Shahid
Via Empire Notes, a Washington Post story, Seeking Salvation In City of Insurgents (free yet annoying registration required) tells the story of a "foreign fighter" in Iraq.
Abu Thar turned 30, and might never have tried to reach Iraq again but for the photographs that emerged of U.S. military police abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison. Seeing the photos, his wife, also a religious student, urged him to leave everything and go to Iraq to fight jihad. She was pregnant with their sixth child.The morals of the story: 1) War is bad. Seriously - these are people, with wives, daughters, and lives they would rather be living. They may be religious nuts to us, but they'd still rather work and study in Yemen than kill Americans in Iraq. 2) Bush's invasion and occupation of Iraq is not making us safer. Quite the opposite, it's creating generations of new violent America-haters. And for all his talk during the election of destroying "three-fourths" of Al Qaeda, here we see Zarqawi's group, and who knows how many individuals, swelling Al Qaeda's ranks.
"She told me, 'If they are doing this to the men, imagine what is happening to the women now,' " Abu Thar recalled. " 'Imagine your sisters and I being raped by the infidel American pigs.' " ...
Back at his home, he had a final dinner with his wife and children, who went to bed without being told their father was leaving. "My favorite daughter came and sat in my lap and slept there. She opened her eyes and said, 'Daddy, I love you.' "
He was weeping openly now, a thin man with a thin beard under a ragged tree in a courtyard in Fallujah. "You know these memories are the work of the devil trying to soften my heart and bring me back home," he said.
He rejected going home with a passion. When a visitor told him, "We will come and see you and your family in Yemen," the anger in his reply contorted his usually smooth features. "The only place I am going from here," he snapped, "is heaven." ...
In Fallujah, Abu Thar was assigned to a group called Monotheism and Jihad. The group is headed by Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian who has asserted responsibility for many of the most extreme terrorist strikes in Iraq, and who last month allied his group with al Qaeda. ...
When he finished reading, he held his hands high and prayed: "Oh God, you who made the prophet victorious in his wars against the infidels, make us victorious in our war against America.
"Oh God, defeat America and its allies everywhere." ...
[J]ust before he crossed the border from Syria, [his wife] called and told him she had given the [newborn] child a name: Shahid. It means martyr.
posted by Chris @ 11/11/2004 11:18:00 AM
6 comments
6 Comments:
It's so nice you believe everything the enemy says.
You BELIEVE Mr. Thar? Why? Why? WHY? What gives you any iota that this is a credible story? He would like nothing more than to see you dead. Because you belive in equal rights for women. Because you believe in a free press. Because you believe that fags should be allowed to buttfuck all they want. Because you are not interested in worshipping "Allah": which means you are a stinking infidel. That's why; that's the only reason they want.
Just exactly how much education do you think this scumbag has? Do you think that critical thought is his strong point? Do you have any concept of how ignorant these people are? Erase anything you have learned since the age of 5, and fill it with religious hatred. Now we're getting somewhere.
If you believed this man was your enemy, and the enemy of western civilization, then you would not believe him.
This cockroach, through his mouthpeice, the liberal media, is tugging at your heartstrings. How about all the innocent men and women in the twin towers? What of them? Do you not think that sort of thing should
be prevented in the future? Do you not know that this cockroach would like nothing better than to repeat it?
We killed 600 cockroaches today. Do you believe that their ranks are swelling? You read one account, and you think their ranks are swelling? That's what these cockroaches want you to think, sir.
So they can put your wife and daughter in burkas -- or rape them and call them whores. That's what these cockroaches have been doing in Iran, for 25 years; it's what they do everywhere.
Explain to me why you think this is a situation that can be left alone, I'm dying to know. They're taking over Europe, they're murdering people in the streets for NOT THINKING THE RIGHT THOUGHTS. They've taken over all of the middle east except Israel, and they have made a crack at us, with the COMPLETE SYMPATHY of the liberal media. Even my grandfather didn't have to contend with half as many Nazi sympathizers. I would have liked to read a concentration camp guard's story of 1944 in the Washington Post today: he really didn't want to leave his nice village to turn Jews into lampshades, but he feels he really had to, his wife thinks it's best, and really he wouldn't have it any other way.
I'll tell you when I'll stop, sir: when they renounce all religious killing. But they won't. This war is going to last a long, long time, and there are a lot more dead to come.
*Sigh*.
Yes, I guess you're right about there being a lot more dead to come.
Obviously - or at least I thought it was obvious and I didn't need to qualify it, though I guess that was wrong - I care as much or more about the deaths of those in the World Trade Center, and the gaping holes those deaths caused in all the lives they touched. OF COURSE.
I can hardly believe that you honestly don't think that the invasion and occupation of Iraq aren't being used to recruit new terrorists. According to FactCheck's analysis of the first presidential debate, "the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies reported May 25 that the occupation of Iraq has helped al Qaeda recruit more members. The institute quoted "conservative" intelligence estimates as saying that al Qaeda has 18,000 potential operatives and is present in more than 60 countries."
My point is - anti-American terrorists could have and should have been stopped and attacked and diminished in other, smarter ways. For one thing, outlasting them has worked pretty well in other Cold Wars. China's not exactly loving us, but we don't need to invade them with anything besides McDonald's and Pepsi. For a 9/11 response, Afghanistan was a good start, but why didn't we keep our attention focused there? Why is it deteriorating into New Improved Super Opium Land (Now With Mock Elections!)? Because Bush et. al. had such a hard-on to attack Saddam. Even though Daddy knew it was a recipe for disaster 10 years ago. And based on shoddy (cum nonexistent) evidence. And without the support of the UN. And without complete and accurate plans for what to do after Saddam fell. And which created the conditions for Abu Ghraib. And Fallujah. And Fallujah again. And on, and on.
You say that Muslim fundamentalists want to kill me because of my free press, and my equal rights for women, and my homo friends. I guess you're saying that's why Bin Laden attacked on 9/11. Fine. I accept all that. But why in fuck's sake do we need to go out of our way, at tremendous expense in lives, money and political capital, to hand them so many more reasons to hate us so much more? All for no good purpose?!
If your scare story is accurate, and the Muslim armies march on Austin with truckloads of burkas for my women, then by all means, bomb the shit out of them. But destroying an entire country, no matter how evil the tyrant, that had no connection to 9/11, did way more harm than good.
Well. If it's just a question of strategery, then we can talk.
Outlasting them is a worthwhile question, and I believe it has been answered: we tried this through the 90's. We let them
attack the World Trade Center, the U.S.S. Cole, the Khobar
Towers, the embassies in Africa. We kept waiting them out, and
then they took down the Trade Center Towers. Theoretically it
seemed like a bad idea, but I feel pretty comfortable in saying
it was a bad idea in practice as well. The basic principle here
is that you have to defend yourself, or expect to suffer more.
Never a fun place to be. Also, we didn't really wait out the
Russians, we dumped a huge amount of cash into building nuclear
weapons to wipe them off they face of the earth if they moved a
muscle. So they countered it, and so on. Stalemate...until they
went bankrupt.
Taking over Afghanistan was unavoidable. Our enemy was there,
and the Taliban cockroaches wouldn't give him up. If you can
come up with a way to have remained the U.S. president and not
take over Afghanistan, I would be impressed.
Invading Iraq was definitely not the next obvious step.
However, I can recognize the utility, even brilliance of:
1) isolating Iran
2) isolating Syria
3) ridding the world of an enemy bent on our destruction, who
attempted the assassination of a U.S. president, who was
abetting the terrorists, who had the capability to operate a clandestine nuclear program
4) fighting terrorists in Iraq instead of New York
5) scaring the crap out of all our other enemies: in particular Libya
and North Korea.
6) establishing another democracy in the middle east, besides ISRAEL.
7) Gaining footholds throughout the Middle East from which to fight terrorists
Costs:
1) Great expenses
2) Lives of U.S. troops
3) Some more cockroaches will emerge from the woodwork.
The question is, could you have come up with as effective a
solution at the same price? Don't forget, we're up against time
here. Nuclear time.
I was going to add another comment in which I said I hope you're trolling me, but I see now you're not.
"Strategy" aside a moment, I'd like to point out that your original argument boils down to, they're ignorant and they hate us, so we should kill them. That's not the kind of country I want us ours to be. Whether you/we really mean it that way is almost beside the point - that's how the world is coming to see us.
I'd also like to point out that they are not cockroaches. Even if we both put aside the fact that they are human beings, they're still not cockroaches. The only problems we have with real cockroaches are that they breed quickly, survive tenaciously and try to move in to our nice clean kitchens. That's all bad enough, but realize that cockroahes do not hate us, nor do they have a Al-Cockzeera media (or CNN for that matter) to incite more hatred worldwide when we spray them with Raid, nor do they have suicide bombers. So even if Muslims shouldn't be considered higher than insects on strictly moral grounds, at least be smart enough to consider them higher on "strategic" grounds.
Regarding the "brilliant" side-effects of invading Iraq, IMHO cost #3 alone outweighs the benefits. And I think 1 & 2 are pretty damn heavy, too.
By the way, if we're so interested in "ridding the world of an enemy bent on our destruction", you know, idealogical opposites who despise our very way of life, why haven't we ever just gone ahead and knocked Castro over? Oh, that's right, because he's a harmless old man, safely isolated from the world community. Plus, he has no ties to Al Qaeda. So that's a completely different situation.
Time will tell whether your #5, 6 and 7 turn out to be silver linings like you assert, or preface to a deadly, generations-long quagmire.
Lastly, taking the fight "to them" vs. the "bad idea" of outlasting them, I'd just point out that such policies don't enjoy a much better record in the history of our country, either.
News today that underscores my point: it may feel like anti-terrorist action to destroy Iraq, and Bush & Co. may say it's anti-terrorist action, but even if it did reduce the chances of future terror attacks by violent anti-American forces on the U.S. (which I highly doubt), it was far from the best course.
CIA Officer Quits To Criticize Agency on Hunt for Bin Laden"Michael Scheuer, the former chief of the CIA's Osama bin Laden unit, said he believes there has not been adequate national debate over the nature of the threat posed by bin Laden and the forces he leads and inspires."
They are certainly deadlier than cockroaches, no question -- and
fully cognizant of their acts. The definition of that is, I believe,
evil.
We haven't knocked over Castro because we have bigger fish to fry. If
he decides to dabble in helping sneak a nuke into Miami, and we find
out...well, I leave it to your imagination. This isn't to say that he
isn't currently engaged in crimes against his people and doesn't
deserve to be taken out, he is and does. I expect the French to
invade any day now.
My problem is that the Democrats have never presented a strategy
for solving this problem. Perhaps you'd care to be the first?
You have the advantage of hindsight, after all.
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