When incompetence kills 38
We learn this from a private source in India:
When the commandos, sent from Delhi, arrived at Mumbai airport to deal forcefully with the massive terrorist onslaught, there was no one to meet them and no transport to take them into Mumbai. They had to wait an hour for a rickety municipal bus to show up.
Civilization must wake up and defend itself.
The name of the evil 27
Mark Steyn writes:
We’re in danger of missing the forest for the trees. The forest is the ideology. It’s the ideology that determines whether you can find enough young hotshot guys in the neighborhood willing to strap on a suicide belt or (rather more promising as a long-term career) at least grab an AK-47 and shoot up a hotel lobby. Or, if active terrorists are a bit thin on the ground, whether you can count at least on some degree of broader support on the ground. You’re sitting in some distant foreign capital but you’re of a mind to pull off a Mumbai-style operation in, say, Amsterdam or Manchester or Toronto. Where would you start? Easy. You know the radical mosques, and the other ideological front organizations. You’ve already made landfall.
It’s missing the point to get into debates about whether this is the "Deccan Mujahideen" or the ISI or al-Qaida or Lashkar-e-Taiba. That’s a reductive argument. It could be all or none of them. The ideology has been so successfully seeded around the world that nobody needs a memo from corporate HQ to act: There are so many of these subgroups and individuals that they intersect across the planet in a million different ways. It’s not the Cold War, with a small network of deep sleepers being directly controlled by Moscow. There are no membership cards, only an ideology. That’s what has radicalized hitherto moderate Muslim communities from Indonesia to the central Asian ‘stans to Yorkshire, and co-opted what started out as more or less conventional nationalist struggles in the Caucasus and the Balkans into mere tentacles of the global jihad.
And the name of the ideology is Islamism. Or simply Islam. How does Islamism differ from Islam if at all?
What should we do about it? Inform ourselves about it thoroughly. Examine it critically. Argue against it insistently. Make it as unacceptable to the civilized world as Nazism, which it closely resembles.
When its ideologues use violence, fight them actively.
Be aware of their encroachment by stealth, and resist, every step of the way, their continual efforts to subvert our system of law and government.
The thrill of savagery 78
Look at the face of the terrorist in this picture. His expression is one of extreme enjoyment. He is having the time of his life gunning people down, at random, in cold blood.
The screen grab picture and the following comment is from Power Line:
Reuters’ caption for the photo begins: "A suspected gunman walks outside the premises of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus or Victoria Terminus railway station in Mumbai November 26, 2008."
Notice the object the terrorist is holding in his hands. It’s a gun. He isn’t a "suspected gunman," he’s a "gunman."
This kind of silly political correctness infects reporters and news services world-wide. They think they’re being scrupulous–the man hasn’t been convicted of being a gunman yet!–when in fact they’re just being foolish. But the irrational conviction that nothing can be known unless it has been determined by a court and jury isn’t just silly, it’s dangerous. For example, I believe that this kind of confused thinking lies behind liberals’ indignation that terrorists can be held in Guantanamo Bay "without being charged"–as though they were criminal defendants.
Ill treatment at Guantanamo 200
Ann Coulter writes:
Far from being sodomized and tortured by U.S. forces – as Obama’s base has wailed for the past seven years – the innocent scholars and philanthropists being held at Guantanamo have been given expensive, high-tech medical procedures at taxpayer expense. If we’re not careful, multitudes of Muslims will be going to fight Americans in Afghanistan just so they can go to Guantanamo and get proper treatment for attention deficit disorder and erectile dysfunction.
After being captured fighting with Taliban forces against Americans in 2001, Abdullah Massoud was sent to Guantanamo, where the one-legged terrorist was fitted with a special prosthetic leg, at a cost of $50,000-$75,000 to the U.S. taxpayer. Under the Americans With Disabilities Act, Massoud would now be able to park his car bomb in a handicapped parking space!
No, you didn’t read that wrong, because the VA won’t pay for your new glasses. I said $75,000. I would have gone with hanging at sunrise, but what do I know?
Upon his release in March 2004, Massoud hippity-hopped back to Afghanistan and quickly resumed his war against the U.S. Aided by his new artificial leg, just months later, in October 2004, Massoud masterminded the kidnapping of two Chinese engineers in Pakistan working on the Gomal Zam Dam project.
This proved, to me at least, that people with disabilities can do anything they put their minds to. Way to go, you plucky extremist!
Massoud said he had nothing against the Chinese but wanted to embarrass Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf for cooperating with the Americans. You know, the Americans who had just footed – you should pardon the expression – a $75,000 bill for his prosthetic leg.
Pakistani forces stormed Massoud’s hideout, killing all the kidnappers, including Massoud. Only one of the Chinese engineers was rescued alive.
As a result of the kidnapping, the Chinese pulled all 100 engineers and dam workers out of Pakistan, and work on the dam ceased. This was bad news for the people of Pakistan – but good news for the endangered Pakistani snail darter!
In none of the news accounts I read of Massoud’s return to jihad after his release from Guantanamo is there any mention of the fact that his prosthetic leg was acquired in Guantanamo, courtesy of American taxpayers after he was captured trying to kill Americans on the battlefield in Afghanistan.
News about the prosthetic leg might interfere with stories of the innocent aid workers being held captive at Guantanamo in George Bush’s AmeriKKKa.
To the contrary, although Massoud’s swashbuckling reputation as a jihadist with a prosthetic leg appears in many news items, where he got that leg is almost purposely hidden – even lied about.
"Abdullah Massoud … had earned both sympathy and reverence for his time in Guantanamo Bay. … Upon his release, he made it home to Waziristan and resumed his war against the U.S. With his long hair, his prosthetic limb and impassioned speeches, he quickly became a charismatic inspiration to Waziristan’s youth." – The New York Times
He’s not a one-legged terrorist – he’s a freedom fighter living with a disability. I think we could all learn something about courage from this man.
"He lost his leg in a landmine explosion a few days before the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in September 1996. It didn’t dampen his enthusiasm as a fighter and he got himself an artificial leg later, says Yusufzai." – The Indo-Asian News Service
Where? At COSTCO?
"The 29-year-old Massoud, who lost his left leg in a landmine explosion while fighting alongside the Taliban, often used to ride a horse or camel because his disability made it painful for him to walk long distances in hilly areas." – BBC Monitoring South Asia
Side-saddle, I’m guessing. And you just know those caves along the Afghan-Pakistan border aren’t wheelchair accessible.
"He was educated in Peshawar and was treated in Karachi after his left leg was blown up in a landmine explosion in the Wreshmin Tangi gorge near Kabul in September 1996. He now walks with an artificial leg specifically made for him in Karachi." – Gulf News (United Arab Emirates)
Karachi? Hey, how do I get into this guy’s HMO?
They can’t lick leprosy in Karachi, but the Gulf News tells us Massoud got his artificial leg at one of their specialty hospitals.
Anyone who thinks the Guantanamo detainees can be released without consequence doesn’t have a leg to stand on.
Conscience or cowardice? 225
‘Conscience,’ Hamlet says, ‘does make cowards of us all.’
Or does cowardice claim the name of conscience – steal its identity – in order to excuse itself?
Conscience should drive us, as individuals, to do what we believe to be morally right. But it may be a self-flattering word we use to explain why we do certain things that we actually do out of craven cowardice itself, or the sort of moral vanity that makes us want to appear virtuous rather than to act virtuously.
Governments, nations, and crowds also cover their actions with the same deceptive claim, attributing to conscience what they really do out of weakness, fear, stupidity, hypocrisy and ideological romanticism.
False conscience calls itself by many other names, among them these: political correctness; respect for multiculturalism or ‘diversity’; a striving for ‘social justice’ or economic equality or ‘fairness’; remorse for (largely imaginary) historical sins. Under such names all kinds of idiotic, unjust, destructive and evil things are done.
Exempli gratia from the real world:
In the US millions of voters elect an unqualified candidate to political office because he is black.
Navies refrain from capturing pirates, or (even better) summarily killing them, because ‘they have human rights’.
Liberal democratic welfare states keep and protect alien Islamic preachers of terrorism and sedition, lavishly house, feed, educate and medically treat them (and their pluralities of wives and families) at the expense of their intended victims, the indigenous population, because if they’re returned to their own countries they may be tortured or executed – or even because some witness at their possible trials might be tortured.
Western governments abrogate freedom because citizens use it to criticize Muslims and their beliefs.
European police refrain from enforcing the law against Muslim offenders.
In Britain the rule of a single Law of the Land, the very thing that makes it possible for people of different provenance to live together in harmony, is arbitrarily abandoned by the acceptance of Sharia as a second system of law, although it is incompatible with and contradictory to the enchorial system.
Western nations reduce their defensive power to the point of ineffectiveness while vicious tyrannical regimes, inimical to the West and motivated by a declared intention of aggression, acquire arsenals of nuclear weapons.
Governments interfere in markets and impoverish the people.
Jillian Becker November 21, 2008
One piece of extremely good news 94
The US victory in Iraq is bigger than even President Bush and his outgoing administration seem to realize.
First, it can now be proclaimed as victory:
If Barack Obama had gotten his way, Iraq would now be in the hands of Islamists, and America’s image would have suffered a crushing blow. He voted to cut off funding for the troops, just when they needed it most, and still refuses to admit he was wrong.
Well, he was wrong, and George W. Bush deserves credit for refusing to back down when all around him were losing heart: “The war is over and we won.” [Quotations from Little Green Footballs]
And, secondly, how big and important the victory is can be best be understood from a study published by the Hudson Institute’s Center on Islam, Democracy and the Future of the Muslim World. It tells how the jihadists in Iraq, Zarqawi and his successors, prepared to re-establish the caliphate. They even had the caliph chosen and ready. They saw this as a step to Islamic world domination. After Zarqawi himself was killed in June 2006, his followers ‘determined to turn Iraq into a battleground [and] the incubator for their grand vision of a unified Islamic empire under the aegis of a ruling caliph.’ This vision enthralled a new generation of jihadists. As a winning ‘al-Qaeda in Iraq’ (assuming, as it were, the al-Qaeda franchise) they could have drawn thousands more fighters. They declared an ‘Islamic State of Iraq’ which was to be the center of victorious Islam, with Baghdad as its capital. Had the surge not take place, had it not turned the local tribal leaders against the jihadis, the triumph of militant Islam over the United States would have been seen throughout the Islamic world as a victory of historic proportions, ‘a victorious Islamic regeneration’; a caliphate might well have been established, and the non-Muslim world subjected to an onslaught of terrorism – possibly nuclear terrorism – without precedent.
The study is long, but very interesting and well worth reading. Here are two riveting passages from it:
The American public was uncurious as to the identity, nature, and goals of its enemy in Iraq. And, unfortunately, U.S. leaders and commanders were mostly complicit in such willful unawareness. The lack of interest on the part of the public was partly due to bitter partisan recriminations over the Bush administration’s policy in waging the Iraq war, and over who in Washington was to blame for the insurgency that ensued. Consequently, the doctrines of the Bush administration regarding preemptive strikes and democracy in the Middle East came under incessant scrutiny from the administration’s domestic political foes. Meanwhile, the doctrines of the jihadists were overlooked or, in the few cases where they were considered, dismissed as esoteric. Fantastical as they may be, these doctrines do indeed motivate and inform the enemy’s actions and strategy, and their significance was not recognized…
The corollary to the military defeat now being experienced by the jihadists is the even more agonizing prospect of doctrinal collapse: the heralded caliphate is stillborn, and the glorious vision of a reinvigorated Islamic state has been smashed. The anguish and demoralization brought about by this byproduct of battlefield victory cannot be overstated. To smash the dreams of a man who lives for a cause, who endures cruel deserts and damp caves while awaiting martyrdom, is a fate far worse than death. In a battle of wills, young men are able to summon the necessary willpower to press a button and to detonate themselves among innocent bystanders. They do so for the cause of jihad, and for the deferred utopia of a resurrected and avenging Islamic world power. Nothing breaks the will of the individual jihadist more than to see his ideology begin to bear fruit, only to watch that fruit rot away right before his eyes. Such has been the impact of the Zarqawist Islamic State of Iraq—the caliphate-to-be, under the Commander of the Faithful Abu Umar al-Baghdadi the Qurayshite—and such the bitter aftertaste of its ruinous downfall.
A blinding, burning passion for Allah 225
From Power Line:
In Afghanistan … yesterday, classes had to be canceled at a girls’ school after Taliban members on motorcycles accosted a group of students and teachers walking to school in Kandahar, and threw acid on their faces:
"They don’t want us go to school. They don’t like education," said Susan Ibrahimi, who started teaching at Mirwais Mena four months ago. She and her mother, also a teacher at the school, were wearing burqas on their walk to work when the motorbike stopped next to them.
"They didn’t say anything. They just stopped the motorbike and one of the guys threw acid on us and they went away," Ibrahimi said in a telephone interview. …
Fifteen people were hit with acid in all, including four teachers, Qaderi said.
This young girl was burned especially severely and has not yet been able to open her eyes:
A 80
From Power Line:
In Afghanistan … yesterday, classes had to be canceled at a girls’ school after Taliban members on motorcycles accosted a group of students and teachers walking to school in Kandahar, and threw acid on their faces:
"They don’t want us go to school. They don’t like education," said Susan Ibrahimi, who started teaching at Mirwais Mena four months ago. She and her mother, also a teacher at the school, were wearing burqas on their walk to work when the motorbike stopped next to them.
"They didn’t say anything. They just stopped the motorbike and one of the guys threw acid on us and they went away," Ibrahimi said in a telephone interview. …
Fifteen people were hit with acid in all, including four teachers, Qaderi said.
This young girl was burned especially severely and has not yet been able to open her eyes:
In the name of Allah the merciful 97
From Awdal News Network, Somalia:
The first reports were that Aisha Ibrahim Kuhulow was 23 year old, but her father now confirms for Amnesty International that she was only 13.
The girl’s young age, combined with the fact that she herself contacted the Shabab-militia who controls the town, in order to report the rape, failed to protect her from being sentenced to death by the Islamists for breach of Islamic law in having sex outside of marriage.
This child suffered a terrible death as demanded by the armed opposition forces that control Kismayo, says David Copeman who is responsible for Amnesty’s Somalia-department, to the news office, AP.
Hole in the ground
Thousands of people witnessed the grotesque execution of Aisha at a football stadium in the port town of Kismayo on Monday.
The 13-year old was led in and forced into a hole in the ground. The hole was then filled so that only her head was showing. About 50 men then started to throw stones at her, according to Amensty’s information.
After a while, nurses were called to check whether Aisha was still alive. The thin body was then brought out of the hold and examined. When it was established that she was still alive, she was again placed in the hole so that the stone-throwers could continue.
Shot
When some of the spectators tried to storm the stadium to save Aisha, the militia opened fire on the crowd, and a young boy was killed.
A spokesman for the Shabab-militia expressed regret for the boy’s death and assured that the soldiers who had opened fire would be punished.
However, it would seem that the men whom13-year old Aisha tried to report for rape have little to fear. None of them have been arrested.
In the name of Allah the merciful 103
The United Nations said Tuesday that a Somali stoned to death by Islamist militants after she had been accused of adultery was a 13-year-old girl who had been raped while visiting her grandmother.
In the first such public killing by the militants in about two years, she was placed in a hole and stoned to death on Oct. 28 in a rebel-held port city, Kismayu, in front of a crowd, after local leaders said she was guilty under Shariah, the legal code of Islam based on the Koran.
“Reports indicate that she had been raped by three men while traveling on foot to visit her grandmother in the war-torn capital, Mogadishu,” Unicef, the United Nations children’s agency, said in a statement.
“Following the assault, she sought protection from the authorities, who then accused her of adultery and sentenced her to death,” Unicef added. “A child was victimized twice — first by the perpetrators of the rape and then by those responsible for administering justice.”
The human rights group Amnesty International has identified the girl as Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow and said she was killed by 50 men who stoned her in a stadium in Kismayu in front of about 1,000 spectators.
When the family tried to report the rape to the Shabab militia that controls Kismayu, the girl was accused of adultery and was detained. None of the men she accused of rape have been arrested.
A Somali news agency adds more disturbing details:
Thousands of people witnessed the grotesque execution of Aisha at a football stadium in the port town of Kismayo on Monday.
The 13-year old was led in and forced into a hole in the ground. The hole was then filled so that only her head was showing. About 50 men then started to throw stones at her, according to Amnesty’s information.
After a while, nurses were called to check whether Aisha was still alive. The thin body was then brought out of the hold and examined. When it was established that she was still alive, she was again placed in the hole so that the stone-throwers could continue.
When some of the spectators tried to storm the stadium to save Aisha, the militia opened fire on the crowd, and a young boy was killed.
A spokesman for the Shabab-militia expressed regret for the boy’s death and assured that the soldiers who had opened fire would be punished.
However, it would seem that the men whom13-year old Aisha tried to report for rape have little to fear. None of them have been arrested.
