Posted on 08/16/2004 6:22:18 AM PDT by prairiebreeze
News that the Iraqi police have ordered all journalists out of Najaf and are enforcing it, strongly suggests that an operation against the Imam Ali Shrine in Najaf is imminent.
The bullet that whistled through the lobby of the Sea Hotel in Najaf yesterday, embedding shards of glass into a foreign reporter's cheek before lodging itself in an air-conditioning unit, carried an unmistakeable message: "Get out." ...
In Najaf journalists were summoned yesterday morning by the city's police chief, Ghalab al-Jazeera. It was said that he wanted to parade some captured members of Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army, who have launched their second uprising in four months. Instead the police chief delivered a blunt warning: journalists had two hours to leave Najaf or face arrest. ...
For good measure, Mr Jazeera also threatened to arrest Iraqi drivers and translators working for the press corps if we did not comply. The 30-odd journalists staying at the Sea Hotel decided to stay in Najaf. Shortly after the deadline expired, the first bullets struck the building. But the sniper was almost certainly an Iraqi policeman, given that the Mahdi army fighters were more than two miles away. Then armed police raided the hotel and tried to arrest the journalists, before imposing a new two-hour deadline to leave the city.
A deputation of journalists was denied an audience with Najaf's governor, Adnan al-Zurufi. The policeman outside his office was brusque. "If you do not leave by the deadline we will shoot you," he said. That was enough for all but a handful of British and American journalists who hunkered down in the hotel as the deadline expired.
The principal damage inflicted by the War on Terror has not been to material objects or to human lives, although there have been enough of those. Compared to the tens of millions killed during World War 2 or the millions killed during the Cold War (more than 100,000 Americans in Korea and Vietnam; over a million NVA alone), the current losses have barely nudged the Satanic scale. But the damage inflicted against the fabric of civilization has been immense.
Civilization does not principally consist of bricks and mortar, but in a set of commonly accepted values and restraints. If the inhabitants of the sub-Saharan Africa and the United States could be exchanged instanteously; the one materializing in suburban homes and the other in wattle huts, the material imbalance would be reversed again within ten years, because the technology and civilization of Americans is carried in their heads and not in their possessions. There would be nothing Americans could not rebuild in Africa; and there would be nothing Africans could repair or replace in America.
So the most terrifying effect of the War so far has been in the slow destruction of taboos and imperatives which collectively allowed civilization to function. One writer observed that although Britain has possessed nuclear weapons for nearly 60 years no one worried about a UK attack on New York city. He might have added that no one in London lost any sleep over the prospect of an American nuclear strike on Picadilly Circus. The electronics, physics and rocketry check out fine; it was civilization that held them back. The concept of assymetric warfare was supposed to exploit the "fact" that transnational terrorist organizations operating in areas of chaos could strike at a civilization hamstrung by constraints. They could attack orphanages and then seek shelter in the Church of the Nativity; they could fly wide bodied aircraft into Manhattan, then seek shelter in "sovereign" Afghanistan; they could call for the death of millions from the pulpits of Qom; they could fire mortars from the Imam Ali Shrine and never expect the favor to be returned. But the logical flaw in this conception was that civilization could put aside these constraints in a moment. Hiroshima and Dresden are reminders that it could.
There was a time before terrorism when passengers could walk right up to airplanes on the apron; children would be given the tour of cockpits; passengers could eat their food with real knives and body-cavity searches were something that happened to drug smugglers. That was before civilization addressed the assymetry and became, like Islam facing the Mongols, adept in the face of the enemy; able if you forgive the mixed metaphor, to out-Herod Herod. Two taboos are about to fall in the coming days. The first is the protective mantle conferred by one of the holiest Shrines in Islam upon those within. The second is the guaranteed access of the Western press to the battlefield.
A wag once suggested that the War on Terror could end in either of two ways. The Islamic fundamentalist could become like the infidel and within a generation acquire the material wealth and technology whose lack has been their weakness. Or the infidel could become like the Islamic fundamentalist for a day and the end the fight as the fundamentalist would. I thought it was funny once. Let's win this war soon or be prepared to pay the price.
When jounalists are denied access to the war zone they get philosophical and partisan and get religion.
The policeman outside his office was brusque. "If you do not leave by the deadline we will shoot you," he said. That was enough for all but a handful of British and American journalists who hunkered down in the hotel as the deadline expired.
Good.
Nut-cutting time - let's roll!
If they can't report the truth without slanting it to the left, then they deserve to be driven out, imho.
As I have previously stated, in this forum, Islam is a brutal, ugly, malignancy. Its unadulterated form is perverse and obscene, laced with contempt and hatred of all nonbelievers. It is the incarnation of evil. There will come a day when tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of Americans will be slaughtered on their own soil, in the name of Allah, by Muslim "martyrs" who would simply follow the directives of the Koran.
Within hours, the US should, and will, respond with lethal preemptive retaliatory action to preclude a recurrence.
That response will annihilate millions of Muslims, many of whom are radical zealots who would rejoice at an encore of mass American causalities, along with some Muslims who have yet to be indoctrinated with hate and yet other "liberal" Muslims who refuse to accept the brutal directives prescribed in the Koran.
The US will be required to sacrifice the lives of such "good" Muslims, for the sake of its own survival and that of the rest of the non-Muslim world.
That day will mark the suspension, but not the end of, many of our most cherished democracratic ideals. The alternative however will be the end of civilization if not mankind.
original post 03/14/2004
Correct about the suspension, but not end of our most cherished democratic ideals. Good post. I hope it doesn't turn out as you describe though...
Prairie
Suspended? Is that like being a little pregnant?
That prick will be getting free drinks on that scar for the rest of his life. "There I was...hunkered down in Najaf...bullets flying all around me..."
More like trying to stack the odds in favor of living over being killed.
Prairie
It is interesting that governments always use that excuse when they violate rights.
Drama Queen alert!
Once again, the question becomes how do we fight the enemy without becoming what we are fighting?
I don't believe that the former has to automatically transform into the latter.
To defeat terrorism, you must become the one thing they fear most.
Terrorism.
How? By inflicting something on them they do not relish, pigfat on their corpse, pigskin for a prison uniform. Public beheading as a criminal, instead of martyrdom as a 'soldier' of Allah.
This method does have precedent in the US Military. It has been used before, and has worked. The 'soldiers' of Allah only understand glory and Paradise if they die in the service of Allah, BUT they will not be allowed into Paradise if they are defiled by the use of 'non-clean' women to prepare the body, or the use of pork products on them.
They want to get nasty? Let's show them what 'nasty' means.
There are, apparently, soldiers & marines that are blogging from the war zone. So you have to ask these expelled journalists, "just what the heck do we need you for?"
Pop Quiz:
Your daughter is kidnapped by terrorists and entombed alive with limited air. You catch the guy but he won’t talk with civilized interrogation techniques. How uncivilized are you (and the king of the monkeys a couple of posts above you) willing to be if you know that cracking him will save her life.
I suspect you know my answer. Be honest and give it your best shot.
correction: the monkey kings post was one above yours
I suspect that I'd go Jack Bauer on his @$$, but I'm hoping never to have to make that decision.
The reporters imbedded with US forces will remain, as I understand it.
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