Iowahawk Guest Commentary
by Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi
Former Senior VP, Al-Qaeda In Iraq
Yo brosephus, what's crackalackin' with the booty smackin'? Longtime no fatwa. Like what's it been, 5 years? Yeah, I know, I got a whole inbox full of emails from you infidel fags all like, "yo Zark, holla at a playa, how's that paradise shit workin' out witchu?" And by the way, you can stop sending me them stupid LOLgoat pictures, I seen 'em all. Listen chump, Zarkman ain't got time for your internet jibber jabber, or twitter twatter, or whatever that latest earth shit is. And stop asking me to friend you up on FagBook to play MafiaWars or Cowville and all that gayass computer shit. Yo cuzz, Zarkman gots bigger problems.
Let me help you out son: this paradise resort is a straightup kick in the dick. I ain't playin' with you holmes, this shithole is worse than the Ramadi Inn during Taliban convention week. Yeah, I know it's supposed to be Allah's own 5-Diamond eternal reward getaway, peace be upon him, blah blah blah. But for fuck sake, can't he afford to hire a better staff? Look, Zarkman don't like to bitch, but if these fuckers don't give me a room upgrade real soon I got half a mind to drop them a nasty rating on Priceline.
Yeah, I got all the brochures. The all-you-can-eat buffet, the beach volleyball, the 24-hour poontang room service. But every time I ask about it, that fat sunburned asshole desk manager Lou is all like, "oh, I'm sorry Mister Zarqawi, that part of the property is currently under repairs." And then he starts laughing again like some damn idiot and stabs me right in the nutsack with a frickin' pitchfork. Customer service, my ass. Even the fire alarms don't work in this dump.
And don't get me started on their "famous 72-flavor virgin menu." Cuzz, I ain't had no snappa in so long my nards look like a pair of bearded 5-pound plums. Not that I'm experiencing lack of nookie, though. Wordlife cracka, the last 5 years has been one non-stop muthafuckin' prom night. With Zarkman as prom queen. I guess it wouldn't be so bad if my goddamned mystery dates bought me a corsage once in a while. Or if they didn't uses cheese graters as condoms.
HT Steve Keene's excellent Debtwatch blog
. My neighbour got a pre-declined credit card in the mail.
. Wives are having sex with their husbands because they cant afford batteries.
. CEOs are now playing miniature golf.
. Exxon-Mobil laid off 25 Congressmen.
. A stripper was killed when her audience showered her with rolls of pennies while she danced.
. I saw a Mormon with only one wife.
. If the bank returns your check marked Insufficient Funds, you call them and ask if they meant you or them.
. McDonalds is selling the 1/4 ouncer.
. Angelina Jolie adopted a child from America.
. Parents in Beverly Hills fired their nannies and learned their childrens names.
. My cousin had an exorcism but couldnt afford to pay for it, and they re-possessed her!
. A truckload of Americans was caught sneaking into Mexico.
. A picture is now only worth 200 words.
. When Bill and Hillary travel together, they now have to share a room.
. The Treasure Island casino in Las Vegas is now managed by Somali pirates.
And, finally .
. I was so depressed last night thinking about the economy, wars, jobs, my savings, Social Security, retirement funds, etc., I called the Suicide Hotline. I got a call centre in Pakistan, and when I told them I was suicidal, they got all excited, and asked if I could drive a truck.
#1
In 2004, Mr. Holder chose to file an amicus brief on behalf of Jose Padilla, the al-Qaeda terrorist sent to our country by bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to carry out a post-9/11 second wave of attacks.
On Sept. 12, 2001, Gen. Musharraf was in a meeting "when my military secretary told me that the U.S. secretary of state, Gen. Colin Powell, was on the phone. I said I would call back later." The milquetoasts of the State Department were in no mood for Musharraf's I'm-washing-my-hair routine, and, when he'd been dragged to the phone, he was informed that the Bush administration would bomb Pakistan "back to the Stone Age" if they didn't get everything they wanted. Musharraf concluded that America meant it.
A decade later, we're back to Sept. 10. Were Washington to call Islamabad as it did a decade ago, the Pakistanis would thank them politely and say they'd think it over and get back in six weeks, give or take. They think they've got the superpower all figured out -- that America is happy to spend bazillions of dollars on technologically advanced systems that can reach across the planet but it doesn't really have the stomach for changing the facts of the ground. That means that once in a while your big-time jihadist will be having a quiet night in watching "Dancing With the Stars," when all of a sudden Robocop descends from the heavens, kicks the door open, and it's time to get ready for your virgins. But other than that, in the bigger picture, day by day, all but unnoticed, things will go their way.
In the fall of 2001, discussing the collapse of the Taliban, Thomas Friedman, the in-house thinker at the New York Times, offered this bit of cartoon analysis: "For all the talk about the vaunted Afghan fighters, this was a war between the Jetsons and the Flintstones -- and the Jetsons won and the Flintstones know it."
But they didn't, did they? The Flintstones retreated to their caves, bided their time, and a decade later the Jetsons are desperate to negotiate their way out.
When it comes to instructive analogies, I prefer Khartoum to cartoons. If it took America a decade to avenge the dead of 9/11, it took Britain 13 years to avenge their defeat in Sudan in 1884. But, after Kitchener slaughtered the jihadists of the day at the Battle of Omdurman in 1897, he made a point of digging up their leader the Mahdi, chopping off his head and keeping it as a souvenir. The Sudanese got the message. The British had nary a peep out of the joint until they gave it independence six decades later -- and, indeed, the locals fought for King and (distant imperial) country as brave British troops during World War II. Even more amazingly, generations of English schoolchildren were taught about the Mahdi's skull winding up as Lord Kitchener's novelty paperweight as an inspiring tale of national greatness
#2
It took 13 years before the British could avenge Gordon's death and rid the Sudan of "Mahdism." General Henry Horatio Kitchener, who had been on the failed effort to rescue Gordon, led a new army up river, culminating in the uneven battle of Omdurman, near Khartoum, in September of 1898, in which the superior fire power of the British prevailed.
Kitchener had the Mahdi's tomb destroyed and his bones cast into the Nile, so as to leave nothing for the Mahdi's followers to rally around, he would later explain.
But the Mahdi's skull -- "large and shapely" as it would be described -- was presented to Kitchener, perhaps as a souvenir drinking cup. Kitchener suggested sending it to the College of Surgeons in London, where he thought Napoleon's intestines resided.
When the word got out, there was a howl of fury from the British press, unfriendly questions in parliament, and a condemnation from Queen Victoria herself, who said that removing the Mahdi's skull was "too much like the Middle Ages, " according to Kitchener biographer, Philip Warner.
Winston Churchill, who accompanied Kitchener's campaign, later wrote that he was "scandalized" by the "barbarous manner" in which Kitchener "had carried off the Mahdi's head in a kerosene can as a trophy."
Kitchener wrote an apologetic letter to the queen and the head was secretly buried in a Muslim cemetery.
On the day after Kitchener's victory, however, he wisely enlisted Mahdi's defeated army into his own Egyptian army, and no insurgency bedeviled the British in the Sudan thereafter.
Posted by: john frum ||
05/07/2011 7:36 Comments ||
Top||
#3
Whether its a picture of the charred remains being picked at upon Desert One, the dragging of the body of a fallen soldier in the Mog upon Black Hawk Down, or the bodies of the contractors hanging from the Fallujah bridge, the muzzies have set the standards for 'cultural sensitivity'. Know well this, the hand wringers and apologist who were absent their 'outrage' upon those incidents are now clearly showing they are with the enemy. It's not about 'civilized' behavior as much as surrendering to the enemy. They are saying 'shut up and get into the cattle car'.
[Dawn] "All praise is for the Almighty who bestowed sovereignty upon the army, then made the people subservient to the army and the army subservient to its own interests" -- Justice M R Kayani
Here we are today, at the lowest point in our recent history. Found not in a cave of Tora Bora or in the ragged mountains of Wazoo but in the serenity of Abbottabad, living within a mile of the famous parade ground of PMA Kakul, next door neighbour to an Army Major and in the city that hosts three regimental centres, the late Osama bin Laden He's dead, Jim! , in our very own country. Many had feared that this day would come, but never imagined he would be living in such a suspiciously well protected manner.
By this time, I can assume with a high confidence that opinions and columns in the hundreds, if not thousands, have been written on what was Pakistain's role in the raid, how Pakistain could have missed the most wanted man on Earth, what it means for Pakistain and how to move on. But, in the midst of all, we are losing a battle that we, the 'bloody civilians', have been eager to fight for too long.
Imagine this. The hurriedly called morning meeting at the roundtable in GHQ on May 2. Major and Lieutenant Generals tense and nervous, not knowing what to say. The General, K, possibly broke the ice by asking everyone about their last evening's score on the 9-holes at the state subsidised Rawalpindi Golf Club. It was a birdie on the difficult 6th, he said. Oh, and he allegedly met the Chief Minister of Punjab too for some unknown reason.
What goes on in the corridors of military power is a mystery to us. What guides their actions remains a complex web of calculations, strategic they say, often immoral, disgusting, irrational and suicidal in our eyes. They value their assets, they hedge their bets and they play both sides of the game and try to bluff the single most powerful country in the world, to which they have played as a near mercenary force for a fair time ("Our Army can be Your Army" said Field Marshal Ayub Khan, the darling of the khaki apologists).
What we know today is that this is possibly the biggest embarrassment the military has faced in a long, long time. Forget 1971, it was far more morally disastrous but it had its jingoistic and racist supporters, but even in the eyes of the khaki-apologist, today the military is naked and deserving of criticism. The khaki apologist who becomes a constitutionalist when it comes to the failings of the army (the politicians are the constitutional power holders, they guided the actions, they "sold the country", not the Army -- is the usual defence) and are cognizant of the military's powers only when it is on the good side of things, is angry today too. There are too many questions.
Did we protect him? Did we give him refuge? Why would we do that? If not, did we ignore his presence? Are we this incompetent? Did the Field Intelligence Unit (FIU) never ask a question about a mysterious seven kanal house with a three-story building, built by settlers known from being Waziristan? Is the holy mother of all agencies so inept and useless that in the sweeps done around areas visited regularly by the Army Chief and the upper hierarchy, they never got suspicious of the house and its residents? How did bin Laden come to Abbottabad in the first place? Did he take a Rs. 70, 13-seater Hiace ride from Mansehra and stop off at the Baloch Regimental Center?
If not, then why did they allow a foreign power to come in and hunt him down? Did our forces coordinate and collaborate with the US on the raid? Why are they not speaking? It is not as if they would not want to take credit for it. The logic of avoiding the local terrorists' wrath is just too pathetic, they already target us. Mullah Omar's, Hekmatyar's and Haqqani's anger be damned, this is their protector we are talking about. It is stupid, nay unimaginable, that our forces collaborated extensively and do not want to take credit for it. They would not risk inviting the wrath of the international media that they have called upon themselves today.
And then there is the ultimate nightmare. If they did not know about the operation, then really, like the Foreign Office in its poorly worded, shamefully funny press statement says, we failed to respond in time to nothing less than an invasion? At cruise speed, terrain hugging and avoiding radars, a UH-60 "Blackhawk" (or even the secretive stealth helicopter that are rumoured to have been used, although non-stealth Chinooks are alleged to have provided support too) would have easily spent more than 30 minutes inside Pak territory before the soldiers roped down into the compound. A 40-minute operation and then the return ride. In all, the US team spent at least an hour-and-a-half inside Pakistain and we failed to respond? Were our radars jammed completely? Did we even fail to respond to visual sighting of a bunch of helicopters? Is our response time so slow? With three regimental centres in a highly militarised town, no one was able to answer to a 40-minute ground operation by foreign forces? Are our defenses so inept and weak? Did we scramble jets? When did we, if, realise that it was a friendly country conducting an anti-terrorism raid and not "the enemy"? What is the purpose of keeping the armed forces if they consume such a large chunk of our budget and fail to respond to nothing less than an invasion that lasted for 90 full minutes?
I am, for not a single moment, arguing we should have shot down the Americans. I for one believe they did the right thing. For all we know, it was the nightmare we have, that some sympathetic group in our very forces protected the most wanted man on Earth. The questions I pose are the multitude that people from various facets of life and inclinations ask. They ask what would happen if India were to carry out the "surgical strike" that their jingoists threaten of? They ask, yes India is not the United States, but how could our air defense systems be so easily jammed and fooled and tricked? They ask, what is the response time to an invasion? What is the purpose of an Army that let's others not just operate in its territory, but come in, operate and go back?
So, today, we are at a point where the Army's defenses are weak. It is being criticised by the international community and ever so slightly, by locals too. But the criticism is weak and non-existent in comparison to what it should be. This is the time when the Army is rightfully exposed to the most criticism. If you ever held any views on civil-military balance that did not hold civilians in contempt, right now is the time to shout and be heard.
If there's anything that can be guaranteed, it is that the military will remain the most dominant player in the echelons of power for the times to come. And because that will happen, we will continue to fight for "strategic depth" in Afghanistan, we will continue to hold India as the mortal enemy, we will continue to amass even more nuclear weapons, procure even more fighter jets and buy another air refueler and what not. We will remain an impoverished, militarised, third world country. And as long as we remain militarised, and existing only to fight against the mythical enemy, the schools will remain dysfunctional, the hospitals non-existent and the people, poor, hungry and malnutritioned.
Barely 40 hours before the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group, or SEAL Team Six, fast roped down into the compound of Osama bin Laden, our Army Chief told a ceremony at the annual 'Youm-e-Shuhuda' (Day of the Martyrs) that prosperity must not come at the cost of honour and dignity. Where was the honour and dignity when, like the Foreign Office says, soldiers from another country basically invaded ours, operated and went back, without even so much as a bird being swatted in response?
The political process is an evolutionary one. Slowly, and slowly, we are moving towards a functional democracy. A Public Accounts Committee functions well today, maybe another institution of accountability and justice and public service will improve tomorrow. The politics of urbanisation is here. But amongst all this evolutionary change, unless the fish with the small legs comes out of the water, the process of evolution will face the ultimate barrier -- the military.
I do not aim to demonise the military here. Our soldiers have laid down immense sacrifices for the protection of our boundaries. They have protected us from threats, both internal and external. Even today, make no mistake, we are at a state of war for such a large active deployment of soldiers is nothing short of a full-fledged war, and they are the constant targets of the forces of evil and enemies of humanity. But it is the higher direction of war that is misguided and irrational. We wanted to liberate Kashmire in 1965 and we failed. It only resulted in a large loss of life, loss of sympathy for the Kashmire cause and a permanent setback to the economy. We sent soldiers to die on the peaks of Kargil ... three months of unprovoked Pak aggression, over 4000 dead Paks, another victory for India ... , fooling a Prime Minister and a nation and thinking that the world would accept that those were "non-state actors" and not our own soldiers. We abandoned our own uniformed men to die on the peaks when we could not even supply them with the basic food supplies for our war was adventurous and the shenanigans of a would-be autocrat. We have lost too many soldiers to the misguided policies of our higher brass. The soldier is just a pawn in the games of the powerful, for his life is a small price in the game of chess they play.
For all their failings, the politicians we have are ones we elected. Incompetent, greedy and often despicable as they are (supporting rapists and honour killers), they represent the collective will of the people in a system marred by inefficiencies and problems. Today is the time for them to come into action. It is not the time to be busy installing gas pipes in UC-84 of Muzaffargarh or to be making sure that their brothers and cousins got the 10 kilometre road construction contract. Today is the time to hold the military accountable for their failures and their actions and bring some direction to the state of affairs.
If there was a time for all facets of society to collectively bargain for change and demand action, this is the time. Come what may, a loosely tied group of non-elected, unelectable, "civil society activists" cannot bring change. Change has to come from the political class. Only they have the tools and the platform to do it. It is directly affected by the media and the perceived voice of the public. The fire breathing demagogues of television ape each other. Kharbooza kharboozey ko dekh kar rang pakarta hai. One of them rips apart a poetic self-righteous line on illusory sovereignty and others feel the need to do so. Imagine that if we can collectively raise hue and cry, how the politicians cannot become sensible and secure enough to take action and hold the military accountable. While it would be commendable if they could resign for their failures, but they get extensions, it is upto the public to demand accountability. Intelligence failures in 1965 were never addressed, the concerned officer was promoted(!). In 1999, the adventurer toppled the government. Isn't it time we demanded accountability of the powerful and unaccountable?
The Kargil Review Committee Report, commonly called the Subrahmanyam Report, was just a small step in the evolution of India's civil-military balance. The politicians held their military accountable for the failures of Kargil. We never did that. Today is the most opportune time to do that. Constitute a Parliamentary Commission, for we do not have a Subrahmanyam, nor should we rely on ex-bureaucrats to do that. Select a few hawks, a Tehmina Daultana and a Khawaja Asif. Select a few mild, calculated and efficient politicians, a Raza Rabbani and SherryRehman. Do not put dubiously pro-military politicians like Chaudhry Nisar or ex-generals like Jehangir Ashraf Qazi on it. Summon the DG ISI, DG MI, DG IB. Summon the Army Chief. Summon the bureaucrats. Summon the experts. Summon everybody. Make them testify. Ask them the tough questions. Make the report, if not the proceedings, public.
What should they ask them? I cannot imagine that anybody would even want to ask the unimaginable (did we protect him?). It can only be an intelligence failure inquiry. The good that can come out of this exercise is enormous. A much needed and necessary reform in the intelligence community, a reform in the civil-military balance and a reform in the culture that defines the rules of Islamabad. For once, we could even bring the ISI under civilian control and make it focus on intelligence and counter-terrorism not chasing journalists on CD-70s. For once, we could, just maybe, begin to redress the civilian-military [im]balance in the favour of the civilians. Define the policy, make the policy and own it. Do not let the Generals do it for you anymore. We can, for the first time ever, dream of a national security and foreign policy dictated not by Rawalpindi and Aabpara, but one where civilians make competent decisions, impose their supervision and enable the military to competently implement it.
The op-ed writers, the TV anchors and the pundits are busy answering the questions that either the west has or the old, aged line around the smokescreen of illusory sovereignty. They are missing the point. There is good that holds for us in this.
In the wake of 1971, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto passed gagging orders to prevent the media from criticising the military. The soldiers who returned later were protected by the state and no one was allowed to criticise their actions. Their honour was literally restored by Bhutto. And they sent him to the gallows.
We must not put a shroud on the failures of the military anymore. We have embarrassed our country a lot already. Today is the time for reform, redress and for us to start a new beginning.The military must face music for its actions and failures. Civilian power must be recognised. Strike while the iron is hot.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/07/2011 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[9 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
#1
Let me guess.... within a month of publishing this article the author is found in a static state with a dead bird in his mouth.
Posted by: Water Modem ||
05/07/2011 1:45 Comments ||
Top||
#2
"where civilians make competent decisions, impose their supervision and enable the military to competently implement it"
#3
Newc, the author is right that that is a critical step. I agree with your assessment about the likelihood, but one could wish it to come about nonetheless .....
The United States has no purpose. That is perhaps its greatest achievement. America's founding document, its Declaration of Independence, allows that a state exists only to secure life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
That's it. There's a curious lack of ambition in those words. The United States was not founded for the greater glory of anything, or as the necessary outcome of history, but for the freedom to collect figurines, to join a clogging troupe, to take a road trip. Yet these words, which carry no ideology whatsoever, are the ones that keep winning. This is the lesson of the past 10 years, and one Osama bin Laden, a man animated by a grandiose vision of restoring a 7th century Muslim empire, never grasped. The most successful organizing principle the world has ever known is a simple guarantee that we can buy and do things that have no point greater than the satisfaction of our own happiness.
On Twitter on May 2 a Bahraini named Mubarak Mattar, in a translation from the Arabic by Global Voices, wrote, "With all our differences with al Qaeda, we are proud of the death of a Muslim man who was able to shake the world at a time all the Arab armies united couldn't do that. ... You are the only one who said 'No' in an era where the Arabs said 'Yes.' "
In a spectacular, bloody way, Osama bin Laden said, simply, "no." This is not the philosophy of a new prophet in a clash of civilizations; it's the word of a nihilist. We feared the compelling power of his ideology, but what actually resonated was his raised fist. That's why it gives him too much to call him a monster. Remember him as a thug and murderer, but also as a self-obsessed diva with a gift for timing and spectacle. Bin Laden was a trust-funder who took up performance art.
A 2010 International Monetary Fund report on economies in the Middle East and North Africa separated out the region's oil importers: Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria, and Tunisia. These countries all have total unemployment and youth unemployment far above global averages. To change any of this, writes the IMF, together they will need to create some 18.5 million full-time jobs by 2020. The report blames bloated public sectors, restrictive regulation, and education that fails to match training to jobs; it reads as if it had been written to validate Mohamed Bouazizi's despair. Bin Laden had no answer for it. That doomed him long before the Navy SEALs arrived at his compound.
What I'd like to be able to say to myself, 10 years younger, is that Osama bin Laden will lose because nobody actually wants to live in a cave. Even bin Laden didn't want to live in a cave. As Bloomberg News reported, in Abbottabad he sent runners out for equal amounts of Coke and Pepsi, for Nestlé milk and the good-quality shampoos. The societies that make these things do not turn up their noses at the consumer and his whims, the needs that lack any justification larger than the personal.
#2
These countries all have total unemployment and youth unemployment far above global averages. To change any of this, writes the IMF, together they will need to create some 18.5 million full-time jobs by 2020. The report blames bloated public sectors, restrictive regulation, and education that fails to match training to jobs;
To me, this sounds like Obama's plan for the US, no?
Four is the number at the heart of the violent counter-reformation that confronts our Western values. Four is the number of wives the Koran says a man may have. No such latitude is afforded to women. Osama bin Laden, above all a man of the Koran, took his full quota of wives, a luxury not available to most Muslim men. He was 17 when he married his first wife, who was also his first cousin. She was 14. While this was in accordance with historical custom, in our culture it would have been statutory rape.
Her name was Najwa Ghanem. She had her first child at age 16. Her second at 17. Her third at 19. By the time she was 21 she was the mother of four. In 1982, when bin Laden was 25, he married again, to a woman with a doctorate in child psychology. They had one child. He married a third time, a marriage which produced four children. Then a fourth time, and another three children. All up, 19 children from four simultaneous marriages. In our culture, that would be bigamy.
The cult of personality and mythology that grew around bin Laden masked the real menace, and real cause, for which he stood. Because when you scrape away the layers of rhetoric of such jihadists, or those who rationalise their actions, it is evident their primary concern in seeking to impose strict sharia is to control and constrain women's freedom. This is the core cultural impact of sharia.
Though sharia is embraced or tolerated by most Muslim women, it is unforgiving, even dangerous, towards those who defy the control allowed to husbands, fathers, brothers. This is not confined to the wild Wahhabist fringe that bin Laden inhabited. The constraints on women imposed daily by sharia are imposed on hundreds of millions of Muslim women by hundreds of millions of Muslim men.
In this context, the whole concept of Islamic holy war has been in part an expression of sexual repression and sexual oppression. Bin Laden was not a great warrior. His greatest asset was inherited family wealth, which he used to buy influence among warlords, fund recruits and support his greed for women.
After money, his most valuable asset was the pipeline of men willing to murder innocents in the name of Allah. Like all activists willing to murder, his terrorist cell was able to cast a very long shadow on a very small budget. Thus the concept of al-Qaeda was, and remains, a viral, self-managing movement which justifies murder and intimidation by invoking the Koran, a deeply contradictory document. The self-styled religion of peace is a self-styled religion of war.
Al-Qaeda's harsh and anti-democratic version of Islam was irrelevant in the Arab spring earlier this year, when tumult against oppressive regimes rocked Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Syria, Jordan, Yemen, Bahrain and Kuwait. Women took to the streets. In Egypt the unemployment rate for young women is almost 60 per cent. They have a huge stake in reform. But when a steering committee of 10 prominent Egyptians was set up to fill the vacuum left by the fall of President Hosni Mubarak, women were conspicuously absent.
Not just sexual inequality, but sexual repression, is a structural problem in the Muslim world. Millions of young men cannot have a girlfriend and are unable to find a wife because they are unable to find a job. A glimpse was provided on February 11, during the anti-government demonstrations in Tahrir Square in Cairo, when a blonde, attractive American network TV journalist, Lara Logan, was set upon and sexually assaulted by a throng of men after she was separated from her bodyguards. It took a wedge of Egyptian soldiers half an hour to extract her.
Whether the Arab spring translates into greater democracy and greater rights for women remains unknowable. In Egypt, the most organised political group is the Muslim Brotherhood, which wants strict sharia.
And the last time a regime was toppled by people power in the Middle East, on the streets of Tehran in 1979, it was led by left-wing students and many women. But their victory soon gave way to theocratic oppression, a long night which has not lifted after 32 years.
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.
Wazoo
What we know today is that this is possibly the biggest embarrassment the military has faced in a long, long time. Forget 1971, it was far more morally disastrous but it had its jingoistic and racist supporters, but even in the eyes of the khaki-apologist, today the military is naked and deserving of criticism. The khaki apologist who becomes a constitutionalist when it comes to the failings of the army (the politicians are the constitutional power holders, they guided the actions, they "sold the country", not the Army -- is the usual defence) and are cognizant of the military's powers only when it is on the good side of things, is angry today too. There are too many questions.
