What Islam Does to Civilized Life - Destroy Human Happiness

The following is from a marine stationed in southern Afghanistan. It is a sad and realistic assessment of Islam I read at "Atlas Shrugged" by blogger Pamela Geller.

I am growing increasingly upset with the culture of Islam here. I am growing increasingly vocal. In a meeting the other day as local elders were discussing ways to improve this place, I announced that the reality of the situation is that the men have screwed this place up so bad it’s time to arm the women with machine guns and give them a turn. A few laughed; I didn’t. Soon, no one laughed when they realized I was serious. What I have learned is that Islam is pain and human suffering. For the rest of my life I will fight it wherever it creeps. Even the Northern Afghanis who fight with us against the Taliban and their much more open minded (think New York Catholic) view of Islam (who say the only solution is to genocide the south and start over) lack an element of humanity, that righteous desire to “defend the defenseless.” I have attached an unclassified intelligence report that sheds some light on what Islam in it’s pure form does to civilizations.

I have seen the face of Islam and I do not care what Charles Johnson or Ibrahim Hooper say: social, economic, and religious systems must be judged by their fruits. The same standard by which I reject socialism, communism, and Nazism is what I use when I reject Islam. That standard is human happiness.

Solomon's Mine

Ah, Afghanistan. The prehistoric land of a trillion dollars worth of minerals. All the Kings Horses and all the Kings Men, couldn't put the Middle East back together again. One thing for sure - it will be fun to watch other nations jockeying for a part of that wealth - a fable like Solomon's Mine.

Revelations that Afghanistan may be sitting on $1 trillion worth of untapped minerals pose a quandary straight out of the pages of "The Hobbit," of all things.

In J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy, the eponymous hero overcomes multiple obstacles to reach a treasure hoard guarded by a dragon. But the hobbit then almost succumbs to defeatism when the cunning monster asks him how, even if he gets his hands on the gold, he will actually carry it all home?

Reuters Afghan boys ride on a bicycle in the old city of Ghazni, southwest of Kabul, in August 2007. The region that could be holding $1 trillion of untapped mineral deposits.
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Useful as mineral wealth might someday prove to be for Afghanistan, commodities analysts need not adjust their supply forecasts just yet.

Oil offers a lesson here..READ

The Empty Suit In The White House (Part 1)

"Barack Obama’s increasing disregard for Britain’s views is no way to treat an ally whose troops have fought side by side with America since September 11, says Con Coughlin."

It says much about Britain’s rapidly disappearing ‘special relationship’ with America that when I happened to mention to some of our senior military officers that I was visiting Washington, they begged me to find out what the Obama administration was thinking about Afghanistan. It is not just that the transatlantic lines of communication, so strong just a few years ago, have fallen into disuse. There is now a feeling that, even if we reached the Oval Office, there would be no one willing to take Britain’s call.

For weeks now, President Obama has been deliberating over what the Afghan strategy should be — and how many troops to send. If there is confusion in Washington, then Britain’s strategy is not much clearer. Gordon Brown has staged a recent flurry of activity on the subject, from writing misspelt letters to grieving mothers to demanding that an exit strategy be established for the withdrawal of British forces. Yet among our top brass, the general perception is that the Prime Minister has little interest in the war. Read at Spectator.

Bush May be Winning the War of Opinion over the War Against Muslim Terrorists

In an interesting and detailed article by Frederick W. Kagan in the Weekly Standard he explains the origins of Al Qaeda and how we must defeat them.

"Al Qaeda is an organization pursuing an ideology. Both the organization and the ideology must be defeated. Just as, in the Cold War, the contest between the United States and its allies and the Soviet Union and its captive nations was the real-world manifestation of an ideological struggle, so today, the global war on terror is a real-world contest between the United States and its allies and al Qaeda and its enablers. We can hope to defeat the ideology only by defeating its champion, al Qaeda.

"Al Qaeda's ideology is the lineal descendant of a school of thought articulated most compellingly by the Egyptian revolutionary Sayyid Qutb in the 1950s and 1960s, with an admixture of Wahhabism, Deobandi thought, or simple, mainstream Sunni chauvinism, depending on where and by what group it is propounded.

"Qutb blended a radical interpretation of Muslim theology with the Marxism-Leninism and anticolonial fervor of the Egypt of his day to produce an Islamic revolutionary movement. He argued that the secularism and licentious (by his extreme standards) behavior of most Muslims was destroying the true faith and returning the Islamic world to the state of jahiliyyah, or ignorance of the word of God, which prevailed before Muhammad. The growing secularism of Muslim states particularly bothered him. According to his interpretation, God alone has the power to make laws and to judge. When men make laws and judge each other according to secular criteria, they are usurping God's prerogatives. All who obey such leaders, according to Qutb, are treating their leaders as gods and therefore are guilty of the worst sin--polytheism. Thus they are--and this is the key point--not true Muslims, but unbelievers, regardless of whether they otherwise obey Muslim law and practice.

"But al Qaeda was only part of the story in Afghanistan. The Taliban forces that seized power in 1994 imposed a radical interpretation of Islam upon the population and attacked the symbols of other religions in a country that had traditionally tolerated different faiths and diverse practices. Like their AQI counterparts today, the Taliban tended to be ill-educated, violent, and radical. And they were just as necessary to sustaining al Qaeda in Afghanistan as the Iraqi foot soldiers of AQI have been to supporting that movement. Bin Laden provided essential support, both military and financial, to put the Taliban in power and keep it there. In return, the Taliban allowed him to operate with impunity and protected him from foreign intervention. The war began in 2001 when Taliban leader Mullah Omar refused to yield the al Qaeda members responsible for 9/11 even though the Taliban itself had not been involved in the attacks.

"Afghanistan's extremist thugs and misfits, once in power, facilitated the foreign-led al Qaeda's training, planning, and preparation for attacks against Western targets around the world, including the attacks on two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998, the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in 2000, and 9/11. In return, al Qaeda's foreign fighters fiercely defended the Taliban regime when U.S. forces attacked in 2001, even forming up in conventional battle lines against America's Afghan allies supported by U.S. Special Forces and airpower...

"...we must break free of a consensus about how to fight the terrorists that has been growing steadily since 9/11 which emphasizes "small footprints," working exclusively through local partners, and avoiding conventional operations to protect populations. In some cases, traditional counterinsurgency operations using conventional forces are the only way to defeat this 21st--century foe. Muslims can dislike al Qaeda, reject takfirism, and desire peace, yet still be unable to defend themselves alone against the terrorists. In such cases, our assistance, suitably adapted to the realities on the ground, can enable Muslims who hate what the takfiris are doing to their religion and their people--the overwhelming majority of Muslims--to succeed. Helping them is the best way to rid the world of this scourge."