h/t.
Fashion Police
The perfect style statement for those wishing to break away from the “lopped off head” pack ;
One shopkeeper selling evening dresses told us the moral police had ordered him to saw off the breasts of his mannequins because they were too revealing.
“Al Qaeda is surging against us, and I think that’s happening globally.”
A Hugh Hewitt interview with Fred Kagan;
HH: You come back from Iraq, you see these changes, you talk with it, and then you hear Harry Reid declare the war is lost. What was your reaction upon hearing that, Frederick Kagan?
FK: It’s very disappointing. I think a lot of people, there is a lot of hyperbole, there’s a lot of exaggeration, and we really need to look this squarely in the eye, and recognize that most wars, you don’t know who’s going to win until the end. And there’s been, there were rosy optimistic scenarios from the Bush administration early on, and declarations of victory that were mistaken, and now you’ve got Democratic opponents of the war rushing to say that the war’s lost, and that it’s hopeless. And the facts on the ground just don’t support that. The war isn’t lost. We certainly can still win, and it’s really very disappointing to hear the Senator majority leader just throw up his hands like that.
HH: One of the things I read in Max Boot’s piece, which I had not realized, is that the Iraqi special forces are operating along with our special forces at night in recon type situations, and are devastating the bad guys. That’s a change of significance.
FK: There have been a lot of changes along those lines. Iraqi forces at all levels are fighting in a very determined fashion. And even sometimes Iraqi local police, which no one has put any stock in, but a former cadet of mine who is now up in Salahaddin Province north of Baghdad, told me a story about the Iraqi local police who were engaged by a bunch of al Qaeda fighters who thought they would just drive through a checkpoint, and the local police shot them up, drove them off, and seized one of their cars. It was amazing. These Iraqi soldiers, both special forces even down to some of the local police guys, are fighting hard, putting their lives on the line, taking casualties and killing the enemy.
And a photo essay from Michael Yon;
The latest group of professional soldiers I had the honor of accompanying was the 1-4 Cavalry from Fort Riley, Kansas. They opened their doors in Baghdad and wanted me to tell the people at home the good, the bad and the ugly. They didn’t hold back; they provided plenty of all three. In one neighborhood where residents have been subject to a methodical slaughter, our people found an abandoned Christian college that had already proved itself the proverbial island in the storm.
The Children Are Our Future
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More from the Asia Times;
During a televised address to the nation as far back as January 12, 2002, President General Pervez Musharraf warned that the greatest danger facing Pakistan came not from outside, but from Pakistan’s own home-grown Islamist radicals – “a danger”, he said, “that is eating us from within”.
This danger, more than five years later, has assumed menacing proportions. The rapid escalation of violence orchestrated by Islamist extremists across Pakistan in recent times and cumulative efforts to further radicalize the country have now led Musharraf’s military regime to revisit the idea of madrassa (seminary) reforms.
[…]
Speaking on the status of education in Pakistan, Education Minister Javed Ashraf Qazi disclosed, at the Civil Service Academy in Lahore in the first week of April, that there were 5,459 madrassas in Punjab province; 2,843 in NWFP; 1,935 in Sindh; 1,193 in the Northern Areas; 769 in Balochistan; 586 in “Azad” (Pakistan-occupied) Kashmir; 135 in the Federally Administrated Tribal Areas; and 77 in the capital, Islamabad.
A majority of the extremist seminaries that preach and support militant violence follow the Deobandi sect and are associated with the Wafaq-ul-Madaris, the main confederacy of seminaries. According to the International Crisis Group (ICG), “The two factions of the Deobandi political parties, JUI-Fazlur Rehman [Jamaat-e-Ulema-Islam faction headed by Maulana Fazlur Rehman] and JUI-Samiul Haq, run over 65% of all madrassas in Pakistan.” Rehman and Haq are widely considered to be the primary backers of the Taliban.
Via Richard Fernandez, who comments;
There are two ways to think about the madrassa video. One is to view it as a window into a hostile way of life. That’s us looking in. The other viewpoint would be to imagine the video image as a clear pane of glass through which the characters in the video could view the West. From their point of view we would be the hostile way of life. That would be them looking out.
Thus, without resort to any kind of ethnocentrism an impartial observer would readily agree that it describes an explosive situation. How can these two hostile worlds separated by our notional pane of glass coexist? What happens when they collide? That is what the world is about to find out.
“Everything in Kirkuk is severe.”
Another installment by Michael Totten, with the Iraqi Police in Kirkuk;
“If America pulls out of Iraq, they will fail in Afghanistan,” Mam Rostam said.
Hardly anyone in Congress seems to consider that the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan might become much more severe if similar tactics are proven effective in Iraq.
“And they will fail with Iran,” he continued. “They will fail everywhere with all Eastern countries. The war between America and the terrorists will move from Iraq and Afghanistan to America itself. Do you think America will do that? The terrorists gather their agents in Afghanistan and Iraq and fight the Americans here. If you pull back, the terrorists will follow you there. They will try, at least. Then Iran will be the power in the Middle East. Iran is the biggest supporter of terrorism. They support Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Ansar Al Islam. You know what Iran will do with those elements if America goes away.”
Muslim Opinion
A poll of four major Muslim countries – the good, the bad and the ugly;
There is strong disapproval of attacks by “groups that use violence against civilians, such as al Qaeda.” Large majorities in Egypt (88%), Indonesia (65%) and Morocco (66%) agree that such groups “are violating the principles of Islam.” Pakistanis are divided, however, with many not answering.
But there is also uncertainty about whether al Qaeda actually conducts such attacks. On average less than one in four believes al Qaeda was responsible for September 11th attacks. Pakistanis are the most skeptical—only 3 percent think al Qaeda did it. There is no consensus about who is responsible for the attacks on New York and Washington; the most common answer is “don’t know.”
Most significantly, large majorities approve of many of al Qaeda’s principal goals. Large majorities in all countries (average 70 percent or higher) support such goals as: “stand up to Americans and affirm the dignity of the Islamic people,” “push the US to remove its bases and its military forces from all Islamic countries,” and “pressure the United States to not favor Israel.”
The Ankle Police
They Hate Us For Our Grocery Marketing Practices
AP;
At least two major insurgent groups are battling al-Qaida in provinces outside Baghdad, American military commanders said Friday, an indication of a deepening rift between Sunni guerrilla groups in Iraq.
U.S. officers say a growing number of Sunni tribes are turning against al-Qaida, repelled by the terror group’s sheer brutality and austere religious extremism. The tribes are competing with al-Qaida for influence and control over diminishing territory in the face of U.S. assaults, the officers say. The influx of Sunni fighters to areas outside the capital in advance of the security crackdown in Baghdad may have further unsettled the region.
“This is a big turning point,” U.S. Maj. David Baker said Friday in the Diyala provincial capital of Baqouba. “If they are fighting against each other, it’s better than them fighting against us.”
[…]
“It’s happening daily,” Lt. Col. Keith Gogas said Thursday in an interview at an Army base in Muqdadiyah, 60 miles northeast of Baghdad. “Our read on it is that that the more moderate, if you will, Sunni insurgents, are finding that their goals and al-Qaida’s goals are at odds.”
American commanders cite al-Qaida’s severe brand of Islam, which is so extreme that in Baqouba, al-Qaida has warned street vendors not to place tomatoes beside cucumbers because the vegetables are different genders, Col. David Sutherland said.
Cover those melons, infidel woman!
First, They Came For The Cartoonists
A journalist for the Mississauga, Ont.-based newspaper The Pakistan Post was assaulted by two men, one armed with a cricket bat, who warned him to stop “writing against Islam” and a Pakistan-based religious organization, the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE) reported Thursday.
Journalist Jawaad Faizi was attacked on the evening of April 17 while sitting in his car outside the home of the newspaper’s editor, Amir Arain. The two men smashed the car windows, and repeatedly hit Faizi. They fled when they saw him call 911 on his cell phone.
During the attack, Faizi said, the men told him to stop writing critically of the religious organization Idara Minhaj-ul-Quran and its leader, Cleric Allama Tahir-Ul-Qadri. Allama Tahir-Ul-Qadri is a frequent visitor to Canada, CJFE said.
Saddam Hussein: Portal Of Influence
While researching for our new eBook Both In One Trench we realized that there seems to be a confluence of prominent terrorists emanating from Kuwait after it was occupied by Saddam’s armies. Many of these men are of Palestinian ethnicity. The Palestinians living in Kuwait had favored Saddam because he was a prominent proponent of the Palestinian cause. Their allegiance to Saddam was so thorough that the Kuwaiti government kicked out its Palestinian population after liberation because they collaborated with Saddam. Saddam’s support of Palestinian terrorism is incontrovertible.
A large number of these Palestinians, over a hundred thousand, made their way to Jordan where they began to radicalize the moderate Jordanian population. One of these Palestinians – part of the Palestinian migration from Kuwait which has been termed the “returnees from Kuwait” – was Sheik Abu-Mohammed al-Maqdisi (or Isam Mohammad Taher al-Barqawi). He would later become a major al Qaeda leader.
Moderate Islam vs. PBS
Martyn Burke says that the Public Broadcasting Service and project managers at station WETA in Washington, D.C., excluded his documentary, Islam vs. Islamists, from the series America at a Crossroads after he refused to fire two co-producers affiliated with a conservative think tank.
“I was ordered to fire my two partners (who brought me into this project) on political grounds,” Burke said in a complaint letter to PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which supplied funds for the films.
Burke wrote that his documentary depicts the plight of moderate Muslims who are silenced by Islamic extremists, adding, “Now it appears to be PBS and CPB who are silencing them.”
[…]
Subtitled Voices From the Muslim Center, Burke says his film “attempts to answer the question: ‘Where are the moderate Muslims?’ The answer is, ‘Wherever they are, they are reviled and sometimes attacked’ ” by extremists.
Iran – What Were They Up To?
Good question. Ken Timmerman;
The announcement Wednesday by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that his government would release the 15 captured British sailors and marines came after an intense and often bitter internal debate, sources in Tehran told NewsMax.
The capture of the British naval inspection team was clearly a coordinated effort by the Iranian government aimed at demonstrating Iran’s ability to confront the U.S.-led multinational forces in Iraq and to divert international attention from the nuclear showdown. The decision to release the hostages showed the limits of Iran’s power and the fears of some leaders that too much provocation could backfire.
[…]
Khamenei’s top advisers argued that by striking out against a U.S. ally in Iraq, they would be sending a message to other European nations to step back from supporting the U.S. strategy of increasing pressure on Iran over its nuclear program. They saw the move as a clear test of Western resolve.
But as Britain refused to apologize for the behavior of its boarding party, continuing to insist that they were operating in Iraqi waters – not inside Iran’s territorial waters, as Tehran alleged – some of Khamenei’s advisers began to have second thoughts.
Adding to those doubts were reports that the USS Nimitz was steaming toward the Persian Gulf – making it the third Carrier Strike Group in the area.
Victor Davis Hanson, on the popular theory that Iran was looking for a shooting war;
What should we make of the Iranians’ behavior?
Namely that the country’s leadership is in deep political trouble. The Iranian government is desperate to provoke the West to win back friends in the Islamic world, and to quell growing unrest at home. Subsidizing food and gas, providing billions for terrorists and building nukes all cost money at a time when the state-run Iranian economy is in shambles.
Because of incompetence in their oil industry, the Iranian mullahs have achieved the impossible: Despite having among the world’s largest petroleum reserves, their production is shrinking and they have managed to earn increasingly less petrodollars even as the world price has soared.
Robert Mayer thinks it was an exercise in image rehabilitation. “See? These Holocaust deniers aren’t such bad guys, after all.”
There is no way to know what the now-released British sailors will say once they’ve been debriefed. But one thing is certain — they will be the most sought after people in the media. Iran knows this. Do not be surprised if they tell all of Britain that they were not tortured, forced to confess, and kept in a jail cell. Do not be surprised if they tell us that they were treated with respect, fed well, and allowed to play games. Do not be surprised if they say that they freely confessed to crossing into Iranian territorial waters after being told that there is no clear agreement specifying the border. And last, do not be surprised if they think that Ahmadinejad is a pretty swell guy after they met with him.
A few informed opinions to chew on.
The Consequences Of Buddhist Imperialism
…and the war For Himalayan oil;
A three-tier security ring has been thrown around the 72-year-old Buddhist head, who lives at Dharamsala, in the Himalayan foothills, Indian police spokesman Prem Lal said.
[…]
All those approaching the exiled Tibetan chief will be closely watched by highly trained Tibetan security guards as well as heavily armed deployments of Indian police.
Superintendent Lal said police had been alerted by central intelligence agencies to the reported plot by Lashkar-e-Toiba to kill the Dalai Lama “on the directions of a foreign organisation”, which he declined to name, but is assumed to be al-Qa’ida.
In a recent document, Osama bin Laden denounced “pagan Buddhism” as part of his general attack on anything not Islamic.
The assassination threat picked up by Indian authorities is thought to be based on bin Laden’s denunciation and the extremist jihadi movement’s hatred for anything and anyone that is not Muslim.
Lashkar-e-Toiba is believed to be al-Qa’ida’s agent in South Asia and has been involved in virtually every major terrorist attack in India.
Kneel, Britannia
“15 British Agressors [sic] must be EXECUTED.” That was the placard being held up by some beetle-browed Iranian outside the British Embassy in Tehran. Well, I don’t entirely disagree. I certainly think that those British captives who have let themselves be put forward on Iranian TV, that woman wearing a headscarf, and the young man apologizing to the Iranian gangster-rulers, should be court-martialed for dereliction of duty when they get back to Blighty, with shooting definitely an option.
How on earth can Britons behave like that? A previous generation would not have done so. I knew the women of my mother’s generation pretty well (Mum was born in 1912), and I am certain that any one of them, given that headscarf and told to put it on, would have said: “You can hang me with it if you like, but I’ll be damned if I’ll wear the filthy thing.”
If you’re already having a lousy day, perhaps best to skip this one.
VDH;
We were all waiting for the final shoe to fall: It is America’s fault. And sure enough the Independent headline blaming us came in on schedule. The story line was predictable: We apparently tried to detain those masterminding the Iranian efforts to kill Americans in Iraq, then “botched” this illegal effort at getting “legitimate” diplomats, and thus left the poor British to sweep up the mess. So Bush — not lax officers, insane rules of engagement, or Iranian perfidy and aggression — did it after all.
First They Came For The Three Little Pigs….
When the concept of “multiculturalism” was introduced to Canadians, most assumed it meant “more pavilions at Folkfest”.
Daily Mail;
Schools are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils, a Governmentbacked study has revealed. It found some teachers are reluctant to cover the atrocity for fear of upsetting students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial.
There is also resistance to tackling the 11th century Crusades – where Christians fought Muslim armies for control of Jerusalem – because lessons often contradict what is taught in local mosques.
The findings have prompted claims that some schools are using history ‘as a vehicle for promoting political correctness’.
[…]
The report concluded: “In particular settings, teachers of history are unwilling to challenge highly contentious or charged versions of history in which pupils are steeped at home, in their community or in a place of worship.”
Related: 4 Officers sent to arrest 11 year old boy – “Maybe if the hostage takers could be tricked into calling Blair gay, we might see some action?”
“This is a downward spiral”
First, the attackers threw a grenade to stop the minibus. Then they shot dead the passengers, one by one. Only the driver survived. The executioners heard him gabbling to Allah for forgiveness, realised he was not a Buddhist and spared him.
After that, communal passions erupted. Crowds of Muslims and Buddhists took to the streets to demand protection. Since the ambush a string of killings claiming victims of both faiths has taken the death toll to more than 2,100.
The insurgency is now the bloodiest conflict in southeast Asia. Yet it is a war of shadows. The militants issue no communi-qués. They have no known leaders. They have made no precise demands. If they are connected to the worldwide network of Al-Qaeda and its affiliates there is no proof.
There is a sense of siege over the hushed towns and quiet fishing villages in the palmy jungles of the far south of Thailand.
[…]
“The coup leaders continue to ask the wrong questions and refuse to take the conflict for what it is — an Islamic insurgency,” said Professor Zachary Abuza of Simmons College, Boston, the leading foreign expert on the struggle. “Many Thais think it’s only about poverty and social justice,” he added.
Abuza says that two well established separatist groups, the National Revolutionary Front and the Pattani Islamic Mujaheddin Movement, are the prime movers.
Intelligence officers from Thailand and its allies are not wholly convinced. Interrogations have produced stories of tall, hooded terrorist trainers who are not Thai. Eavesdroppers have picked up radio chatter in Indonesian.
This comment from Mel Welch, Minneaplis, (in the comments below the article);
As [earlier commentor] Usman Ali illustrates, there will always be a valid justification for Islamic violence against anyone (oh, except civilians, of course, though if they’re infidel civilians it will be alright) – a right to an insurgency, though no palpable enemy or oppressor is visible. The very existence of non-Islamic ideology presents a credible threat to the oppressive Islamic Theo-tyranny that would rule your thoughts and your actions.
It is an insult and disingenous article that the Times would call this murderous action an “insurgency.” It is what it is – terrorism and murder by a tunnel-visioned worldview that will, when able, convert or kill all opposition.
” It makes no mention of any other religion besides Islam”
That wonderful UN Human Rights Commission has just passed what we might call the “No More Cartoons about The Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him) Act.” It’s a Hate Speech Ban taken to its logical insanity…
It passed by a margin of 24 – 14. The Permission Slip Resolution was even more popular;
This is a resolution that Cuba has been campaigning on for awhile. Effectively, and I mentioned this in the previous post, it would prevent the United Nations from sending its own investigators into a country to examine the human rights situation without the express permission of the country itself. Genocide in Sudan? Well, you’ll need to get a hand-written note from Khartoum himself first saying that it can enter.
Why, it’s the UNMOVIC model, all over again!
The continued participation of Canada and other democratic governments on this commission serves no purpose but to grant it a legitimacy it does not deserve. Time to walk away from this charade, Mr. MacKay.
“Misguided advocates of negotiation with the mullahs, beware.”
The mullahs are on an Allah-mandated mission. They are intoxicated with Petrodollars and aim to settle for nothing less than complete domination of the world under the Islamic ummeh. It is precisely for this reason that they consider America and the West as “Ofooli,” setting-dying system, while they believe their Islamism as “Tolooi,” rising-living order. They are in no mood of negotiating for anything less than the total surrender of democracy, the very anathema to Islamism.
Hugh Hewitt and Mark Steyn (who writes for “McClain’s, which is what, like the Time Magazine of Canada?”);
HH: And back in Tehran, they say I guess we can push even further, don’t they?
MS: Exactly.
HH: And as a result, great power status, as you wrote at National Review, erodes, and is not quickly reassembled. I don’t know if Great Britain gets it back. As Arthur Herman said, they used to wonder if they’d left a navy big enough to defend Great Britain. Now the question is do they have a navy big enough to defend the navy.
The “Denis Coderre Can’t Party With His Friends” Law
More Progress In Iraq
The leaders of a car-bombing ring responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Iraqis have been captured,
It is noteworthy, though the AP can’t quite bring itself to note it, that the anti-al-Qaeda Sunni insurgents have advanced beyond the Democratic congressional leadership in their thinking.