Monday, December 31, 2007

2007: The West's Year Of Failure

[Cross-posted to THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS]

From this December 28, 2007 article in Spiegel Online International:
Ongoing difficulties in Iraq. A Taliban offensive in Afghanistan. And now the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan. For the West, 2007 has been a year of failure and missteps.

[...]

There are three lessons to be learned from the strategy followed by the US to this point.

Lesson one: The conflict with radical Islam is not the hobby of a US president gone berserk. This will become all the more clear next November when American voters go to the polls. Bush, who cannot run for re-election due to term limitations, will go, but the conflict with Islam will remain. In fact, it is growing more intense. That, at least, is what the murder of this exceptionally brave woman in Pakistan has given to the West: a high degree of clarity. The radical Islamists will not tolerate any democrats, even if they come from their own countries. They are looking for a showdown, apparently at any price. They will even accept the failure of a country as big and proud as Pakistan.

Lesson two: Bush will not be in a position to do much to end this conflict. He is a war president and an unsuccessful one at that. Even if he talks about diplomacy, it sounds like preparation for war. His partners in Berlin, Paris and London will have to act cleverly in this difficult situation. Any belligerence or crowing must be avoided so as to not damage the Western position as a whole. As strange as it might sound, this beleaguered president must be ushered into retirement with dignity and civility.

Lesson three: The classic military intervention -- Bush's formula against the danger of terrorism -- has not been successful up to now and will not be so in the future. And the situation in nuclear-armed Pakistan is clearly not one where any sort of military operation should be considered....
The article, avoiding insofar as possible any reference to Islam, emphasizes the role of diplomacy (Even with "thugs"!), which has been, for the most part over the past fourteen centuries, an abject failure with any Islamic nation. The Spiegel article, overlooking the religious element and the emphasis which Islamic terrorism places on Islamic jihadi-martyrs' status in eternity, also attempts to draw fallacious comparisons between the present clash of civilizations and the Cold War:
A look back and the Cold War -- an era full of provocations on both sides -- provides a useful model. In 1953, construction workers building the great Stalin Allee in East Berlin, rebelled against their communist government. Many in the Soviet zone hoped that the West would support their fight against the East German communist dictatorship. In West Berlin, the US propaganda station RIAS became shriller -- but nothing more was done.

In Budapest in 1956 there was the same calm discipline. The armed Hungarian students (this writer's father among them) rebelled against the Moscow puppet regime. They were hoping for Western help, but that hope was in vain. The students saw this as a betrayal. For tens of thousands, my father included, there was nothing to do but flee from the Soviet tanks rolling in.

The West's abstention was painful; in fact, it was unbearable -- but it made political sense.

These provocations continued until the dismal high point -- the military putsch by General Wojciech Jaruzelski in Warsaw in 1981. The armies of the West stayed in their barracks. Soviet Communism broke apart all by itself a short time later.
Toward the end, however, the article also states the following, thus ending on a contradictory note:
The West has to protect itself and its people with everything modern technology has placed at its disposal....[T]here is an important role to be played by the military and by secret services -- but primarily in the service of targeted operations against terror camps and cells. While mass invasions have proven useless, pinprick operations continue to have an important place in the West's arsenal.
In my view, the article overlooks a necessary component of victory in this long, long war against Islamic expansionism: Stop whitewashing Islam by calling it "the religion of peace."

[Hat-tip to Mark Alexander, where I found the article from Spiegel Online International]

5 comments:

joe said...

Very much what one has come to expect from the Germans. Do nothing. If one must do something then only talk. Talk is confused with action. Germans want to manage things not fix them.

If something needs to be done then let the US do it. If what the US does is not perfect in their eyes, then they can always say "We told you so".

Always On Watch said...

Joe,
Good points.

Many rush to blame the US for any action taken.

Silly Allah said...

If the ignorant many would just read the Koran, they would learn the that Islamic terror is not just a few crazies in the mountains of Afghanistan. Why do people refuse to read and learn about a violent cult started with violence 1400 years ago? Why won't people read about Wahabi-nuttyism? The facts are all there.

How to Discuss Islam with Muslims.

Always On Watch said...

Silly Allah,
Our political leaders are insistent that Islam is "a religion of peace." As long as they (and interfaithers) continue with that delusion, the West will continue to ignore the Islamic threat--at peril to us all.

personalrep1 said...

Islam Is Murder, Rape, Slavery, Looting, Sex with Little Girls, Terror, Hate

By
Larry Houle
http://www.godofreason.com
intermedusa@yahoo.com

Muhammad created Islam as a criminal Mafia enterprise to make war against infidels, murder those infidels who refused to convert to Islam or pay a devastating submission tax (jizya) (criminal extortion) enslave their women and children, rape and breed them like cattle, loot their property and share 80% of the looted proceeds with the criminal Muslim jihadists with 20% going to Muhammad. If no fighting was involved then 100% of the proceeds went to Muhammad.

Islam is on a holy mission decreed by Allah to conquer the world by whatever means necessary and make Islam- the only religion and Muslims the only people. This means the extermination or conversion by force or the threat of death or slavery of 5 billion people. The Koran is a blueprint for mass murder and the creation of a total totalitarian state with all human beings living in total submission to the will of Allah as expressed by the ETERNAL LAWS OF ALLAH (the ANTI GOD) in the Koran.

Murdering infidels, stealing their property, raping their women and little girls, selling into slavery the women and little girls the Muslim men did not want to keep as sex slaves, breeding them for profit and the imposition of the devastating jizya (submission) tax on the conquered peoples funded the Islamic armies allowing them to conquer more infidel nations, taking more slaves, more jizya, more sex slaves – a vicious deadly circle. These evil criminal acts are Islam - murder, looting, rape, and slavery.

Muhammad invented Islam and Allah (the Anti God) and created fake revelations from this bogus Allah and presented them as the ETERNAL LAWS OF GOD. This ANTI GOD - Allah was presented as the same God worshipped by Christians and Jews. This allowed Muhammad to morally justify criminal acts as holy duties sanctioned by God to be rewarded on earth by unlimited wealth of booty, unlimited source of sex provided by sex slaves and future wealth by breeding and selling slaves. And for those Muslims who splayed and were slain in carrying out these evil criminal acts of the ANTI GOD were guaranteed accession to a Paradise of big breasted, lustrous eyed virgins who re – generate as virgins after each sex act to be molested by these righteous killers for all eternity.

When President Bush stood at the podium in Dubai and declared that Islam was a noble religion that had been hijacked by Islamic terrorists, he was a dimini of the first order.

The Saudis have murdered at least 2000 US service men in Iraq. The Saudi government has been behind most of the suicide bombers in Iraq in a desperate attempt to overthrow the Shiites.

The reality is that Islam is not a religion but an evil ideology.

Terms like Islamic terrorists, Islamo - Fascists gives tremendous creditability to Islam. They perpetuate the myth that Islam is a wonderful religion of peace and love that has been hi – jacked and perverted by a few bad apples of evil Islamo – Fascists, Islamic militants, Islamic Fundamentalists, jihadists, Wahhabism, radical Islam, political Islam, Islamists etc

There has been no hijacking. There has been no perversion. These demented souls are following exactly the teachings of the Koran and in the footsteps of the Prophet - Muhammad.

Osma bin Laden is a true Muslim - a holy man of the Koran following EXACTLY the teachings of Muhammad.
Islam is an ideology of murder, hate, terror,. It is an ideology of war.

The Koran is a book of war. This war is permanent until ALL infidels have been converted to Islam, agree to pay a submission tax or have been murdered.