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The Iraq government strikes back at Sunnis who are killing Arabs. The result: an almost immediate move towards cessation of hostilities:
The American occupation of Iraq was condemned loudly by many Sunni Arabs as the worst of all possibilities. However, two months into Iraq’s first fairly elected government, the Sunni Arabs have found someone they dread more than Uncle Sam: their fellow Iraqis. The Shiite dominated government is becoming increasingly aggressive in its efforts to end the insurgency, and unlike the American forces, they aren’t worried about the op-ed page of the New York Times as they go about the ugly business of War. In a remarkable piece from the AP, many Sunni leaders practically pined for the good old days when they were just fighting Americans.
The new Iraqi Government forces are not clamping down on the whole populace or conducting random searches at roadblocks, either. They are singling out the Sunni Arabs for extra attention as if they had never heard of the horrors of “ethnic profiling.” Apparently, you can only massacre people in the streets for a year or two before they start taking it personally.
And this is how you put an end to terrorist actions. You realize that if people are killing your civilians it’s a war, and you have to declare war back.
I’m beginning to think that this whole approach of, the terrorists kill our civilians, but we don’t kill their civilians, is just a mistake. It sounds good, but it doesn’t work, and in the short run as well as the long run, leads to more deaths on your side.
The whole notion of, “but then you’re no better than the terrorists” sounds good, but again, it doesn’t work, and it gets your people killed. If people are killing your civilians, you have the right and duty to fight back.
The notion that “we’re not at war because no nation declared war on us” is also a mistake. If your civilians are getting killed, you’re at war.
The notion that “we’re not at war with the other side’s civilians, only with their terrorists, so we are wrong to kill their civilians” is a noble attempt, but it gets your own civilians killed. It’s also false. As in Iraq, where the Sunni population is supporting those who are killing Iraqis, it is evident that only with the support of the surrounding civilians can terrorists persist.
The U.N. approach that “it doesn’t matter who started it, if both sides are at war then both sides are equally to blame,” doesn’t work because the terrorists keep killing your civilians regardless of anything the U.N. says.
It’s not pretty. It’s part of a world we’d like to leave far behind, as we move to a world governed planet-wide by law rather than war. But we’re not there yet. And when one side unilaterally rejects war, their civilians get killed by people that do not do so.
Conversely, terrorists fold quickly when they are responded to as nations have historically responded to those who declare war on them.
All this trouble we’re in due to terrorists could be over far more quickly if they are responded to in this manner. They would quickly be forced to sue for peace.
HIGH-DEFINITION AM AND FM RADIO.
ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF WHAT LIFE WAS LIKE UNDER SADDAM:
“Twenty five years ago,” [Ali] begins, checking his mobile, as if in the last five minutes he’d somehow missed someone calling in a news flash, “my brother Samir was playing football in a field here in Basra. On the highway nearby passed a convoy of Baath-party officials. Someone shot at the Baathi — or perhaps simply fired a weapon in the air, who knows? Unsure who was responsible or why, the Baathists arrested everyone playing football and took them to prison.”
Months went by, and the government refused to say what happened to Samir. With his family growing increasingly distraught, Ali took the hazardous step of visiting the party’s Basra headquarters to ask about his brother’s whereabouts. In response to his query, the Baathists arrested Ali, accusing him of belong to the Shia opposition group, Dawa Islamiyya — as had, so they claimed, Samir. (Accusing someone of membership in Dawa was an all-purpose charge the regime used to “disappear” its citizens.) “I was sent to prison for trying to find out if my brother was alive or dead,” Ali says.
He was kept in prison for 9 months and tortured sadistically. His brother was killed. Yet the Left thinks such a regime didn’t support terrorists (even though a bipartisan Senate committee found otherwise. )
America did a noble, historic, admirable, brave thing, in freeing the Iraqis.
Robert Spencer describes how a journalist is to go on trial in Italy for “defaming Islam:”
[Grasso, the trial judge] was working from a list compiled by Smith, who complained that Fallaci has “propagated hate against Islam and Muslims, distorting real historical facts and inventing others, lying, offending, and defaming Muslims around the world.” Smith exulted at Grasso’s decision: “It is the first time a judge has ordered a trial for defamation of the Islamic faith. But this isn’t just about defamation. We would also like (the court) to recognize that this is an incitement to religious hatred.”
In the Koran, Islamists are instructed to attack non-Muslims by all available means. It is the practice of Islamists to immigrate in large numbers to a country, and refuse to assimilate, and look instead for ways to oppress non-Muslims. So here we have an example of this in Italy. Enough Muslims have immigrated and practiced non-assimilation, and hostility toward non-Muslims, that for the first time they have been able to make it a crime to say that Islam sucks, and they’ve put someone on trial for it. There is no freedom of speech under Islam.
In order to prevent this kind of thing from happening in America over the next several decades, we must act intelligently to restrict immigration to this country from Muslim nations, and to encourage assimilation of Muslims who are here.
Terrorists released from Gitmo have already been found engaged in new terrorist activities:
Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden (Delaware) has been a leader of what should be loosely called the “Release Suspected Terrorists Now!” caucus. Biden says everyone should be let go from Gitmo — except, in a crucial caveat, “Those we have reason to keep, keep.” Ah, there’s the rub.
We captured more than 10,000 people in Afghanistan. Roughly 750 ended up at Gitmo — exactly because we had reason to keep them. The number now is down to 500, as cases are constantly reviewed. Unfortunately, the release process isn’t perfect. Two former detainees were killed in fighting in Afghanistan last year, and another was picked up in a raid on a terrorist training camp. A former detainee in Pakistan was suspected of involvement in the deadly kidnapping of two Chinese engineers.
Yet the Left wants Gitmo shut down. The Left cares neither about Gitmo, nor the terrorists, nor the Americans killed by terrorists released from Gitmo, nor the danger of America being attacked with WMDs. All the Left cares about is mechanically attacking GWB. They’re like robots. It’s like they’re programmed.
