Drip, Drip, Drip

[preemptingyou03]

A pre-Zarqawi death article, but nevertheless, touches the main theme.

Drip, Drip, Drip…
Al Qaida’s Muslim Victims Pile Up
By Nicholas M. Guariglia
April 29, 2006

Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the most wanted man in Iraq and the world’s most notorious neck-sawyer, finally revealed his face on a live video this past week. In the video, he rejected the newly formed Iraqi parliament under Nouri al Maliki’s premiership, condemned those the Iraqis elected, called for more attacks on Iraqis who collaborate with the U.S., and managed to offend all of Iraq’s ethnic groups –– Kurds are of course “Zionists” because they do not want to burn Jews, Shi’ites are “heretics” because they are not Sunni, and Sunnis who reject fascism are ‘Sunnis’ with purposeful quotations around their names to indicate their phoniness. Apparently only a select few Salafists know the true meaning of life and conduct themselves devoutly.

In the aftermath of the video –– in which al Zarqawi walked around his desert enclave with a beefed up sense of self, whiling firing rounds proudly into sands of nothingness –– Western pundits noted a far more “moderate tone” in his rhetoric, which was designed to “appeal” to the Iraqi masses to “legitimatize” his (Iraqi-killing?) ways. Listening to the CNN commentary of the video would have been successful in forcing an already nauseous person to the toilet while making a perfectly fine person immediately nauseous.

Of course, al Zarqawi is not of Iraqi nationality, nor are the majority of his agents. However much obstructionists would like to hype up the legitimacy of the insurrection –– I believe it was Michael Moore who referred to these terrorists as “patriots” and “Minutemen” –– the fact of the matter is, al Qaida is mainly an organization filled with deviants disgruntled at their own governments and therefore violent toward their own countrymen. A few days ago, a dozen or so were killed in Egypt; a few weeks ago, a few dozen were killed in Pakistan; a few months ago, al Zarqawi, a Jordanian, blew up a wedding party in his homeland. Why is it that the world acts as if these attacks are unsurprising, or those Jordanian newlyweds were somehow not as “pious” as their slaughterers? Why is it that for every car bomb that goes off in an Iraqi market, it is somehow characterized as an American-induced event and not the kind of Muslim-on-Muslim savagery that only underscores the need for a continued military-to-military alliance with the new Iraqi army?

One of the greatest indicators to come out of Iraq was when the Iraqi security forces –– who once covered their faces with ski masks due to fear of being recognized and labeled as American collaborators –– began to show their faces as they patrolled the streets. Is it that mind-boggling to believe that the Iraqi and American national interests are at last intertwined? The continued violence in that country would at once end if the humane had their way. Taking the intentionalistic approach, the United States would have fired its last bullet in Iraq sometime three years ago.

Unfortunately bad people have a say in that; bad people, indeed, without the Iraqis at heart. Liberal-gone-neocon Christopher Hitchens once had a hearty exchange with comedian Jon Stewart on this very issue. Stewart contended that no one believed anyone would be crazy enough to undergo a “Churchillian” war to “redraw the map” of the Middle East. Hitchens replied hastily: it is not we, but the “bin Ladenists” that seek to redraw the map. They do not believe Iraq should exist. They do not believe the current borders of the Arab world should exist. It should, in their opinion, all fall under the control of one huge totalitarian caliphate run by (who else?) the Caliph (bin Laden approved, if not bin Laden himself).

However nutty and unlikely this objective seems, it needn’t matter, for our enemies believe it is doable and they therefore will kill anyone (Muslim or not) who either stands in their way or who threatens the sanctity of their worldview. It is hard to say what the average jihadist fears more: the revolutionary side of the American allure, or daunting American soldiers themselves. But the fact that your everyday Wahhabi may be just as threatened from a Playboy centerfold than from a Navy SEAL, showcases a lot about the twisted society they seek.

This would explain why Iraqi entrepreneurs that undertake “unholy” actions like selling Western music CDs and DVDs are routinely targeted, as are those who frequent such blossoming shops. Our fascist opponents have a strict ethos of state-imposed morality, and Iraqis have generally shown their contempt for such a brutal code of law. Iraqis, as well as most Muslims (even those with high disapproval of the United States), reject the idea of a mullah or imam micromanaging their life. And this is why, in large part, Iraqis have enlisted in droves –– some 250,000 currently under arms –– to war back against the al Qaidists and Wahhabi jihadists.

We have seen the international media report al Qaida-on-Muslim violence as if it were just another event that we were all expecting, and not the ironic tragedy melodrama that it is. We often worry of fueling Islamic anger and creating blowback, but it is the al Qaidists that are sparking blowback amongst their coreligionists, and we need not look any further than the ferocity and pleasure with which our Iraqi allies are killing them. The embattled Don Rumsfeld, standing next to his top commander General George Casey, spoke of this Iraqi counterterrorism trend with great confidence in a recent trip to Iraq, claiming those who continuously denigrated and undermined the Iraqi armed forces in the past have turned out to be “flat wrong.” Noting the almost apparent glee by some to claim Iraq was in a state of civil war, Rumsfeld pointed out that Iraq’s religious and political leaders refrained from demanding reprisal attacks, and the Iraqi army stepped up to the plate in separating the hooligan militias.

And yet it is at this precise moment that the ever-so-helpful Senator Biden suggests decentralizing Iraqi society and allowing each ethnic group to govern their affairs tribally and autonomously. This coming just days after a unity government in Iraq was finally formed. Why the sudden call for segregation at this moment? Hassan al Senaid, a senior official in the Dawa political party (which nominated the Iraqi premier), of course criticized Biden’s proposal: “Partitioning Iraq is rejected by all Iraqis.”

So there we have it. If the past three months of the defeatist mantra could be paraphrased, it’d sound something like: “We have a civil war, and therefore should partition Iraq. Okay, we don’t have a civil war, but we don’t have a unity parliament, and therefore should partition Iraq. Okay, we have a unity parliament, but… we should still partition Iraq.” The al Qaidists must be chuckling in their safehouses knowing U.S. representatives are unsure if the country their military occupies should even be a country at all.

The killings and bombings will continue, because the notion of man-made constitutions, elected parliamentary parties debating, emancipated women, assimilated minorities, and a separation of mosque and state scares the hell out of these totalitarians our European counterparts often characterize are freedom fighters. Whenever an obstructionist contends the removal of fascist governments and the installment of democracies in their place is an “inflammatory” doctrine, they are (thankfully) correct, as Hitchens himself appropriately highlighted in a 2004 editorial: “The demolition of the Taliban, the huge damage inflicted on the al Qaida network, and the confrontation with theocratic saboteurs in Iraq represent huge advances for the non-fundamentalist forces in many countries. The ‘antiwar’ faction even recognizes this achievement, if only indirectly, by complaining about the way in which it has infuriated the Islamic religious extremists around the world. But does it accept the apparent corollary –– that we should have been pursuing a policy to which the fanatics had no objection?”

http://www.worldthreats.com/middle_east/Guariglia_20060525_03.htm