Eugene Volokh, April 20, 2007
Middle Eastern Media Take Up Reid's "War Is Lost":
Iranian Press TV reports, in response to Reid's statement:
Leader of the Democratic majority in the US Congress, Harry Reid, has said the US has lost the Iraq war, and Bush's troop surge has failed.... Reid's comments came a day after 200 fatalities were reported in bombings in Iraq, despite a much touted US Security Plan which the White House said sought to root out insurgency."
A Republican party e-mail also reported the following as translations of items from Al-Jazeera Online, and Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, "The Leading Arabic International Daily"; please let me know if the translations are inaccurate:
"Yesterday the leader of the Democratic majority in Congress, Harry Reid, announced that he conveyed to Bush that the United States lost the war in Iraq and that the additional America forces that were sent there will not succeed in the achievement of any positive progress."
"Leader of the Democratic majority in the US Congress, Harry Reid, has said the US has lost the Iraq war, and Bush's troop surge has failed.... Reid's comments came a day after 200 fatalities were reported in bombings in Iraq, despite a much touted US Security Plan which the White House said sought to root out insurgency."
#3
Michelle Malkin has the Lieberman slap at Reid. Reid is quoted as responding, We take a back seat to no one in supporting our troops, and we will never abandon our troops in a time of war."
Ok, Harry, lets put that up for a vote. You and yours love polling so much, how about a full muster of our men and women in uniform and ask them Do you believe the Democrats support you fully or more than any other group in America?. Lets make it public and cover it just like any national election. Put up or shut up. You love political theater, so youll just love this.
#4
WASHINGTON - Senator Joe Lieberman (ID-CT) today made the following statement in response to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's comment that the Iraq War is "lost:"
"This week witnessed horrific terrorist attacks by Islamist extremists in Iraq, killing hundreds of innocent civilians and leading Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to declare that the war is 'lost.'
With all due respect, I strongly disagree. Senator Reid's statement is not based on military facts on the ground in Iraq and does not advance our cause there.
Al Qaeda's strategy for victory in Iraq is clear. They are trying to murder as many innocent civilians as possible in an effort to reignite sectarian fighting and drive us to retreat from Iraq.
The question now before us is whether we respond to these terrorist attacks by running away as Al Qaeda hopes - abandoning the future of Iraq, the Middle East, and ultimately our own security to the very same people responsible for this week's atrocities - or whether we stand united to fight them.
This is exactly the wrong time to conclude that we have lost the war in Iraq, or that our new strategy has failed. Instead, we should provide General Petraeus and his troops with the time and the resources to succeed. We should not surrender in the face of barbarism."
Posted by: Bobby ||
04/21/2007 10:55 Comments ||
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#5
Harry Reid comes off to me as a small time pol in way over his head trying to look like he rates the position he has .
#7
Lieberman: "The question now before us is whether we respond to these terrorist attacks by running away as Al Qaeda hopes - abandoning the future of Iraq, the Middle East, and ultimately our own security to the very same people responsible for this week's atrocities - or whether we stand united to fight them."
Sorry, Joe, but it looks to me like your party announced its stance on that question plain, loud and clear in the Summer of 2004 when it gave Michael Moore and Jimmy Carter the seats of "honor" at its National Convention. And it reaffirmed that stance two years later, when it supported a raving anti-war moonbat to unseat you in the 2006 Connecticut primaries.
After 9/11 many of us thought, "At last, we are united on something, for we all know in our hearts that we are all in this together." At least I did...
But no; it's plain as day, now, that we are NOT all in this together.
Why, oh WHY, are you still a Democrat, Joe? How the Hell can any decent man ally himself with a party of psychopathic monsters who want to destroy this country?????
Posted by: Dave D. ||
04/21/2007 12:44 Comments ||
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As a backlash continued Friday against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's remarks that the war in Iraq is "lost," he dropped that term and called for a responsible ending to the war.
"I said it yesterday; I say it again. The longer we continue down the president's path, the further we will be from responsibly ending this war," Reid said in a Senate speech.
He said Democrats "take a back seat to no one in supporting our troops, and we will never abandon our troops in a time of war."
watch the RGJ.com and LVRJ.com (Reno gazette and Las Vegas Review Journal....the two most powerful papers in the state) ...Harry's not impressing anyone, and the hometown crowd is embarrassed
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/21/2007 21:05 Comments ||
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#10
Reid should realize he's on thin ice when our enemies quote him for talking points.
What did the last wave of terror attacks and the many crimes committed against our people all this time reveal?
If we look at how the media handles the situation we'll find something like this almost everywhere;
Dozens killed, scores wounded in attacks suggest failure of security measures
It's as if the speaker here wants to only emphasize the defect in security measures in a way that honestly angers and disgusts me.
When shall they realize, if ever, that we are dealing with brutal crimes against humanity, a genocide against the people of Iraq? Why don't people talk about the cruelty of the crimes and expose the obvious goals of the terrorists behind the crimes?
Isn't it everyone's duty to expose the criminals, describe their sick ways and purposes and alert the world about the danger?
Where are the media when terrorists use chlorine poisonous gas, acids, and ball bearings to kill and hurt more and more civilians in utter disregard to all written and unwritten laws, ethics and values?
I understand it's the duty of the media to practice scrutiny over the work of governments but isn't it equally their duty to expose criminals and their evil deeds?
It's frustrating to see the media turn a blind eye to the nature of the crimes and open fire on an honest endeavor to restore peace to a bleeding nation. I'm sure the terrorists are pleased by the coverage. Why not, when their crimes are being portrayed as successful breakthroughs against the efforts of Iraq and America it's likely motivating them to keep up the killing.
From the Smithsonian, hat tip to LGF:Before Sayyid Qutb became a leading theorist of violent jihad, he was a little-known Egyptian writer sojourning in the United States, where he attended a small teachers college on the Great Plains. Greeley, Colorado, circa 1950 was the last place one might think to look for signs of American decadence. Its wide streets were dotted with churches, and there wasnt a bar in the whole temperate town. But the courtly Qutb (COO-tub) saw things that others did not. He seethed at the brutishness of the people around him: the way they salted their watermelon and drank their tea unsweetened and watered their lawns. He found the muscular football players appalling and despaired of finding a barber who could give a proper haircut. As for the music: The Americans enjoyment of jazz does not fully begin until he couples it with singing like crude screaming, Qutb wrote when he returned to Egypt. It is this music that the savage bushmen created to satisfy their primitive desires.
Such grumbling by an unhappy crank would be almost comical but for one fact: a direct line of influence runs from Sayyid Qutb to Osama bin Laden, and to bin Ladens Egyptian partner in terror, Ayman al-Zawahiri. From them, the line continues to another quietly seething Egyptian sojourning in the United Statesthe 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta. Qutbs gripes about America require serious attention because they cast light on a question that has been nagging since the fall of the World Trade Center: Why do they hate us?
Born in 1906 in the northern Egyptian village of Musha and raised in a devout Muslim home, Qutb memorized the Koran as a boy. Later he moved to Cairo and found work as a teacher and writer. His novels made no great impression, but he earned a reputation as an astute literary critic. Qutb was among the first champions of Naguib Mahfouz, a young, modern novelist who, in 1988, would win the Nobel Prize in Literature. As Qutb matured, his mind took on a more political cast. Even by the standards of Egypt, those were chaotic, corrupt times: World War I had completed the destruction of the Ottoman Empire, and the Western powers were creating, with absolute colonial confidence, new maps and governments for the Middle East. For a proud man like Sayyid Qutb, the humiliation of his country at the hands of secular leaders and Western puppets was galling. His writing drew unfavorable attention from the Egyptian government, and by 1948, Mahfouz has said, Qutbs friends in the Ministry of Education were sufficiently worried about his situation that they contrived to send him abroad to the safety of the United States.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Steve ||
04/21/2007 10:40 ||
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#1
I read this last night - added some details I wasn't aware of. I had to LOL at this passage:
The American girl is well acquainted with her bodys seductive capacity, he wrote. She knows seductiveness lies in the round breasts, the full buttocks, and in the shapely thighs, sleek legs and she shows all this and does not hide it. These curvy jezebels pursued boys with wide, strapping chest[s] and ox muscles,
He says this like it's a bad thing. Not too repressed were you, Sayyid?
#4
Sounds like Qutb managed to internalize the European brand of anti-Americanism and disseminate it to the Muslim world.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
04/21/2007 14:21 Comments ||
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#5
Virtually the entire modern world, Qutb theorized, is jahiliyya, that barbarous state that existed before Muhammad.
That "barbarous state"? More like a veritable Eden it must have been before Muhammad came along with his endless war and slaughter.
Only the strict, unchanging law of the prophet can redeem this uncivilized condition.
It's hard to imagine how one goes about redeeming "this uncivilized condition" with barbarities like truck bombs, chemical weapons and bomb vests. None of it stops Islam from trying, though. Too bad Qutb didn't manage to step in front of one of our uncivilized locomotives during his visit in America. It certainly would have saved us all a world of grief.
M. Zuhdi Jasser, a true (but exceedingly rare) moderate muslim, speaks out. He's simply saying what we all know to be true: the MSM is weak and islamic organizations are terror apologists.
Dennis Wagner of the Arizona Republic broke the story on April 10, 2007 about PBSs censorship of the documentary, Islam vs. Islamists from its America at a Crossroads series which debuted this week. The films producers, Frank Gaffney, Alex Alexiev and the veteran filmmaker, Martyn Burke of ABG Films, Inc. have since presented in shocking detail their painful protracted experiences trying to navigate the censors at PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting which funded the film with $675,000 of the taxpayers monies but now has chosen to shelve it. In just the last week of public debate, there has been a firestorm of outcry from the public who are demanding that oppressive methods of editorial content control by power brokers at PBS be investigated and the real story behind the shelving of Islam vs. Islamists be exposed. PBSs exploitation of the public dime and the public airwaves for the narrow point of view of the Islamist sympathizers with the exclusion of the anti-Islamist Muslims is just now beginning to be understood.
As one of the subjects of the documentary, I was able to experience first-hand the professionalism and in-depth journalistic standards of veteran filmmaker, Martyn Burke, and his first-class team of consummate professionals. It was refreshing to have a documentary set out objectively to look into the deep-seated internal struggles of anti-Islamist Muslims like myself. Our work at the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) here in Phoenix has been riddled with continual blowback and resistance in many forms from the power structure of the activist Muslim community in the Phoenix Valley. The Valley Council of Imams, the local Muslim Voice newspaper, and organizations like CAIR-AZ have provided a laboratory of typical Islamist responses to an American organization of Muslims, like AIFD, who are trying to rescue spiritual Islam from the death grip of IslamistsIslam vs. Islamists. I do this out of love for my faith and its spiritual path to the God of Abraham in order to free it from the corruption of the political imam which has become so ubiquitous.
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