Article

2005-05-25 Iraq-Jordan

Archived material is restricted to Rantburg regulars and members. If you need access email fred.pruitt=at=gmail.com with your nick to be added to the members list. There is no charge to join Rantburg as a member.

Posted by Jort Snaiter9204 2005-05-25 00:44|| || Front Page|| [11138 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Your seething makes me stronger.

Posted by Conan the Grammarian 2005-05-25 11:06|| 2005-05-25 11:06|| Front Page Top

#2 would have been cooler if he were wearing the boxers with little teddy bears

Posted by mhw 2005-05-25 11:12|| 2005-05-25 11:12|| Front Page Top

#3 Arabs have a little fury for everything under the sun it seems. It's a fatal operating system flaw. You'll never in twenty lifetimes ever see the headline "Arabs react with calm rational reflection to news of (insert anything in the news)."

Posted by Tkat 2005-05-25 11:17|| 2005-05-25 11:17|| Front Page Top

#4 The frenzies over PissKoran and SodomBriefs may represent a tipping point in one sense: perhaps now the US public will finally realize that the PR campaign to win over muslim hearts and minds is pretty much hopeless. Victory on the battlefield matters. Support for democracy matters.

But censoring our speech (Bush's ROP mantra, for ex) so as to avoid all injury to muslim "sensitivities" does not make any difference whatsoever to the opinions toward us of 90% of the world's muslims.

Posted by thibaud (aka lex) 2005-05-25 11:26|| 2005-05-25 11:26|| Front Page Top

#5 I wonder what kind of shorts he wore in La'iba al-Waladaani (The Two Boys Played).
The reviews were so touching (not)
"Saddam's acting in the picture is actually quite good," al-Sabah notes. "One scene, in which he buries his face in a pillow and cries, is so touching you almost can forget you're watching a low-budget sexploitation film."

Posted by tipper 2005-05-25 12:00|| 2005-05-25 12:00|| Front Page Top

#6 or, OTOH, you could count the thousands of muslims cities where there were NO riots in response to PissKoran. Even in Afghanistan, there were many towns where there were no demonstrations. What was the total attendence at the demonstrations compared to the total population of Afghanistan?

Of course I suppose you could use THAT as further evidence of the unimportance of the hearts and minds struggle. Starts to look like an unfalsifiable proposition.

Everything ive read about counter insurgency says that hearts and minds matter. As long as we fight this as a counter insurgency operation, and one largely reliant on local muslim forces, hearts and minds will matter.

Now that leaves open the question of what the most important drivers of hearts and minds are. I tend to lean toward the view that local matters are more important (ie Opium in afghanistan, jobs for ex-baathists and restraint in house searches in the Sunni Triangle in Iraq, support for Mubarak in Egypt, etc) rather than the abuse scandal, or the Palestinian question. Nonetheless the abuse scandal does hurt, at the margin, and progress on the Israel-Pal question WOULD help. And trashing of Islam in the west does NOT help. Does. Not. Help.

I think in this Bush's rhetoric has been largely correct. The ROP usage went a bit too far - its fairer to say that Islam is a diverse religion, and some elements in it are not peaceful. Which I think is more the direction of admin rhetoric recently. In some ways it would be much better if we could just come out and say "Wahabism is the problem" - it would avoid alot of dancing around and confusion, and would clarify A. That religion IS a problem - its not just a handful of terrorists and B. That Islam in GENERAL is not the problem. '

Unfortunately there are genuine reasons to want to maintain good relations with the House of Saud. Whether those reasons trump the reasons not to, Im not sure.

Posted by Liberalhawk 2005-05-25 12:02|| 2005-05-25 12:02|| Front Page Top

#7 Well said (as usual), Brother 'Hawk.

Posted by Mike">Mike 2005-05-25 12:11|| 2005-05-25 12:11|| Front Page Top

#8 Can't argue with most of what you say, LH, esp the importance of local issues. I'm arguing for a change in emphasis above all.

The problem is that it's 100 times easier for lazy, Bush-hating journos and editors/producers to file their 37th story on Abu Ghraib All the Time than to do any digging into local issues in Samara or Kandahar.

Posted by thibaud (aka lex) 2005-05-25 12:26|| 2005-05-25 12:26|| Front Page Top

#9 In some ways it would be much better if we could just come out and say "Wahabism is the problem"

Ignoring the Iranians?

Posted by Robert Crawford">Robert Crawford 2005-05-25 13:50|| http://www.kloognome.com/]">[http://www.kloognome.com/] 2005-05-25 13:50|| Front Page Top

#10 Religion does matter, though. We face the "better a bad believer than an unbeliever" effect. (The more radical folks seem to reverse this.) And I think the Israel issue has a religious dimension: the "uppity Jews" turned the proper (divine) order of society upside down; and that in a land Muhammadans can call holy. [because of its association with Abraham and the appropriated Jewish prophets, though of course the Jews never lived in Palestine, right? . . .]

Posted by James">James 2005-05-25 14:27|| http://idontknowbut.blogspot.com]">[http://idontknowbut.blogspot.com] 2005-05-25 14:27|| Front Page Top

#11 Awe, LH, you're no damn fun at all!

Posted by Secret Master 2005-05-25 14:32|| 2005-05-25 14:32|| Front Page Top

#12 "Arab Embarassment Over Saddam's Skidmarks"

Posted by mojo">mojo 2005-05-25 14:47|| 2005-05-25 14:47|| Front Page Top

#13 fuck arab opinion

Posted by Ken Ragif 2005-05-25 15:34|| 2005-05-25 15:34|| Front Page Top

#14 James, I believe the holiness of Israel is because Mohammed supposedly snuck out one night and with his horse flew up for a visit to Heaven -- his jump-off point was the Temple Mound platform in Jerusalem (of which the Wailing Wall makes up one side of the base). A small rock sticks out from the platform, around which the Al Aqsa Mosque was built some centuries later.

And of course, all lands that were ever part of the Ummah must remain Muslim forever more.

Posted by trailing wife 2005-05-25 23:03|| 2005-05-25 23:03|| Front Page Top

17:28 Liverpool !!!
17:06 VOTE
16:49 DEMOCRAT
23:58 Minni Mullah
23:52 Sobiesky
23:50 Angie Schultz
23:45 trailing wife
23:42 Tom Dooley
23:37 trailing wife
23:30 Tom Dooley
23:26 Minni Mullah
23:25 Sobiesky
23:21 trailing wife
23:20 badanov
23:17 Phil Fraering
23:17 Minni Mullah
23:16 trailing wife
23:14 mojo
23:07 Anonymoose
23:07 mom
23:07 BH
23:05 trailing wife
23:05 Anonymoose
23:03 trailing wife