And we shall call his name Muhammad.
Unfortunately for Muhammad, Mother Nature has reduced him to water vapor and called him back to the heavens.
We shall miss him… and his hat.
Can you believe somebody stole Muhammad’s hat?
I have been thinking about yesterday’s article in the New York Times about the company responsible for the current demolition project at the Deutsche Bank building in NYC.
First, a little background on the Deutsche Bank building. This building was originally damaged during the events of 9/11/2001 and is currently being deconstructed/demolished. Just a couple of days ago, the Deutsche Bank building was responsible for the deaths of two firefighters who were killed while attempting to put out a fire in the building. While the deaths of these heroes is tragic, this is not my point.
The lead paragraph of yesterday’s NYT story is enough to get the conspiracists going:
The John Galt Corporation of the Bronx, hired last year for the dangerous and complex job of demolishing the former Deutsche Bank building at 130 Liberty Street, where two firefighters died last Saturday, has apparently never done any work like it. Indeed, Galt does not seem to have done much of anything since it was incorporated in 1983.
“So what” you say? Ever read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged? Who is John Galt?
I have already said too much…
Salman Rushdie turned 60 today. He was recently honored with knighthood for his contributions to literature.
Here’s how Muslims in Pakistan celebrated:
The Pakistan parliament yesterday called on the government to reverse the decision to award Rushdie a knighthood or face further protests from Muslim nations.
“If someone commits suicide bombing to protect the honour of the Prophet Muhammad, his act is justified,” the minister for religious affairs, Ijaz ul-Haq, told Pakistan’s national assembly, according to the translation from Urdu by Reuters. He urged Muslim countries to break diplomatic ties with London.
“This is an occasion for the [world's] 1.5 billion Muslims to look at the seriousness of this decision,” said Mr ul-Haq, the son of the former Pakistan military leader, Zia ul-Haq. “If Muslims do not unite, the situation will get worse and Salman Rushdie may get a seat in the British parliament.”
His comments were reported on local news networks and provoked an angry response around the world. Effigies of the Queen and Rushdie were burned in the eastern Pakistan city of Multan as students chanted “Kill him! Kill him!”
Mr ul-Haq said his main intention had been to examine the root causes of terrorism; he denied he was encouraging suicide bombing.
So he wasn’t encouraging suicide bombings, he was just saying that if you are Muslim and deeply offended by something Salman Rushdie wrote about your god in a fictional book, then it’s okay for you go blow yourself up and kill a bunch of other people that happen to be in your vicinity.
And apparently if you are a student with a whole lifetime ahead of you, then you don’t have to kill yourself. You can kill Rushdie or at least encourage others to do so.
Organized religion is so great at uniting people and promoting hatred and violence around the globe. What would we do without it?
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My disgust with this war grows daily, but I’ve been feeling like a lot of people are feeling the same way lately. The anger isn’t just quiet indignation anymore. It’s more palpable and a lot less shunned by the media.
Opponents of setting a deadline for the withdrawal of major United States and Coalition combat forces from Iraq typically use some or all of the following arguments :
- setting a deadline tells our enemies how long they need to hang on for victory – or, as neo-conservative William Kristol declares in an outraged tone every Sunday on ‘Fox News Sunday’ during the panel discussion: America’s “surrender day”;
- we will have handed al-Qaida, who consider Iraq the major front in the war on America, total victory;
- the al-Qaida terrorists will “follow” us home and we’ll be fighting them on our own streets instead of in Baghdad;
- if we think the chaos and slaughter in Iraq is bad now, wait until we withdraw;
- the meltdown in Iraq that’s sure to follow the withdrawal of US forces will engulf the Middle East in regional strife that we will be powerless to contain;
- the US will lose its credibility and the world will no longer believe we have the stomach for war (that’s one of Vice-President Cheney’s favourites – he of the “other priorities” when he had an opportunity to serve during the Vietnam War);
- the sacrifice of the troops who have fought and died or been seriously wounded will have been in vain;
- we have a responsibility as the nation that invaded and occupied Iraq to see the mission through and leave Iraq, if not a shining beacon of democracy in the Mid-East, at least stable and functioning as a state.
To these points in turn I would respond thus:
- setting a deadline above all else tells the world that we have no territorial designs on Iraq or on its resources, that there is a limit to our willingness to have our soldiers fight and die waiting for Iraq’s politicians to make the hard decisions that will make the country governable and able to function as a state, and that only Iraqis can solve their differences and come together as a nation; I would argue also that a phased, unhurried and orderly withdrawal from a country where we do not belong, that we should never have invaded in the first place, and which we have insisted all along we would not occupy indefinitely, is only “surrender” in the minds of ideologically blinded, muddleheaded political flacks such as Bill Kristol – oh, and the president and vice-president;
- our invasion of Muslim Iraq with our largely Christian armed forces has furthered al-Qaida’s aims and objectives in a way that few other actions by the US could have matched – so much so, that Osama bin Laden (OBL) must have thought his birthday had come early; it has bogged down and worn out the ground force component of our armed forces, divided us from traditional allies, inflamed anti-American passions among Muslims throughout the Middle-East and stimulated recruitment for al-Qaida and affiliated terrorist groups; the last thing al-Qaida wants us to do is leave Iraq, thus they try to goad us into staying by pretending that they will have driven us out – a line that resonates with Bush/Cheney and the GOP base;
- the “follow us home” line which we hear so often from right-wing pundits, Bush, Cheney and even some, like Senator Joe Lieberman who I used to think had a brain, is hardly worthy of response given its absurdity; they never actually explain how that would happen (would they charter a plane or six, maybe? hijack a ship and wade ashore on Myrtle Beach, perhaps? persuade some hapless State Department consular officer somewhere to issue non-immigrant visas to them en masse?) or show any recognition that al-Qaida-in-Iraq is a franchise of the main OBL-led organization, is rooted in Iraq itself and will have its hands full fighting for survival after we leave in a country which is 80% Shiite and Kurdish and where even the Sunni minority doesn’t buy into al-Qaida’s evil brand of extremist, fundamentalist Islamic fascism;
- the violence in Iraq may, indeed, get worse before it gets better once we depart Iraq, but that may happen anyway whether we leave in a year or five years; in any event, I go back to the argument that it must be for Iraqis to decide their future and that the presence of American military occupiers is as much a catalyst for violence as a positive force to quell it;
- as for the possibility that the chaos will engulf the Middle-East, all the more reason for us to plan now for such a scenario by engaging our allies in the region as well as in Europe and reaching out diplomatically to Iran and Syria, neither of whom have any national interest in a regional conflict, to contain and limit the conflagration if it occurs;
- the old canard about the world believing we don’t have the stomach for sustaining a war if we quit Iraq is a figment of Cheney’s fevered imagination; we will be engaged in Afghanistan for many years to come (if the people there don’t rise up against us for killing so many civilians in air strikes or in undisciplined panic attacks by our troops) if anyone wants proof of our staying power; as for our credibility, we will have regained much in the eyes of the world if we withdraw from Iraq since almost nobody thought it made sense to go there in the first place;
- I happen to hold the belief that the sacrifices of the members of our armed forces whenever and wherever it has been made, have never been in vain or wasted when we, as a nation, set them a mission that we thought was in the national interest; sometimes our country has been wrong or misguided, but the faithful and dedicated service of our servicemen and women will never be forgotten and will never have been wasted.
Finally, if we break it, it’ll be ours to fix – to paraphrase then Secretary of State Colin Powell’s pre-invasion warning to Bush. This is by far the most compelling reason to stay in Iraq until some sort of stability and order can be imposed. After all, our actions precipitated the chaos that followed the overthrow of the established order, introduced terrorist groups into the country, the car bombings, the sectarian murder and mayhem. How can we just up and leave? Even I, a certified member of the 30% Club who bitterly opposed the madness of an Iraq invasion from the beginning, have a problem with that one. Isn’t it our responsibility to see this thing through even if it takes five or ten years for the sakes of the people of Iraq?
I can only reiterate my belief that it is in the long term interests of Iraq and its people that we leave as soon as possible. Al-Qaida has stoked the violence in Iraq but once they are deprived of the unifying element of a foreign occupier, I believe the people – Sunnis as well as Shiite and Kurds – will turn on them and destroy them. Only if the Shiite politicians in Baghdad myopically fail to share power and the nation’s oil wealth with the Sunni minority will the latter be tempted into an unholy alliance with al-Qaida.
The US and its coalition of the lukewarm-willing have overthrown a tyrant and afforded the Iraqis an opportunity for a new beginning. Major US ground forces should stay no more than another year. Beyond that, we should leave dedicated anti-terrorist forces, trainers and air/naval assets to assist the Iraqi armed forces and provide whatever other economic, diplomatic and other help we can to a friendly government. It is past time, however, for Iraqis themselves to determine Iraq’s future without the security blanket of the US Army and Marine Corps.
A confluence of technologies, from the Internet to biotechnology, is making it easier and easier for far-flung hatred to assume organized form, intersect with weapons technology and constitute unprecedently potent terrorism. This growing lethality of hatred may be the biggest long-term problem we face.
Here’s a response favored by many left-of-center and right-of-center thinkers. Address the “demand side” — the desire to obtain and use nuclear and biological weapons — by reducing the number of people who hate the U.S. and the West. Address the “supply side” by improving arms control.
Neocons take the opposite tack: degrade the arms control infrastructure (the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the Biological Weapons Convention, etc.) and antagonize the masses.
You can even do both at once! President Bush undermined the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty by agreeing to give nuclear technology to India, a nonsignatory. This ratcheted up anti-Americanism in Pakistan — a Muslim nation with nukes, jihadist recruiters and an unstable government.
From a column in today’s New York Times by Robert Wright titled “The Neocon Paradox.” (Also available here.)
As we all know by now, Bush defined the Axis of Evil as Iraq, Iran and North Korea.
Iraq is in ruins thanks to U.S. military involvement. It may be in the throws of a civil war, but is definitely not worthy of membership in any Axis of Evil.
North Korea recently entered into a nuclear agreement. From the Guardian article discussing the agreement:
Under the first phase of the agreement announced in Beijing, North Korea would be required to shut down its main nuclear reactor and allow U.N. inspectors back into the country within 60 days. In return, it would receive aid equal to 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil.
So, for now, North Korea is ‘friend’ of the United States and perhaps on the way out of the ‘club’.
Iran, must be a little nervous at this point. I wonder what the United States has planned for them? Destroy the country a la Iraq or enter into a nuclear agreement? Harpers Magazine has an online forum discussing Iran and the anticipated U.S. actions there.
Additionally, there is a February 10, 2007 Guardian Article which indicates that military action is planned:
US preparations for an air strike against Iran are at an advanced stage, in spite of repeated public denials by the Bush administration, according to informed sources in Washington.
The present military build-up in the Gulf would allow the US to mount an attack by the spring. But the sources said that if there was an attack, it was more likely next year, just before Mr Bush leaves office.
It looks like the Bush Administration is planning on clearing out the Axis of Evil before he leaves office, and leaving a huge mess for someone else to clean up.
It looks like we are already beginning to see the benefits of the midterm elections.
BBC NEWS – US ‘open to Iran talks on Iraq’:
The White House has indicated it will consider talking to Iran and Syria about the future of Iraq.
Chief-of-staff Josh Bolten told the ABC network that President George W Bush would look at all the options when he meets a panel of advisers on Monday.
The Iraq Study Group panel, due to give its recommendations by the end of the year, is believed to favour renewing contacts with Tehran and Damascus.
Senior Democrats have urged preparation for a phased pullout of US troops.
Iraq was a key factor in the Republican defeat in mid-term polls and US defence chief Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation.
(Via BBC News.)
I can’t even begin to wrap my brain around the death that the United States is responsible for over in Iraq.
While posting a comment to another post, I came across information about the number of deaths that can be attributed to the United States’ involvement in Iraq since 1991.
9/11 was a tragedy, 2,752 deaths in one day.
Take the anguish you felt and now imagine that event (2,752 deaths) occurring every two weeks in New York State and New Jersey for a period of 15 years. (New York and New Jersey have a combined population close to Iraq’s population.)
Wow, that hurts. Over a million unnecessary deaths.
According to the UNICEF, over 500,000 people, mostly children and the elderly have died between 1991 – 1999 as a result of sanctions against Iraq. According to a study published in the Lancet, over 650,000 Iraqis have died unnecessarily since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. While many people attempt to debunk this study, it is the best attempt to accurately measure the deaths in Iraq as a result of U.S. actions.
So, it looks like over 1 million unnecessary deaths in 15 years, due to the United States’
involvement in Iraq. This doesn’t even address the injuries and lifetime disabilities inflicted upon Iraqis.
Are you ashamed yet?
The best thing that can be said about the recently passed bill on the treatment and legal handling of detainees from the war on Islamist terrorism is that now, at least, it is no longer a rogue president assuming authority and power he does not possess under the Constitution that sets out the parameters. Now it has the stamp of approval of the legislative branch. Unfortunately, this also serves to make it even more shameful.
Whilst some concessions were wrung from Bush by the three Republicans who seemed to be fighting valiantly for the soul of our democracy, in the end their bill brought them little honour. Whilst grave breaches of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions are prohibited, the executive branch is left a good deal of latitude on what interrogation techniques are allowed and some of these undoubtedly will include some methods that many of us would consider torture – or at least ones that would not please any of us if they were applied to captured American civilian intelligence agents or special operations troops caught out of uniform.
Another worrying feature is the broadening of the definition of who constitutes an “enemy combatant”. And most serious of all, the withholding of the right of habeas corpus rights, the most fundamental of all rights in the American judicial system – the right to challenge one’s detention. We know that many detainees who have been and in some cases still are held at Guantanamo are people who were likely simply in the wrong place at the wrong time; or people who have been given up as terrorists for personal reasons or monetary gain. They languish in detention because the government simply does not know whether they are terrorists or not. These people have now lost the right to challenge their imprisonment.
In the end Bush gained almost everything he wanted from this bill: the right to hold anyone he wants as an enemy combatant – even if that person is seized in the United States – as long as he wants, and to treat such individuals as harshly as he chooses within certain fairly loose constraints. It is a bill that shows us not at our best but at our worst; not as being strong and confident in ourselves and our cause, but as weak and uncertain.
Bush administration mouthpieces such as press secretary Tony Snow like to use analogies from the past, such as World War II.; withdrawing from Iraq we’ve been told would be like losing heart during the Battle of the Bulge. This sort of nonsense is laughable but it does serve us to look back for lessons from history.
During World War II on the battlefields of Italy, the men of the highly decorated 442nd Regimental Combat Team fought for their country with an unmatched bravery, ferocity and devotion to their country, even as their Japanese-Americans wives, parents, siblings and children languished behind barbed wire in internment camps in the U.S., stripped of their property, and treated as if they were an enemy fifth column.
In 1950s America, innocent men and women were persecuted and hounded from their jobs, even their homes, amid allegations of real or imagined membership of the communist party during the McCarthy era.
History shows us that when we have surrendered to our fear, we have behaved in ways that make us, in time, justifiably and deeply ashamed. I believe this is becoming such a time.
We have a president, who, for the first time in our history, has embraced torture as national policy, and who has kept our enemies in offshore prisons – some in secret locations – where they can languish indefinitely. And now, with the explicit authorization of a compliant, spineless, Congress, these detainees – many seized under murky circumstances at best – are to be stripped of their habeas corpus right to challenge their detention.
The administration would have us believe these are dangerous times that require tough action. These, however, are not the actions of a strong, brave nation but a weak and frightened one.
I understand that many Americans, particularly, it seems, on the right, are scared; they want their families to be safe. I get it. I really do. I have a family. Although I am an American now, I lived in London at a time in the 1970’s when you couldn’t go for a drink in a pub without the ever-present fear of an Irish Republican Army bomb going off. But our fear in Britain and that of our government led us to do things we bitterly regret now; the conviction of innocent people on next to no evidence, such as the Guildford Four, being but one frightening example.
We must resist the fear mongering of the Republicans who shamelessly stoke and exploit our anxieties. We will not prevail in this struggle against Islamic terrorists by fighting darkness, as this administration seeks to do, with more darkness.
In allowing the recent bill on detainee treatment and trials, which betrays bedrock principles for which Americans have always stood, to go forward in our name with barely a whimper of protest, we have shamed ourselves and our country.
Mr Bush has at times portrayed himself as a Winston Churchill-type figure leading his country in time of war. Perhaps, then, it is as well to remind ourselves of how a true war leader, faced with a genuine threat to the very existence of his nation, stirs his people to give of themselves their courageous best and not draw from them, instead, their frightened worst. The following is an excerpt from a speech to Parliament, delivered by Winston Churchill on the 18 June 1940 following the fall of France, when in all of Europe only Britain stands against the mighty Nazi German war machine:
The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.”
Would that we will one day deserve to have it said of us. But that time is not now.
