Barakzai's Recommendations

[BarakzaiAbdali]

go live with them man, who is stopping you, I will be happy to get your 'worldly possessions', bequeath them to me. I will take good care of them

Lets do an experiment, post that you will give your american citizenship and all worldly western possessions here and now in exchange for a life in watan. I bet 99% of afghans who can read and write (and thus made a fool by this poison you call western education) will sign up right here, right now.

But no, lets tell them rainforest rocks, stay in the desert and keep the camels ready in case you come visiting and are wishing a desert safari. May be some goat cheese, yes 20% afghan population you tend to goats so i can have goat cheese with my morning mimosa.

Tssk Tssk, none of this distraction accounts for your aforementioned contradiction. You claimed, foolishly and prematurely I might add, that you do not send others to do what you yearn to do. Yet you are all too willing to send Americans to do the killing and mass murder you want to do. Lemme guess, each Islamist represents daddy? So each time one goes down, it takes care of that wierd Oedipal Complex you developed? So perhaps while Scimitar swings from vine to vine... you will learn to lock, load, pump action, and fire at targets? After all, you are keen on equating invasion and occupation with progress... go live it man. Let Tom or Steve come home to share their warm bed with lovely wife Suzie.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

is it shame that is keeping you from sanity? get over it, it is getting way too costly.

As costly as you perpetuating an invasion and occupation from your armchair so you can serve as a fifth column citizen? You know Baygham, you and Miss Palin are none too different... nor are you and Mr Kristol or Mr Wolfowitz or Mr Perle... all fifth column and all the first to take 3 steps back to promote an agenda that enslaves others and forces innocents here to take 3 steps forward.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

By the way, can't you, Toramana, and Azmal go to Toramana's Chowk and carry on your meaningless, trite, repetitive, cathartic banter? What is it on this thread that worries you so that you felt the need to stage an intervention?

http://www.pashtunforums.com/literat...-corner-15459/

[Baygham]

Tssk Tssk, none of this distraction accounts for your aforementioned contradiction. You claimed, foolishly and prematurely I might add, that you do not send others to do what you yearn to do. Yet you are all too willing to send Americans to do the killing and mass murder you want to do. Lemme guess, each Islamist represents daddy? So each time one goes down, it takes care of that wierd Oedipal Complex you developed? So perhaps while Scimitar swings from vine to vine... you will learn to lock, load, pump action, and fire at targets? After all, you are keen on equating invasion and occupation with progress... go live it man. Let Tom or Steve come home to share their warm bed with lovely wife Suzie.

You are confusing me with your beloved President George W Bush. I did not sent Americans anywhere, GWB and the american government did.

That discarded oedipal complex is very 19th century, the world has advance another 100 and some years, let me guess you were busy with the nursing staff (teaching them about Islam offcourse- what were you thinking).

American are free to come and go where ever they want to. They have planes, ships, humvees, even joksters like you amongst their citizens in case they need, well a jockster.

I on the other hand will be content who ever they sent or not sent. Like I told you, not interested in who is blowing the wind, more interested in my own sail and mastery of the elements, will navigate through what ever comes my way. GBW, Osama, obama, islami, hindu, whatever.

Tom and steve are happy frolicking with the gliterati in Kabul(the night scene I hear, is one of the best around especially when your chips are down), they dont want to come back to the demanding biatches back home.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

You are confusing me with your beloved President George W Bush. I did not sent Americans anywhere, GWB and the american government did.

That discarded oedipal complex is very 19th century, the world has advance another 100 and some years, let me guess you were busy with the nursing staff (teaching them about Islam offcourse- what were you thinking).

American are free to come and go where ever they want to. They have planes, ships, humvees, even joksters like you amongst their citizens in case they need, well a jockster.

I on the other hand will be content who ever they sent or not sent. Like I told you, not interested in who is blowing the wind, more interested in my own sail and mastery of the elements, will navigate through what ever comes my way. GBW, Osama, obama, islami, hindu, whatever.

Tom and steve are happy frolicking with the gliterati in Kabul(the night scene I hear, is one of the best around especially when your chips are down), they dont want to come back to the demanding biatches back home.

Oops we struck a nerve it looks like. You're a rabid interventionalist and have accepted it here in the past; yet the story changes again with you. In fact, with much vigor and glee you referred to the the Americans as "farm hands" and "slaves" to execute your sick fantasy of killing and rekilling daddy. Your father will face his own reckoning, and its time you took responsibility for your own reckoning. Grow up and understand that his actions and your actions are independent. It matters not a lick or a whit whether he made you read a thousand or a thousand and one tikaay of the Quran or whether he threw shoes at you , etc etc. Time to face the real world and quit acting like you are some bizarro Edgar Allen Poe.

[Baygham]

Oops we struck a nerve it looks like. You're a rabid interventionalist and have accepted it here in the past; yet the story changes again with you. In fact, with much vigor and glee you referred to the the Americans as "farm hands" and "slaves" to execute your sick fantasy of killing and rekilling daddy. Your father will face his own reckoning, and its time you took responsibility for your own reckoning. Grow up and understand that his actions and your actions are independent. It matters not a lick or a whit whether he made you read a thousand or a thousand and one tikaay of the Quran or whether he threw shoes at you , etc etc. Time to face the real world and quit acting like you are some bizarro Edgar Allen Poe.

You crack me up. Well I did almost go the hafizulquran route, was way too easy to memorise the damn thing by the time brother and sister got done with solving the 'zeer zabar' conundrum for the day.

I told you stay away from this psychology crap, stay with the heart, thats where the lord resides right?** Up there, in the head, it can get scary, its a jail for the shayateen, you will open a pandora's box and if you venture somewhere forbidden, it will shatter your heart.

The irony is, it was my islamist father that sent us to America, the great defeater of God-less communism. Get educated there, there is nothing of honor here its all corruption and deception he would rightly say. An ardent supporter of the mujahideen he was too naive (like most pashtoons) to know the intricacies of war, mujahideens, isi, salafi, wahabi, kgb, cia, he did not know these things, but even he knew where to sent us to find out about the ways of the new World.

If alive he would be lost in todays world, who to call friend, who to call a foe, where to go. Too proud to admit to folly, too adamant to change, too honourable to accept his fading power. He would have never changed, he did not want to, but he knew we would, and rather than change like the dogs he saw around him in watan, selling their soul for pennies, he wanted us to maintain the dignity he himself had. A dignity in a new world, one he could not enter himself but his children could. In a way an ultimate sacrifice to give permission to your children and let them free from whatever chains are tying you down. I am very proud of him for that and he was very proud of me.

Rather than dragging our children with our chains, we should all let them free, to carve a future for themselves with honor and dignity. Not in the image of our ancestors or even ours but in their image and like my father, even a 'jutt jahil' in watan knows that such a path lies through modern education in the halls of western colleges (hopefully one day in watan) and not some repetitious ranting in a madrassa back home.


**(that catheter you put in people's heart must poke him in the a s s, is that kosher? ask the imam, next time you are attending juma prayers without proper attire)

[BarakzaiAbdali]

You crack me up. Well I did almost go the hafizulquran route, was way too easy to memorise the damn thing by the time brother and sister got done with solving the 'zeer zabar' conundrum for the day.

I told you stay away from this psychology crap, stay with the heart, thats where the lord resides right?** Up there, in the head, it can get scary, its a jail for the shayateen, you will open a pandora's box and if you venture somewhere forbidden, it will shatter your heart.

The irony is, it was my islamist father that sent us to America, the great defeater of God-less communism. Get educated there, there is nothing of honor here its all corruption and deception he would rightly say. An ardent supporter of the mujahideen he was too naive (like most pashtoons) to know the intricacies of war, mujahideens, isi, salafi, wahabi, kgb, cia, he did not know these things, but even he knew where to sent us to find out about the ways of the new World.

If alive he would be lost in todays world, who to call friend, who to call a foe, where to go. Too proud to admit to folly, too adamant to change, too honourable to accept his fading power. He would have never changed, he did not want to, but he knew we would, and rather than change like the dogs he saw around him in watan, selling their soul for pennies, he wanted us to maintain the dignity he himself had. A dignity in a new world, one he could not enter himself but his children could. In a way an ultimate sacrifice to give permission to your children and let them free from whatever chains are tying you down. I am very proud of him for that and he was very proud of me.

Rather than dragging our children with our chains, we should all let them free, to carve a future for themselves with honor and dignity. Not in the image of our ancestors or even ours but in their image and like my father, even a 'jutt jahil' in watan knows that such a path lies through modern education in the halls of western colleges (hopefully one day in watan) and not some repetitious ranting in a madrassa back home.


**(that catheter you put in people's heart must poke him in the a s s, is that kosher? ask the imam, next time you are attending juma prayers without proper attire)

Once again, a series of smoke screens without meaning for any of us here. How does Michael Scheuer, urging you, his fellow American, to not utilize this country as a fifth column citizen in an attempt to force create a million other mentally disturbed Bayghams with perpetual war of attrition get translated into him wanting the wataan to have reptitious ranting in madrassahs?

No, the real answer is that you, Khalid Hosseini, and a host of other folks capitalize off this rather absurd image of being the products of an abused childhood to justify invasion, murder, and occupation. All actions that are altering the American character for the worst. In fact, the polling, surveys and data all support the notion that Muslims generally admire the American work ethic, technological prowess, and pursuit of education and do not identify Americans, but do identify the governmental policy as problematic and intrusive. So no matter how hard you attempt to answer logic, fact, and argument with some rant about your Manson Family upbringing... it is obvious to all here that what you say matters little. Why? Because you have contradicted yourself a thousand times, lending support to occupation at various junctures and then pertending to not care at all about it.

Stick with answering the question and quit diverging into your fanstasy land. You claimed above that you dont send others to do what you ought to do yourself... yet you send American boys to die abroad for your pipe dream. That is the fact and it is supported by your own rants here. Bottom line Baygham? I have no issues with religiosity or irreligiosity, rather it is you that has to deal with the fact that you are some odd antijihadi cleric.... like some sort of reverse FazlurRahman.

[khushal]

I want to give you an honest and educated answer that is not spewn out rapid fire. Give me a day or two to put it together.

I have much patients. Whenever you have time.

[ScimitarXEdge]

is it shame that is keeping you from sanity? get over it, it is getting way too costly.

you label yourself capitalist ...and you're acting as if you represent Sanity?

[ScimitarXEdge]

go live with them man, who is stopping you, I will be happy to get your 'worldly possessions', bequeath them to me. I will take good care of them

Lets do an experiment, post that you will give your american citizenship and all worldly western possessions here and now in exchange for a life in watan. I bet 99% of afghans who can read and write (and thus made a fool by this poison you call western education) will sign up right here, right now.

But no, lets tell them rainforest rocks, stay in the desert and keep the camels ready in case you come visiting and are wishing a desert safari. May be some goat cheese, yes 20% afghan population you tend to goats so i can have goat cheese with my morning mimosa.

See the problem with your little experiments is that you ignore the false logical premise you establish; people who are conditioned/brainwashed to think a certain way will usually have an initial resistance to things outside of that comfort zone; irregardless of how meritable it is. Being able to read and write is inconsequential; all it means if that people are able to be indoctrinated by literary means as well; it does not immunize them from brainwashing. Now this doesn't necessarily mean they will remain that way; but it demonstrates your model of experimentation is flawed and wouldn't serve to prove anything except that people are so brainwashed they remain compliant to the status quo.

The reality is; that the Global Capitalist enterprise has parasitically entrenched itself and has severely damaged nearly every facet of every environmental niche; so even if I wanted to pack my bags and leave; I could not because it wouldn't actually be a solution to the Damages of Capitalist Parasitism. We can only return to a natural way of life AFTER we dismantle the capitalist way of life; or else it would be fruitless. However; your idea of what you think Progress should be is not Ecologically teneable, our planet Earth cannot and will not support it. Ultimately mankind will either by choice or by force of nature will have no other choice but to return to a more basic way of life. And I'm sorry to reveal the bad news, NASA isn't building super warp drive space ships like on Star Trek to colonize the solar system; so don't bank on a surprise Wild Card.


Since you're so into experiments; Why dont we do another experiment; ....go to Pakhtunkhwah; go to the Mimbar on Friday and give a Khutbah on how the normative way of life of Pakhtuns is based on sexual predatory behavior, then show me how many millions of Pakhtuns follow your call or put you on the chopping block.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

Barakzai,
I am interested in your thoughts about Fareed Zakaria's take on this whole issue where he states that Islamic extremism was not fundamentally rooted in Islam, nor could it be claimed a reaction to American foreign policy. It had its roots in the stagnation and dysfunctions of the Arab world. Decades of failure under tyrannical regimes, all claiming to be Western-style secular modernizers, had produced an opposition that was anti-Western, religious, violent, and increasingly globalized.

Khushaal Wrorre,

Sorry to sound like a broken record and I am sure at this point my utilization of Dr. Scheuer as a source repeatedly may irk some on here that wish me to diversity my citations. I also choose to continue to rely on such high caliber sources because some folks here tend to work off the political party paradigm. In their algorithmic thinking, every argument made by someone you do not agree with or who carries a label you do not like must be opposed and ipso facto condemned. By using Scheuer, I deflect their ability to label the argument Paki honed, Islamist derived, or un-American. It allows for the discussion to stay on track because they have to deal with a completely different personae and not BarakzaiAbdali. I would say that his reasoning is so sound and so solid (and so profound) that I cannot but help to refer you to it. A great source is just that, a great source. I want you to take a look at Dr. Scheuer’s answer to your question which nails shut the coffin top over the rhetoric of the failed civilization theory that “Spengler/David Goldman” has been a huge proponent of and that some here have lapped up like water to a dog on a hot summer day.

**Enjoy, and expect a useless, non-evidence derived, and pointless response from various others on here. Note how eerily similar their past posts bare a strong resemblance to the quotes referenced below to Ralph Peters and Bernard Lewis, and how easily this vein of thinking is stenosed and excised here.**

I hi-lited important areas. Note also, how strongly Ralph Peter’s theory of failures in life latching onto insurgency causes strongly resembles the argument made here by the roadrunner. Scheuer also effectively filets that argument wide open.

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Imperial Hubris pg 110 by Dr. Michael Scheuer, former head of Alec Station, the Bin Ladin Unit, Central Intelligence Agency. Credentials:

http://security.nationaljournal.com/...-f-scheuer.php

The one distractive theme that has emerged with a vengeance since the 11 september attacks, however, is dangerous to national security, because it is wrong but plausible, and because it is comforting to American elites refusing to see the US government actions in the Islamic world are causing Muslims to attack the United States. The argument’s gist is that Bin Ladin, his allies, have been spawned by a “failed civilization—one hostile to democratization, capitalism, and modernity, save for the tools of war—and that they are driven by a realization that Islamic society is dying and a maniacal desire to destroy other civilizations that are successful and causing the demise of Islam. These men, this argument goes, recognize this failure, blame it on the West, and are lashing out with indiscriminate violence to spark an Armegeddon like battle with Western civilization. This line of analysis take a brilliant, calculating, and patient foe like Bin Ladin and and reduces him to the status of a madman, bloodthirsty, and irrational.

It is with some trepidation that I disagree with this line of analysis. First it is held by writers for whom I have a profound respect, especially Bernard Lewis, Ralph Peters, Malise Ruthven, and Victor Davis Hanson. Second, I believe that in a general sense there is much truth to this analysis. There is no avoiding the fact that there is a breakdown across much of the Muslim world that is most evidence in rampant illiteracy, technological backwardness, poor educational systems, decrepit public resources, rudimentary healthcare, discrimination against women, tyrannical governments, and a host of other problems. And there are indeed many Muslims that blame other civilizations—Western, modern, Christian, secular, call it what you will—for each of these misfortunes. “Meanwhile, the blame game, the Turks, the Mongols, the imperialists, the Jews, the Americans—continues, and shows little signs of abating,” wrote Bernard Lewis in the book Western Influence What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response.

"If the peoples of the Middle East continue on their present path, the suicide bomber may become a metaphor for the entire region, and there will be no escape from the downward spiral of hate, rage and self pity, poverty and oppression, culminating sooner or later in another alien domination; perhaps from a new Europe reverting to old ways, perhaps from a resurgent Russia, perhaps from some new expanding power in the East. If they abandon grievance and victimhood, settle their differences, and join their talents, energies, and resources in a common creative endeavor, then they can once again remake the Middle East in modern times what it was in antiquity and the Middle Ages, a major center of civilization. For the time being the choice is their own."

The question for me, however, is whether this is a failure of Islamic civilization, or the result of a transition from the era of European Colonialism—which planted the seeds of modernization in the middle east—to one of unrelenting tyranny by the states and regimes made from Europe’s former colonies. Arguably, many Muslims have fewer personal freedoms and modern amenities—potable water, quality schools, adequate electricity, etcetra—than they did during the age of European imperialism. Does the situation today result from Muslims turning their backs on modernization, or from having entered the post colonial era under a system of absolutist monarchies and dictator run regimes that represent a retrograde step from what might, astoundingly, be seen as the more enlightened age of colonialism? I am certainly not arguing here for a return to colonialism, although, as noted, Al Qaeda heralds the invasion and occupation of Iraq as a return to direct colonial rule. I am only suggesting that the post colonial governing arrangements—for which reasons of economic self interest, the West has defended as sacrosanct—have further enslaved Muslims rather than freeing them.

The failed civilization theory, unfortunately, allows US elites, policy makers, and voters to take refuge in the idea that the Islamic world as gone mad, and that nothing the United States has done has caused Al Qaeda’s attacks, or generated the widely held anti US sentiment in the Islamic world. This analysis can be use to buttress a belief that such attacks are the irrational almost crazed, Muslim response to the death throes of a once glorious and worldwide Islamic civilization, and that the violence is meant to destroy the “others” who are blamed for Islam’s demise. In July 2002, the journalist James Klurfield wrote an article providing a good summary of the erroneous conclusions that flow from the failed civilizations thesis. The attacks of 11 September 2001, Klurfield argued in tones nearly identical to those of Bernard Lewis, Ralph Peters, and others,
"came from a religious sect lashing out at modernity and the leading exponent of modernity, the United States. Osama Bin Ladin is the product of failure, a failed culture that is being left behind by the rest of the world. He and his followers are lashing out because they cannot cope with the modern world… Ben Ladinism and other forms of Islamic fundamentalism are attempts to deal with the Arab world’s inability to cope with modernity… fundamentalism is a dead end road."

With the problem framed in this context, the other lines of analysis that accompany this thesis—one that deal with the Islamists’ war aims and Bin Ladin’s personal goals—move the reader further down the road toward believing that the Islamist and Bin Ladin have no specific complaints about policies and actions of the United States and its Western allies, and are attacking because they do not like us and resent our affluence and way of life. “For Osama Bin Ladin,” wrote the eminent historian Bernard Lewis

"his declaration of war against the United States marks the resumption of the
struggle for religious dominance that began in the seventh century. For him and his followers, this is a moment of opportunity. Today, America exemplifies the civilization and embodies the leadership of the House of War, and like Rome and Byzantium it has become degenerate and demoralized, ready to be overthrown. But despite its weakness, it is also dangerous... for members of Al Qaeda, it is the seduction of America and its prolifigate dissolute way of life that represents the greatest threat to the kind of Islam they want to impose on their fellow Muslims."

At this point we are faced again with the chance to incorrectly answer the question “Why do Muslims hate us?” Do they hate us for what we think and how we live, or do they hate us for what we do in the Muslim world? The answer, per Professor Lewis, would be mostly the former, amounting to the same kind of ill defined threat posed by America and the West to Islam that Ayatollah Khomeini railed so shrilly against for more than a decade. Khomeini’s rhetoric about the threat posed to Islam by evil, degenerate, and irreligious Americans fueled some sporadic acts of anti US violence, but never spawned anything but never stimulated anything resembling a jihad. Indeed, the most destructive anti US act of the Khomeini era—the bombing of the US marine barracks in Beirut in 1983—was conducted by Hizballah using Khomeini’s rhetoric to cover its simple goal of preventing the US military from establishing a long term presence in Lebanon. Notwithstanding Khomeini, Hizballah attacked because of what the United States did—intervened in Lebanon—not because of what it is or thought. Given the similarity between the failed civilization thesis and the ayatollah’s indictment, the brilliant analyst Ralph Peters creates a portrait of Bin Ladin as a Sunni Khomeini, violently lashing out hither and yon in an effort to destroy an evil civilization and its lifestyle. “Consider a minor player on the worldstage that has been hyped into international stardom,” Peters wrote late in 2000,

"Osama bin Ladin is not waging a war against the West’s realities. He doesn’t know them. He struggle against a riveting, overwhelming, wildly skewed personal vision of the West, exemplified by an America that he has conjured from shreds of information and his own deepest fears… Mr Bin Ladin’s acolytes know little--often nothing—of the mundane West, but are galvanized by the psychologically rewarding opportunity to hate. Men of few earthly prospects, they imagine a divine mission for themselves. It is the summit of self gratification."

So by this point we have progressed from the ramifications of a railed civilization, and the anger it engenders to a Khomeini like hatred of America because of its “dissolute way of life” that seduced Muslims, to a group of young ignorant men with few “earthly prospects” who sustain themselves psychologically by hating and killing what they hate. The pay off, naturally, is Osama Bin Ladin the mad man. Again Ralph Peters paints the scene, this time from his excellent book, Beyond Terror, Strategy in a Changing World.

"Osama Bin Ladin is willing to die, but he wants a commensurate effect when he goes… In terms of religion, he imagines himself as Allah’s humble servant, but is in fact, an extreme egomaniac, “leading God from below.”
But [bin ladin] cannot be dealt with as a rational actor, since under the cunning surface, he is irrational in the extreme. His methods make cruel sense, but his goals are far beyond the demise of a particular regime or the recognition of a Palestinian state. He wants to destroy, at the least, a civilization he has cast as Satanic. He does not want to defeat the West—he wants to annihilate us. If he had the technology today, he would use it."

This line of analysis, as already noted, comes from excellent, and learned writers, and I am loathe to challenge or criticize those from whom I learned so much. Still I think these analyses miss the mark regarding Osama Bin Ladin. For nearly a decade now, Bin Ladin has demonstrated patience, brilliant planning, managerial expertise, sound strategic and tactical sense, admirable character traits, eloquence, and focused, limited war aims. He has never, to my knowledge, behaved or spoken in a way that could be described as “irrational in the extreme.” The term “irrational” it seems to me is better applied to Americans who have forgotten, or never learned, Nathan Bedford Forrest’s lesson that “war means fighting and fighting means killing,” and are horrified by the modest—compared to what is coming—casualties Bin Ladin has so far exacted.

There has been no similar reporting from those who know, fought alongside, served under, fought against, or interviewed him. To the contrary, Bin Ladin is much more frank—about Al Qaeda’s successes and, especially it defeats—and much less prone to hyperbole than many Western leaders who thunder denunciations of him. Professor Lewis and Mr. Peters may very well be correct that contemporary Islam is a failed civilization; Peters writes that the “Arab homelands of Islam” should be written off as “incapable of constructive change.” There are also probably millions of Muslims who blame the West for that failure and are eager to use indiscriminate violence in seeking revenge. Bin however, is not one of those individuals. “In the same way,” Bin ladin wrote in 2003, “I inform you of the good news that our ummah has been promised victory by Allah, but if this victory has become delayed, then it is due to our sins and out sitting back from helping the religion of Allah.”

Bin Ladin has consistently put the blame on the decrepit condition of Islamic civilization squarely on the Muslims themselves. He certainly damns the West for attacking Islam and accuses it of stealing Islam’s natural resources and trying to eliminate all Muslims, but he gives credit for the Crusader’s success to the fact that many Muslims have strayed from the path set down by Allah and his Prophet and failed to join a defensive jihad to defeat the West’s attacks and then work to restore the greatness of Islam. The enemies of Muslims—be they Americans, Christians, Jews, Polytheists—are dominating the Islamic world, according to Bin Ladin, because an insufficient number of Muslims have stood up and fought for their faith. Rather than taking the negative road of blaming non Muslims for the plight if Islam, bin Ladin has stuck resolutely to the positive message that the Islamic world cannot be defeated because Allah promised it victory if Muslims obeyed his words and the Prophet’s guidance. Yes Bin Ladin does blame others—especially the US led Crusaders—for attacking Islam, Muslims, and Muslim territory, but he claims that Muslims, if they return to Islam, have it in their power, and need help from no one but God, to annihilate the attackers. Bin Ladin, at the end of the day, is a happy warrior, a brilliant hunter-killer waging war to achieve precise, devastating, but limited goals. There is simply no evidence that he is vaingloriously trying to lead the world—Muslim and Christian, and other—to armegeddon. And it is for this reason that I, with respect, strongly disagree with those who apply the failed civilization theory to Bin Ladin and Al-Qaeda. An armed, patient, and positive predator always is more dangerous and less prone to errors than the bomb throwing madman crazy for revenge.

[kakargirl]

Excellent thread wror, very interesting,but then again my wror makes excellent threads, and has taught me alot ,which i'm so greatful for.

[khushal]

Barakzai,
So all this reading material that you have provided makes me believe that influential policy thinkers such as Bernard Lewis and like minded have control over policy makers. Because most Americans I talk to seem to agree with their thinking and don't even know anything about what Mike Sheuer is saying. I cant blame of how most Americans think because they are just thinking what mass media is feeding them and they are feeding them the Bernard Lewis story and the Fareed Zakaria story. Why is mass media ignoring the Mike Sheuer story. Are they afraid of the Mike Sheuer story.

When Matt Hoh was interviewed, he says that policy is hard to change because if any terror attack happens on US soil, then the leaders that changed policy would be held responsible, so the leaders are afraid to change the status quo policy when any mediocre mind is well aware the status quo policy is not working and can never work. One of the reasons Nixon was so afraid to leave Vietnam was because if the domino effect theory that communism would spread to south Korea, Japan and the whole south east asia. The Nixon Administration was fearful of going down in history of making a mistake that was irreversible to American(western) dominance.

I'm wondering are we witnessing the beginning of the end of American power as we know it. I recently read an article that said that we took down Israel's eastern shield(Iraq) and have made Israel more vulnerable from the east and now the western shield(Egypt) is also being demolished which makes Israel much more vulnerable from the west and the northern shield(Syria) is on the verge of collapsing as well. Arab rulers of the people, by the people, for the people is definitely not in Israel's interest. He(I forget his name) was advising Israel to get out of the West Bank, Gaza and leave half of Jerusalem to the Palestinians before it's too late.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

Barakzai,
So all this reading material that you have provided makes me believe that influential policy thinkers such as Bernard Lewis and like minded have control over policy makers. Because most Americans I talk to seem to agree with their thinking and don't even know anything about what Mike Sheuer is saying. I cant blame of how most Americans think because they are just thinking what mass media is feeding them and they are feeding them the Bernard Lewis story and the Fareed Zakaria story. Why is mass media ignoring the Mike Sheuer story. Are they afraid of the Mike Sheuer story.

When Matt Hoh was interviewed, he says that policy is hard to change because if any terror attack happens on US soil, then the leaders that changed policy would be held responsible, so the leaders are afraid to change the status quo policy when any mediocre mind is well aware the status quo policy is not working and can never work. One of the reasons Nixon was so afraid to leave Vietnam was because if the domino effect theory that communism would spread to south Korea, Japan and the whole south east asia. The Nixon Administration was fearful of going down in history of making a mistake that was irreversible to American(western) dominance.

I'm wondering are we witnessing the beginning of the end of American power as we know it. I recently read an article that said that we took down Israel's eastern shield(Iraq) and have made Israel more vulnerable from the east and now the western shield(Egypt) is also being demolished which makes Israel much more vulnerable from the west and the northern shield(Syria) is on the verge of collapsing as well. Arab rulers of the people, by the people, for the people is definitely not in Israel's interest. He(I forget his name) was advising Israel to get out of the West Bank, Gaza and leave half of Jerusalem to the Palestinians before it's too late.

There are those like Ron Paul and his sons... but you are correct, the mass media has generally marginalized them. A great example was the exchanges between Jon Stewart and Rand Paul a few weeks ago on the latter's show. Another example was Christine Roman's treatment of Scheuer a few days ago, but he was able to effectively countering her.

My personal belief on this issue is that very few countries/nation states/empires are skillfull enough to extricate themselves from quagmires. When assymetric warfare is being fought in the way that it is with smoldering insurgencies in Iraq and Libya and hotter ones in Afghanistan and Chechnya, it takes economic catastrophe to catalyze the contraction of a power or superpower. Therefore, the insurgents and their backers will treat the US and its allies like Gullivers, making micronicks and cuts at its great legs for about another decade or two until a massive contraction of the empire occurs in the manner of the British imperium (i.e. Gulliver falls or at least hemorrhages to the point of syncope).

The issue here at home in the US is that the governing elite has complete control of the apparatus. Take for example Senator Lindsay Graham's cpomments a few days prior, indicating that the 2012 Presidential candidates would face quiet a bit of public pressure to leave Afghanistan and Iraq. He urged these future candidates to ignore the public (he almost said this verbatim). He can do this because the populace is faced with the self setup choice of the two party system where both parties offer escalation... but in different arenas. You have Susan Rice of the Obama administration gambling for perpetual war in Libya and then on the other hand you have Newt Gingrish and Pawlenty promising perpetual presence in Afghanistan and Iraq.

I also heard the same regarding the shields of Israel. This is very true in the case of Iraq. Baathist Saddam was an effective stop cock on the sunni insurgent conveyer belt from south asia and central asia to the levant... now with Saddam out of power, there is clear evidence of this conveyer belt operating in full swing.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

Chronique des années de sang by Mohamad Samraoui is a little known but classic source that ought to be read and disseminated widely.

In recent, years, David Petreus and Central Intelligence has attempted (but generally failed) to cut away at the popular support the insurgency enjoys via measures described in the Red Cell Memos released by wikileaks:

http://mirror.wikileaks.info/leak/cia-afghanistan.pdf

Despite the widespread and unintended open source proof of such activities in the form of the Red Cell Memos, and in the face of obvious executions of the red cell memo protocols to a t, delivered to the public in well packaged forms such as the now infamous Time Magazine cover, the naysayers and enablers of this tactic attempt to dismiss this aspect of COIN as nonexistent. They refer to critics as conspiracy theorists. This of course is a strategic denial and need not be taken seriously.

Samraoui's text is a strong counter to their attempts to silence criticism.

Unfortunately for General Petreus, Afghanistan is not Algeria, and the general demeanor of the population varies drastically from the environment that French Intelligence, Central Intelligence, and the Algerian government encountered and manipulated to undercut the support for a homegrown Islamist movement. This of course led to the bloody military coup, backed by western powers, against the popularly elected Algerian government. This should be a strong testament and rebuke to those here operating under the false but well intentioned belief that the popular will could be expressed through electoral mechanisms under the Karzai or Maliki governments. It is beyond common sense to advocate the untenable position that operating within an already corruption marred electoral process, buttressed by American bayonets, would ever realize the popular will should it be contrary to the secular democratic goals of the Karzai and Maliki regimes.

Here is a Samraoui's description:

Mohammed Samraoui. [Source: Rachad]
Mohammed Samraoui, the Algerian army’s deputy chief counterintelligence specialist, will later desert in disgust and explain in a French trial that the Algerian army helped create the Groupe Islamique Armé (GIA), supposedly an Islamist militant group linked to al-Qaeda fighting the Algerian government. He will say that in the months before an Algerian army coup in January 1992 the Algerian army “created the GIA” in an attempt to weaken and destroy the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), an Islamist political party poised to take power in elections. He will say, “We established a list of the most dangerous people and demanded their arrest, but in vain: they were needed [to be free] to create terrorist groups. Instead, we arrested right, left, and center. We were trying to radicalize the movement.” Army intelligence identified Algerians returning from the Soviet-Afghan war and many times recruited them. “They all took the flight home via Tunis because it was half-price. As soon as they landed in Algiers, we took them in hand.” [RANDAL, 2005, PP. 169-170]

Samraoui's claims would later be backed up in French court and in print in the writings of another high level Algerian military official, Habib Souaidia:

"Algerian general Khaled Nezzar loses a libel suit in France against Habib Souaidia, a former lieutenant in the Algerian army. Souaidia claimed in a 2001 book that in the 1990s the Algerian army frequently massacred Algerian civilians and then blamed Islamic militants for the killings. The French court rules that the contents of Souaidia’s book are “legitimate.” The court declares that it could not judge Algeria’s history but Souaidia had acted in good faith in making his allegations. [Agence France-Presse, 9/27/2002; Inter Press Service, 9/30/2002] Souaidia served in the Algerian army until 1996 and took part in operations against Islamic militants. Nezzar is considered the real power in Algeria, still ruling behind a facade of civilian rule ever since the early 1990s. Several former Algerian officers living in exile testified in court and corroborated Souaidia’s statements."

http://www.historycommons.org/entity...med_samraoui_1

How does this pertain to Afghanistan and the festering insurgency? Well, with Samraoui, the notion is ipso facto cemented that false flag operations are a tactic beloved to state sponsored intelligence organizations. More than that, Algeria's sordid history, as detailed by Samraoui and corroborating sources serves a stern warning to the public to not trust official government channels and supporters commenting on a popular insurgency's motives, supposed civilian casualty count, and media blitzes attempting to assign a guilty before proven innocent verdict to possible insurgent driven operations. However, it also serves a warning to popular insurgencies that their members must remain acutely aware of these propaganda attempts to undercut its most precious fuel and integral lifeline, namely, populace support.

Algeria and Afghanistan however, are worlds apart. Algeria was a fairly developed post colonial country. Algeria's situation was more comparable KP proper where multiple organizations actually do have the capability to influence the populace against a homegrown insurgency as every home now does have a TV. However, FATA and Afghanistan proper remain out of Petreus's and Mr Karzai's reach for such attempts. The role of a federalist tribal set up also counters the Algeria effect from occuring there.