THERE'S GRATITUDE FOR YOU. . .

>It's always comforting to see that when all else fails them,

>the Dougies of the world will trot out their tired old

>anti-Semitic crap.

>So much easier than dealing with their own inadequacies! x(

TRANSLATION: "I, Trilingual, have the right to traffic in every bigoted stereotype that exists. I can play on the basest prejudices by accusing people who have a different political view than I have of being illiterate, drooling, culturally ignorant residents of trailer parks - because I perceive other people who are different than I am as steroetypes and caricatures and I can spew whatever bigotry I want at them. It's perfectly OK when I do this, because I am pure and good.

But I am Jewish, and therefore nobody can mention anything about Judaism, because if they do, they are 'anti-Semitic.' If they do that, I will scream ANTI-SEMITE!!!, just like my mother taught me to, so that I can shut off all debate; immunize myself from criticism; avoid having to answer what was said about my views; and achieve for myself my Highest Goal: making myself a VICTIM. Ahhh, that feels so good, so safe, so nice and weak. Pass me some more anti-depressents, please. Oh, and did I mention: THE NAZIS ARE COMING!!! Concentration camps are around the corner! So make sure to spend your life fleeing and hiding under your bed, like I do."

We've gone off to a anit-semite tangent.

This is a thread on Iraq, or are the two connected?

>Who are "these people"? The people in Falluja who engaged in

>these attacks? All of the residents of Falluja? All Iraqis?

>All Arabs? Who are the people about whose welfare you don't

>care at all based on this incident?

First, I must confess that I attended a work function prior to posting and had several cocktails under my belt. Not that I said anything I don’t believe. It’s just counter to my WASP upbringing to give voice to such unpleasant thoughts. However, I started it, so...

The truth is, “these people” is an ever widening group. The longer these troubles go on, the more and more I come to believe that there really is something primitive and savage about a great many, moving towards most Arab Muslims. I know it’s not all of them –- no characteristic or trait is universal to an entire group of people -- but there are far, far too many of them to dismiss it as a tiny fraction.

It may be a tiny fraction that is committing the atrocities, but where is the widespread indignation? Where are the moderate Arab Muslims speaking out and denouncing the behavior? They don’t exist. In fact, the extremists receive widespread support. The women dress their babies up and they dance in the streets. Their religious leaders denounce the desecration of bodies but say nothing about the killings. They allow their places of worship to be used for terrorist indoctrination and training.

Where is the other side preaching anything but death and violence? If these were Catholics or Mormons or most any other religious group doing these kind of things, I believe you would see widespread condemnation from within the ranks of the believers. Instead you have a primitive culture, shackled by a primitive religion that hasn’t changed since the 7th Century, and I’m though pretending it is anything else.

>But polls show that a majority of Iraqis favor the war we

>waged and are glad we did it. So what is your basis for

>making these claims about what a "sizeable portion" think, and

>what is a sizeable portion?

I’m amazed that you put such faith in these polls. How the hell could they accurately poll a country like Iraq? And I ask again, where are the people speaking out about the violence? If they exist, why aren’t they using their numbers and out demonstrating to show their support? Are they just cowards or are they incapable of criticizing other Muslims?

>Some of them do, to be sure. And we should absolutely make

>sure that those responsible are "brought to justice." But

>you're raging against abstractions based on emotion. Did you

>conclude after the Rodney King riots that "these people" hate

>us, are primitive savages, and we should hate them back? Or

>did you recognize that those involved constituted only a small

>minority of black people and their behavior couldn't fairly be

>attributed to black people generally. What's the difference?

The difference is that every day the behavior of the vast majority of black people proves otherwise. Where is the counterbalancing behavior of the Arab Muslims? Where are the groups working for peace and understanding? Where are the groups working to lift up their people instead of blaming others for all their ills?

Instead we have Palestinians blowing up children on buses. We have Saudis flying jumbo jets into buildings full of civilians. We have multi-Arab-national terrorist organizations planting bombs on trains. All without any kind of major disapproval from this group of wonderful people.

>FALLUJA, Iraq, April 1 — As the rage cooled in Falluja on

>Thursday and the burned and beaten bodies of four American

>civilians were wrapped in white cloth, many townspeople said

>they were torn between pride in the attack and shame over the

>mutilations.

This article is what your citing? If you ask me, it proves my point more than yours.

Many townspeople torn between pride and shame. That’s a resounding show of support.

>Many said they supported the killing of four security

>consultants because they were Americans and Americans are

>despised.

>

>But some of those same people said they felt embarrassed when

>mobs tore the bodies apart afterward and dragged them through

>the streets, turning this town in the heart of the Sunni

>Triangle into a symbol not only of resistance but of

>barbarity. The macabre celebration was televised worldwide.

Many supported the killing but some of those people felt embarrassed. Not many or most…some.

>In the morning, a team of American officials rushed to a

>meeting with Falluja's mayor and top clerics. American

>officials said the clerics promised to issue a fatwa, or

>religious edict, at Friday Prayer to condemn the ambush and

>the grisly aftermath. One of the gravest sins in Islam is

>desecrating the dead.

You’ll note that big fatwa condemned the mutilation and not the ambush. Even if you accept that that should be expected in Falluja, where was the condemnation from that big majority you claim supports the American efforts elsewhere in the country?

Actually, they ARE connected. In case you've missed it, one of the reasons Iraqis and other Arabs loathe the U.S. is because it supports Israel. The Arabs constantly lump the U.S. in with Israel as being part of a world Zionist conspiracy to rule the universe. Just like Dougie, the Arabs find it SO much easier to blame anyone and everyone except themselves for their backwardness, obscurantism, and decay.

Israel, by the way, is not my idea of a paragon state, but compared to any of its Arab neighbors it's a democratic utopia. It does, at least, have free elections, a vigorous free press, a real court system that's a check on the executive, civil rights guarantees, etc. Israel has made some huge mistakes, though, including staying in Gaza and the West Bank long after it should have found a way to get out. It never should have started the settlement process. And it never should brush aside the rule of law, as it often has in its war against Palestinian terrorism. (For example, Israel shouldn't have assassinated the vengeful sheik, or any of its other opponents. Israel has a functioning judicial system, after all. It should have arrested the creeps, tried them, and imprisoned them. That would continue to provide the strongest possible contrast to the way things are done in the Arab countries, where the "justice" system is strictly subservient to whomever is in power.)

Still, in spite of its mistakes, Israel is a better place for all of its residents than any of the Arab countries (unless one happens to be a member of the ruling elite in those countries).

I disagree that Islam is a primitive religion. It is, in fact, a breathtakingly sophisticated religion, and Muslims, for centuries, were the most progessive and cultured peoples in the world at a time the Christian West had succumbed to the Dark Ages. For reasons I really don't understand, Islam seems to have fallen under the spell of fundamentalism and has been unable to achieve the kind of reform and modernization that both Judaism and Christianity have experienced. However, I don't believe there's anything intrinsic to Islam that binds Muslims forever to such backwardness, and in time there will be change. It just seems to be an extremely grim and painful process in the Islamic world. Unfortunately, it has spilled over into the rest of the world, and (getting back to my original posting) I don't know if there's any way to prevent that from continuing without walling off the Muslim world until it finally gets its act together and returns to an understanding that it IS possible to co-exist with other peoples and beliefs. Islam was certainly capable of that in the past, though, and I'm sure it will be capable of that in the future.

Yes, I see on this mornings news where 3 more Iraqi cities are expressing their gratitude for the US 'help'...

Of course, they are linked. This is a war bought and paid for by the jewish neo-cons, and zionist sympathizers. The only country that is safer from the fall of Iraq is Israel, and that is exacly what its proponents intended. It was obvious efore the war that winning the war would be easy, but the ocupation would not. Only those who view the Israeli military strategy and occupation as successful, would have concluded that a similar-style occupation of Iraq would also be successful. We are reaping what they have sown!

I gues I'll ask again, where are those demonstrations of support besides some questionable poll?

Shiite Militia Marches in Iraq to Back Cleric Critical of U.S

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/04/international/middleeast/04IRAQ.html?th

Leftist Anti-Semitism

>Of course, they are linked. This is a war bought and paid

>for by the jewish neo-cons, and zionist sympathizers. The

>only country that is safer from the fall of Iraq is Israel,

>and that is exacly what its proponents intended. It was

>obvious efore the war that winning the war would be easy, but

>the ocupation would not. Only those who view the Israeli

>military strategy and occupation as successful, would have

>concluded that a similar-style occupation of Iraq would also

>be successful. We are reaping what they have sown!

Thank you for illustrating the Great Irony of Leftist Idiocy. Anti-Semitism, to the extent it exists in any meaningful way, today is found almost exclusively among the very anti-war Leftists and Socialists, particularly in Europe, whom Trilingual and other "The-Nazis-Are-Coming" Jewish liberals worship. Throughout Europe, leftist professors are expelling Israeli Professors from universities and academic leagues for no reason other than because they are Israeli. Leftist student groups have begun depicting Israel as today's South Africa (as do you), complete with anti-Israeli boycotts. The most virulent anti-Semitic rhetoric comes from the left, who sees Israel as the Fascist brother of the United States, and Arab groups as "oppressed" by Jews.

The primary belief among the anti-war Left is exactly the belief you just articulated, which traffics in every anti-Semitic caricature around: that the war was caused by scheming, deceitful, behind-the-scene Jews who are traitors to their country and who use their hidden financial and political power to use this country in order to benefit world Jewry, i.e., Israel. According to this Lefist world-view, bookish, deceitful Jews with hidden power in the Government and Media (Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Kristol, Krauthammer, Podhoretz, etc. etc.) swindled the stupid gentile leader (Bush) into waging a war in Iraq all for the benefit of Israel.

How ironic that so many liberal Jews like Trilingual scream that THE NAZIS ARE COMING when talking about conservatives, when the people to whom they bow and whom they follow - European leftists and anti-war activists - are at the vanguard of anti-Semitic rage.

Actually, Tri, it's more likely to be plagiarism of Ann Coulter than Auntie S. I'll start doing some research. Amazing though how Dougie has ignored the other thread where I exposed his plagiarism of Ann Coulter. I guess I'll have to bump it back up.

>Only those who view the Israeli

>military strategy and occupation as successful, would have

>concluded that a similar-style occupation of Iraq would also

>be successful. We are reaping what they have sown!

Auntie S, you're back! But your reading skills have deteriorated even further. Who ever said the Israeli occupation strategy was successful? The consensus just about everywhere (even in Israel) is that the occupation has been a disaster from which it needs to disentangle itself. Even Sharon seems to have finally realized that, even though some of his own crazy hard-line supporters are threatening hari-kari and worse if he pulls out of the occupied territories. But the majority of Israelis clearly wants out of this situation.

Also, the U.S. occupation of Iraq is different from the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Israel ended up as the occupying power after a war in which it was directly attacked. After winning that war, the powers that formerly occupied the West Bank and Gaza (Jordan and Egypt, respectively) washed their hands of the Palestinians and left them twisting in the wind. So there was no sovereign power with whom Israel could try to negotiate a resolution after 1967. The growth of Palestinian national identity has been a slow process since 1967, and both sides have squandered opportunties for peace since then, but the fact remains that the circumstances of the Israeli occupation are different than those of the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

Iraq, let us remember, was not an immediate threat to the U.S. It had not invaded the U.S., nor had it attacked us, nor did it have the means to do so. The U.S. invasion was strictly a war of revenge, if not also a war of smoke-and-mirrors to deflect public attention from the administration's failures against Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Not unlike the Argentine dictatorship's invasion of the Falklands in order to distract public attention from the collapsing economy. The Falklands War was an unmitigated disaster for the dictatorship and was the final straw that brought it down. The Iraq war may yet be the same final straw that will bring down the minority, appointed Bush administration.

>The number of people who engaged in that episode is a tiny,

>minute fraction of the population of Iraq. It's

>self-evidently abusrd to attribute the behavior of this small

>crowd to Iraqis and Iraq generally, as you just did.

After viewing the video ...

http://www.newsfrombabylon.com/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownloaddetails&lid=111&ttitle=Falluja_Mercenary_Massacre

and after seeing the pictures ...

http://www.newsfrombabylon.com/article.php?sid=3888

I feel compelled to believe that the "tiny, minute" Iraqi population who did these acts did not grow up in any type of cultural vacuum. It takes a village to learn to hate and not hate. It also appeared this was more than a handful of people involved and it also appeared no one tried to stop this from happening as it was occurring. A culture with a deep, common religion allowed this to happen and did not stop it from happening.

There he goes again

Tri, always the melodromatic one in the crowd!

A culture with a deep, common

>religion allowed this to happen and did not stop it from

>happening.

No kidding, now we have pissed off 60% of the Iraqi population (Sunni)by locking-up the chief clerics lieutenent!

Expect more of this over the coming weeks, prompting Dubya to do something dramatic??

No we pissed off the Sunnis by overthrowing Saddam. We pissed off the Shias (60%) by occupying Iraq. All we have left is the Kurds, I guess!

>No we pissed off the Sunnis by overthrowing Saddam. We

>pissed off the Shias (60%) by occupying Iraq. All we have

>left is the Kurds, I guess!

Yes, you are quite correct.

I see today where even more Iraqis are 'showering us with flowers and sweets', just as the Shrubya experiment predicted.

Yes, bombing mosques is probably just the right way to get invited for a quiet cup of tea with the neighbors, n'est ce pas?

Wouldn't it be ironic if the "Coaliton of the Killing" released Saddam in June, and said: "You can have your country back. If we had realized what you had to go through, we would have stayed at home. BTW can you give us some pointers on how to deal with Shias. They seemed so tame and secular under your rule. Maybe we should have asked for your advice, and not that of Arik Sharon and his acolytes after all!"