Deborah Orr
Next week I'm going to the cinema. Definitely. Without the required escort? Stone her.
But this Thursday evening saw me sitting on a panel of five women in Whitechapel, and taking part in a "Dialogue With Islam" about whether the veil is "a mark of separation" or "a statement of identity". That there was a 'debate' indicates that we still have a problem.
Quite how these two categories are mutually exclusive, I'm afraid, was not resolved during the debate. Neither was anything else. They're quite the same, actually, and that's the point.
The more I try to get to grips with this issue, the more puzzling I find it all. I learned during the course of some full and frank exchanges, though, that the veiling of women has got nothing whatsoever to do with female sexuality, protection from the gaze of strangers, or anything else at all. The reason why Muslim women adopt total face and body shrouding is because Allah tells them to. There is, apparently, no other explanation that is either relevant or necessary, whether you believe in Allah or you don't. There is a difference, however: if you wear a shroud because you believe that Allan demands it, fine and dandy. If you wear a shroud because you're afraid that if you don't, the local hard boyz from the Committee for the Protection of Virtue and Elimination of Vice will beat you half to death, then we have a serious problem. It's hard to be a good, progressive feminist when you're scared of being killed if you violate some arcane rule. Allan's commands aren't the central issue here (for many of us), it's the demands of his more fanatical, male adherents.
I learned too, more forcefully than I've heard it expressed before, that the idea that this "dress code" oppresses women is ridiculous. Sure Deb, seems rather silly: dressing women like sacks of potatoes shouldn't be considered oppressive in the least. After all, it's the woman's responsibility to control the desires of the men around her.
The reason why there has never been a concerted Muslim feminist movement (I'm told) is that Muslim women have always had all of the equalities that Western women are still struggling with the vile British patriarchy to achieve. Quite where this splendid state of affairs can be seen working in an actual society remains somewhat elusive though. Which is a shame, because I'd be off there like a shot if only I could locate the place. Pay attention, Deb: Saoodi-controlled Arabia. Iran. Mauritania. Great place, that Mauritania.
Here though, Muslims are constantly and invariably demonised (the audience started jeering when I questioned this entirely negative view), it's all the Government's fault, everything, and since Islamic terrorism is a contradiction in terms, ... Not a contradiction, but increasingly redundant.
... it doesn't exist and therefore can hardly be cited as an influence, rightly or wrongly, on the current woeful state of misunderstanding and distrust. I actually understand the people who advocate my death or forced conversion to their religion, and I always distrust them.
People never go on about Christian terrorists, apparently, which proves something -- That there aren't too many. Remember Eric Rudolph? You know him, the fellow who murdered a couple of abortion doctors. Remember the end to his story? A Department of Justice headed by a Bush appointee and an FBI headed by a Bush appointee prosecuted him in a courtroom headed by a Bush appointee, and he's now incarcerated in a federal prison run by a Bush appointee.
And he's about the only one I can think of here in the States.
-- although I do vaguely remember the days when you only appeared to get two kinds of terrorist anyway - Catholic and Protestant. You haven't travelled much, else you'd have encountered Coptic, Orthodox and Chaldian terrorists.
(In an unfortunate cultural echo, they wore black face coverings that showed only their eyes as well.) It was totally grim, of course, back in the days when any Irish person was viewed as a potential terrorist, and much injustice resulted from such assumptions. Remember those days? Remember how few IRA hard boyz it took to bring an entire population under suspicion? And how the moderate Irish government, and moderate Northern Irish government, and brave moderate Irish men and women, went to great lengths in blood and sacrifice to bring it to an end? We're still waiting for the moderate Muslim community and moderate Muslim governments to do the same.
I hate the British government's demands that the Muslim community should take on collective guilt for Islamic terror, ... Wrong. They don't demand guilt. They demand responsibility. The Muslim community has to help police itself, and good, loyal Brits of Muslim faith need to rat out the terrorists and terrorist supporters in their midst. There's a difference.
... and I do consider myself to have a great deal in common with the Muslim people I was discussing these matters with. In that case, you're on my list.
I didn't support the attack on Afghanistan. Why the hell not? Did you support the Taliban? Or is it that they were too far away and the evil they were committing, from blowing up Buddhas to executing their women in soccer stadiums to enabling terrorist attacks halfway around the world, was too distant for you to care? Remind me, aren't liberals supposed to care about the oppression of ordinary people? Here was the Taliban lopping heads and beating people for the slightest of infractions. Other than issuing statements, what would you do about it? Poseur.
I didn't support the war in Iraq. The best face you can put on that position is that you simply didn't (and don't) give a rat's ass about the ordinary people of Iraq. Screw 'em, you got yours. That they were starved and beaten and used cynically for Saddam's own ends, well, that's their tough luck. If they care enough they can revolt on their own, and if Saddam crushes them too bad. And the sanctions were evil because babies were dying; after all the BBC told you so.
The people who were so firm about doing away with (for example) apartheid melted away when confronted with the genuine evil of Saddam. What does that say about your morality?
I think the "war on terror" and the "axis of evil" are stupid and divisive pieces of dumb propaganda. Until more of your citizens are blown up in the Tube. Then you might gain an appreciation that terror is real, that law enforcement alone as the single arrow in your quiver is an inadequate response, and that there is indeed collusion of evil people to generate and spread terror.
I'm troubled by the social exclusion of many Muslims, just as I am by that of other British minorities. Britain is one of the most inclusive countries in the world today. Go ahead and be troubled by the 'social exclusion' of many Muslims; just be mindful as to why, and the extent to which it's generated by Muslims themselves who consider you to be unclean and an infidel.
I agree with many of the criticism that the people in Mile End made of British society. Of course you do. Can't possibly imagine that you or they would have anything good to say about your society. That's part of being a good progressive: all cultures are equal except your own which is inferior. Even we at Rantburg have better things to say about Britain than you do, and you live there.
But I'm seen by many of the people I spoke with on Thursday as Islamophobic, just because I have some criticisms of Islam - and indeed of revealed religion generally. You might expect that Muslims who care greatly about their faith will consider atheistic critics of said faith to be evil and unworthy of respect. Christians also tend to get a little riled when confronted by such people, especially when their critics are both strident and stupid.
Except a Christian won't behead you.
That they seem entirely anti-Western, on the other hand, is it be honoured, respected and genially tolerated, if we are to prove ourselves as liberally democratic as we like to say we are. It's quite a trick - having to accept opposing values in order to be seen to uphold your own. And remember, your own society is e-e-e-evil and inferior. Who says so? You do. Why would you expect your opponents to disagree?
Turning up before a bunch of people who have nothing positive to say about Britain or its culture is depressing. For you as a good progressive it should have been exhilerating.
I'm all for meeting people half way, and so are many British Muslims. But this audience, at least, appeared to want to hear nothing except a fulsome surrender to the idea that the West is always terrible and Islam is always best. No can do. Why not? You seem most of the way there already. Remember to have yourself fitted for a black burqa -- Seafarious, our own fashion consultant, points out that blue will make your ankles look fat.
#4
That is Dr Steve White, wxj - not me. Got all over this, didn't he? Lol. I should charge him the Madam's fee for posting it - I can tell he left with a smile on his face...
The Iraq Study Group has reached a consensus.
by Robert Kagan & William Kristol
In the frenzied final week of the Iraq Study Group's deliberations, co-chairmen James Baker and Lee Hamilton took time out to pose for a photo spread for a fashion magazine, Men's Vogue. This might seem a dubious decision given the gravity of the moment and their self-appointed roles as the nation's saviors. The "wise men" who counseled Lyndon Johnson during Vietnam and the members of the Kissinger Commission who tried to reshape Ronald Reagan's Central American policies did not sit for Annie Leibovitz in the middle of their endeavors. Nor did they hire a mega-public relations firm to sell their recommendations (supposedly intended for the president) to the public at large, as Baker and Hamilton have done.
But we think the chairmen's self-promotion and big-time product marketing are perfectly understandable. They have to do something to distract attention from two unpleasant facts.
The first is that after nine months of deliberation and an unprecedented build-up of expectations that these sages would produce some brilliant, original answer to the Iraq conundrum, the study group's recommendations turn out to be a pallid and muddled reiteration of what most Democrats, many Republicans, and even Donald Rumsfeld and senior military officials have been saying for almost two years. Thus, according to at least six separate commission sources sent out to pre-spin the press, the Baker-Hamilton report will call for a gradual and partial withdrawal of American forces in Iraq, to begin at a time unspecified and to be completed by a time unspecified. The goal will be to hand over responsibility for security in Iraq to the Iraqis themselves as soon as this is feasible, and to shift the American role to training rather than fighting the insurgency and providing security. The decision of how far, how fast, and even whether to withdraw will rest with military commanders in Iraq, who will base their determination on how well prepared the Iraqis are to take over. Even after the withdrawal, the study group envisions keeping at least 70,000 American troops in Iraq for years to come.
Continued on Page 49
#1
I've won several bets (friendly and "future beers to be named later" variety) with this preposterous commission outcome. A few related ones remain to be settled, when Dubya formally rejects all of the specific recommendations.
Of course the administration should be horse-whipped for ever going along with the whole idea in the first place. It goes way beyond Bush, or Iraq, or Donks vs. Trunks. The US does not use commissions to make decisions on strategy in war - we have elections, and elected officials to do that. The familiar dodges involving base closure and perennial Social Security reform are repugnant but probably now institutionalized - but war strategy? This is insane - even if little comes of it (and as Kristol and Kagan point out, the commission exercise has been yet one more prop used by the media to flog their latest Iraq priorities).
Yet despite Bush's residual steel, I find it hard to imagine any changes in the direction of pursuing anything like victory. If the administration can watch its post-modern "counter insurgency" approach sputter and fail for over a year, helping turn Congress over to a party that may be the most lifeless and pathetic ever to win a US election, without firing anyone or trying anything different, they can probably (incredibly) continue to fiddle-f**k in Iraq now.
Leaks about re-thinking "Sunni engagement" are beyond ironic. There were many whose initial reaction to Sunni engagement was deep concern - and election turnout and unity government did nothing to change matters. Attempting to split and co-opt the Sunni community of course made sense - but as with everything in Iraq we forgot to first "set the conditions" by breaking the will of the die-hard resistance and making life intolerable for those who tolerated al Qaeda. The Sunnis who joined the government could never deliver enough to break the complex grip that fear and violence have back home.
Strategic boldness and tactical lassitude - an odd and unfortunate combination, so far ....
#2
The *real* solution is going to come from the pentagon group led by Colonel McMaster.
And that's theone I trust. He and the 3rd ACR did arguably the best job of it over there of any Army unit. Col McMAster "Gets It". That and he was a young pup when I served with him in GW1, but a damn fine officer. If we had more like McMaster as General Officers I bet that we'd have a lot less of the BS ROE and other hamstringing we have done to ourselves - far more effective meaning far less blood shed on BOTH sides.
#3
FWIW, I think this commission nonsense has two functions:
1. to smoke out the spineless cowards.
2. provide political cover for whoever needs it.
1 is short term, 2 is long term. There was no chance that it's reccomendations were going to be implemented. Sort of like the moynahan commission, WRT welfare reform.
just my $0.02
Posted by: N guard ||
12/02/2006 10:07 Comments ||
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#4
Right on all counts, OldSpook and N guard.
McMaster does seem like someone who understands that force and will are still the first topic in war - not jobs and electricity.
I'm hampered by limited info, but I wonder if there's a widespread split in the Army as I saw in the palace in Baghdad, between those with almost a fixation on non-military measures and those who were more practical and realized what people and environment we're dealing with.
"The U.S. military is no longer able to defeat a bloody insurgency in western Iraq [Al Anbar Province] or counter al Qaeda's rising popularity there, according to newly disclosed details from a classified Marine Corps intelligence report," began a front-page article in yesterday's Washington Post by Dafna Linzer and Thomas E. Ricks. It concerned the so-called "Devlin Report," a five-page document allegedly filled with gloom and doom. It contrasts completely with my article Return to Ramadi, in the Nov. 27 Weekly Standard, in which I write that the largest city in the province is slowly being reclaimed from al Qaeda. By coincidence, the day my article hit the stands the Times of London published an extensive article coming to the same conclusion as mine. But for the timing, you'd practically think one of us had plagiarized the other.
Why such different conclusions between our articles and the Post's and whom to believe?
It helps to know that the Times writer and I both went to and reported from Ramadi. We didn't summarize classified documents or quote unnamed sources. Linzer and Ricks stayed home and reported from Washington, relying entirely on an unpublished document in addition to quoting a "senior intelligence official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity." I have recently ripped the media's "Baghdad Brigade" for pretending it can cover a country the size of California from a single Iraqi city. What does that say about those who think they can cover Al Anbar from Washington?
All of this illustrates a point I and others have desperately tried to make, that you cannot understand the Anbar if you haven't been there. That's why I went three times to the province and twice to Ramadi itself. It wasn't to attend a beerfest. It may also help explain things that Ricks has a recent book declaring the war a "Fiasco," and hence is already inclined towards a pessimistic view. Top-notch milblogger Bill Roggio at The Fourth Rail declares, "Military and intelligence sources that I spoke to who have read the [Devlin] report indicate that they largely agree with [it] . . . but not as presented by the Washington Post." (Emphasis his.)
Alas, as much attention as my article has gotten it's hard to compete with a Post A1 article. Further, as Vietnam's Tet Offensive proved, guerrilla wars are as likely to be decided in the media as on the battlefield. It's looking like Iraq will prove no exception.
Posted by: Steve White ||
12/02/2006 00:08 ||
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#1
I guess it's a good thing that the Germans and Japanese didn't possess the resources, skills, and natural advantages that the enemy has in Anbar, or I guess we'd have lost WWII. Oh, wait ....
#3
...as Vietnam's Tet Offensive proved, guerrilla wars are as likely to be decided in the media as on the battlefield. It's looking like Iraq will prove no exception.
This being the case, that makes the MSM media the enemy, shouldn't they be treated as such in a real physical fashion?
#4
Hard to believe but Walter Cronkite was on our side during World War II. I'm not kidding.
His life's conduct makes a lot more sense when you consider that in World War II he was on the side of the Soviet Union as well as the U. S. Which was intentional and which coincidence?
#6
Mikey the Viet Cong were pretty much destroyed during Tet. But they didn't have the endless bodies the Religion of Pieces has. There was then as now kind of traitorous 5th column we face today in the MSM.
#7
Hard to believe but Walter Cronkite was on our side during World War II. I'm not kidding.
Walter lost me at Tet too. Walter was in the European Theater when the Bulge happened in December 44, when we were surprised by a enemy offensive, that killed far more than Tet, that resulted in the destruction of an entire American division, and just after a serious bloody drubbing in the Hurtgen Forest. He knew better. No excuse. Im sure a Baker Group circa 1944 would have been working on an honorable withdraw after that if not earlier in the bogged down human grinding machine that the bocage country was in Normandy for weeks after the invasion.
#8
This is exactly why I've adovcated media blackouts as much as possible. In the case of Ramadi - at least for 90 days, concurrently loosen the ROE, and then turn our lads & the ISF loose on all suspected assholes.
#11
I can make a case for repeal of the Freedom of the Press. No shit. They had an enormous chance to do good here in the US, but they obviously fucked up. They became the enemy of the people, and that sin cannot be tolorated. Put a price on the head of every journalist.
#12
wxj - But they've been there since the end of WW-II. There have been no consequences for it, either. Hell, they credit themselves with bringing down a President, trashing US Foreign Policy, installing an entire generation raised on the smell of their own 60's brain farts into the power positions of most of AmeriKKKa's institutions, and turned the entire US toward their Stalinist nightmare, er, utopia.
#13
"The next war had better be completely finished in less than 3 months to prevent the media from organizing."
I figure the next President who has to wage one will reckon he's got more like two weeks. Tops.
"I wonder if the MSM assholes have ever thought about what this will look like?"
If they have, which I doubt, they certainly don't give a shit.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
12/02/2006 20:55 Comments ||
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#14
Start treating them as the enemy they are, freedom of the press is not freedom to not have your ass kick by a fellow citizen or your ass deported by the government as a hostile alien.
Freedom of the press is about the government not interfering in the legal opertaion of the press. If you are doing illegal things, like giving away state secrets, the First Amendment doesn't cover you.
#15
IMNSHO, the Sunnis screwed themselves by believing all the MSM's hype about how 'fearsome' they and the insurgency were. As a result the Sunnis lost any influence in the goverment and the security forces to groups that will see that their heads end up on stakes.
If the insurgency has gotten fiercer, it's out of desperation.
This should make many here happy, ecstatic even. Meat for every ankle-biting crybaby cum armchair super-warrior on the planet. Dig in. WaPo's got your backs.
Ever since 1948, when Harvard professor Arthur Schlesinger Sr. asked 55 historians to rank U.S. presidents on a scale from "great" to "failure," such polls have been a favorite pastime for those of us who study the American past.
Changes in presidential rankings reflect shifts in how we view history. When the first poll was taken, the Reconstruction era that followed the Civil War was regarded as a time of corruption and misgovernment caused by granting black men the right to vote. As a result, President Andrew Johnson, a fervent white supremacist who opposed efforts to extend basic rights to former slaves, was rated "near great." Today, by contrast, scholars consider Reconstruction a flawed but noble attempt to build an interracial democracy from the ashes of slavery -- and Johnson a flat failure.
More often, however, the rankings display a remarkable year-to-year uniformity. Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and Franklin D. Roosevelt always figure in the "great" category. Most presidents are ranked "average" or, to put it less charitably, mediocre. Johnson, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Richard M. Nixon occupy the bottom rung, and now President Bush is a leading contender to join them. A look at history, as well as Bush's policies, explains why.
At a time of national crisis, Pierce and Buchanan, who served in the eight years preceding the Civil War, and Johnson, who followed it, were simply not up to the job. Stubborn, narrow-minded, unwilling to listen to criticism or to consider alternatives to disastrous mistakes, they surrounded themselves with sycophants and shaped their policies to appeal to retrogressive political forces (in that era, pro-slavery and racist ideologues). Even after being repudiated in the midterm elections of 1854, 1858 and 1866, respectively, they ignored major currents of public opinion and clung to flawed policies. Bush's presidency certainly brings theirs to mind.
Harding and Coolidge are best remembered for the corruption of their years in office (1921-23 and 1923-29, respectively) and for channeling money and favors to big business. They slashed income and corporate taxes and supported employers' campaigns to eliminate unions. Members of their administrations received kickbacks and bribes from lobbyists and businessmen. "Never before, here or anywhere else," declared the Wall Street Journal, "has a government been so completely fused with business." The Journal could hardly have anticipated the even worse cronyism, corruption and pro-business bias of the Bush administration.
Despite some notable accomplishments in domestic and foreign policy, Nixon is mostly associated today with disdain for the Constitution and abuse of presidential power. Obsessed with secrecy and media leaks, he viewed every critic as a threat to national security and illegally spied on U.S. citizens. Nixon considered himself above the law.
Bush has taken this disdain for law even further. He has sought to strip people accused of crimes of rights that date as far back as the Magna Carta in Anglo-American jurisprudence: trial by impartial jury, access to lawyers and knowledge of evidence against them. In dozens of statements when signing legislation, he has asserted the right to ignore the parts of laws with which he disagrees. His administration has adopted policies regarding the treatment of prisoners of war that have disgraced the nation and alienated virtually the entire world. Usually, during wartime, the Supreme Court has refrained from passing judgment on presidential actions related to national defense. The court's unprecedented rebukes of Bush's policies on detainees indicate how far the administration has strayed from the rule of law.
One other president bears comparison to Bush: James K. Polk. Some historians admire him, in part because he made their job easier by keeping a detailed diary during his administration, which spanned the years of the Mexican-American War. But Polk should be remembered primarily for launching that unprovoked attack on Mexico and seizing one-third of its territory for the United States.
Lincoln, then a member of Congress from Illinois, condemned Polk for misleading Congress and the public about the cause of the war -- an alleged Mexican incursion into the United States. Accepting the president's right to attack another country "whenever he shall deem it necessary," Lincoln observed, would make it impossible to "fix any limit" to his power to make war. Today, one wishes that the country had heeded Lincoln's warning.
Historians are loath to predict the future. It is impossible to say with certainty how Bush will be ranked in, say, 2050. But somehow, in his first six years in office he has managed to combine the lapses of leadership, misguided policies and abuse of power of his failed predecessors. I think there is no alternative but to rank him as the worst president in U.S. history. You're welcome.
One of the greatest traits of the french Vth Republic is that each president is worse than the one before him, and make people regret him.
Who could have thought that mitterrand, that awful, cancer-ridden crook, would be seen as a better man than shirak, by contrast?
Current Fearless Leader is yacoub ben shirak.
I let you imagine what it will take for the curse of the Vth to be upholded, and our 2007 president to fail even THAT standard.
The worst US president will be Mensa material, in contrast.
#5
"But Polk should be remembered primarily for launching that unprovoked attack on Mexico and seizing one-third of its territory for the United States."
Further evidence for the phrase, "inverted reality based community."
This mini-meme is being fed to most kids studying history these days, but it bears little resemblance to the truth.
Like most of the revisionist crap that the academic left attempts to spread, a la Gramsci, these days.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
12/02/2006 14:29 Comments ||
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#6
Johnson, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Richard M. Nixon occupy the bottom rung, and now President Bush is a leading contender to join them.
No Carter?
Well this guy's obviously full of shit...
#7
"worst president" has several meanings:
1) Bush doesn't give a rat's a** about Eric Foner's opinion.
2) Bush doesn't even know who Eric Foner is.
3) Bush doesn't care what the Washington Post thinks.
Therefore George Bush is the worst human being ever.
Al
Posted by: frozen al ||
12/02/2006 16:39 Comments ||
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#8
...Christ, not THIS sh*t again...Every Republican president that I can remember (that's Nixon on forward) has been proclaimed 'the worst President ever" by one or more Learned Idiots.
Until of course the next Republican president takes office, and then he becomes 'the worst ever'..
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
12/02/2006 17:40 Comments ||
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#9
You really know what is the "worst ever"? It's the sheep who read total crap like this, by guys like this and, believe it; that is the "worst ever"
#10
do we get to vote on Eric Foner's status as "biggest donk bitch"?
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/02/2006 19:46 Comments ||
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#11
FDR was one of the best.
After 4 years in the White House, the US was in a depression.
After 8 years in the White House, the US was in The Great Depression.
After 12 years in the White House, the US was in World War 2.
Phalking brilliant, wasn't he ? His anti-depression policy actually extended the depression by several years. Big brother government, socialism, no workie.
We know that we are being lied to. Sometimes we just don't realize how much we are being lied to.
The more sordid the Islamic present seems, the more we are told of the glories of the Islamic past. And the most glorious of the glories of Islam, the most enlightened of its enlightenments, are the "Islamic science" and "Islamic philosophy" of the Golden Age.
So what does Islamic law say about this science and this philosophy? According to Reliance of the Traveller: The Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law by Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri (d. 1368), they are unlawful, serious affronts to Islam, a form of apostasy. Apologists for Islam in the West brag about the "Islamic science" and "Islamic philosophy" that their accomplices in the Islamic world condemn.
Reliance of the Traveller lists the following sorts of "unlawful" knowledge:
(1) sorcery
(2) philosophy
(3) magic
(4) astrology
(5) the sciences of the materialists
(6) and anything that is a means to create doubts
#1
Islam is the antithesis of intelligent thought, even about God. It is so self-contradictory that it insults itself. It is a death cult without peer, and a piece of fecal matter as a lifestyle. It denies the entire Old Testament, while pretending to embrace it. It has no validity, and there is no reason not to flush it down the tubes along with zoroastrianism and Quetzelcoatl worship - both of which reached higher intellectual and scientific levels than Islam can ever hope to achieve.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
12/02/2006 20:53 Comments ||
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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.
Deborah Orr
The Iraq Study Group has reached a consensus.
