The Long War: Rethinking American Options in the War on Terror

Tahmed writes in #120 <<< End of Discussion >>>

End of discussion because tahmed has been stumped. He brought out the point of British opposition to slavery to show their moral superiority, saying that the Mullah`s opposed ending it at that time, so I asked him if in his selective presentation of history detached from economic and historical contexts,

1. He had forgotten about the Atlantic Slave Trade where when their economic benefit from slavery was profitable they took trade in human flesh to levels never before seen in human history

2. I provided academic references to that effect, that prove that the so called Islamic slavery never approached in numbers the Atlantic Slave Trade and the racism that linked slavery and its trade was a European endeavour.

3. I asked him to explain to me his ``morality`` claim when the cause of this oppositon was economic and why it wasn`t extended to indentured servants and factory workers who were brutalized in a similar manner by these colonial elite.

As usual he had no answers because he has taken an oath to unconditionally worship the colonial elite and their successors, the US elite.

Masadi`s Rules of Discussion:

Rule 1: When unable to provide a rational response, change the subject.

Examples: I point to the fact that mullahs opposed the abolition of slavery in the ottoman empire in the early 19th century on the grounds that this was part of their ``Islam``, while the brits put pressure on the ottoman caliph to abolish slavery. Unable to respond, Masadi ignores that and instead changes the subject to start talking about ``Atlantic Slavery``.

Rule 2: When the other individual brings up the point again, call the other individual an idiot and/or a hypocrite and/or a ``full of slogans`` and/or accuse him of not being rational.

End of Discussion.

HP`s post #118 <<< Fuel lines have grown so long that one staffer spent 12 hours in line on his day off. ``Employees all confirm that by the last week of May, they were getting one hour of power for every six hours without.....One staff member reported that a friend lives in a building that houses a new minister; within 24 hours of his appointment, her building had city power 24 hours a day.`` >>>

The brave people of Iraq are going through a very tough period in their history. They are at the forefront of the resistance against the mutual tyranny of both the petty barbarians and the higher barbarians, fueled by the US elite~ look how they`ve destroyed an entire nation and still strutt around justifying it with BS, claiming to be ``civilization``. The struggle of the people of Iraq is the struggle of oppressed folk around the globe. Inshallah they will prevail and this war will mark the beginning of the end of the Empire and its enslaving of humanity. A new day will dawn soon.

`Wash Post` Obtains Shocking Memo from U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Details Increasing Danger and Hardship

By Greg Mitchell

Published: June 18, 2006 6:20 PM ET
NEW YORK The Washington Post has obtained a cable, marked ``sensitive,`` that it says show that just before President Bush left on a surprise trip last Monday to the Green Zone in Baghdad for an upbeat assessment of the situation there, ``the U.S. Embassy in Iraq painted a starkly different portrait of increasing danger and hardship faced by its Iraqi employees.``

This cable outlines, the Post reported Sunday, ``the daily-worsening conditions for those who live outside the heavily guarded international zone: harassment, threats and the employees` constant fears that their neighbors will discover they work for the U.S. government.``

It`s actually far worse than that, as the details published below indicate, which include references to abductions, threats to women`s rights, and ``ethnic cleansing.``

A PDF copy of the cable shows that it was sent to the SecState in Washington, D.C. from ``AMEmbassy Baghdad`` on June 6. The typed name at the very bottom is Khalilzad -- the name of the U.S. Ambassador, though it is not known if this means he wrote the memo or merely approved it.

The subject of the memo is: ``Snapshots from the Office -- Public Affairs Staff Show Strains of Social Discord.``

As a footnote in one of the 23 sections, the embassy relates, ``An Arab newspaper editor told us he is preparing an extensive survey of ethnic cleansing, which he said is taking place in almost every Iraqi province, as political parties and their militiast are seemingly engaged in tit-for-tat reprisals all over Iraq.``

Among the other troubling reports:

-- ``Personal safety depends on good relations with the `neighborhood` governments, who barricade streets and ward off outsiders. The central government, our staff says, is not relevant; even local mukhtars have been displaced or coopted by militias. People no longer trust most neighbors.``

-- One embassy employee had a brother-in-law kidnapped. Another received a death threat, and then fled the country with her family.

-- Iraqi staff at the embassy, beginning in March and picking up in May, report ``pervasive`` harassment from Islamist and/or militia groups. Cuts in power and rising fuel prices ``have diminished the quality of life.`` Conditions vary but even upscale neighborhoods ``have visibly deteriorated`` and one of them is now described as a ``ghost town.``

-- Two of the three female Iraqis in the public affairs office reported stepped-up harassment since mid-May....``some groups are pushing women to cover even their face, a step not taken in Iran even at its most conservative.`` One of the women is now wearing a full abaya after receiving direct threats.

-- It has also become ``dangerous`` for men to wear shorts in public and ``they no longer allow their children to play outside in shorts.`` People who wear jeans in public have also come under attack.

-- Embassy employees are held in such low esteem their work must remain a secret and they live with constant fear that their cover will be blown. Of nine staffers, only four have told their families where they work. They all plan for their possible abductions. No one takes home their cell phones as this gives them away. One employee said criticism of the U.S. had grown so severe that most of her family believes the U.S. ``is punishing populations as Saddam did.``

-- Since April, the ``demeanor`` of guards in the Green Zone has changed, becoming more ``militia-like,`` and some are now ``taunting`` embassy personnel or holding up their credentials and saying loudly that they work in the embassy: ``Such information is a death sentence if overheard by the wrong people.`` For this reason, some have asked for press instead of embassy credentials.

-- ``For at least six months, we have not been able to use any local staff members for translation at on-camera press events....We cannot call employees in on weekends or holidays without blowing their `cover.```

-- ``More recently, we have begun shredding documents printed out that show local staff surnames. In March, a few staff members approached us to ask what provisions would we make for them if we evacuate.``

-- The overall environment is one of ``frayed social networks,`` with frequent actual or perceived insults. None of this is helped by lack of electricity. ``One colleague told us he feels `defeated` by circumstances, citing his example of being unable to help his two-year-old son who has asthma and cannot sleep in stifling heat,`` which is now reaching 115 degrees.

-- ``Another employee tell us that life outside the Green Zone has become `emotionally draining.` He lives in a mostly Shiite area and claims to attend a funeral `every evening.```

-- Fuel lines have grown so long that one staffer spent 12 hours in line on his day off. ``Employees all confirm that by the last week of May, they were getting one hour of power for every six hours without.....One staff member reported that a friend lives in a building that houses a new minister; within 24 hours of his appointment, her building had city power 24 hours a day.``

-- The cable concludes that employees` ``personal fears are reinforcing divisive sectarian or ethnic channels, despite talk of reconciliation by officials.``

The final line of the Cable is: KHALILZAD``


Anyone rememebr the flypaper theory?

tahmed writes <<< You are a slave because you are incapable of reflection, and therefore incapable of changing your views on anything. >>>

And yet my posts are full of logical analysis and yours full of slogans and ad nauseum repititon. You follow mainstream bs, I challenge that bs using reason and that makes me a slave and you a free thinker? As always, your reasoning is lop sided. I don`t have any ``Arab`` masters, neither do I defend ethnicities like you defend the `Anglo Saxon`` ethos. You wont even condemn the worst barbarism of these elite, you support colonization and brush aside the mass slaughter of the Atlantic Slave Trade, and I have not said a single word to support the Arab practice of slavery, just pointed the BS in your argument assigning morality to the British colonials~ that my ignorant friend makes YOU a slave not I.

Re: # 104

yes tahmed that hyperthyroid-eyed poiso-spitting turkey-necked cobra beauty -- there are times one would like to simply wring that turkey neck....for the venoms she spews -- like the one you quoted.....:)

the last but one sentence in #114 to masadi should read `` You are a slave because you are a prisoner not because you are bound by physical chains, but because of your own mental limitations.``

Now you can go an lick the feet of your Arab masters.

masadi #113 I am a free man and it is you who is the slave.

I am a free man because I use my eyes and brains to reach my conclusions and so can rationally present by views, and by the same token I can change my views on specific issues (as I have sometimes done on chowk) if I am presented with additional evidence.

You are a slave because you are incapable of reflection, and therefore incapable of changing your views on anything. This is the worst form of slavery: Your slavish mentality makes you one step worse than slaves who were forced into slavery by Arabs. You are a slave because you are a prisoner not of your own mental limitations. So, go lick the feet of your Arab masters.

hamidm writes <<< ................. it has nothing to do with masadi`s love of the culture of death - for god`s sake, the man is one stick of dynamite short of blowing himself up !............... >>>

Meaningless rhetoric, using bs and fox newsesque caricatures to cover up the fact that he has been stumped in every claim he has brought forth from the intellectual whorehouse of shock-troop republicanism.

tahmed, I didn`t claim moral superiority for anyone, you claim that for your colonial (and now neo-colonial) masters (note here that when I condemn them, I am not talking about the vast majority of the masses of the Western world), and I use YOUR criteria to prove that no such claim of moral superiority is justified. It has nothing to do with being God appointed. Don`t hide behind slogans. They are the worst barbarians and hypocrites that have lived to date. Whether you worship them or don`t worship them does not alter this fact.

nasah: could there be a teeny tiny possibility that this kind of enablement by muslims is the problem..

Divided loyalties
Sociology prof warns multiculturalism `creates nations within a nation`

By Licia Corbella

Dr. Mahfooz Kanwar recently attended Calgary`s largest mosque for a funeral.

At one point in the proceedings, a man Kanwar has known for more than three decades led the prayers.

``He was saying in Urdu (the official language of Pakistan): `Oh, God, protect us from the infidels, who pollute us with their vile ways,``` recalls Kanwar, a professor of sociology at Mount Royal College in Calgary.

``I stood up and grabbed him by the lapels, which was shocking even to me because I have never done anything like that in my life and I said: `How dare you attack my country.` And then I addressed the crowd and said: `I have known this man for more than 30 years and he has been on welfare for almost all of those years.` ``

Kanwar chuckles at the memory.

``Then I said to this semi-literate man, `you should thank me and those you call infidels.`

``He asked me why and I said: `Because the taxes I pay are putting food on your table as are the taxes of the so-called ``infidels.` ``

Most Canadians and many Muslims would applaud Dr. Kanwar`s righteous outburst. But guess which of the two men is no longer welcome at the Sarcee Tr. S.W. mosque?

Not the intolerant, hate-spewing semi-literate. No, it`s Dr. Kanwar who`s persona non grata.

That, says Kanwar, is just one of numerous instances he has experienced as a result of the culture of ignorance and intolerance that permeates so many mosques in Canada and throughout the world.

In light of the arrests two weeks ago of 17 young Muslim Canadian men who are alleged to have planned terrorist attacks against their fellow Canadians that included attacking Parliament, seizing the CBC and beheading the prime minister, Kanwar says it`s vitally important for Canadians to start making more demands of those who immigrate to this country.

Kanwar says we now know one of the 17 accused was allowed to spew hatred and calls to violent jihad at a Toronto-area mosque and he was never once told by the leadership there to stop.

``Multiculturalism creates nations within a nation and divides the loyalty of people,`` says the 65-year-old Pakastani-born Kanwar, who immigrated to Canada in 1966.

``It allows people to marginalize themselves. It endangers us all as these recent arrests show.``

Because of Kanwar`s open and published opposition to Ontario`s proposal last year to consider allowing sharia law for arbitration purposes in that province, Kanwar says he has been issued with fatwahs -- not the death-threat versions made famous by the one issued against Salman Rushdie for writing the novel The Satanic Verses -- but more like a shunning.

Kanwar, a devout Muslim, says he has essentially been excommunicated by Calgary`s mosques because he is too tolerant of others.

Six of the young men who listened to him are also charged in the plot.

Kanwar is pretty certain, if he spoke up at that mosque, however, with his message that Canada`s culture is better than the culture found in any Islamic-based country, he`d be kicked out.

``The policy of official multiculturalism is a disaster,`` says Kanwar, who ironically once headed a government-funded multicultural organization in Calgary in the early `70s.

Every year, Kanwar`s organization would host a large food and crafts festival in the basement of the Jubilee Auditorium.

#103 by nasah on June 18, 2006 10:25am PT

while i have no idea who Diana West is and I don`t usually read the editorials from the moonie times, she`s dead on..the enemy isn`t terrorism..the enemy is militant Islam and it`s enablers..the muslims who live here in the west and know who`s buying and selling the jihadi videos but chose to do nothing about it...


why don`t you address the points she`s making..

Why is it that the majority of the muslim world support OBL..why is it that the majority of people in the land of Islam`s holiest shrines and the majority of pakis - allah`s chosen people - support OBL and are against the war in Afghanistan?

Why is it that brit-pakis - with all the opportunities available to them - still decide to blow up a bunch of fellow brits

Jihadist of Mass Destruction


By Paul Cruickshank and Mohanad Hage Ali
Sunday, June 11, 2006; Page B02
Washington Post

`Dirty bombs for a dirty nation.``

The slogan appeared on a jihadist Web site in December 2004, its author lamenting that the planes that struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, did not also carry weapons of mass destruction. He pressed for a WMD attack against the United States, and proposed that deadly new dirty-bomb catchphrase to rally his followers.

No al-Qaeda figure, not even Osama bin Laden, has dedicated more effort to thinking through how to destroy the United States than the author of that Web posting, Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, the veteran Syrian jihadi whom Pakistani police arrested last fall. He is arguably al-Qaeda`s most influential strategist since 9/11, and has been at the center of al-Qaeda`s efforts to develop WMD capabilities since the late 1990s.

But this is a rapidly changing war in which the arrest or death of any one leader may not matter. The new al-Qaeda promoted by Setmariam and Zarqawi is an al-Qaeda that lives on the Internet and in the swelling ranks of jihadists worldwide.

Indeed, Setmariam`s exhortations and ideas, posted over the years on jihadist Web sites, offer a public dossier on al-Qaeda`s strategies for global jihad and its internal debates on WMD. Our examination of thousands of pages of Setmariam`s writings and videos of his speeches reveals just how influential the 47-year-old Syrian has been in redirecting al-Qaeda toward a more decentralized and hard-line jihad -- one that will be that much harder to defeat because it is now so diffuse.

Setmariam`s vision centered on a few key ideas: Al-Qaeda needed to remake itself to become looser, meaner and more resilient. And to defeat the United States, jihad should be waged globally and with many more recruits.

This vision has become reality. After the London bombings of July 2005, which were undertaken by a local, autonomous cell and resembled attacks in Casablanca, Istanbul and Madrid, Setmariam gloated on a jihadist Web site: ``I swear to God that I have in me a joy stronger than the joy of the farmer who sees the harvest of his fruits after a long planting.``

Setmariam developed his strategy at the al-Ghuraba camp in Afghanistan from 1998 to 2001, where he instructed the best and brightest of al-Qaeda -- those who could recruit and plan operations.

His Afghanistan lectures were filmed and distributed across the Muslim world and in Europe; his videotapes turned up in Naples in 2000, when police raided the homes of members of a militant Islamist group. His lectures were later incorporated into a 1,600-page publication, ``The Call for a Global Islamic Resistance,`` which was disseminated widely on the Internet beginning in December 2004.

We obtained more than 20 hours of video of Setmariam`s lectures, in which he addresses his students, clad in white Islamic garb, with the obligatory Kalashnikov propped against a wall. Even then, Setmariam was urging future operatives toward the new structure and strategy al-Qaeda would adopt after 9/11.

Setmariam argued that ``individual terrorism`` should replace the group`s hierarchically orchestrated attacks. He believed al-Qaeda should move away from centrally coordinated actions led by teams from Afghanistan -- the model for the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and later the 9/11 attacks -- and should instead rely on local groups launching spontaneous attacks. He offered a harsh critique of al-Qaeda`s rigid hierarchy, even drawing a diagram to show how easy it was to round up a cell and then trace its members back to a leader.

Setmariam`s courses also offered tips on how to encourage more Muslims to become jihadis. ``This should be done,`` he said, by ``highlighting Jewish-Crusader-Hindu oppression of Muslims`` and emphasizing the ``degeneracy of the Non-Muslim world.`` He claimed his teaching was informed by years of living in Europe in the 1980s and 1990s, where he blended in because of his fluent Spanish and French and his red hair and fair complexion. ``I am one of the few jihadis who understand the Western culture and mentality,`` he said later.

Many of the students Setmariam trained in Afghanistan now recruit jihadis worldwide. His protégé Amer Azizi is wanted by Spanish authorities in connection with the 9/11 plot, the Madrid bombings of March 2004 and the buildup of al-Qaeda`s presence in Spain. Before Zarqawi`s death, Azizi was thought to be one of his key aides in Iraq.

But clearly it is through the online postings of his writings that Setmariam exerted the greatest impact, both because he cogently expressed jihadist strategies and because the medium spreads his ideas across the world instantly. Setmariam`s online writings may well have influenced the manner of recruitment and even targets for the perpetrators of the attacks in London and Madrid.

The power of the Internet to foment jihad was reaffirmed earlier this month with the arrests of suspected bombing plotters outside Toronto. The suspects reportedly became radicalized through militant Web sites and received online advice from Younis Tsouli, the Britain-based webmaster for Islamic extremist sites who called himself ``Terrorist 007,`` before he was arrested late last year.

According to U.S. authorities, Setmariam helped al-Qaeda`s WMD chief, Abu Khabab al-Masri, instruct recruits on the use of such weapons at the Derunta training camp in Afghanistan before 9/11. Setmariam and Masri were particularly determined to develop the ability to explode radioactive material over a large area by inserting it into a conventional bomb. In a letter written before 9/11 and discovered in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban, Masri instructed al-Qaeda operatives to work with contacts in Pakistan to learn how to use ``the charges from a traditional nuclear reactor for military ends.``

``I feel sorry that there were no weapons of mass destruction in the planes that attacked New York and Washington on 9/11,`` Setmariam said in his December 2004 Web posting. He argued that the attacks were not destructive enough to justify the loss of al-Qaeda`s sanctuary in Afghanistan following the U.S. backlash. Bin Laden had not fully thought through how to destroy the United States, which is ``a life and death issue for all Muslims,`` Setmariam wrote.

In Iraq today, Setmariam`s hopes for ``thousands, even hundreds of thousands of Muslims participating in jihad`` are becoming reality. Iraq is evolving into what Setmariam refers to in his 2004 book as ``an open front`` -- a necessary area to build ``individual terrorism`` because it offers a ``haven`` and a rich recruiting environment.

But even with the Iraqi insurgency and an increasingly globalized jihad, Setmariam realized that defeating the United States through conventional means would take ``many years and enormous sacrifices,`` as he wrote in the December 2004 online posting. Therefore, ``an attack on the United States with WMD has become necessary . . . by means of decisive strategic operations with weapons of mass destruction including nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.``

In his 2004 book, Setmariam said that ``Strategic Operations Brigades`` should be established and given ``very high-level financial capabilities`` to acquire an ``operational knowledge and potential to use WMD.`` Then Americans, he argued, could be subjected to a ``back-breaking policy of collective massacres.``.

Despite his capture, Setmariam`s strategic advice will remain influential. His final, chilling proposal, made before his arrest and posted online in December 2005 by unknown followers, argues that with Washington and its allies bogged down in Iraq, the time is ripe for al-Qaeda to strike again: ``I reiterate my call for mujahideen who are spread in Europe and in our enemies` countries or those able to go there, to move fast to hit countries that have a military presence in Iraq, Afghanistan or the Arab peninsula or to hit their interests in our countries and all over the world.``

A PALESTINIAN LIFELINE
Hamas has only benefited from the West`s attempt to starve its government

Editorial
Saturday, May 20, 2006; Page A22
Washington Post

A WESTERN effort to tame the Islamic government of the Palestinian Authority is foundering. The United States, European Union and Israel have been withholding aid -- and in Israel`s case, customs receipts -- from an administration that depends on those funds to pay some 165,000 employees. The outside nations, the chief source of support for the Palestinian Authority before Hamas won an election, have been demanding that the Hamas movement accept Israel, renounce terrorism and abide by existing Israeli-Palestinian accords before funding is restored. But Palestinian leaders have a long tradition of exploiting the suffering of their own people for political ends; Hamas has been content to foster a humanitarian crisis in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The result is that Israel and the Western donors are negotiating among themselves about how much funding should be restored to the Palestinians and in what form. They have little choice, since the collapse of the Palestinian Authority would do more damage to Israel, and lingering hopes for a Middle East peace, than it would to Hamas. But the governments need to be careful in their retrenchment: What`s needed is an approach that spares average Palestinians from hunger and disease while continuing the political isolation of Hamas.

European governments are taking the lead in creating a new mechanism for international aid that would bypass Hamas-run ministries. In theory, money would be paid directly to institutions and their employees. All sides agree that Palestinian hospitals and clinics should be provided with funds to buy medicines and supplies and to pay the salaries of their staff, who make up about 8 percent of the government workforce. Some Europeans also would like to fund schools and teachers, who constitute another 22 percent of employees. Israel and the Bush administration are more skeptical; they question whether a Hamas-run curriculum should receive Western funding. And what of garbage workers? Gas stations? By increments, international donors could soon persuade themselves to fund most of the Palestinian government.

That may be necessary to avoid the authority`s collapse: The Palestinians have scant revenue other than that collected -- and currently restricted -- by Israel. Despite its understandable rejection of Hamas, it is in Israel`s larger interest to allow Palestinian money to be used for legitimate Palestinian needs and to ease its current chokehold on the movement of goods in and out of Gaza. But Western governments should draw the line at providing for Hamas cadres now installed in ministries or the salaries of the 75,000 gunmen who are on the Palestinian payroll -- unless these take decisive action against terrorism. Palestinians who are supplied with necessities but denied a government that can negotiate for their statehood will more likely place the blame where it belongs -- at home

Stay the Course? What Course?

By Eugene Robinson
Friday, June 16, 2006; Page A25
Washington Post

Fresh from his triumphal visit to Baghdad -- a place so dangerous he had to sneak in without even telling the Iraqi prime minister -- George W. Bush is full of new resolve to stay the course in his open-ended ``global war on terror.`` That leaves the rest of us to wonder, in sadness and frustration, just what that course might be and where on earth it can possibly lead.

This is a ``war`` in which three men held for years without due process at the Guantanamo Bay prison kill themselves by hanging, and their jailers are so unnerved and self-absorbed that they see the suicides as an attack. Rear Adm. Harry Harris`s all-about-me lament -- ``I believe this was not an act of desperation but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us`` -- was worthy of delivery from Oprah`s couch.

Bush claimed at his news conference the other day that he`d ``like to close Guantanamo`` if only the people being held there weren`t so ``darn dangerous.`` These bad people, in other words, are forcing him to hold them indefinitely under conditions that mock international norms. But if the inmates are indeed beyond redemption, why order them to be hog-tied and force-fed when they go on hunger strikes? Why not just let them starve? Why freak out when three of the evildoers hang themselves? Why not pass out rope and tell the rest to bring it on?

In this amorphous, open-ended ``war`` that we`re spending precious lives and billions of dollars to wage, the rules of engagement seem to be shoot first and apologize later.

We`re sorry if U.S. Marines massacred 24 civilians in Haditha. We`re even more sorry than we were after U.S. military personnel tortured and humiliated those prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Bush`s stalwart ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, is sorry if London police, conducting an anti-terrorist raid this month, shot and wounded an innocent man whose only ``crime`` was to come downstairs in his underwear to see who was breaking into his house. But not as sorry as Blair was after the London subway bombings, when commandos shot dead an innocent Brazilian electrician whom they mistook for a possible, potential, just-might-be terrorist.

Nobody`s sorry, though, about secret CIA prisons or extralegal detention or interrogation by brutal ``waterboarding`` or an Orwellian blanket of domestic surveillance. After all, we`re at ``war.``

The military announced yesterday that the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq has reached 2,500, another of those awful, round-number milestones. It is widely expected that the new Iraqi government will consider an amnesty for some of the insurgents who killed some of those American servicemen and women -- drawing a distinction between roadside bombs placed by Sunni Muslims in ``resistance`` to the U.S. occupation and those placed by foreign al-Qaeda jihadists. If this happens, we`ll have taught the Iraqis well. They`ll be saying ``pardon me`` just like their American tutors.

Today`s generation of jihadists was forged in Afghanistan fighting the Soviet occupation. How long will the next generation, being forged in Iraq fighting the American occupation, be with us?

Iraq is just one theater in Bush`s ``war.`` Elsewhere, Afghanistan is once again ablaze as the resurgent Taliban counterattacks. Somalia is coming under the sway of an Islamic militia that may harbor al-Qaeda militants. America`s popularity in the world continues to fall.

But George W. Bush forges ahead, trying vainly to kill a poisonous, retrograde ideology with bullets and bombs. His ``war`` is self-perpetuating, and no one even knows what victory would look like. Long after he`s gone, we`ll still be looking for a way to end the mess he began.

masadi sahab
the problem is these brown sahabs have not read history written by the brits.

``In the 1860s, when Chinese labourers immigrated to the United States to build the Central Pacific Railroad, a new population with both physical and cultural differences had to be accommodated within the racial worldview. While industrial employers were eager to get this new and cheap labour, the ordinary white public was stirred to anger by the presence of this “yellow peril.” Political party caucuses, labour unions, and other organizations railed against the immigration of yet another “inferior race.” Newspapers condemned the policies of employers, and even church leaders decried the entrance of these aliens into what was seen as a land for whites only. So hostile was the opposition that in 1882 Congress finally passed the Chinese Exclusion Act.




The large migrations from southern and eastern Europe that started in the 1880s required the reassessments of other new people and their incorporation into the racial ranking system. Old-stock Americans (English, Dutch, German, Scandinavian) were horrified at the onslaught of large numbers of people speaking Italian, Greek, Hungarian, Russian, and other “foreign” languages. They held that such “races” could not be assimilated into “Anglo-Saxon” culture, and policies and practices had to be put into place to separate them from the mainstream.

Despite much opposition, these European groups soon lost their inferior race status, and within a few generations their descendants not only assimilated into the “white” category, they also incorporated the racial worldview. More than half the ancestors of late 20th-century American whites immigrated to the United States during the period 1880–1930. The “white” racial category was constructed flexibly enough to enclose even those who could not claim an Anglo-Saxon background.

During the 19th century, the idea of race was diffused throughout the European colonial systems, reinforced by the fact that the peoples conquered and colonized by western European powers were also physically different. Such conquests buttressed the idea of European racial superiority. The racial worldview with its tenets regarding the limited capacities of inferior races was employed to justify the extermination of peoples, including the Tasmanians, most of the Maori, and many indigenous Australians. It was an essential ingredient in the colonial policies and practices of the British in India and Southeast Asia and, later, in Africa. Numerous British writers of the 19th century, such as Rudyard Kipling, openly declared that the British were a superior race destined to rule the world.``

Re: # 102
Diana West not withstanding , at least some of the professionals in Washington know exactly why it`s got to back-pedal on some issues. If these draft dodgers had not piled onto Iraq they could have pretty much done what they wanted in Afghanistan . They`ve left that half done , they are screwing up in Iraq because they will never have public support , and offering a few sops to the world at large.
West`s op-ed piece is trash and she`s a twit. The foreign office boys know better, there`s a bit of economics to worry about. You can`t push the pretence of high moral ground if you don`t offer a few sops, to keep the business end going.