Blast the beasts and the children
VOA reports that "bomb blasts at two Baghdad pet markets Friday killed at least 64 people and wounded more than 100 others. Authorities say a female suicide bomber carried out the first attack, ... Militants have targeted this market several times since the start of the Iraq war."
The NYT adds that: The second bomb hit minutes later and barely two miles away at the New Baghdad pet market. Both markets are on the east side of the river, and both are in mainly Shiite areas. But they are popular with both Shiites and Sunnis. ... American military commanders have noted in recent months that in areas where there are many checkpoints insurgents have begun using suicide vests instead of vehicles to carry out bombings because they are easier to sneak past road blocks and barriers. Ghazil is sealed off to most vehicles by head-high concrete blast barriers. Although far less deadly than VBIEDs, human-borne bombs can still pack considerable power, as the video below shows. In order to maximize the number of deaths caused by the relatively small amounts of explosive, the suicide bomber attacks densely populated crowds. But casualties are not enough. Terrorism aims to maximize horror. Since the Ghazil pet bazaar was densely thronged by families and children it meets both these criteria. In the terrible calculus of extremism, places like Disneyland, not Fort Bragg, are the greater military targets. The attack occurred only a few months after an attack on the same market in November, 2007. The IHT reported then that: Ghazil animal market was a crowded bazaar in a city willing itself into recovery. Cautious but hopeful parents led fun-starved children by the hand to show them parakeets, tropical fish and twittering chicks painted in bright, improbable hues. ... Fish tanks lay where they had exploded in the faces that peered into them, twisted bird cages were hurled across the lane, and human and animal blood was being hosed off the streets by well-practiced firefighters. The horror was the point, the whole point. Cats, dogs, parakeets and children had no distinguishing characteristic except their innocence. And that made them the targets of those who some call "militants".
posted by wretchardthecat at 2/01/2008 05:53:00 AM
35 Comments:
And that made them the targets of those who some call "militants".
In the wider, less terrorized world, where many in authority believe that breathing human beings are gross polluters, these militants really do deliver reductions for such "thinkers," up to 100 pollution sources at a stroke.
Every time I read an account like this, I think of my own innocent kids and seethe at the idea that anyone, even for a nanosecond, would dream that hurting them could somehow be God's will...
If, in a world where such evil exists, our atheist friends are correct that there is no supreme being and hence, everyone eventually passes from this life into unconscious and eventually unremembered eternity... how unbelieveably unjust such a universe would be. To cause such misery and pass into nothingness with impunity...
I can't recall the reference offhand, but I seem to remember that Revelation refers to Hell having to enlarge to absorb all the new tenants as the world spiraled toward the apocalypse...
I hope that however God deals with such vile specimens of inhumanity, it is merciless, and it is everlasting.
To kill a 5 year-old as he smiles at his first goldfish. Oh My God.
Seethe also at their Western enablers and apologizers.
Every time NYTs and Cindy Sheehans' of the world sprouting the nonsense, it gives succor to those monsters to continue this evil.
Triton'sPolarTiger said...
"Every time I read an account like this, I think of my own innocent kids and seethe at the idea that anyone, even for a nanosecond, would dream that hurting them could somehow be God's will..."
That's my own reaction. These Islamic fascists are real-life monsters worse than any fantasy about Dracula.
"If, in a world where such evil exists, our atheist friends are correct that there is no supreme being and hence, everyone eventually passes from this life into unconscious and eventually unremembered eternity... how unbelieveably unjust such a universe would be. To cause such misery and pass into nothingness with impunity..."
I'm an agnostic and not an atheist but it's my suspicion (I don't know) that we all end up in oblivion, both the good and the wicked.
If these Islamic monsters are to see justice, they need to experience it while they're still alive, e.g. stuck in a chicken coop in Gitmo under the tender mercies of USMC guards . Also, keep in mind, the monster achieves victory only after the moonbat screeches "Surrender! Run away!".
The moonbat and the Islamic monster have a symbiotic relationship.
the event may have involved an inaccuarate (or is it accuarate) interpretation of the individual's holy text
Every time I read an account like this, I think of my own innocent kids and seethe at the idea that anyone, even for a nanosecond, would dream that >hurting them could somehow be God's will...
It blows me a way imagining that there are a group of people (able to walk and chew gum at the same time) who imagine that this somehow promotes their cause. (Then again there is a vocal minority here that actually thinks a proactive nuclear genocide of Muslims would promote their cause...) As a father, my world would just go white hot, and (for better or for worse) nothing would matter to me in whatever was left of my life except inflicting maximum punishment on those responsible. It would turn me into a monster.
Can you imagine the rage these families and friends of families would have at these people? It's not as if al-Qaeda can turn this into a civil war any more. Most of the Sunnis have rejected them now. This is just going to further distance al-Qaeda from the Sunni population. (It's a microcosm of the way proactively nuking Muslims would turn the whole world, including me, against them.)
Bill said:
"As a father, my world would just go white hot, and (for better or for worse) nothing would matter to me in whatever was left of my life except inflicting maximum punishment on those responsible."
Ditto that. If the monsters killed off my kids, I'd dye my hair brown, forge my birth certificate and try to enlist in the Marine Corp. (I'm too old to do it legally). I'd prefer to get kill in action as a USMC Second Lieutenant rather than jump off a bridge.
Should the bad guys ever succeed in nuking a major US city, I suspect the lines of outraged fathers at USMC recruiting offices would stretch out for miles.
I've noticed an interesting double standard (cognitive dissonance?) from the usual anti-war suspects:
Attacks like these in Iraq, although they are clearly -- for now-- trending toward "nuisance" levels like the IRA in London in the 70s&80s, are seen as proof the "war" is lost.
Yet the much larger 9-11 and other potential attacks just like this one, if they occurred over *here*, would be mere police matters.
Which is it?
The body count from Islamist murder is in the hundreds of thousands across the globe. But not to worry. The Democrat debate before the national primary says that no problem exists. Neither Hilary nor Barack uttered a single word about Islamism. It is not a foreign policy issue. It is not a domestic issue. It is not a moral issue. It is not a philosophical issue. Islamist murders do not exist.
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Soooo, then, where did the innocent young ladies come from? They're just wandering around the streets in their burkha's waiting to be seduced by some passing terrorist with a pretty sparkly dynamite belt?
Don't people with Downe's syndrome require more than a normal amount of supervision? Don't women in general in the Middle East require supervision?
Who are the families of these two women, and what is *their* definition of "terrorism"?
"Militants." No, just scumbags whose supporters ought to be roasted on spits.
There is new reporting that this is not even a suicid bombing attack.
Two girls with Down Syndrom were strapped with bombs and sent to the market, remote detonation.
Sick, sick, sick...
Always right said:
"Two girls with Down Syndrom were strapped with bombs and sent to the market, remote detonation."
Two innocent mentally retarded girls in burkhas used to unknowingly deliver bombs targeting children shopping for kittens and parakeets.
Have we hit bottom yet?
It is interesting that this is the best the enemy can do, e.g. they're not using car bombs or IEDs.
I wonder what the Iraqis do with al Qaeda guys after they capture them? One of these days, Seymour Hersch will publish an expose about Iraqi treatment of al Qaeda prisoners. No doubt, moralizing editorials in the New York Times will follow....
From the Democrats I get no sense that they see this kind of terrorist murder as a threat to our civilization, such as it is. The Democrats have a strange allergy to the war on terror, much less these daily, weekly facts of terror at work in the world.
They keep repeating mantras like "...to restore America's prestige in the world" which indicates they have bought the Chomsky line that all evil in the world flows from America. All the while ignoring that all over the world this "country of tarnished prestige" has lines and lines of eager waiting applicants for emmigration. Or they raise fake moral equivalencies, as in: "we [America] have our own problems with religious orthodoxy..." as if an open declaration of faith from Mike Huckabee is the same as an Islamic fatwa on a modern novelist.
I want the Democrats to come out and condemn the slaughter of innocents without equivocation.
I'm really moved by the comments here; I often come to the Belmont Club to get a human reaction to inhuman events like this...
About the Dems, I'm trying to say that just sitting around not talking about terrorism is not going to make it go away. They seem to have a childish petulance about it that makes them look incredibly cold in the face of these monstrosities.
Nahncee: There have been repeated reports that the mentally retarded are kidnapped off the street to serve as bomb carriers. I think it was one of the guys over at Iraq the Model said it nearly happened to a member of his own family.
One of the ladies with Downs Syndrom was known at the market and sold cream there every day. So rather than sitting around in an institution of some kind or locked up at home the poor thing was working for a living, like the young guy I saw yesterday at the Publix collecting the shopping carts.
The news reports are saying "Female Suicide bombers struck" - which is crap! The victims that were wired up with remote controlled explosives had no idea what was going on. They did not "strike" anything - they were helpless dupes.
A US Army Colonel summed it up a few years back. Why are we in Iraq? "Because nowhere else in the world are there people who need to be killed more than some there."
At 1st the Islamic suicide bomber blew up jews and no one gave a crap...
except the jews, and the world condemned....
the jews
for building barriers, bulldozing houses of the suicide bomber handlers, for targeting and killing the leaders of these movements...
Then this cult of death bombed america a few times and still no hard response
then 2001...
then the insanity of the islamic murderers went wild, SINCE THE CONCEPT OF ISLAMIC MARTYRS WAS ACCEPTED BY THE ISLAMIC WORLD AND STILL IS
now bali, spain, england russia all have been bombed and still the world condemns israel for CUTTING OFF SOME power to people who support such acts...
even today, dozens of bomb belt wearing palios are being arrested in sinai trying to cause death in israel
and so now in iraq, arabia, jordan, lebanon & egypt the suicide bomber concept is widely accepted (and more in the wider islamic world INCLUDING in ENGLAND), practiced and used...
Karma is a pain in the ass...
expect many many more islamic peoples to die horribly from their own devices...
i cant say i am surprises...
We are in such deep manure.
The monsters that used those two retarded girls would not hesitate to nuke an American city. The instant they have the capability, they will use it. Add to that, a year from now we'll probably have a liberal as President. The liberals are completely disconnected from reality. Go look at the comment sections of the various news articles concerning those two retarded girls. The moonbats just shreak BDS nonsense and can't see our peril. Those idiots are the driving force behind the Democratic Party and will require Hillary or Obama to go into ostrich mode with their heads in the sand or up their behinds.
I hope McCain can pull a rabbit out of the hat. He's our last hope.
These things are becoming all-too-commonplace these days. Just another example of the "peace" coming from the religion of pieces. I'm almost afraid to say more about what I truly think, since our resident dhimmi "ash" will make his entrance and find some other way to fit my comments into his extensive reading of Dr. Joseph Goebbels. Needless to say, apparently I have no moral authority to speak about these matters. You see, I am opposed to "the religion of peace" and so any means to achieve my silence are justified on the grounds that I am an ugly Islamophobe lacking all intellectual subtlety.
The idea behind this atrocity and others like it as I understand is the Saddam-strategy. Kill as many people as possible, particularly innocents, so when you threaten more killings people believe you. This was Mohammed's strategy also and it's easy to see why it has been adopted and adapted to modern times.
It works.
Where is AQ? Where can people find them and kill them in retaliation? Nowhere. They're ghosts the way Mohammed was a tribal raider with extreme mobility.
AQ is not stupid (merely profoundly evil). They are doing this because it is likely to work. If nothing else it can be used in the Press to get a total US withdrawal in abject defeat.
As for a nuked US city, Presidents Obama and Hillary would hug first responders, wonder "why do they hate us" and at most lob a few cruise missiles (and maybe not even that). So too McCain who is bound by his press-love and PC (and nearly left the Reps for the Dems). AQ knows this so has no fear.
Of course eventually enough of that will require halving the Muslim world-wide population, but AQ can't see that far ahead.
Clear and Succinct self-analysis Fred!
Bravo!
---
PeterBoston said...
"The body count from Islamist murder is in the hundreds of thousands across the globe.
But not to worry.
The Democrat debate before the national primary says that no problem exists.
Neither Hilary nor Barack uttered a single word about Islamism.
It is not a foreign policy issue.
It is not a domestic issue.
It is not a moral issue.
It is not a philosophical issue.
Islamist murders do not exist."
Dittos
Employment of illegal slave labor is not a problem either, not for inner city Blacks, the job market as a whole, or the country.
Nor are the murders, rapes, drugs, and mayhem on the freeways that comes with the unrestrained invasion.
Nor the ruined schools, cheated students, closed hospitals...
I could go on.
Viva McCain-Kennedy!
Doug,
Islam always has had a steady line of collabos from the 7th century onwards to the present. Today, their most effective ones are those who spare no tactic or occasion to silence criticism of the religion of pieces.
There's a pretty good discussion going on about this awful incident over at Jihad Watch. To use the simple and the innocent in this way is morally depraved beyond all comprehension, but again "war is deceit" and, by Muhammad's example, all manner of strategems are permitted in fighting the jihad against the infidels and their supporters. And their supporters are those people in that market on that day, since they were not involved in waging war on the infidel invaders.
Who would have thought that a sociopathic, brutal, and epileptic madman born in the 6th century and whose career as a brigand and military leader did not commence until he was well into his forties would inaugurate the world's most populous religion?
And it is all coming to a climax in our world of post-modernist rejection of reason and the correspondence theory of truth. However sane Benedict XVI's appeal to reason, the awesome size of Islam's numbers, combined with its Western allies and appeasers, tempts me to despair that humanity knows the difference between good and evil.
Fred: To use the simple and the innocent in this way is morally depraved beyond all comprehension...
And it is all coming to a climax in our world of post-modernist rejection of reason and the correspondence theory of truth.
...tempts me to despair that humanity knows the difference between good and evil.
Using a Downs syndrome victim in this manner has got to be the Western Utilitarian Postmodernist's fondest desire.
When terror reaches out and throttles one (maybe two) of own home-grown cheerleaders for these "militants," then the academy will once again return to preaching the JudeoChristian distinction between good and evil.
Triton: If, in a world where such evil exists, our atheist friends are correct that there is no supreme being and hence, everyone eventually passes from this life into unconscious and eventually unremembered eternity... how unbelievably unjust such a universe would be. To cause such misery and pass into nothingness with impunity...
I invite you to consider something that I believe to be of increasing importance with each passing day. Those who “cause such misery” do pay for it, if only in advance. I can imagine few greater punishments than to be a Muslim. Consider what a vast spiritual wasteland they live in. Some examples:
No dogs for children to play with and learn from about unconditional love and devotion.
Illiterate mothers who cannot read a bedtime story to their children or help them learn to read
No freedom of speech that permits healthy discussion and critical analysis of current events.
No freedom of religion that is so vital to a pluralistic society.
No graphic depiction of most living forms which curtails artistic creativity.
No public displays of affection that lend a romantic atmosphere to daily life.
No pork or other haram foods that widen the diet and give variety to sustenance.
No beautiful or shapely women proudly strutting their stuff on the street.
No non-liturgical music to break up the monotony of constant religious worship.
No alcohol to unwind with and enhance convivial gatherings.
No co-ed intermingling that allows young people to refine their social skills.
The Muslim world is nothing short of a spiritual gulag. Living in it must be pure Hell. This has led me to conclude that the Western world is allowed to regard crushing Islam as moral duty so that all Muslims may be freed of such inhumanity. Islam has no redeeming value to our world and the sooner Muslims are unshackled from this hideous death cult, the better it will be for all of us.
As I type this it also occurs to me that by keeping Muslims enslaved in such a spiritual wasteland, Islam’s clergy maintains the indecent attractiveness that a martyr’s paradise supposedly offers. By enforcing such poverty and deprivation almost anything—including sheer oblivion—must seem more appealing by far. I would not put it past Islam to knowingly impose such privation solely for the sake of driving jihad. Nothing about Islam could possibly shock me any further.
Bill: Can you imagine the rage these families and friends of families would have at these people?
Quite frankly, no. It is obviously nowhere near enough for them to finally head for the nearest mosque and begin stacking up dead jihadis like so much cordwood. Once Muslims finally begin to respond in such a fashion, only then will I know that they are truly serious about turning Islam into the Religion of Peace. [spit]
Until that time, these are the just desserts of a people who uphold a vicious doctrine that can somehow justify flying fully loaded passenger jet airliners into occupied skyscrapers.
Eggplant: Have we hit bottom yet?
Islam hit bottom a very long time ago in a little Russian town named Beslan. The rest is all just needless slaughter until our world awakes to the necessity of forever crushing Islam.
Fred: I'm almost afraid to say more about what I truly think
Please do not give Ash that totally undeserved victory.
Bill: Can you imagine the rage these families and friends of families would have at these people?
Zenster: Quite frankly, no. It is obviously nowhere near enough for them to finally head for the nearest mosque and begin stacking up dead jihadis like so much cordwood.
This time last year, about 100 Iraqis a day would disagree,... just before assuming room temperature. But with our help they learned to recognize when they were being played by terrorists with little more respect for Islam than most here.
My dad once told me that, "Any fool can learn from his mistakes, but if you're smart you'll learn from others'." So some either never got that lesson or were in some kind of JihadWatch trance when the rest of the world saw the victims of Islamists turn against each other, snowballing into near civil war. They were led into imagining that their mortal enemy wasn't just radical islamists, but a much wider ideological opposition. That didn't work out so well.
Funny, a few here think that a wider Christian genocide would work out better.
I wondered whether these attacks were comparable to those of the self-appointed Basra religious police. I'm not sure how many animals a fanatic might find objectionable, but I know that Arab Islam is deeply conflicted about dogs. It's hard for me to believe that the jihadis harbor no imagined justification other than the desire to convince people that they are dangerous.
Bill: This time last year, about 100 Iraqis a day would disagree,... just before assuming room temperature.
Quite evidently, they didn't disagree anywhere near enough. When they disagree enough to kill the jihadis before they kill them, please let me know.
Remember, we didn't spread the meme of jihad, Islam did. It is Islam's obligation to begin deactivating this same deadly meme. Muslims, as Islamic believers, all share in that duty. Those who do not are targets, just like us in the West, and deserve about as much or less security.
But with our help they learned to recognize when they were being played by terrorists with little more respect for Islam than most here.
"[R]espect for Islam"?!?
WTF are you talking about? The terrorists are enacting explicit and well-accepted Islamic doctrine. Please do not spew palliative, appeasing horseradish in my general direction.
Muslims have yet to make any sort of disconnect from their vile and demonic doctrine. Until they do so in large numbers, all of them remain responsible for the mayhem being wrought each single day upon the surface of this earth.
Zenster "WTF are you talking about? The terrorists are enacting explicit and well-accepted Islamic doctrine."
When you identify the "well-accepted Islamic doctrine" for targeting innocent Muslims in order to trigger retaliation against other innocent Muslims and civil war, let us know.
Until then, OBL and al-Qaeda "should" be considered as Muslim as Eric Rudolph and Christian Identity are Christian. A clear example of this is the overwhelming number of Sunni Arabs in Anbar aligning with with foreign Christian armies against al Qaeda Arabs, who by many other measures would be their allies against us.
You're of course right that it's first a Muslims responsibility to remove al Qaeda support from their societies. But their confusion, division and weakness doesn't absolve us of our responsibility to target only the guilty. Muslims pay for their general failure to exorcise ideologies like al Qaeda every day through the WOT and through their economic and social stagnation.
Bill: When you identify the "well-accepted Islamic doctrine" for targeting innocent Muslims in order to trigger retaliation against other innocent Muslims and civil war, let us know.
In case you hadn't noticed, Muslims killing other Muslims has pretty much been a constant through out Islam's entire history:
Muslim violence against Muslims is a symptom of politics whose origins may be traced back to the earliest years of the history of Islam and Muslims. This history became a closed cycle of group solidarity and tribal politics, and its victims continue to be Muslims who accept this history as the norm.
[Emphasis Added]
Nowhere do I claim that Muslim on Muslim violence occurs "in order to trigger retaliation against other innocent Muslims and civil war". When not of a takfiri nature, such violence is still traditionally absolved by Islam's hideous sanctification of murdered innocents as martyrs.
This decriminalization of collateral fatalities is well-established and thoroughly entrenched in historic Islam. It permits the most vicious and barbaric practices to continue unabated with religious justification.
Until then, OBL and al-Qaeda "should" be considered as Muslim as Eric Rudolph and Christian Identity are Christian.
Absolutely not. Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda are a direct reflection of time-honored Islamic traditions while Eric Rudolph is a near-total abberation of Christian doctrine.
A clear example of this is the overwhelming number of Sunni Arabs in Anbar aligning with with foreign Christian armies against al Qaeda Arabs, who by many other measures would be their allies against us.
And once such terrorist predation is eliminated—preferrably through the expenditure of much Western life and wealth—do you honestly think for one minute that the aforementioned Anbar Sunnis will retain an iota of allegiance to Western values and culture? If so, I have several bridges and lots of Florida real estate that you'd probably be interested in.
You're of course right that it's first a Muslims responsibility to remove al Qaeda support from their societies.
Damn straight, and no better way to make clear their responsibility than for Muslims to continue suffering at the hands of terrorists that they routinely refuse to hand over before the fact. Only when the zealots cross over into murdering Muslims is there any outcry. Well, they can all go piss up a rope until the time comes when there is universal condemnation of terrorism regardless of who is being targeted.
But their confusion, division and weakness doesn't absolve us of our responsibility to target only the guilty.
And granted Muslim use of taqiyya and their regard of war as deceit, exactly how are we supposed to oh so carefully winnow out these terrorist operative who they voluntarily shelter within their midst? Terrorism and dhimmitude epitomize collective punishment. How is it that we must refrain from administering these treacherous Muslims a dose of their own medicine? I think a good measure of exposure to the end results of their own preferred practices might serve a very useful purpose towards enlightening our Muslim enemies as to just how evil their selective memory and application of humanity really is.
Muslims pay for their general failure to exorcise ideologies like al Qaeda every day through the WOT and through their economic and social stagnation.
Yet, somehow we're supposed to pay right alongside them as well? I think not. Muslims richly deserve the Islamic terrorism committed against them. Nowhere has any significant portion of Islam expressed anything remotely approximating universal condemnation for terrorism. As the above cited author, Salim Mansur notes:
"'useful idiots' (in Lenin's memorable phrase) give pause to the vast majority of Muslims -- in particular those in North America and Europe -- whose silence in the face of evil feeds the bloodlust of Muslim terrorists."
[Emphasis Added]
Until there is a major seachange in how Muslims regard the use of terrorism, their continued slaughter at the hands of Islamic zealots is nothing but poetic justice and I, for one, shall not weep a single tear on their behalf.
Fred: I'm almost afraid to say more about what I truly think
Please do not give Ash that totally undeserved victory.
Three strikes are you're out. It's good enough for baseball, it's good enough for the prison system, it should also be good enough for trolls like Ash.
Give him your attention three times, and if he insists on wallowing in Stoopid and/or comparing you to Hitler, then he's out. Ignore him happily ever after.
I promise you the rest of us won't miss it at all.
Zenster: Nowhere do I claim that Muslim on Muslim violence occurs "in order to trigger retaliation against other innocent Muslims and civil war".
I’m responding to a claim that what al-Qaeda is doing in this story is “well-accepted Islamic doctrine” and that’s exactly what they’re doing.
Of course many Muslims agree that takfiri gets around Islam’s prohibition on killing Muslims, but I’m not aware of any well-accepted doctrine for its application beyond targeting apostates and accepting collateral “martyrs”, (although I’m sure it’s occurred). But what al-Queda is reduced to doing here is not only contrary to Islam, it's without precedent. It’s two steps beyond the already controversial doctrine of takfiri, 1) it’s “targeting” innocent Muslims so that their allies will retaliate and 2) kill non-apostate Muslims of al-Quida’s own sect. WTF? That’s not Islamic takfiri. It’s just throwing out Islam and the Koran altogether.
Maybe stories like these will be buried outside Iraq and forgotten, but judging by al-Qaeda’s shrinking Iraqi support, it’s working against them where they’re published and remembered.
Bill: Of course many Muslims agree that takfiri gets around Islam’s prohibition on killing Muslims, but I’m not aware of any well-accepted doctrine for its application beyond targeting apostates and accepting collateral “martyrs”, (although I’m sure it’s occurred).
Research showed that takfiri is a spurious offshoot of terror groups and not mainline doctrine, which is why I did not couch it as such.
To a minor extent we are now in agreement.
But what al-Queda is reduced to doing here is not only contrary to Islam, it's without precedent.
Here, we still part ways. I view al Qaeda as a direct and logical extension of how Islam always engenders bloodshed over who is or isn't sufficiently pious. Overemphasis upon Islamic purity is a root cause of this evil and the Koran itself is a clear source for such vile spiritual fastidiousness. One look at Pakistan tells us all we need to know about Islamic purity.
Since the Koran drives all of this evil, those who subscribe to it are its willing victims and beyond sympathy. Muslims have no excuse and their lamentations ring hollow as they continue to bow and scrape for a filthy, murderous deity.
Zenster: “I view al Qaeda as a direct and logical extension of how Islam always engenders bloodshed over who is or isn't sufficiently pious. Overemphasis upon Islamic purity is a root cause of this evil and the Koran itself is a clear source for such vile spiritual fastidiousness. One look at Pakistan tells us all we need to know about Islamic purity.
I wouldn’t label much as a “logical extension” of any of the major religions. All are sufficiently vague and arguably contradictory to enable radically different interpretations, especially considering that there’s so much more that effects behavior than ideology.
The claim that “Pakistan tells us all we need to know about Islamic purity” would be more thought provoking if Pakistan were the center of anything in Islam other than a poorly established, cold war whipsawed backwater and magnet to the Muslim world’s rejects, criminals and expatriates. If not for its nukes and al-Qaeda’s need for safe haven, it would be as irrelevant to us as to the Islamic world.
Zenster: "Since the Koran drives all of this evil, those who subscribe to it are its willing victims and beyond sympathy.”
I can’t speak to your concept of sympathy, but I’m sure that if you were born in an Islamic society, you’d be Muslim (especially with your propensity to radicalism). I haven’t know many Muslims well, but the two I have known were no more beyond "my" sympathy than anyone else.
You’d likely agree with me that terrorists are emboldened by our inaction, moral confusion and our unwillingness to fully wage and sustain a war. You’d probably agree that much of the blame rests on our “allies" and political opposition’s refusal to join us to label a people or ideology as “evil”, much less pay the price for its destruction. But I don't know if you’d agree that Islamists are aided by our alies' concern that extremism would corrupt expansion of the war.
In that sense, I think the reactionary right is as destructive to our WOT as the far left, with rhetoric posted here claiming Muslims should be quarantined, deported, or nuked because Islam is fundamentally evil and members are “beyond sympathy”. Maybe they’re what OBL was counting on, radical rhetoric promoting a broad over reaction. Maybe hiding from the Islamic world at the ends of the earth, bathing in group think, he imagined the champion of freedom's response to 9-11 would thoroughly alienate us from the rest of the world, paralyzing us and supercharging Islamists support. But from what I can tell, OBL’s delusions were no more poorly developed than visions of people on the fringe right, claiming to be the insightful and forward thinking, but stunningly blind to human nature, political reality and the unintended consequences of war on such a broadly supported religion
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