Posted on 01/01/2005 7:23:40 AM PST by Prospero
"Words fail," they say, and they do, they do indeed.
Having just finished a first-stage restoration of my father's 45 year-old home movies, which included scenes of Djakarta, where our family briefly lived, I've always felt a sub vocal kinship with Indonesia and her millions.
They say I spoke Bhasha, the Malay tongue spoken there, and would translate for my parents instructions for the house servants, who were probably also spies for the Junta, the Communists, or both. Perhaps I dream in that language, occasionally, but this week I retreated into a walking nightmare, early on after the first indications that the Banda Aceh Christmas Earthquake of 2004 had swamped the parameter of the east Indian Ocean, strongly hinting at what the world would find when the northern end of Sumatra was finally heard from.
In America, for days, we could watch a handful of the same "amateur videos," from Phuket and Sri Lanka, and the horror there was bad enough. The only such video I've seen of the torrent that scraped over Banda Aceh, however, appears to have taken almost a week to make it to the Internet. I have yet to see it's like on television. It makes what happed to the beaches in Thailand and Sri Lanka look like a creek over running its banks after a brief summer storm.
Let's just say, what happened to the sex tourism spots and coasts and more distant islands elsewhere is nothing in comparison to the fate of Banda Aceh and the western shore of Sumatra. Since so many can't find the words, here are a thousand of them:
Now, if you had told me a week ago that an American Marine expeditionary force would be in Banda Aceh on New Years Day, my first reaction would have been that the President had decided upon a bold and unexpected strike in the War on Terror, jumping ahead on the timeline of that effort's multi-generational strategy. I might have thought it was a bold and necessary move, and I would have believed you if you had said they had located and captured Osama Bin Laden there.
As it was, in our shock, probing in from the parameter toward the epicenter of the Banda Aceh Earthquake, only a few have considered whether the hand of the Almighty reached out and sliced off a decade from what still promises to be a protracted conflict with Islamo-Fascism.
Consider that Indonesia is largely a Muslim country with a population similar to that of the United States, and developments there have been "the elephant in the living room" few wanted to consider as we cleaned out Islamo-Fascist terror nests in Iraq, Afghanistan and the southern Philippines.
Banda Aceh was, until a week ago, home of a Taliban-like, semi-autonomous government that had succeeded in establishing the Sharhia Islamic law, though the central government on Java nominally "allowed" this legal code on a "separate but equal" basis, for Muslims only. That was in 2002, and it was hoped the restive Islamo-Fascist insurgents who have fought for independence from Djakarta for more than twenty years would be satisfied. The locals had even just recently succeeded in putting into place, shall we say, "heavy legal penalties" for anyone who tried to prosthletize a citizen of Greater Islam... meaning Christians, of course.
Not a week passes without stories emerging from Indonesia of an on-going persecution of its Christian minorities, and the central governments failure to put a stop to it, especially the further one travels further from Djakarta to the myriad islands of the Indonesian archipelago. Remember the bombing of the nightclub in Denpasar on Bali, the only refuge for Hindus in Indonesia? The Australians haven't.
When he was forced to leave Sudan, Osama Bin Laden considered moving to Yemen, Afghanistan and Banda Aceh. He decided upon Afghanistan, of course, and may still be holed up there, or on the border with Pakistan, or under the nervous refuge of the Mullah regime of Iran. In fact, the Grand Mosque in Banda Aceh is right up there with Karbala, Qom, Medina and Mecca in everyone's top ten list of Muslim "holy places."
Today, it's an open air morgue, and if they find Osama among the dead there, I wouldn't be a bit surprised.
Sooner or later, we were going to have to deal with Indonesia, in general, and Aceh in particular. And things weren't looking too good.
Things are looking up.
Consider that the Christian Reformation, perhaps even the American Republic, has roots in the Black Death of 1349. People faced with such tragedy question their Worldview, abandon or are, at least, forced to examine their beliefs and habits, and the rebirth of Philosophy and the scientific method in the West began again in the centuries immediately after the plagues of the 14th Christian Century. They certainly questioned the magic of their priests and closely examined the "mysteries," resulting in a rebirth of Bible study that continues to this day. Unquestioned obedience to Rome ended with the Black Plague, and the True Belief of many a young muslim, of their Imams, may come to an end in the aftermath of the Christmas Earthquake.
Now, some might think I'm suggesting the God of Abraham did an angry thing of "biblical proportions" when He decided to shake Sumatra, and that he's on our side, loves George W. Bush, answered the humble prayers of the persecuted, etc., etc. But, this natural tragedy doesn't strike me that way at all. You won't find me cheering the deaths of a million people on Sumatra, and particularly in Aceh.
"Rather fear," I would think, betting on the "beginning of wisdom" might be the best response to this Catastrophe.
But... after you've digested the indigestible scope of the Christmas Earthquake, consider what you might have thought if Kabul under the Taliban had been wiped off the face of the Earth a week or so before our first boots hit the ground there after the destruction of the World Trade Center.
What has happened in Banda Aceh is no less miraculous and undreamed of a possibility, and, at this hour, American Marines are handing out water and food to the pitiable handful who escaped the 20 foot high, hundred mile wide river that swept over their island, again, making what happened in Thailand and Sri Lanka look like a simple storm surge in comparison. The Epicenter of fierce hatred, a sanctuary of Islamo-fascism is no more, as though Falluja had been hit with several hydrogen bombs.
Now you see them, now you don't.
Some of those locals, who have waited for almost a week for food and water, helping off-load our nation's charity are wearing T-Shirts with the image of Osama on them.
We certainly didn't cause this tragedy, but we'd be fools not to take advantage of the strategic miracle God has handed to us.
At the risk of forgetting that the effort here is to rescue people, and at the risk of getting down in the gutter with the Transnational Socialist bureaucrats, I'd just like to say "Go f**k," to any and all who suggest our troops should "Go Blue."
Why would the President even think about agreeing to dirty the image of our armed forces by taking on what has become the very symbol of international graft and corruption.
I think it was Reinhold Niebuhr who mapped out the apparent fate of all organizations, who inevitably drift from their original "reason for being." They start with a mission, and then build an organization to accomplish that mission. To make a long story short, eventually the maintenance of the organization, "self-continuity," becomes the organization's "reason for being."
In this case, the mission of the U.N. is explicit. It's a religious faith upon which every Transnationalist weak sister heaps their sorry ideals. It is the very essence of a people who define compassion as the degree with which they appear generous with other people's money, buying blue beanies rather than water purifiers and medicine.
It's as if one of Castro's babbling spokepersons believed they had taken over the world.
Thank God for George W. Bush.
Interesting and insightful! Well worth the read!
Loved it.
Reading The Diplomad this am, it's clear the Blue Beanies are shameless in trying to undermine this opportunity to make great gains in the War on Terror because it undermines their PR.
Thankfully, the President has the Lincoln stationed precisely where it needs to be, and the opinion of "the world" matter less than winning the hearts and minds of the survivors of the former semi-autonimous Aceh terror state.
Go Navy!
In 2002, I remember Muslims being urged to convert their holdings into the newly-minted Muslim Gold coin.
Do you know if many did?
http://www.islamonline.net/livefatwa/english/Browse.asp?hGuestID=Ta4O7M
Name subhan - United Kingdom
Profession researcher
Question Is it a credible claim, according to Islamic fiqh, that Muslims ought to use a currency based on precious metals?
Answer In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger.
No, imam Malik argues that if people use anything including stones as currency then to such currencies all the Shari`ah rulings apply.
This is the only thing I found..and because of google I know about interest(No) insurance(yes)and things including whether washing machines get something "clean".
Thank you! I think I remember seing the actual coinage in an article.
Seriously, I didn't recall this, but it is interesting.
Doing some deeper background on the present situation, or I should say the situation a millisecond or so prior to the Aceh Earthquake I ran waded throgh an untitled .pdf document by an Austraian observer.
Great historic back story, which filled in a lot of my gaps about the increasingly interesting history of Aceh.
Bottom Line: I no longer know which side in the Acehian civil war is worse - The Djakarta Central Government, which is clearly using Jihadist propaganda to undermine support for the old Acehian independence network or the Acehians, who were he original foothold for Islam in the East Indies in the 9th Century.
I would hope someone in Foggy Bottom is considering whether it might be in the best interests of the United States to support Acehian independence.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/EG22Ae05.html
I posted this at 36
An interesting point of view.
Something good comes out of something bad.
Maybe this is why God allowed it to happen--to once again turn back the tsunami that is Islam.
I wonder how much the totality of destruction in Aceh has affected GAM and the Indonesian forces. How many of the Indonesian forces survived, and which side of the conflict enjoys the support of our enemies: Al Qaida and its sympathizers.
I suppose we should watch how the Saudis respond to this situation.
So far, this thread and others on FreeRepublic seem to be the only place where the the strategic nature of the Aceh situation, especially as the U.N. tries to nudge the U.S. out of the limelight, is even being discussed. The Thursday conference in Djakarta should be most enlightening.
Meanwhile, I know I would be very appreciative of any insights of where Islamic opinion is leaning with regard to Aceh.
And, it will be interesting to see how few or how many really understand the apocalyptic nature of the Aceh situation, how it seems to be a "clean slate."
What a wipe out.
(Great to see Greg Palkot and Fox finally arrived at Banda Aceh. I was getting sick having to watch CNN.)
Thanks SuziQ!
Thanks to backhoe for enlightening me on the terrorism in Aceh
Extremely interesting.
Bookmarked.
Sooner or later, we might have found our forces having to take Aceh or Djakarta or elsewhere in the Islands.
Nature intervened, it seems, and Aceh is wiped out, and we have a beach head in hostile territory way ahead of anyone's strategic planning in the War on Terror.
Far from making fiends we find ourselves right in the middle of the confusing Indonesian stew including Bali... the question is how to leverage the situation in our favor. Aceh may be a lever on the world's most populous "muslim nation," to weaken Djakarta or to help Djakarta, depending on their "helpfulness" in rootng out and destroying our enemies.
Meanwhile, rejoice. At least one sanctuary for Al Qaida is wiped off the face of the Earth.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/
Before and after.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1312563/posts
Full Extent of Indonesia Disaster Slowly Revealed
Sun Jan 2, 2005 03:31 PM ET
Hope not, eh?
I think their biggest danger comes with starving people trying to get on board the helicopter and mobbing the rescuers.
There may be some of their military on board...It looked like that in one "unloading" picture.
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