"I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
Most people think Voltaire said that. He didn't, but I will defend your right to say he did. It's a nice sentiment anyway, deployed by those who regard themselves as the unswayable advocates of Frank and Open Debate. But everyone has limits. Great Britain is discovering those limits now, as the government debates a law that would criminalize nasty jokes aimed at certain religions.
To those who've lamented Albion's perfidious decline, it's no surprise.
Beefy England has been sapped by decades of dole culture and dotty leftists, and it cannot seem to accommodate the desires of a few Muslim activists without selling its own heritage down the Thames. On one hand, these activists deserve the respect one must accord all citizens. Even those who aren't citizens. Even those who advocate blowing up other citizens. On the other hand, some British sensibilities abrade the cultural values of some Muslims. What to do?
Why, cave in, of course.
Hence the Great Pig War of 2005. Two British banks have announced they will no longer give away piggy banks because they offend some Muslims.
An official for the Lancashire Council of Mosques applauded: "This is a sensitive issue and I think the banks are simply being courteous to their customers." That customers might be courteous to the culture of most Britons is, of course, not considered.
Another prominent British Muslim sensibly called the move a mistake: "We live in a multicultural society," said Khalid Mahmoud, a Labour member of Parliament, "and symbols of one community should not be obliterated just to accommodate another. ... I doubt many Muslims would be seriously offended by piggy banks." Bully for him.
But this is not the first example. Government workers in the West Midlands were ordered to remove or hide anything with a pig on it, including a tissue box that contained a picture of The Littlest Satan, Piglet. (One Muslim citizen had complained. One.) In 2003, a West Yorkshire school removed books from classrooms because they contained pigs. Out went Busytown volumes and "Charlotte's Web." In came cultural apartheid.
At the risk of alienating those who wish to pave the Middle East, Islam is not the problem. The Muslim Council of Britain, after all, opposed the pig-book ban.
The problem is Official England: a culture so terrified of asserting itself that it caves every time someone announces he's offended. The proper response to anti-pig initiatives? Calmly reply that Britain is not ruled by Shariah, but is composed of many cultures, the beliefs of which occasionally conflict.
Multiculturalism is a fine and necessary idea. Cultures that seal themselves off wither and die. England is better for having ska and curry, just as Saudi Arabia is poorer for lacking, oh, women's rights and a penal code that does not hand out amputation. So to speak.
But as an ideology, multiculturalism is not only predicated on a falsehood, but a lie even it doesn't believe.
Multi-culti dogma asserts that all cultures are equal, but refuses to defend the dominant culture when assailed for insensitivity, no matter how retrograde or niggling the charge. Rather than assert the primacy of a generally shared idea, it simply eliminates any official manifestations of the idea. Problem solved! See also, Christmas.
Europe today, America tomorrow?
The concatenation of idiocies that binds Euro-progressives and the ever-aggravated Islamist contingent will no doubt appear on U.S. shores. You can expect PETA to join fundamentalists to protest a painted pig outside a BBQ joint if it's in the same time zone as a mosque. Doesn't matter if it's a noisy minority; an earnest city council keen to placate will order a ban on certain kinds of signage.
Problem solved. Until the next retreat. Unless the perpetually aggravated folk heed an old man's words: "Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too." Nice idea. Tolerant and inclusive. Universal.
Voltaire, as it turns out.
Posted by: Steve ||
10/28/2005 10:00 ||
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#3
No arguing the point at all, Lileks is painfully spot on! If you'd like a current look, or fast-forward futuristic peek at multicultural and affirmative action outcomes, examine governmental affairs administrated right here at home by Mayor Ray Nagin or abroad by Robert Mugabe. Excluded groups are the same, outcomes are quite similar as well.
#4
It's already here. The Boulder (Colorado) City Council is considering a hate speech ordinance.
How they'll reconcile that with harboring the Grand Poobah Hate Speecher Ward Churchill, I don't know. But it's a leftist thing, so I'm sure it will all be ok; they'll find just the right facet of some acceptable ideal in their enlightened progressive arguement and come up with the perfect slogan to justify it all.
This editorial says what I had been saying about the Miers nomination. Ms. Miers was too much an unknown quantity. Conservatives didn't want to get hosed by a Souter 10 years hence.
As to charges of 'sexism (whatever the f*ck that means ), conservatives ain't your Daddy's rightwinger
Critical summary:
In choosing Ms. Miers, Mr. Bush tried to avoid such a debate, perhaps because he thought he had enough other fights on his hands. But the avoidance cost him much more than had he lost after a pitched battle on principle. The biggest lesson of the Miers nomination is that Mr. Bush can't avoid the battle for control of the Supreme Court that he promised Americans he would make in two elections.
#1
No - the biggest lesson of the Miers brouhaha is that social conservatives have their heads up their posteriors and are not looking at the bigger picture which includes, at the moment, places like Iran. Where Bush needs Dem support for any moves we end up taking.
Shortsighted idiocy - not to oppose Miers, but how it was done.
#2
And before the choir chimes in to educate me on the Rantburg Way, let's just say that I've been a contributor here for a good long while.
But between the Schiavo mess and now this, I've about had it with people who cannot see beyond their pet issues - no matter how important and strongly felt - to see what it takes to actually govern during a difficult, protracted war which will extend well beyond Iraq and take many years to win.
At a time like this, dividing the country over abortion or whatever is just WRONG.
#4
Sorry badanov, but you don't have the numbers. The RINOs are not going to give the president any more respect than the 'base' has. You either live with a RINO or a Dem will just pick up the seat from that state. That's not going to change, its the nature of the demographics of the state. The Dems have no need to give a nominee a 'fair hearing' or a 'floor vote' anymore than the conservatives gave Meirs. The Reps can bleat all they want, the Dems will only point out this behavior of the party to justify their actions. Wise commanders pick fights they know they can win. Picking a fight just to have a fight reminds me of the old say - don't wrestle with a pig, you only get dirty and you make the pig happy. The Dems are eager to paint the conservatives as radicals in the view of the middle swing voters, who determine who controls Congress or the White House. The conservatives are going to make the Dems job just that much easier in the very fight you want.
Choose the most qualified candidate for the job whether they be a man, woman, minority, or a white-bread Ivy Leager. And let the chips fall where they may. If the Dems threaten a fillibuster expose them for the obstructionist grand-standers that they are. If the RINO's in the Senate aren't on board...tough shit. It's long overdue they get their noses bloodied. Sure it's a simplistic idea. But I pretty much resemble that remark.
#7
Thank goodness you got the last in on that DepotGuy. That's important. No rollers, no faith based Bushitler anything. It's not in the best interest of the democratic party country.
#8
Sorry badanov, but you don't have the numbers. The RINOs are not going to give the president any more respect than the 'base' has. You either live with a RINO or a Dem will just pick up the seat from that state.
We have the numbers. and we have them now. Even if the Gang of 14 decide to welsh on their deal, we still have the nuclear option. We have the numbers and we have the options.
But, let's set this thing on its head. If a state has a choice between a republican and a dino, which would they take, the republican everytime. Why? Because of the different philosophies. Republicans, even those in name only, still believe in the basic values, God, country, rule of law, smaller government and a strong defense. If folks in a state have a choice they will vote for the RINO, and coversely the republican everytime, because the right will take care of the country, while the left just wants to surrender it to their socialist buddies in Euroland and elsewhere.
That's not going to change,
It is changing...
its the nature of the demographics of the state. The Dems have no need to give a nominee a 'fair hearing' or a 'floor vote' anymore than the conservatives gave Meirs.
No, they just have a constitutional obligation as witnessed by their oath of office to support and defend the constitution (which in judicial hearing they have shirked that obligation repeatedly )and that means giving all political appointees, including judges a fair hearing. And in the passed several years the left has created this unconstitutional method which obsructs their own roles and makes their role even larger than constitutionally permitted.
But the left doesn't do that. They place in front of themsevles for all the world to see this strawman of a rightwinger 'turning the clock back' and then knocking it down as though they really accomplished something. I liken it to cutting a fart in a crowded room and blaming someone else for it.
The left has an obligation to the constitution, and it is one they have repeated shat on for their own agenda.
#9
The best quote I have heard is "I may not be a judge but I stayed in a Holiday Inn last night." There has to have been other better qualified nominees. I'm don't know what George was thinking on that one. One pundit said the recommendation to select a non-judicial nominee was a recommendation of the Supreme Court justices.
Like incurable disease, Arab-Israeli conflict cannot be resolved
Shaul Rosenfeld
The political worldview of many is premised on the certainty that the Arab-Israeli conflict can be resolved. There are almost no politicians in Israel, either on the Right or the Left, who are willing - even implicitly â to raise the possibility that the conflict cannot be resolved.
Assertions such as âevery problem has a solution, we just need to want it enough,â or âitâs unthinkable that weâll live by the sword foreverâ
share a wide common denominator: Those who hold such views place, absentmindedly, their wishes where a mechanism that examines reality should be found.
There is nothing wrong with oneâs wishes and desires, as long as those do not become an alternate means for understanding reality. The âfree flowâ between wishes and reality, and more so forcing the one on the other, are characteristic symptoms of the difficulty of reconciling oneself to a problematic reality and digesting its implications.
Sigmund Freud said the intention to make mankind happy was not part of Godâs plan of creation, and to that we can add: Bringing you into the world was not accompanied by a binding agreement with your parents and leaders to provide solutions to any problems that may follow.
Among its many sins, the world has presented us with various incurable diseases, as well as unresolved problems (for the time being) in the fields of physics, mathematics, philosophy, and biology. And what is true for science, is also true for political conflicts.
Some lasted for hundreds of years, and others ended with one of the sides, or both, disappearing. Some empires collapsed and no longer exist, and some countries disappeared. Some nations left nothing behind them aside from a footnote on the pages of history.
It is likely that a large part of those involved in such conflicts fully believed their problems have a solution, right before their hopes evaporated.
Israel still viewed as foreign element in region
Is the Arab-Israeli conflict of the type that cannot be resolved? It appears that way. This conflict features almost all the characteristics that make this so, unfortunately, for the foreseeable future.
Israel is still perceived in the Arab world as a foreign element, a thorn in the regionâs side, which the Arabs view as essentially Arabic-Islamic. The relative de facto acceptance of Israelâs existence stems from the slim chance the Arabs see of removing Israel, the Jewish Stateâs close ties with Washington, and for some Arab countries, the financial rewards granted by the United States.
Should our power or the interests of the various parties be weakened, disappear, or change, Israel will again be forced to fight for its existence.
And itâs not only the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where we can say that the maximum concessions we could bear with are much less than the minimum the other side would be willing to accept â even as an intermediate step. Indeed, the plethora of historical, religious, cultural, and ethnic raw materials that serve to feed the dominant Arab ethos towards Israel do not contribute to a genuine acceptance of a political Jewish entity in the region. The opposite is true.
âFirst, do no harmâ
Israelâs common image among the âlocalsâ as an expelling, oppressing, expropriating, and humiliating entity on the one hand, and a democratic, victorious (when it comes to wars against the Arabs,) prosperous, successful, and advanced (compared to the Arabs) entity on the other hand, certainly does not serve as a reason for optimism for those who realistically hope for reconciliation.
Meanwhile, the unrealistic ones prefer, for example, to adopt the folly of the Oslo route, en route to implementing their alchemical scheme.
So what should we do? Refrain from naively falling into a trap, cautiously attempt to resolve that which can be resolved, act to lower the intensity of the conflict, and live with whatâs left.
Just like chronic diseases that can be contained, we can continue living with this conflict. We lived with it for 120 years and we can do it for another 120 years, and even longer, as long as we plan our moves widely, for example when it comes to demographics, and refrain from various hubris projects, like the ones prepared for us by the Meretz (left-wing party) chef, Yossi Beilin, once every few years.
Medical students are taught the rule " primum non nocere," that is, âfirst, do no harm,â or in its wider implication, consider the possible harm that can be caused by intervening. It is worthwhile to add here: Consider the harm caused by your attempt to fundamentally fix something that cannot be fixed. This rule should also be studied in schools for politics.
#1
what a bunch of nothing. Identified a problem and gave no solution. Make yourself seem sage by stating the obvious - that you can ignore a problem and not make it go away. Yawn, so typical.
#2
A'mighty long winded article for arguing appeasement and accomo of enemies, including helping them to threaten andor destroy your own society in the name of living a few extra years.
THIS week the president of Iran told a student rally that Israel should be "wiped off the map." Always a crowd pleaser in Tehran, Mr. Ahmadinejad's call to exterminate Jews rang freshly ominous in view of his government's nuclear ambitions.
Meeting with a lively group of American businessmen on Tuesday, I was asked how we'd know when Tehran was on the verge of acquiring a nuclear capability. "You'll see Israeli planes in the sky over Iran," I said with a smile masking my seriousness.
But it won't be as easy as Israel's 1981 destruction of Iraq's French-built Osirak reactor. This time, Israel will need more than attack aircraft (and better refueling means). It may take a combination of aircraft, missiles, special-ops teams and clandestine resources to interrupt Iran's nuclear program if the world fails to act. The effort would look more like the opening of the 1967 war than a pin-point strike.
But Iranian nuclear weapons constitute a literal life-or-death issue for Israel. Tel Aviv would be better off facing the world's (disingenuous) outrage than nuclear destruction.
Even for the military power of the United States, shattering Iran's nuclear-weapons program would be complicated. Iran's facilities are dispersed, hidden, buried and hardened. Attacks would kill foreign technicians wisely hired by Iran â de facto hostages.
Yet, for all of the concern that Israel, the United States and blithely irresponsible Europe should feel about Tehran's quest for nuclear weapons, the Sunni Muslims of the Middle East and Pakistan should be more worried still.
The likeliest future nuclear exchange in the Middle East may not be between Israel and Iran, after all, but between Shi'a and Sunni Muslims.
Posted by: Captain America ||
10/28/2005 08:26 ||
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#1
Another abject failure of the Clinton administration...and of his treasonous National Security Advisor Sandy (check my pants out) Berger.
#2
So Clinton screwed it up so bad this Administration couldn't do anything for the last five years? Not buying it. We're paying for the last admin's complacency in lots of ways, but in the last quarter of year five of an administration, continuing problems are the responsiblity of the current management. And I'm hard pressed to think of a thing we've done since 2001 to deal with Iranian nukes other than let the Europeans demonstrate their fecklessness.
#3
The fact that Iran has lots of sites is not totally in their favor.
If we can id some keys sites and take some clandestine action against them (maybe even using UAVs) we may be able to slow the nuke development up by several years.
#4
Just because you don't see action doesn't mean action isn't being taken.
At the same time, there are real limits to what can be done until/unless Iran gives sufficient provocation. Let's see if they have more 'accidents' on their oil lines in the next few weeks. Or more students taking on the police (probably not, given the deaths in previous demonstrations.)
#5
Blame (or credit) for this can go all the way back to the peanut farmer, and beyond. The Orsirak reactor at Al Tuwaitha was rubblized on a Sunday in about 20 seconds. (the French and other Euro engineers were sleeping off hangovers). Oi vey, anything is possible.
Attacks would kill foreign technicians wisely hired by Iran â de facto hostages.
Frankly, any foreign technician who dies or is injured when someone bombs his work site will just be getting his just deserts. And, they're probably getting a salary based on their risks.
Remember, only one man died in the Osirak bombing: a French engineer. Go figure. Hostages? Only that they have made themselves expendable.
Posted by: Eric Jablow ||
10/28/2005 22:56 Comments ||
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Gill is badass Sikh policeman who ruthlessly crushed the Khalstani terrorist movement in the Indian Punjab
Fascist apologists would notoriously boast that Mussolini made the trains run on time in Italy (itself a dubious claim), and this, in substantial measure, has been the perennial justification for dictatorships, military rule and other authoritarian forms of government. It is an argument that has, in different forms, been advanced in support of General Pervez Musharraf's junta in Pakistan as well; champions - both domestic and foreign - have argued that the General is the only one who 'can deliver' in the country, and hence the only one Western governments can 'do business' with.
But the Musharraf regime's, and the Pakistani Army's 'capacity to deliver' -certainly to its own people - has been found to be entirely lacking in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake that has rocked parts of Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK) and the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), killing tens of thousands, and flattening out entire townships and villages at a stroke. As one Pakistani commentator noted, the Army, "the avowed vanguard of Pakistani society - was leaden on its feet and seemed overwhelmed by the catastrophe."
Three weeks after the quake, while hundreds of non-governmental entities - including, prominently, several jihadi groups (which, according to Pakistan's official position, do not, in fact, exist, have been 'banned', and have had their infrastructure 'dismantled') - have made their presence felt in relief efforts in some of the remotest areas of the affected region, the Army and governmental apparatus is still to come to grips with the basics.
Even in Muzzafarabad - the town most easily accessed - heavy machinery for the clearance of the debris of collapsed buildings is still to be delivered, and a large number of bodies remain trapped under rubble, with people using spades and shovels and whatever primitive equipment they can get their hands on to clean up the mess.
The bulk of official efforts, in any event, remain concentrated in the main towns such as Muzzafarabad, Bagh and Rawalkot; but entire villages in wide areas have been flattened by the earthquake, and access and relief to these remains acutely inadequate. Sources in PoK complain bitterly of the 'complete human failure' and fear that it will result in a second tragedy, potentially greater than the earthquake itself, as the bitter Kashmiri winter sets in on a people without shelter.
In the meanwhile, international organisations have criticised government agencies for obstructing relief efforts and for discriminatory and selective distribution of relief material - including, crucially, a large number of tents that have been brought in by many donor agencies. Stories of a black market in tents - run by Army officials - have been doing the rounds in the media, and one prominent observer has noted that the distribution of tents is "being used for power and patronage by military and civilian authorities that control the territory".
These are all matters of detail - and evidence of the Army's incompetence, bias and corruption will continue to pile up as more light is brought to bear upon the course of relief efforts and the utilisation of the millions of dollars for relief and rehabilitation that have poured into the Government's coffer's since the earthquake. What is crucial, however, is an attitude of mind. The Pakistan Army has never regarded PoK or the NWFP as anything more than an area of strategic importance.
The people of these regions have always been of little consequence. Unsurprisingly, in the wake of the earthquake, there was hardly any effort to rush immediate help to the victims - rather, tens of thousands of troops were moved up to reinforce the LoC, with convoys driving through and past devastated towns and villages, indifferent to the enveloping suffering of the people.
This reveals a deep pathology in the Pakistani military mind, and it is fairly certain that, if the scale of devastation and dislocation experience in PoK had rather occurred across the LoC, in J&K, Pakistan would have sent in its Forces - no doubt masquerading as 'irregulars' - to grab as much territory as was possible. It is beyond the capacities of this mindset to imagine that India would not do the same.
The competence of the military regime to bring relief to the victims of the earthquake is undermined further by the chronic inadequacies of institutional development and the state's outreach in the affected regions. When entire areas are held with an exclusive focus on grand strategy, military tactics and political power play, without thinking of the human beings, there is, naturally, no planning for the people.
This, of course, is happening in some measure all over Pakistan - and is characteristic of all dictatorships - but it is a chronic problem in PoK and the NWFP, where institutional development has been systematically crippled in a perverse policy to keep the people in thraldom in the pursuit of Islamabad's inchoate quest for 'strategic depth'. The communities of PoK and NWFP have been entirely dehumanised, and Islamabad has never had much interest in their daily lives; these territories, however, have been integral to the Pakistani (overwhelmingly Punjabi) military leadership's concept of their 'interests of state'.
Pakistan's narcissistic Army has heaped limitless contempt on civilian rule and institutions, and on democratic politics. It is now time to challenge and extinguish this myth. The fact is, the Army itself has a disastrous record of incompetence that goes far beyond the present crisis, and many a Pakistani commentator has noted that each spell of military rule in the country has culminated in a national catastrophe: "Dictators took the country into foolish and unnecessary wars, dictators who sowed the seeds of Pakistan's break-up, dictators and shortsighted intelligence chiefs who danced to America's tune and turned Pakistan into a crossroads of international jihad. The Pakistani dream, if ever there was one, has been betrayed at the altar of this tradition."
Pakistan's Army is, in fact, at the heart of the country's problems; it is no part of their solutions. Claims that the Musharraf regime will bring back democracy to Pakistan and remove corruption now stand totally discredited - the Army has systematically undermined democratic institutions and processes and weakened mainstream political parties, and is itself the country's most corrupt organisation, "and an unchallenged holder of country's resources and wealth". The enormous humanitarian tragedy brought about by the earthquake - and the visible pattern of the Army's response - has simply reiterated these long-standing realities.
As an aside, within this context, it is useful to note that some Pakistani writers are plaintively asking why India is "dragging its feet" on Gen Musharraf's proposal to turn the Line of Control into a soft border. Perhaps they have not noticed the nearly 40,000 killed in J&K by Pakistan-sponsored terrorists over the last 17 years, and the continuing spate of terrorist attacks and assassinations in the State by groups headquartered in Pakistan. And while many in Pakistan are today celebrating the 'humanity', generosity and efficiency of the jihadi groups involved in relief work, they will live to rue the day, when these terrorist entities call their debt, and a grateful and deeply indebted people respond in large numbers by enlisting in the future armies of terror.
Posted by: john ||
10/28/2005 19:21 ||
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by Amir Taheri
New York Post
THE new president of the Islamic Republic, Mah moud Ahmadinejad, has radically changed a key aspect of Iran's regional policy by committing his administration to the destruction of Israel.
In a speech Wednesday, Ahmadinejad described Israel as "a stain of shame that has sullied the purity of Islam," and promised that it would be "cleansed very soon." All nations that establish ties with Israel, he warned, would burn "in the fires of our Islamic rage."
Ahmadinejad was not simply carried away by his rhetoric: He was inaugurating "A World Without Zionism" â a week of special events in thousands of mosques, schools, factories, offices and public squares, dedicated to mobilizing popular energies against the Jewish state.
Smaller versions of the exercise took place in Syria and Lebanon, countries where Iran exerts much political influence â and, more surprisingly, in Afghanistan, where a group of newly-elected members of Parliament joined the Iranian ambassador in a special "Death to Israel" ceremony.
Syrian Information Minister Mahdi Dakhl-Allah and Yasser Hurryiah, a leader of the Syrian Ba'ath Party, spoke at an Iranian-sponsored event and endorsed Tehran's new tough line on Israel. Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, head of the Lebanese branch of the Hezbollah movement, reflected Tehran's new policy in a message of his own in which, for the first time, he called for the liberation of "the whole of Palestine."
For the next week or so, special registers will remain open in thousands of schools across Iran to enable "volunteers for martyrdom" to put down their names for the coming "Holy War." The Iranian branch of Hezbollah claims it has enrolled 11,300 would-be suicide-martyrs for operations against the United States and its allies, especially Israel and Britain.
Hostility to Israel has been a key ingredient of the Islamic Republic's foreign policy since its inception in 1979. But the late Ayatollah Ruhallah Khomeini was always careful not to promise anything on Israel that he couldn't deliver. And while his regime could make life difficult for the Jewish state (largely by recruiting, training, arming and financing Lebanese and Palestinian guerrillas), total destruction required the full participation of Israel's Arab neighbors, especially Egypt and Syria.
Khomeini's anti-Israeli stance was largely opportunistic â a means of wooing the Arabs who, being mostly Sunnis, regarded the ayatollah's Shiite revolution with suspicion.
He also knew that Israel's presence represented a kind of insurance for Iran's own security. For, had Israel not been there to become the focus of Arab rage, Iran might have gotten that role. After all, many Arab dictators, including Iraq's Saddam Hussein, often spoke of dismembering Iran and "liberating" the Iranian province of Khuzestan (which they dubbed "Arabistan").
In the 1980s, Saddam's eight-year-long war against Iran (with the support of all Arab states except Syria and Lebanon) helped further tone down the new regime's hostility toward Israel. And when it was revealed that Israel had been shipping urgently needed anti-tank missiles to Iran to stop Iraqi armored attacks in 1985-86, many in Tehran wondered whether Iran and Israel did not, after all, face the same enemies.
But with the war's end in 1988, the mullahs reverted to their original anti-Israel posture. For years, the Islamic Republic waged a proxy war against Israel via the Lebanese Hezbollah and several Tehran-financed radical Palestinian groups, including Islamic Jihad.
Yet Ahmadinejad has gone several steps further â presenting the destruction of Israel as a major goal of his government. Why?
One reason may be his desire to distance himself as far as possible from his predecessor, Muhammad Khatami, and from Hashemi Rafsanjani, the powerful mullah-cum-businessman who still heads a key faction within the regime.
Ahmadinejad has criticized the "softness" of Khatami and his mentor Rafsanjani, which led to "a decline in revolutionary spirit." Thus the new stand on Israel may be part of a package of measures to revive the regime's original radical message.
Another reason may be Ahmadinejad's belief that Israel is preparing to attack Iran's nuclear sites as part of a broader U.S. plan against the Islamic Republic. He may thus be trying to mobilize Iranian and Arab public opinion for the coming showdown.
But the real reason for Ahmadinejad's Jihadist outburst may well be his deep conviction that it is the historic mission of the Islamic Republic to lead the Muslim world in a "war of civilization" against the West led by the United States. One of the first battlegrounds of such a war would be Israel.
Since his election in June, Ahmadinejad and his "strategic advisers" have used a bellicose terminology as part of their program to put Iran on a war footing. In the past few weeks, the regime has been massively militarized with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Ahmadinejad's main power-base, seizing control of almost all levers of power.
According to Gen. Salehi, one of Ahmadinejad's military advisers, a clash between the Islamic Republic and the United States has become inevitable. "We must be prepared," Salehi says. "The Americans will run away, leaving their illegitimate child [i.e., Israel] behind. And then Muslims would know what to do."
The war talk has given the Iranian economy the jitters, prompting the biggest crash ever of the Tehran Stock Exchange.
Remarkably, the new foreign policy aimed at provoking war with Israel and America has never been properly debated in the parliament, or even within the Cabinet. Some of Iran's senior diplomats, speaking anonymously, say they, too, have not been consulted.
Iranian author Amir Taheri is a member of Benador Associates.
#3
Remarkably, the new foreign policy aimed at provoking war with Israel and America has never been properly debated in the parliament, or even within the Cabinet. Some of Iran's senior diplomats, speaking anonymously, say they, too, have not been consulted.
Yeah, like there would actually be a difference if they were? I think not.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
