The winning entries in the Watcher’s Council vote for this week are Cheney’s Chess Moves in the Middle East by Joshuapundit, and Don’t Bury Your Heads in the Sand. by Iraq the Model.  Here is a link to the full……

And now…  the winning entries in the Watcher’s Council vote for this week are Cheney’s Chess Moves in the Middle East by Joshuapundit, and Don’t Bury Your Heads in the Sand. by Iraq the Model.  All members, please be sure……

Submitted for Your Approval First off…  any spambots reading this should immediately go here, here, here,  and here.  Die spambots, die!  And now…  here are all the links submitted by members of the Watcher’s Council for t…

CyberCipher on May 11, 2007 at 8:31 PM

Sounds right to me. Robert Spencer would certainly agree with you.

So.. if I understand all this correctly. Nuking them would actually be in their own best interests. Right?

Mojave Mark on May 11, 2007 at 10:28 PM

Presuming that your comment was aimed at me, killing Muslims en mass is not what I would recommend or advocate. Mort Kondracke is a buffoon, as far as I am concerned.

No, my comment wasn’t aimed at anyone it was an ironic comment about how absurd dealing with these Muslim fanatics is. Think “The Onion” type of sarcasm.

I think we should be there now to stabilize the situation and help to create a democracy ala Turkey in Iraq. These Muslims hate each other so very much that it makes it hard to do. It’s also hard for the Western mind to understand such primal murderous hatred for fellow human beings. Pakistan will probably light off the first terrorism nuke and then we’ll see what happens. Who knows maybe it may come one day to a country being annihilated. We should not assume that it will be Iran.

The irony is that it probably wouldn’t happen anyway. The Saudis aren’t going to sit by while Shiite fanatics run wild in a Sunni area; they’ve already promised as much through one of their mouthpieces. So what Kondracke’s really calling for, even if he doesn’t realize it, is a Saudi-Iranian proxy war (or actual war) with Iraqis in the middle.

Allah — peace be upon him — has constructed a fine summary here which begs the question of Uncle Morty: “Shiites ‘friendly to the U.S.’?!”

As if…

You did indeed. You were NOT hallucinating.
Pam Hess is rather extraordinary in that respect,
n’est-ce pas?

Nah … I must have dozed off.

So.. if I understand all this correctly. Nuking them would actually be in their own best interests. Right?

Mojave Mark on May 11, 2007 at 10:28 PM

Presuming that your comment was aimed at me, killing Muslims en mass is not what I would recommend or advocate. Mort Kondracke is a buffoon, as far as I am concerned.

Nevertheless, I am reminded of something that Golda Meir said a long time ago, viz.

“We will have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us”

I don’t believe that simply “walking away” from a culture or a people that are bent on killing each other and killing their children is either immoral or un-Christian. The United States has made an extraordinary effort to help the people of Iraq, but if Iraqis reject all that we have done for them, and insist upon killing one another, we probably ought to leave their part of the world and “shake the dust off of our feet” (just as Jesus instructed his disciples to do when the message of the Gospel preached by pairs of his disciples was rejected).

I don’t necessarily think that right now is the time for us to pursue that particular course of action. Other people are in a far better position to make that judgement call than I am. I just don’t think that our help to the Iraqis should be “open-ended.” I don’t think George Bush believes that it should be “open-ended” either.

When we leave, we have to leave with a good faith belief that the two sides can co-exist, which is why political reconciliation within parliament is so important and why we’re stuck there until it happens.

Is this statement historically accurate? Well, maybe the American people would like to believe this about themselves — but 32 years ago, I honestly believe that Nixon, Kissinger, Ford, congressional leaders, et. al. KNEW precisely what was going to happen in southeast asia in the time period that was to follow shortly after the U.S. withdrawal. Millions died in Vietnam and Cambodia after we left. We left anyway, fully cognizant of what was going to happen.

Ironically, we (the U.S. and Vietnam) are practically best buddies today. I can not visit the shopping mall and buy an article clothing for myself or for someone else without seeing multiple instances of the phrase “Made in Vietnam.”
Did simple economic necessity somehow overcome the harsh feelings that were left behind — by what some people have described as U.S. complicity in mass murder? Probably not, since the people that died are simply “not around anymore” to hold a grudge against the United States.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not a part of the “blame America first” crowd, and I despise Jane Fonda’s mindset as much as the rest of you. And even though I admire Pam Hess for taking a stand, I don’t necesarily share the same feelings or the compelling obligation to save the children of two Islamic cultures that are bent on killing each other (or anyone else who disagrees with them, for that matter, on religious, social, or political issues). If there is one thing that I have learned in life, it is not to step in the way of people who are determined to bring about their own destruction — it’s about as smart as stepping in front of a moving freight train. These people are most likely going to find a way to die prematurely, no matter what.

Or am I hallucinating or over-simplifying things?

I don’t want to hear about Sudan anymore.

Sudan is muslims killing Christians and/or others, and we can’t have Christians fighting back.

Oddly the anti war just doesnt get a clue that their stance on getting the US out of Iraq will create the very genocide and civil war they accuse the US of Causing right now.

[...]

William Amos on May 11, 2007 at 4:52 PM

You’re wrong. They do have a clue. The key is that they don’t care.

Anti-war movements have nothing to do with war. If the anti-war left gave a flying crap about War or Violence in any objective sense we would not see them heaping praise on the Palestinians, Castro, Kim Jong Il, Hu Jintao, Che, etc. etc.

Search DailyKos for a few key words like “intervention” “police the world” and “used to” and you’ll see that the left was all about intervention… unless Bush is the one intervening. Their primary goal is to defeat the Right, because they see the Right as the cause of the world’s problems: the only thing keeping the Left from “fixing” humanity. They don’t give a crap what happens in Iraq because, quite frankly, the worse it is, the more they can use it against the Right. No matter how many people die, it is worth it if it defeats the Right, because once the Right is defeated, then the Left will have no roadblock to healing the world.

If you accept that the only thing stopping the Left from healing humanity is the Right, then their actions make perfect sense. They don’t care about individual issues because there is only one issue that, if solved, will magically cure all others: defeating the Right.

My biggest problem with this war is our governments lack of strength shown against the interference by Iran and/or the lack of, by the Sauds. The Evil heads of the snakes of each religion reside in those two countries. If we cut the heads we kill the insurgency, but we are being played by both countries. What is really scary to think is that each country may be acting in unison. Maybe not directly in contact with each other, but as the old saying goes, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. No one can deny they all listen to the same hate propaganda. Death to America, Death to Israel.

Anything and everything that happens in Iraq now will be called “Bush’s fault” even if the US leaves.

The whole thing has never been about the US. Its all been about playing politics with human lives at stake for the anti war movement.

Kondracke is only (finally) admitting to the reality of the endgame in Iraq.

Kristopher on May 11, 2007 at 3:46 PM

As Lehosh says above me, the analogy is flawed because we didn’t approach this like WWII – we were too busy trying to please others, e.g., the media, the world community, and the thing we feared most was to be seen in a bad light over the Iraq operation. Thus, instead of fighting this war like an actual war, we have fought it like a public relations campaign, thereby ensuring failure to achieve our objectives at both.