Jim’s Blog

Here is a blog by an American officer that tells us the Iraq war from inside.

The war cannot easily be summarized. If it could be, he would summarize it for us. But we are clearly winning, it is clearly costing, Iraq remains all @#$%^&*, and is likely to rapidly become more @#$%^&*, the moment US troops leave. Clearly Iraq is not going to become a Jeffersonian democracy any time soon, but looks increasingly probable it will not be overrun by Islamic radicals the moment US troops leave.

On the one hand, nation building has not been a total failure. On the other hand, it is taking a lot longer, costing a lot more, and producing a lot less than had been promised.

The problem is that after this experience, it is not a credible to threaten that tyrants who attack Americans, or sponsor terrorists who attack Americans, are going to suffer overthrow followed by nation building

When foreign tyrants attack America, it

The state of Texas has just engaged in the mass abduction of wives and children from Christian polygamists because of the alleged bad conduct of one Christian polygamist – though strangely they seem unable to find the person who alleged this bad conduct.

Evidently, although Muslim polygamy is multicultural, Christian polygamy is not.

“Back Talk remarks

Because everyone pretty much accepts the idea that Osama bin Laden is hiding in Pakistan, it might sound sensible to send more troops in that general direction if you don’t think about it too hard. But it isn’t sensible because no matter how many troops we send to Afghanistan, they are not going to invade Pakistan, and that’s where Osama bin Laden is.

So everyone accepts that the guy who brought down the two towers has safe haven. And everyone accepts that Christian polygamy is a crime against women and children, while Muslim polygamy is muticulturalism. And everyone accepts that we pay off terrorists to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

That is not war on terror, or war on the axis of evil. That is acceptance of defeat.

I was wrong about Muslim reaction to the video “Fitna”. I said that Muslim’s were not reacting, just their pals in the west. This is not the case. Muslims are reacting, and, as usual, threatening murder and terror, though their western pals reacted first.

Liveleak, which bowed to terror by censoring “Fitna”, has strengthened security, and re-released “Fitna”.

They did not explain what they did to strengthen security, but from the nature of the threats, I would conjecture that now there are some people at their facilities who are armed.

We are funding terror.

Twelve days ago, the US gave one hundred and fifty million dollars to the Palestinian Authority, much of which will be used to buy arms to murder Jews, much of which will be used to reward terrorists for their holy deeds.

Why pay off the Palestinians when there are many deserving people going hungry? Duh! The answer, of course, is that it is a payoff. If we pay them, they will refrain from hijacking US planes, refrain from murdering Americans. They will stick to murdering Jews – at least for the moment, though each time they come back for more money, they tell us that alas, unless the payment increases, they will, alas, have difficulty restraining extremist elements. Every negotiating session, they utter threats. Every time they utter threats, we pay them more. Eventually we are going to have to say no, and the dollars we have sent them will come back to us as bombs.

Now if sacrificing a few Jews would keep those @#$%^&* Palestinians off our backs, I would be all in favor of it But it is too late for that. It was too late in 622AD. When someone threatens to kill you it is war, and once it is war, the only way you can have peace is to kill your enemies, or die trying.

Tribute always ends in war or surrender. Surrender to Islam would be unimaginably intolerable. In the end, we will have to make total war, absurd though it is that a power so insignificant should threaten a power so great. But this is not the first time that utterly insignificant Muslim groups, by the power of fanaticism, by a willingness to die that exceeded Christian willingness to kill, have successfully extracted tribute from extremely powerful Christians, for example the tribute of money and slaves paid to the Algerians. It has always ended badly, and since 1529, it has usually ended very badly for the Muslims.

Most servers have been intimidated into silence, but the gutsy “Pirate Bay” is still serving “Fitna”, in bittorrent form, the only major commercial service still standing.

But the interesting thing is who is doing the intimidating. At first, it was a western, politically correct, demand for pre-emptive surrender..

Fitna shows a verse from the Koran urging murder, terror, or conquest. Then it shows today’s Muslim preachers urging murder, terror and conquest Then it shows acts of murder, terror, and subjugation. Then it shows another verse from the Koran urging murder, terror or conquest, then more of today’s preachers, then more dead bodies. In short, it is pretty similar to many Islamic devotional videos, similar to videos produced by the faithful to summon them to serve the faith, to donate their money, their lives, or their children, and in substantial part is composed of extracts from these devotionals.

Originally I wrote: “The Muslim reaction, naturally enough, has been “So What”. They are not outraged. They are bored. They get more than enough of this stuff from people asking for converts and donations.”  This turned out to be dead wrong.

As I write this there is chaos in Basra.  Tomorrow there will be chaos some place else.  In Basra today Iranians are backing every pony in this race, for what they want is chaos, and chaos is easy to create.  We are pursuing a strategy based on creating order.  Creating order in the Middle East is like pushing mud uphill.

As I wrote when the attack on the Taliban was launched, it is easy to destroy our enemies, wherever they may be, but state building is hard, no one knows how to build states, and in recent time the trend is for states to fail.  I recommend we abandon state building, and focus on destroying our enemies wherever they may be without regard to states and state boundaries – including those enemies located in Saudi Arabia, Britain, and Germany.  A religion, not a state, is at war with us.

The choice is not peace with defeat, or victory with endless and expensive war, rather the choice is what kind of endless war we shall fight.  If we do not fight, the enemy will not stop fighting. This war has been running from the massacre of the Jews of Medina by Muhammad in 0624, to the present day, with a brief one hundred and thirty year interruption from 1830 to 1960 caused by colonialist victory over the middle east.  To keep the Middle East quiet during that colonial period required mass murder on a very large scale in the most troublesome spots and the frequent and credible threat of mass murder in other spots.

Islam is a problem.  The original message and example of Mohammed was that Muslims must pursue domination and exercise theocratic state power, thus solutions based on tolerance and separation of Church and State are inherently unworkable.  Tolerance cannot work, because coexistence is unacceptable to true Muslims.  We can only coexist with those versions of Islam that accept separation of Church and State - which very few do.  Islam is not just another religion, just as the Communists were not just another political party.  If we are reluctant to commit genocide, and therefore unable to credibly threaten genocide as we did during the colonial era, we cannot stop Islam from fighting us, thus must find ways to fight Islam that are less expensive than the way we are doing it now.

Yes, the enemy is Islam.  Not radical Islam, not Islamofascism.  “Moderate” Islam does exist, but is an insignificant minority, subject to almost as much repression by mainstream Islam as Christians, Jews, and apostates.  Whosoever accepts certain key doctrines of Islam must always be the enemy of all who do not accept those doctrines, and thus always our enemy.

We should of course, encourage our enemies to fight each other, and fund and arm some of our enemies against other of our enemies, but should not mistake the enemy of our enemy for our friend.

Tolerance is an effective tactic for ensuring peace if those one tolerates reciprocate, or are sufficiently weak.  It was not possible to tolerate most communist parties during communism’s strength, and it is no longer possible to tolerate Islam now that the tide of colonialism has receded.

An hour or so ago I read that the surge was about to be diminished, because it is unsustainable, and posted “Losing in Iraq, part one”

I guess Sadr read it also, for a few minutes ago I read that the Green Zone is being shelled and the oil is being cut off. I read it and posted, Sadr read it and started shelling.

The major alternatives:

1. Declare victory, since we aimed to slaughter Al Quaeda (radical Sunni) and have done so, and get the hell out, leaving Iraq’s oil in the hands of our victorious enemies (radical Shia) who will use fund attacks on us, as radical Shia are already doing in Iran.
2. Let our enemies get the oil, but make sure that there is unending war between our various enemies, so that they spend the oil money killing each other instead of us.
3. Slaughter enough radical Shia, and their families, that the remainder decide to play nice and let someone have the oil who will use it buy whiskey and whores, rather than rockets and bombs
4. Ethnically cleanse Basra and Khorramshahr, and staff the oil ports with non Muslim workers imported from all over the world.

Of course, if implementing any of these options, will need to do so with fewer troops, but the last two options would seem to require quite a few troops.

When the US began its attack on the Taliban in Afghanistan, I said that destroying our enemies anywhere in the world would be easy, but building states would be hard, would most likely fail, for no one understands how a state is built, and the trend of the times is for states to fail.

And so it has proven: The surge produced the temporary appearance of relative quiet in Iraq, but our enemies knew that the surge was unsustainable. We could not keep so many men in Iraq indefinitely. And now the time is coming, that forces in Iraq must be reduced.

Al Quaeda is being slaughtered in Iraq. They are radical Sunni Muslims, and are being killed by conservative Sunni Muslims. But conservative Sunni Muslims are not our friends, merely the enemy of our enemy. The radical Shia plurality, knowing we are about to reduce our forces, is once again taking up arms against us. The moderate Shia minority are disinclined to fight them. We are hosed. To win, we need more tightly focussed objectives. If our objective was to slaughter lots of Al Quaeda, we are winning, we have won. If we have broader objectives, we are losing. Time to adopt more realistic and tightly focussed objectives.