on the Fall of France.
First, are we watching the birth of a new form of warfare? I'm trying to think of a catchy name. The last time this happend, France was the Star and the name was Blitzkrieg.

Chirac wants to cut a deal. Appeasement will buy some time, but it won't stop the process of turning France into an Islamic State. The mulsims want their own little areas inside France that they control and the French government isn't allowed to enter. That means the End of France as a nation, since the definition of a nation involves control of that nations geography, government, bureaucray, police, military, etc. If France no longer controls it's own soil, it is NOT a Nation. Regardless of any action the French government takes, they are finished. All that has to be worked out is the timing. If the French fight, the muslim 5th columns will call for aid to their brother muslims. We are looking at a guerrilla war that will make Iraq look like a sundy school food fight. Considering that the muslims can send millions of jihadists to France, I don't think the French stand a chance. Osama is pretty clever. The USA liberates Iraq and Al-Qaeda liberates France. I think the USA got the better of that deal, but there are issues.
France is a wealthy nation by 3rd world standards. AFAIK, it has a higher GDP then ALL 22 arab states combined. So the prospect of looting France will bring out the mujahdeen in the millions.
Of itself looting france isn't such a big deal. My ancestors had great fun raping and pillageing in France 1100 years or so ago. No the issues are what an Islamic France will provide the Taliban in the way of resources. Nuclear weapons, munitions factories and a good sized armamnents industry.
Taking a page from the WW2 playbook, when the brits sank the French fleet so the German couldn't get it, wouldn't a pre-emptive strike on French Nuclear weapons sites be a real good idea? Get the factories building the Euro fighters also. And the AMX plants. The Muslims will not be able to rebuild them, since if they could, they wouldn't be forced to buy weapons from the French in the first place.
And I almost forgot. A seat on the UN security Council for Al-Qaeda. Doesn't that thought warm your heart? NOT!

cool blog!

I'm going to hold my comments for now and see what else happens on this thread . . .

uh, that's a big negative on quoting my bad spellin' there commie girl..

you seem to think that the US has some kind of problem fearing the sovs. this from someone that takes michigan professors seriously. I dont ahve a problem wiht proficiency and quality but if its fake it really bugs me.. people that write past their candor are creepy no matter how "professional" or "strategic".
The kgb was an adversary that utilized every possible advantage to further their control over land on earth, sis. Do't think for a minute I need to apologize from countering that. The US policy of realism in the ME was about as perfect as one could get because it kept us out of war and getting distracted from guarding the fulda gap.
After the fall of the red ministers we could take the fight back down south and clean up THE SOVS messes finally. You missed that point completely on your way down the stairs to hate W land.
the "insurgents" are supposedly allah crazy but it doesnt stop them from carrying ak's from the atheist people's paradise. Gimme a break.

It's a shame that you must quote the same on-the-fringe, manipulative narcissists that I am saying are the freaks and then try to use it for your argument to show that somehow all Muslims are like this. Islam or Allah or Paradise or whatever is the excuse, not the reason. And I cease to understand how Islam is being spread by suicide bombers (I think you are refering to it as "spread by the sword"). I don't know any suicide bombers who are involved in missionary work, and I haven't met anyone who suddenly wanted to become a Muslim after having their leg blown off in an attack. And, please show me where in history a huge Muslim army invaded Indonesia and told them to become Muslim or else get their heads lopped off. They are after all the largest populated Muslim country in the world and maybe I am ignorant of my history? Maybe you can prove to me that Church didn't spread Christianity by the sword?

And speaking of history, I think a few military strategists might find early Islamic history very interesting. I might have argued with many of you about the military conquests, but since the US's practice of "pre-emptive strikes" has taken hold and has been christened as legit, no Orientalists out there can possibly criticize early Islamic conquests. They were, after all, "pre-emptive strikes". You see, you send out a spy, they come back with news of an impending attack, and you out and ambush them while they still haven't finished packing the camels. Or, in the modern case, you drop bombs on them when you get word that they might be able to send a nuke your way. No difference.

My point as always, is that there is little difference between the East and West. Both are doing the same crap to each other, wagging their fingers at the sin of the other, but then committing the same sin themselves. Turn the table, and there is a mirror on the underside. What is amazing is that most people on both sides are so stupid, hypocritical, and self-righteous that they can't see it. Yeah yeah, America is the Great Satan and Iran is the Axis of Evil. Grow up.

so that's what you believe because you believe it, great!
Lemme guess, youre not a baby boomer and you don't like talking about yourself?

both sides are wrong!! both sides are wrong!!

but I LIVE on this side..

and how many constitutional democracy have the muslims gone out and created? preemptively/postemptively?

if you, a woman, lived in muslim paradise, would you be beaten for writing what you said if it wasnt about Bush?

when I grow up, will I be smart like you?

The "Grow up" was not for anyone on this blog. It was meant for the world leaders who perpetuate the absurdity. That is for any Ayatollah, President, Prime Minister, King, Dictator or whatever. I will say it again, my point is that it is the same crap on both sides of the ocean.

I used to think that the ME was a chaotic, barbaric war zone until I lived there. It wasn't what I thought at all, but eventually I came back to the US. Know what? The grass wasn't as green as I remembered. But I lived on both sides, get the news from both sides, have friends and family that live on both sides. And everyday, it's the same crap from both sides and is getting worse. The Americans forward me news articles about teenage suicide bombers in Israel, and the Arabs send me articles about teenagers who shoot up their school and then shoot themselves. It's the same crap. I get articles about people being tortured in prisons in Egypt and Syria, and then I get articles about Gitmo and Abu Ghraib. It's the same crap. Dictators embezzle aid money in the third world, the mayor embezzles the money from the school board. Same crap. Muslim leaders from the fringe call for jihad, and the preachers on channel 56 call for a crusade. Same crap. Americans went nuts and looted and burned New Orleans. Muslim immigrants in France are doing the same thing. Americans worry about the oppression of women in Muslim countries and Muslims worry about the oppression of women in the West. It's all just the same crap, and it will always be the same crap. It's not about both sides being wrong. It's about the absurdity of it all.

The Muslims once had an empire, and as they all do, the empire fell. America has an empire, and eventually one day it will fall. Same crap. And just because crime in Detroit has gone down in the last 100 years doesn't really say anything. Iraq had a lot less crime under Saddam, and no is going to use that to argue that a dictatorship is the best form of government. It's just the same crap.

But my question is, and this is not Bush-bashing but a real question I want everyone out there to think about. Don't post an answer, just think about it: Do you think that one day an American will be arrested for speaking out against the actions of the US government?

P.S. No one gets hit in Paradise. But if I ever got hit by someone here on earth, I'd hit them right back.

thanks for the space chester..

try looking at it like this:
no one counts the hours anyone works except ours,so they can tax us into mediocrity.
noone goesinto the slums and cite's and counts the hours tha anyone actually spends lifting THEMSELVES out of poverty. After a while, maybe 30 years of listening to people equivalate the two worlds you start to get a little pissed when someone like you comes along and starts baggin on the west as if there's nothing different,inherently different, and better about my world than the ME and its "culture".
Its futile to tell you this because if you could understand it you'd already have a different view.
the whole point of my post was that in a free society you shouldnt have to be held to A definition of many things. The fact that peoplecant live in a civilized world becuase of their selfish ignorance doesnt mean that I'm wrong to reject their demands on my freedom to keep some things ambivalent. Can you get your massive brain around that?

Muslims are coming into the west with all of the nastiest tendencies of the left and demanding that we just roll over and let them call all ofthe shots.
and if we reject them they try and use our own laws against us. Well guess what, there's these people in the west called conservatives that arent mush brained spineless doormats and we will kill for our freedom and we arent all stupid and impressionable. Go find a liberal to kvetch to and see things forwhat they are, not so simple.

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