0 comment Tuesday, June 17, 2014 | admin
As the story of Saddam Hussein's execution by hanging is discussed across the Internet, there are extremes of emotion; as usual, the leftists are crying crocodile tears over the hanging of Saddam; they see him as a wronged victim, and the United States as the villain. On the opposite side of the emotional scale, we have the neocons, and the dittohead Republicans rejoicing and cheering Saddam's death, just as they were jubilant when Saddam was captured just over 3 years ago.
I find myself with no strong emotions on the event; I am disgusted by the lefties who defend Saddam or any other criminal, and I am not at all clear on why they sympathize so strongly with Saddam. He could hardly be classified as a fellow leftist, but because he is 'Other', from the Moslem world, they idealize him as a victim. And in their world, America is always evil, always wrong, and their fellow Americans invariably the enemy. They truly are people 'without a country' deracinated, disembodied people whose only feeling of affinity is with those who share their political delusions. I still maintain that many of them would take up arms against their fellow Americans in a heartbeat, such is the depth of their loathing.
Still, I can't say I feel elation at Saddam's death; as far as I can tell, he is fairly small potatoes in the larger scheme of things, and although his death is payment for the crimes he committed, I don't think it will have much effect on the situation in Iraq. I don't see his death as a 'milestone' in Iraq.
Apparently, Con Coughlin, writing in the Telegraph, does not think so, either:
Hanging Saddam won't bring peace to Iraq
This was a man whose maniacal policies -- whether launching unnecessary wars with Iran and Kuwait or the genocidal purges of his own people that were a perennial feature of Iraqi politics -- resulted in the deaths of up to one million people during the 35 years he dominated the nation.
[...]Even if support for Saddam is confined to his immediate family and criminal associates from Tikrit, there remains a substantial constituency among Iraq's disfranchised Sunni community who still fondly remember the hegemony they enjoyed over the country during his rule. The remnants of the old Ba'ath party, who have proved remarkably proficient at sustaining the vicious and unrelenting insurgency that has done so much to undermine the coalition's attempts to restore order to Iraq, have even gone so far as to threaten reprisals against those responsible for his demise.
[...]Removing Saddam from the scene might satisfy the Iraqi people's bloodlust, but it will have precious little bearing on the determination of rival Sunni and Shia Muslim groups to achieve their political goals through violence, rather than through the constitutional, democratic framework that the coalition has worked so hard to establish.
The best that can be hoped for from Saddam's demise is that it gives the Iraqi government the confidence to tackle and defeat the insurgency in a manner that has hitherto been lacking. Its failure to do so would have potentially disastrous consequences for both the future of Iraq and the region.''
Coughlin, at the conclusion, speaks of the possibility that, should the Iraqi government fail to quell the 'insurgency', civil war may be the result.
My problem with Coughlin's take is simply this: how bad does the situation in Iraq have to be before the label 'civil war' will be applied to the violence there? The neocons and the talk-radio fans have insisted that the situation there does not amount to a 'civil war', and that the term is only used by the 'Bush-bashers' and the lying MSM. So when will it cross the line and become a civil war? They keep raising the bar.
But I do agree with Coughlin that the removal of Saddam will not substantially change things.
The Iraqi 'insurgency' as it is euphemistically called, seems to have a life of its own, and is part of the wider turmoil which Islam is creating worldwide.
Will the execution of Saddam increase the violence against our troops in Iraq? I certainly hope it does not, but only time will tell. And how can we know for certain whether any increased violence or attacks are a retaliation for the execution, given the prevalence of the violence in Iraq?
And another concern for us in the West is the possibility of retaliation within our home countries. All along we have heard that 'we have to fight them in Iraq so we don't have to fight them here', and all the while, we are opening the gates to more and more Moslem immigrants. Doing so almost guarantees that we will have to fight them here, and indeed Islamic aggression is occurring here, in the sense that they are actively pursuing their agenda to Islamize our countries. The incidents I blogged about yesterday testify to an Islam that is on the march, pushing into Christendom as surely as in the days when our European ancestors had to drive them back at Tours or Lepanto or Vienna. Of course not all war involves bloodshed; the Islamic plan utilizes legal means and propaganda and deception, and ominously for us, they use our traditions of openness and hospitality against us. They use our institutions, our legal and legislative systems, in their war on the West.
Meanwhile many of us are lulled by the 'War on Terror' into the belief that because we are 'fighting them in Iraq' we are standing strong and resisting. Meanwhile, here in our country, we are welcoming Islam in, and giving them a foothold in our military, our government, our media. We are handing them the keys to our country.
Our efforts, if we are to survive and not fall under Islamic domination, must be refocused to defeating them domestically. The war in Iraq is, in a sense, a diversion.
Dictators and strongmen come and go, and although Saddam is now gone, how many other Islamic leaders, even more dangerous, still are at large? And why are our 'borders' still wide open?
I find myself with no strong emotions on the event; I am disgusted by the lefties who defend Saddam or any other criminal, and I am not at all clear on why they sympathize so strongly with Saddam. He could hardly be classified as a fellow leftist, but because he is 'Other', from the Moslem world, they idealize him as a victim. And in their world, America is always evil, always wrong, and their fellow Americans invariably the enemy. They truly are people 'without a country' deracinated, disembodied people whose only feeling of affinity is with those who share their political delusions. I still maintain that many of them would take up arms against their fellow Americans in a heartbeat, such is the depth of their loathing.
Still, I can't say I feel elation at Saddam's death; as far as I can tell, he is fairly small potatoes in the larger scheme of things, and although his death is payment for the crimes he committed, I don't think it will have much effect on the situation in Iraq. I don't see his death as a 'milestone' in Iraq.
Apparently, Con Coughlin, writing in the Telegraph, does not think so, either:
Hanging Saddam won't bring peace to Iraq
This was a man whose maniacal policies -- whether launching unnecessary wars with Iran and Kuwait or the genocidal purges of his own people that were a perennial feature of Iraqi politics -- resulted in the deaths of up to one million people during the 35 years he dominated the nation.
[...]Even if support for Saddam is confined to his immediate family and criminal associates from Tikrit, there remains a substantial constituency among Iraq's disfranchised Sunni community who still fondly remember the hegemony they enjoyed over the country during his rule. The remnants of the old Ba'ath party, who have proved remarkably proficient at sustaining the vicious and unrelenting insurgency that has done so much to undermine the coalition's attempts to restore order to Iraq, have even gone so far as to threaten reprisals against those responsible for his demise.
[...]Removing Saddam from the scene might satisfy the Iraqi people's bloodlust, but it will have precious little bearing on the determination of rival Sunni and Shia Muslim groups to achieve their political goals through violence, rather than through the constitutional, democratic framework that the coalition has worked so hard to establish.
The best that can be hoped for from Saddam's demise is that it gives the Iraqi government the confidence to tackle and defeat the insurgency in a manner that has hitherto been lacking. Its failure to do so would have potentially disastrous consequences for both the future of Iraq and the region.''
Coughlin, at the conclusion, speaks of the possibility that, should the Iraqi government fail to quell the 'insurgency', civil war may be the result.
My problem with Coughlin's take is simply this: how bad does the situation in Iraq have to be before the label 'civil war' will be applied to the violence there? The neocons and the talk-radio fans have insisted that the situation there does not amount to a 'civil war', and that the term is only used by the 'Bush-bashers' and the lying MSM. So when will it cross the line and become a civil war? They keep raising the bar.
But I do agree with Coughlin that the removal of Saddam will not substantially change things.
The Iraqi 'insurgency' as it is euphemistically called, seems to have a life of its own, and is part of the wider turmoil which Islam is creating worldwide.
Will the execution of Saddam increase the violence against our troops in Iraq? I certainly hope it does not, but only time will tell. And how can we know for certain whether any increased violence or attacks are a retaliation for the execution, given the prevalence of the violence in Iraq?
And another concern for us in the West is the possibility of retaliation within our home countries. All along we have heard that 'we have to fight them in Iraq so we don't have to fight them here', and all the while, we are opening the gates to more and more Moslem immigrants. Doing so almost guarantees that we will have to fight them here, and indeed Islamic aggression is occurring here, in the sense that they are actively pursuing their agenda to Islamize our countries. The incidents I blogged about yesterday testify to an Islam that is on the march, pushing into Christendom as surely as in the days when our European ancestors had to drive them back at Tours or Lepanto or Vienna. Of course not all war involves bloodshed; the Islamic plan utilizes legal means and propaganda and deception, and ominously for us, they use our traditions of openness and hospitality against us. They use our institutions, our legal and legislative systems, in their war on the West.
Meanwhile many of us are lulled by the 'War on Terror' into the belief that because we are 'fighting them in Iraq' we are standing strong and resisting. Meanwhile, here in our country, we are welcoming Islam in, and giving them a foothold in our military, our government, our media. We are handing them the keys to our country.
Our efforts, if we are to survive and not fall under Islamic domination, must be refocused to defeating them domestically. The war in Iraq is, in a sense, a diversion.
Dictators and strongmen come and go, and although Saddam is now gone, how many other Islamic leaders, even more dangerous, still are at large? And why are our 'borders' still wide open?
Labels: Islam, Saddam, War On Terror