Solidarity

Buy Danish!

I just got some yummy Havarti cheese.

I think everyone should see the true face of the enemy. These are British and other "Western" muslims.

One would think if any muslims are "moderate", it would be these.

Does this look moderate, in response to some very mild cartoons?











Their efforts at suppressing free speech are spawning efforts like this. That whole blog is worth a look for its political artwork.

In addition, so far, the Danish and Norwegian embassies have been burned in Syria, a Danish mission was burned in Lebanon, and a Roman Catholic priest was murdered in Turkey by a chanting islamazoid.

Further riots have erupted in Indonesia, Pakistan, New Zealand, etc.

Some Danes are marching in response, to "appeal for a peaceful dialogue to resolve a row":



I sure hope that photo caption isn't an accurate description of that march's goals...Dialogue with this barbarian?



Are you mad?

No quarter!

These times call for New Crusaders. This is a clash of ideas, symbols, and gods.

Break out the old Templar banners!



Beau Seant!

Games

Many have commented, lamentingly, how the Iranians seem to be playing a subtle game of chess.

After all, the game was invented, probably, in Persia.

And obviously chess is beyond the capability of the Bush administration, which appears to be playing the far-less-sophisticated checkers.

But I think that may be wrong.

They may be playing chess, but Bush is playing poker.

The world, in its complexity, is not very much like rigidly-constructed chess at all. Modern Game Theory, after all, uses Poker as its archetypical game for human interaction -- not chess!

If Levian is right, Iran may have been suckered into betting all its chips on the seemingly strong Dead Man's Hand, when Bush in fact is holding better cards.

It's a reverse-bluff.

Aren't the maxims of Sun Tzu essentially, "when strong, appear weak; when near, appear far"?

Just how strong is Bush's hand?

He's got a Good Cop, Bad Cop, Worse Cop thing going now:

MUNICH, Germany (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel likened Iran's nuclear plans on Saturday to the threat posed by the Nazis in their early days, as top U.S. officials urged a tough line to stop Tehran from making an atomic bomb.
...
SENATORS JOIN ATTACK

U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman applauded Merkel and urged the world to take the Iranians seriously.

"From the writings of Hitler during the 1930s and Mein Kampf to the polemics of bin Laden in the 1990s, there is ample evidence that sometimes when people write and say that they hate you and ... they want to destroy you, in fact they mean it and will try," he said.

His Republican colleague John McCain said economic sanctions should be imposed on Iran even if that meant bypassing the United Nations. He said military action must also remain an option if Tehran does not bow to international demands to halt its nuclear activities.

Rumsfeld described Iran's Islamic leaders as extremely dangerous and said they could not be permitted to acquire the world's deadliest weapons.

"The Iranian regime is today the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism," Rumsfeld said. "The world does not want, and must work together to prevent, a nuclear Iran."

Add Bush to those four cards (Merkel, Lieberman, McCain, Rumsfeld), and it's a Royal Straight Flush.

We just need the will to play the cards rather than fold.

A Nice Rant

Once again, someone has said exactly what I'm thinking, better than I could.

I thoroughly enjoyed this well-written rant (warning: and strongly worded) by Banagor:

Mohammed was a Rapist, Child Molester, Murderer, Thief, and Liar

Truly, as their own scriptures demonstrate to anyone who will read them, that Mohammed is somewhere between Charles Manson and Adolf Hitler.

It's indisputable.

I've often in private mentioned that although Manson may have said some pithy things, one would be insane to model a way of life on him.

Satisfyingly, Banagor agrees. I'll give just a taste of it here, but the whole thing is well worth reading:

I don’t go around quoting Charles Manson, and Mohammed makes him look like a candidate for beatification. The only reason that Mohammed wasn’t able to do what Hitler was able to do on such a scale was because Mohammed was a God damned cave man with fleas in his hair and he didn’t have the technical know-how to commit genocide on such a scale - not that he didn’t try, mind you.

What amazes me even more is that some Westerners are angry that we have offended Muslims, as if they truly are worshippers of a “religion of peace”. Isn’t it incredible that every time these “peaceful” Muslims are offended, more people die as a result?

Hitler's manifesto, Mein Kampf, by the way, is one of the most popular books in the Middle East to muslims, and held in great esteem, according to these reflections by a Western teacher of English in the Gulf region:

The call to arms is a clear ringing note in Islam. It is clear to me that in order to remain a valid Muslim one must not only support the concept of Jihad, but to actively engage in the struggle against Dar ul Harb.
...
In 1998 I had a friend of mine who is an Egyptian businessman in Dammam Saudi Arabia. I sometimes visited him and his family for dinner. On the outside he and his family seemed to be like every other family I have known in the West. He has a nice wife with a couple of neat children. They are from Cairo. One day I found myself waiting in their living room while they prepared an especially tasty dinner for me. I love books. I have been an avid reader since before the first grade, so when I find myself in any house I wandered over to the bookshelf to browse through the host’s book collection. The usual geography tomes and books that the children all over the world read were there, but I was shocked when I looked above his collection of business and college books to see two books together. What caught my eye and gave me one of the shocks of my life were back to back on a bookshelf the Koran and Hitler’s’ best selling book Mein Kampf. I was speechless because these two artifacts gave me a window through which I could glimpse their worldview. Everyone knew that Hitler was evil, so therefore his book must be also. The jolting shock came from seeing the great Koran right next to it.

This is the same "Koran", by the way, that we infidels aren't supposed to touch without wearing gloves, as the guards of the terrorists at Gitmo have to do.

An aberration? No:

I noticed these two books in offices and bookshops and in the malls all over the Middle East. I was given a hardback copy of Mein Kampf from an American Caucasian Muslim when he reached the end of his teaching contract in Saudi Arabia. The frequency in which I had seen this book here in the Middle East tells me that this is more than some odd violent Near Easterner’s anti-Semitic attitude, but what had I stumbled on?
...
What I saw concerning Hitler and his book was disturbing enough, but what I keep hearing from my students and co-workers here is even worse! I wished you could have been a fly on my classroom wall this semester, for this is what you would have head one day when Hitler’s name came up:

“ I love Hitler teacher” “Hitler was a great man!” “ Are you German?” “ I have a picture of Hitler in my heart.” “The Jews have no place in this world” “They will kill us all, so therefore we must kill them.” “We should be happy concerning the deaths in the West.” “I have a picture of Osama on my cell phone!”

“Why was Hitler a great man?” I asked them after outburst like this one. One of my very nicest students I have ever had blurted out; “He cooked Jews in the oven teacher!” I am not a Jew, but inside I was physically sick that day. There have been many such days in my time here among the Arabs in the Gulf region. The above statements were made by the best of the best among their brightest students, and they are not alone, for I hear the same sort of language from intellectuals, professionals, and Medical doctors!

So what does all this say about people -- Muslims -- who by definition CHOOSE to follow Mohammed's Nazi-ish ideology?

Being muslim is not an ethnicity.

It is a declaration of a belief-system.

And of subservience to one of the most evil men in history.

It is a choice. And choices have consequences.

Why aren't they ashamed to be associated with this "man"?

Why don't they distance themselves from it?

Wouldn't you?

Iran Endgame?

A fascinating analysis at Asia Times by Paul Levian about what likely will happen to Iran:

Judging from the rather frantic behind-the-scenes efforts of Russia and China in Iran, they seem to appreciate that the Iranian leadership is in for a big and probably deadly surprise. The Bush administration has not only handled its Iran dossier much more skillfully than Iraq, but also managed to set up Iran for a war it can neither win nor fight to a draw.

Whether consciously set up this way or not, Levian's thesis is that the MSM has deluded Iran into overplaying its hand.

This is so deliciously ironic!

This strategic deception might rank as one of the greatest all-time mis-directions, all the moreso since the agents of the propaganda -- the MSM -- actually believe the message they are sending:

If the Iranian leaders think they can deter an attack because the US is bogged down in Iraq they are already between the jaws of a well-set trap...Iranian leaders seem to accept at face value the US moans over its overstretched military forces and the demoralization of US forces in Iraq.

Certainly, Iranian misconceptions are helped mightily by the defeatism of the Western debate about such a war. "No good options" has become something like the consensus view...

It would be even stranger to think this came about in an entirely unplanned manner.

One almost sees the Hand of Providence.

Be that as it may, Levian knows our forces are extremely capable.

He puts a new interpretation on the strange comments by Chirac lately about France possibly using nuclear weapons against a terrorist state:

In particular, the widely but wrongly discounted nuclear belligerence of President Jacques Chirac last month implied that France was ready to accept the US use of nuclear weapons in a war against Iran if they saw fit to do so.

Using tactical nuclear weapons, I believe, has always been part of our military doctrine to substitute when forces are stretched thin.

Why else would we have them?

He lays out a scenario that I heartily endorse:

An initial Israeli air attack against some Iranian nuclear targets, command and control targets and Shahab missile sites. Iran retaliates with its remaining missiles, tries to close the Gulf, attacks US naval assets and American and British forces in Iraq. If Iranian missiles have chemical warheads (in fact or presumed), the US will immediately use nuclear weapons to destroy the Iranian military and industrial infrastructure. If not, an air campaign of up to two weeks will prepare the ground campaign for the occupation of the Iranian oil and gas fields.

Mass mobilization in Iraq against US-British forces will be at most a nuisance - easily suppressed by the ruthless employment of massive firepower. And Israel will use the opportunity to deal with Syria and South Lebanon, and possibly with its Palestinian problem.

If this is true, our planners aren't the dunderheads we often take them to be.

I particular like how he calls for the same kind of Punitive Expedition format that I have long advocated:

The character of this war will be completely different from the Iraq war. No show-casing of democracy, no "nation-building", no journalists, no Red Cross - but the kind of war the United States would have fought in North Vietnam if it had not had to reckon with the Soviet Union and China.

And just who is this analyst?

Paul Levian is a former German intelligence officer.

I hope he's right.

Little Testimony

Ha. These AP stringers are really funny. It's amazing how we have just opened the floodgates to enemy propaganda and consider it news:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - After four months and 26 witnesses, prosecutors in the Saddam Hussein trial have offered little credible testimony directly linking the former leader to the killings and torture for which he's charged.

Little testimony!

Yeah. The security forces operated independently of an authoritarian dictator and tyrant. Right. No direct links between Hussein and his deathsquads.

The byline: By HAMZA HENDAWI, Associated Press Writer