The umma begins to see the light:
The violent attacks by al-Qaeda and by the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq have led people and religious groups in the Muslim world to reduce their financial support for Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network and to question its leadership, senior U.S. intelligence officials told Congress yesterday…
Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell told the panel that “the brutal attacks unleashed by al-Qaeda in Iraq and the other al-Qaeda affiliates against Muslim civilians have tarnished al-Qaeda’s self-styled image as the extremist vanguard.”
Hate to be a churl, better late than never and all, but it’d have been keen – from your standard, “citizen of the world” perspective – if such reservations had been raised when al Qaeda was being celebrated for brutal attacks on non-Muslims.
Could it be that with less financial support AQ would be less able to mount operations? And if that were true is it possible that Americans (and maybe even Europeans) are on average a bit safer?
Nah, that couldn’t possibly be true. I’ve been told over and over again that Iraq is a pointless mess that has accomplished nothing whatsoever, most especially not making anyone safer.
Speaking of brutality and a city “mentioned in dispatches” on this blog a few days back, it’s not a pretty sight…
It seems that it’s only fun to celebrate when it’s the other guys getting kilt. Damn them all the whole lot of ‘em. Too silent for too long for my likes. My parents still harbor ill thoughts of the last people to attack us, so to will I with these types. It’ll be on my kids to be more empathic and thoughtful to those of that faith.
Oddly enough, YouTube shows the celebration video as being unavailable.
It’s a funny thing, having a law about a freedom of the press enshrined in the Constitution where the government cannot assail it for any reason. Makes you think you actually, you know, have a free press and access to information that others might like suppressed.
It’s a law that does no good when the press suppresses itself for fear of annoying or offending somebody.
The even more annoying part? Benjamin Franklin wrote about this very thing over 200 years ago, and many of his writings you probably never read in grade school were precisely pointed to expose this sort of problem.
There might be something to that old saw about history repeating itself.
– Max
Never underestimate the innate human capacity for self-deception. It affects me, it affects you, it affects Mike McConnell and the legions of committees that want to give the boss good news, it affects the Washington Post and what it deems printworthy.
When I see hundreds of thousands of Muslims marching in the streets, vocally and openly rejecting jihad and the imposition of Sharia by violence, and advocating the equality of Infidels with Muslims under the law, in all places and all times, then I’ll give some weight to the DNI’s statement. Until then, I’m the same old skeptical SOB.
One cranky ex-EIG imam with a personal grudge against Zawahiri and a desire to get out of Egyptian prison wrote a treatise that was trumpeted by the Egyptians and by the Americans as proof the tide was turning, but in muj circles the book was laughed out of court.
Meanwhile, the Germans (with good reason IMHO) went public yesterday with the fear that Germany is an AQ target, and that there are literally so many threat streams rolling in Germany that they can’t keep up with them all–that is, a successful AQ attack in Germany is only a matter of time.
I could list dozens of similar circumstances from the last week alone (occupied Chad, anyone?), and wonder how they square with the DNI’s statement (which is probably more circumspect and “nuanced” than the Post would lead one to believe) that AQ is being repudiated, and with the Post’s article of faith that AQ never was a threat to the US in the first place.
And finally, the reality is that if AQ disappeared tomorrow, the jihad would continue as if nothing happened. AQ, while posing legitimate, real threats to Americans and our allies, is truly the “lesser jihad.” The real jihad is advancing, slowly but relentlessly, and our government, willfully and negligently, hasn’t a clue.
xformed, just followed your link. When I was naive, I believed we were going into Iraq to put an end to this evil, much as Napier, so often quoted on this page, made it clear to the Indians what evil he would not tolerate. It’s easy enough to find out who commits such crimes–if you wnat to. It’s easy enough to prosecute them under current Iraqi law–if you want to. As soon as the women feel safe enough to point out who their attackers are, they’ll start pointing. We failed them, miserably.
Zane;
We’re stuck on the horns, aren’t we? Fed to the woodchippers after being dragged into a car and raped, or strangled under a form of law that would take us to a time centuries ago. Bad in both directions.
Show them some freedom and democracy? It’s the way to the future. Different from the VN times, it seems we kept out fingers out of the who we wanted to run it like we did for lots of decades after WWII. We were damned for setting “our guy” up in many lands (the Shah being one), and now, when we provide a far greater degree of self-determination, we get Islamically based “constitutions,” which perpetuate this sort of behavior. Damned now for that. Is there even a middle ground in the human experience?
It will be when the oppressed stand themselves and say “NO MORE!” is when we will see things change for the better.