Anderson Cooper of CNN showed this video (without the rifle info) of snipers killing U.S. troops in Iraq on his October 18, 2006 show. CNN says it obtained the video from a "representative" of an unnamed "insurgent leader."
Bear in mind that Anderson Cooper used to work for the CIA.
Richard Wilson's hypothesis: Israeli soldiers and/or Mossad agents are killing our soldiers in Iraq in order to enrage American troops so that the slaughter continues.
Proof: At the very beginning of this video clip, you see a rifle with a video camera attached to it. This weapon is made by the Rafael company, an Israeli arms manufacturer, that also makes IEDs. If you watch the video all the way through, it explains how this rifle works.
CNN stated that the camera used to film these shootings was not a mounted rifle camera. But as you watch the video, you see that with each shot fired, the camera recoils. That would only happen if it were mounted on the rifle.
Why is this significant? Because this kind of rifle-camera is extremely sophisticated and not available to your average Iraqi insurgent. I mean, it's not exactly an easily obtainable Saturday night special!
Something this sophisticated points to Mossad. Mossad is a master at false flag operations, e.g., Oklahoma City, the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, the bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, the July 7, 2005 London bombings, the 9-11 attacks in New York, the assassination of the Prime Minister in Beirut, the stoking of Muslim riots in France last year, the bombing of the Hassan al-Askari Mosque in Samarra, Iraq, etc.
Israelis freely move among US and UK troops in Iraq, and have access to top-level US intelligence. Until July 2003, the head of all US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan was General Tommy Franks, a Zionist Jew. (He is now on the board of directors for Bank of America.)
On November 7, 2006 another Zionist Jew became a principle liaison between Mossad and US forces in Iraq: Major General Richard F. Natonski of the Marine Corps. His title is Deputy Commandant for Plans, Policies and Operations.
Because of this access, the "insurgents" (i.e., Mossad agents) know exactly where US vehicles will be and who will be inside them. This allows them to target for maximum false flag effect.
For example, on July 23, 2005, a detachment of 19 female US Marines was sent to Fallujah to check Iraqi women for bombs. An IED blew up their truck. Two of the young American women were killed, five were critically wounded, and four were captured.
The bodies of the four captured women turned up later in a garbage dump with their throats cut. Americans were outraged. Islamic clerics insisted that only Israelis could be so cold-blooded.
And who was in charge of US forces in Fallujah at the time? None other than Major General Natonski, the Mossad liaison. Americans are supposed to believe that rag-tag "insurgents" use IEDs powerful enough to kill three US troops per day, on average. An American soldier even set up a blog on how "Intel" is betraying and targeting US troops.
But sometimes Mossad bomb-makers accidentally blow themselves up in Iraq. According to Richard Wilson, Israeli sniping and IEDs are false flag operations. He says that on March 28, 2005, Americans arrested 19 Mossad agents who fired twice on a US Marine checkpoint.
The Marines beat up the Mossad agents and tore off their Star-of-David necklaces. (The US media incorrectly said the agents were Americans.) The Mossad agents said they were employees of Zapata Engineering, which helps the CIA conduct interrogations, and also manages US ammo dumps and US motor pools in Iraq.
IEDs in Iraq are powerful enough to flip over a 70-ton tank. Some of the models shoot depleted-uranium projectiles, and are triggered by electronic devices surreptitiously planted on US armored vehicles. Zapata Engineering (which employs Mossad agents) makes this exact kind of trigger, and oversees some of the US motor pools.
Rumsfeld says the IEDs come from Iran, but Richard says they come from Mossad, and are not "improvised" at all. The Israeli company, Rafael (see above), makes IEDS, which are buried in the middle of a road. Beside the road is a device which emits a laser or radio signal. This device is manufactured by firms like Zapata Engineering, which is controlled by Zionist Jews.
The IED mine, manufactured by Israel, is inert until a US vehicle (secretly planted with a triggering device) rolls over it.
Whenever Mossad carries out these false-flag operations they produce a videotape or a recording from an "unnamed source" that is "close to al-Qaeda." Sometimes they say "the claim was posted on an Internet website, but its authenticity could not be verified."
But Israelis would never kill anyone in cold blood, would they? After all, the USS Liberty massacre was "an accident!"
Source: http://www.wakeupfromyourslumber.com/node/99
Friday, September 28, 2007
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Iraqi women: Prostituting ourselves to feed our children
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The women are too afraid and ashamed to show their faces or have their real names used. They have been driven to sell their bodies to put food on the table for their children -- for as little as $8 a day.
"People shouldn't criticize women, or talk badly about them," says 37-year-old Suha as she adjusts the light colored scarf she wears these days to avoid extremists who insist women cover themselves. "They all say we have lost our way, but they never ask why we had to take this path."
A mother of three, she wears light makeup, a gold pendant of Iraq around her neck, and an unexpected air of elegance about her.
"I don't have money to take my kid to the doctor. I have to do anything that I can to preserve my child, because I am a mother," she says, explaining why she prostitutes herself.
Anger and frustration rise in her voice as she speaks.
"No matter what else I may be, no matter how off the path I may be, I am a mother!"
Her clasped hands clench and unclench nervously. Suha's husband thinks that she is cleaning houses when she goes away.
So does Karima's family.
"At the start I was cleaning homes, but I wasn't making much. No matter how hard I worked it just wasn't enough," she says.
Karima, clad in all black, adds, "My husband died of lung cancer nine months ago and left me with nothing."
She has five children, ages 8 to 17. Her eldest son could work, but she's too afraid for his life to let him go into the streets, preferring to sacrifice herself than risk her child.
She was solicited the first time when she was cleaning an office.
"They took advantage of me," she says softly. "At first I rejected it, but then I realized I have to do it."
Both Suha and Karima have clients that call them a couple times a week. Other women resort to trips to the market to find potential clients. Or they flag down vehicles.
Prostitution is a choice more and more Iraqi women are making just to survive.
"It's increasing," Suha says. "I found this 'thing' through my friend, and I have another friend in the same predicament as mine. Because of the circumstance, she is forced to do such things."
Violence, increased cost of living, and lack of any sort of government aid leave women like these with few other options, according to humanitarian workers.
"At this point there is a population of women who have to sell their bodies in order to keep their children alive," says Yanar Mohammed, head and founder of the Organization for Women's Freedom in Iraq. "It's a taboo that no one is speaking about."
She adds, "There is a huge population of women who were the victims of war who had to sell their bodies, their souls and they lost it all. It crushes us to see them, but we have to work on it and that's why we started our team of women activists."
Her team pounds the streets of Baghdad looking for these victims often too humiliated to come forward.
"Most of the women that we find at hospitals [who] have tried to commit suicide" have been involved in prostitution, said Basma Rahim, a member of Mohammed's team.
The team's aim is to compile information on specific cases and present it to Iraq's political parties -- to have them, as Mohammed puts it, "come tell us what [they] are ... going to do about this."
Rahim tells the heartbreaking story of one woman they found who lives in a room with three of her children: "She has sex while her three children are in the room, but she makes them stand in separate corners."
According to Rahim and Mohammed, most of the women they encounter say they are driven to prostitution by a desperate desire for survival in the dangerously violent and unforgiving circumstances in Iraq.
"They took this path but they are not pleased," Rahim says.
Karima says when she sees her children with food on the table, she is able to convince herself that it's worth it. "Everything is for the children. They are the beauty in life and, without them, we cannot live."
But she says, "I would never allow my daughter to do this. I would rather marry her off at 13 than have her go through this."
Karima's last happy memory is of her late husband, when they were a family and able to shoulder the hardships of life in today's Iraq together.
Suha says as a young girl she dreamed of being a doctor, with her mom boasting about her potential in that career. Life couldn't have taken her further from that dream.
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"It's not like we were born into this, nor was it ever in my blood," she says.
What she does for her family to survive now eats away at her. "I lay on my pillow and my brain is spinning, and it all comes back to me as if I am watching a movie."
Source: CNN
Note from me: Is this what you call LIBERATION? Operation Iraqi Freedom? WTF Mr. Bush! You are the biggest terrorist the world ever had!
"People shouldn't criticize women, or talk badly about them," says 37-year-old Suha as she adjusts the light colored scarf she wears these days to avoid extremists who insist women cover themselves. "They all say we have lost our way, but they never ask why we had to take this path."
A mother of three, she wears light makeup, a gold pendant of Iraq around her neck, and an unexpected air of elegance about her.
"I don't have money to take my kid to the doctor. I have to do anything that I can to preserve my child, because I am a mother," she says, explaining why she prostitutes herself.
Anger and frustration rise in her voice as she speaks.
"No matter what else I may be, no matter how off the path I may be, I am a mother!"
Her clasped hands clench and unclench nervously. Suha's husband thinks that she is cleaning houses when she goes away.
So does Karima's family.
"At the start I was cleaning homes, but I wasn't making much. No matter how hard I worked it just wasn't enough," she says.
Karima, clad in all black, adds, "My husband died of lung cancer nine months ago and left me with nothing."
She has five children, ages 8 to 17. Her eldest son could work, but she's too afraid for his life to let him go into the streets, preferring to sacrifice herself than risk her child.
She was solicited the first time when she was cleaning an office.
"They took advantage of me," she says softly. "At first I rejected it, but then I realized I have to do it."
Both Suha and Karima have clients that call them a couple times a week. Other women resort to trips to the market to find potential clients. Or they flag down vehicles.
Prostitution is a choice more and more Iraqi women are making just to survive.
"It's increasing," Suha says. "I found this 'thing' through my friend, and I have another friend in the same predicament as mine. Because of the circumstance, she is forced to do such things."
Violence, increased cost of living, and lack of any sort of government aid leave women like these with few other options, according to humanitarian workers.
"At this point there is a population of women who have to sell their bodies in order to keep their children alive," says Yanar Mohammed, head and founder of the Organization for Women's Freedom in Iraq. "It's a taboo that no one is speaking about."
She adds, "There is a huge population of women who were the victims of war who had to sell their bodies, their souls and they lost it all. It crushes us to see them, but we have to work on it and that's why we started our team of women activists."
Her team pounds the streets of Baghdad looking for these victims often too humiliated to come forward.
"Most of the women that we find at hospitals [who] have tried to commit suicide" have been involved in prostitution, said Basma Rahim, a member of Mohammed's team.
The team's aim is to compile information on specific cases and present it to Iraq's political parties -- to have them, as Mohammed puts it, "come tell us what [they] are ... going to do about this."
Rahim tells the heartbreaking story of one woman they found who lives in a room with three of her children: "She has sex while her three children are in the room, but she makes them stand in separate corners."
According to Rahim and Mohammed, most of the women they encounter say they are driven to prostitution by a desperate desire for survival in the dangerously violent and unforgiving circumstances in Iraq.
"They took this path but they are not pleased," Rahim says.
Karima says when she sees her children with food on the table, she is able to convince herself that it's worth it. "Everything is for the children. They are the beauty in life and, without them, we cannot live."
But she says, "I would never allow my daughter to do this. I would rather marry her off at 13 than have her go through this."
Karima's last happy memory is of her late husband, when they were a family and able to shoulder the hardships of life in today's Iraq together.
Suha says as a young girl she dreamed of being a doctor, with her mom boasting about her potential in that career. Life couldn't have taken her further from that dream.
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"It's not like we were born into this, nor was it ever in my blood," she says.
What she does for her family to survive now eats away at her. "I lay on my pillow and my brain is spinning, and it all comes back to me as if I am watching a movie."
Source: CNN
Note from me: Is this what you call LIBERATION? Operation Iraqi Freedom? WTF Mr. Bush! You are the biggest terrorist the world ever had!
Monday, July 30, 2007
Nothing Shahi about the Imam or his conduct
'Shahi Imam' has Ahmad Bukhari has embarrassed many of us with his conduct. Even if someone from the journalists had made a comment from behind, such verbal abuse coming out of Bukhari is unacceptable of a sane person let alone an Imam and that too at PM's office in front of the national media.
Just when it seemed that Bukhari was turning into a responsible person and the image of the Shahi Imam as created by his father who did tremendous damage to Muslims through his 'fatwas' at the time of elections, Bukhari has shown his true character.
I have seen journalists ask much tougher and harsh questions and people replying without getting angry. Journalist speaks for the people and thus makes the public figure, politicans uncomfortable. But Bukhari and his supporters neither kept silent or just ignore the question, they instead prompted me to hang my head in shame.
Time to stop calling him Shahi Imam. There is no such post and nothing regal about him. Imams in all mosques are equal and respectable because they lead prayers and that's all.
And now Bukhari says that he will float a political party. What a joke! Does he have any idea of his influence. Parties may think that he has an influence. Even in the Jama Masjid area let alone Delhi, he does not have a following. I am sure except his household no body is going to vote for his candidates. If such people will keep shut, they will do lot good for Muslims in India.
Source: http://indscribe.blogspot.com/2006/04/nothing-shahi-about-imam-or-his.html
Just when it seemed that Bukhari was turning into a responsible person and the image of the Shahi Imam as created by his father who did tremendous damage to Muslims through his 'fatwas' at the time of elections, Bukhari has shown his true character.
I have seen journalists ask much tougher and harsh questions and people replying without getting angry. Journalist speaks for the people and thus makes the public figure, politicans uncomfortable. But Bukhari and his supporters neither kept silent or just ignore the question, they instead prompted me to hang my head in shame.
Time to stop calling him Shahi Imam. There is no such post and nothing regal about him. Imams in all mosques are equal and respectable because they lead prayers and that's all.
And now Bukhari says that he will float a political party. What a joke! Does he have any idea of his influence. Parties may think that he has an influence. Even in the Jama Masjid area let alone Delhi, he does not have a following. I am sure except his household no body is going to vote for his candidates. If such people will keep shut, they will do lot good for Muslims in India.
Source: http://indscribe.blogspot.com/2006/04/nothing-shahi-about-imam-or-his.html
Do Jews ever recall the historic role of Muslims in saving them?
Ahmadinejad reportedly said that Israel should be wiped off from the world and then said that Holocaust was doubtful and that Israel ought to be shifted to Europe.
Not very simple comments indeed but the figure of deaths attibuted to Holocaust has been disputed for long. Head of states are not supposed to issue such statements, more so when it concerns Israel. It is not politically correct! The West (Europe) perpetrated Holocaust and six decades later the mention of the word unsettles them to no end. What a moral guilt! They created Isreal, the rogue state in Palestinian land. And Muslims who for centuries gave refuge to Jews fleeing the excess of Christian west have been paying the price. But see the shock on the faces of many self-styled intellectuals in countries who have nothing to do with either Israel/Holocaust or Iran. The collective guilt of Europe has brought tremendous suffering for Palestinians.
At least, Ahmadinejad has the courage to call a spade a spade. After all, Jews of the present generation must know that it was Muslims who safeguarded their interests and rights for centuries while Christian world was burning them and condemning the whole community across Europe.
Examples of intolerance towards Jews in Chrisitian world:
1. IN spain, every child born of marriage between Christian and Jew was to be baptised. Later at the height of inquisition all Jews were given the option to convert or leave Spain. Thousands were burnt alive and many lived as crypto-Jews.
2. WHEN epidemics like plague spread, the Jews were always blamed and charged with the spread of diseases. Like in 14 th century when thousands of Jews were held responsible for Black Death and killed.
3. IN 1215 Jews were ordered to wear distinct dress from Christians so that they could be identified. At many places they were made to wear yellow badges or specified dress.
4. Almost 13,000 Jews were burnt in Spain alone during inquisition for not converting to Christiantiy in 15th-16th centuries.
5. Popes throught out history condemned Jews. Pope Julius III publicly condemned their holy book Talmud.
6. For two millennium (2,000 years) Jews were persecuted in one form or the other in Europe. Always harassed and thrown into ghettoes.
But forgetting all this the Jews after getting the state turned against the new enemy--Muslims, who had always welcomed the Jews who fled the European persecution. I wonder if jews ever think about it or they are really too selfish and driven by avarice to have forget the humiliation of centuries!
Source: http://indscribe.blogspot.com/2005/12/do-jews-ever-recall-historic-role-of.html
Not very simple comments indeed but the figure of deaths attibuted to Holocaust has been disputed for long. Head of states are not supposed to issue such statements, more so when it concerns Israel. It is not politically correct! The West (Europe) perpetrated Holocaust and six decades later the mention of the word unsettles them to no end. What a moral guilt! They created Isreal, the rogue state in Palestinian land. And Muslims who for centuries gave refuge to Jews fleeing the excess of Christian west have been paying the price. But see the shock on the faces of many self-styled intellectuals in countries who have nothing to do with either Israel/Holocaust or Iran. The collective guilt of Europe has brought tremendous suffering for Palestinians.
At least, Ahmadinejad has the courage to call a spade a spade. After all, Jews of the present generation must know that it was Muslims who safeguarded their interests and rights for centuries while Christian world was burning them and condemning the whole community across Europe.
Examples of intolerance towards Jews in Chrisitian world:
1. IN spain, every child born of marriage between Christian and Jew was to be baptised. Later at the height of inquisition all Jews were given the option to convert or leave Spain. Thousands were burnt alive and many lived as crypto-Jews.
2. WHEN epidemics like plague spread, the Jews were always blamed and charged with the spread of diseases. Like in 14 th century when thousands of Jews were held responsible for Black Death and killed.
3. IN 1215 Jews were ordered to wear distinct dress from Christians so that they could be identified. At many places they were made to wear yellow badges or specified dress.
4. Almost 13,000 Jews were burnt in Spain alone during inquisition for not converting to Christiantiy in 15th-16th centuries.
5. Popes throught out history condemned Jews. Pope Julius III publicly condemned their holy book Talmud.
6. For two millennium (2,000 years) Jews were persecuted in one form or the other in Europe. Always harassed and thrown into ghettoes.
But forgetting all this the Jews after getting the state turned against the new enemy--Muslims, who had always welcomed the Jews who fled the European persecution. I wonder if jews ever think about it or they are really too selfish and driven by avarice to have forget the humiliation of centuries!
Source: http://indscribe.blogspot.com/2005/12/do-jews-ever-recall-historic-role-of.html
Importance of knighthood & Muslim world's response
The photograph on the left shows Muslims in Lucknow, registering their protest against knighthood to Salman Rushdie.Is it an attempt to provoke Muslims? And is knighthood important enough for people to get angry. It is an outdated concept. Britain, a former imperial power, is also neither an important nation, nor the honours given by the 'Queen'.
Neither it is the Nobel prize nor any honour given by an international platform or organisation like United Nations.
Meanwhile, why can't Muslim nations start some really good awards and titles for writers, activists, academicians, scientists and pioneers in other fields, and honour deserving persons both from West and the East, which would be a much better way to tackle such situations. More than 50 Muslim nations, many of them quite rich, but none seems to have an idea about what good PR is. I really don't understand this outrage over the outdated 'Sir', this colonial hangover. yeh angrez maai-baap hain kyaa hamaare!
Still, if you are angry or offended. It is better to sign protest letters, rather than the images of people protesting on streets, unnecessarily giving it undue importance. Mercifully we haven't seen such protests in India on this occasion except in parts of Kashmir. That's why I like this photograph. Meanwhile, on the entire issue, Mohib has written a beautiful piece at IndianMuslims.in here.
Source: http://indscribe.blogspot.com/2007/06/importane-of-knighthood.html
Where is poet Vali's tomb, asks High Court
It was five years ago when the tomb of poet Vali Gujarati (also known as Vali Dakni) was demolished and a road was constructed overnight, leaving no trace of the mazaar. The mob that destroyed the heritage of their own state, went ahead with building a temple 'Huladia Godharia Hanuman Mandir' on the spot.
Now, the High Court has issued a show-cause notice to the Chief Secretary and the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC), regarding the status of the shrine and its restoration. The petition has been filed by All Gujarat Minorities Association. The AMC's hand was suspected in the construction of the smooth road and AMC bulldozers were used. The make-shift temple was later removed though.
Ironically, the dargaah was just next to the Police Commissioner's office. But when there was no police to save the living, who would have thought about saving the abode of a dead. Alas, he was the man who had sang paens of Ahmedabad, Surat and Gujrat.
Source: http://indscribe.blogspot.com/2007/07/where-is-poet-valis-tomb-asks-high.html
Now, the High Court has issued a show-cause notice to the Chief Secretary and the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC), regarding the status of the shrine and its restoration. The petition has been filed by All Gujarat Minorities Association. The AMC's hand was suspected in the construction of the smooth road and AMC bulldozers were used. The make-shift temple was later removed though.
Ironically, the dargaah was just next to the Police Commissioner's office. But when there was no police to save the living, who would have thought about saving the abode of a dead. Alas, he was the man who had sang paens of Ahmedabad, Surat and Gujrat.
Source: http://indscribe.blogspot.com/2007/07/where-is-poet-valis-tomb-asks-high.html
Kashmiri Hindus Overwhelmed With Love Across The Border
Five elderly men who went to Pak-occupied Kashmir to see their ancestral place were overwhelmed with the love they received on the other side of the border.
Yuvraj Gupa, Yashpal Gupta, Rajkumar Kohli, Shivdas Sahni and Kulbhushan Kumar were permitted by Pakistan government to visit their hometown. Wherever they went, the hospitality astonished them.
The leader of the group Yuvraj Gupta said, ‘We have learnt that the bond of language and culture is too strong. We had few words but tears did most of the talking for us”.
The group went to Mirpur, Kotli and Bhambher. Everywhere the residents were eager to invite them at their house. At Mirpur, people got so emotional that they offered land to construct their houses and live. In Kotli, the group was welcomed at the local mosque.
Yuvraj Gupta was asked to give a speech but he got so emotional that he couldn’t complete his speech. He wished to touch feet of a Sufi saint. They went to their schools where children welcomed them and sent message for Indian children.
Source: http://indianmuslims.in/kashmiri-hindus-overwhelmed-with-love-across-the-border/
Yuvraj Gupa, Yashpal Gupta, Rajkumar Kohli, Shivdas Sahni and Kulbhushan Kumar were permitted by Pakistan government to visit their hometown. Wherever they went, the hospitality astonished them.
The leader of the group Yuvraj Gupta said, ‘We have learnt that the bond of language and culture is too strong. We had few words but tears did most of the talking for us”.
The group went to Mirpur, Kotli and Bhambher. Everywhere the residents were eager to invite them at their house. At Mirpur, people got so emotional that they offered land to construct their houses and live. In Kotli, the group was welcomed at the local mosque.
Yuvraj Gupta was asked to give a speech but he got so emotional that he couldn’t complete his speech. He wished to touch feet of a Sufi saint. They went to their schools where children welcomed them and sent message for Indian children.
Source: http://indianmuslims.in/kashmiri-hindus-overwhelmed-with-love-across-the-border/
13 Muslims get Padma Awards
This year the government has selected 13 Muslims in the list of 106 persons selected for the Padma Awards. Though every year a few classical musicians and artists amongst Muslims get the award, the good thing is that this year women from different spheres, scientists, doctors are included in this list.
Obaid Siddiqui of Karnataka was amongst the nine persons who got the highest of Padma Awards viz. Padma Vibhushan in the field of Science and Technology.
Ustad Abdul Halif Jafar Khan and Ghulam Mustafa Khan got the Padma Bhushan for art. Ustad Sabri Khan also got it in the field of art amongst the 36 who in all got Padma Bhushan.
Of the 61 who got Padma Shree, the journalist Fatma Rafiq Zakaria (mother of celebrit journo Farid Zakaria, editor of Newsweek), Hakim Syed Zillur Rahman (UP) in the field of medicine, Mahmooda Ali Shah, Dr Ahtesham Husain, Mahmood Dhaulpuri, Ustad Rashid Khan, beautician Shahnaz Husain, Tennis star Sania Mirza and Qatar’s Sheikh Abdul Rahman.
Source: http://indianmuslims.in/13-muslims-get-padma-awards/
Obaid Siddiqui of Karnataka was amongst the nine persons who got the highest of Padma Awards viz. Padma Vibhushan in the field of Science and Technology.
Ustad Abdul Halif Jafar Khan and Ghulam Mustafa Khan got the Padma Bhushan for art. Ustad Sabri Khan also got it in the field of art amongst the 36 who in all got Padma Bhushan.
Of the 61 who got Padma Shree, the journalist Fatma Rafiq Zakaria (mother of celebrit journo Farid Zakaria, editor of Newsweek), Hakim Syed Zillur Rahman (UP) in the field of medicine, Mahmooda Ali Shah, Dr Ahtesham Husain, Mahmood Dhaulpuri, Ustad Rashid Khan, beautician Shahnaz Husain, Tennis star Sania Mirza and Qatar’s Sheikh Abdul Rahman.
Source: http://indianmuslims.in/13-muslims-get-padma-awards/
Remembering Gujarat and Lessons for Congress
It is now five years since Gujarat plunged into moral darkness. A darkness that was so thick that even five years could not erase it. A darkness that was so deep that it has now entrenched itself to become a part of the Gujarati society. It has infected so deeply that a majority of people in Gujarat are in a complete denial of this.
It is a moral darkness because for many people there is not even an acknowledgment that something utterly inhuman happened five years back. Reading through the comments put by readers on Internet forums or in reply to the articles on Gujarat pogrom one will find that they consistently pose the question ‘Who started it?’ or they attempt to hide it under the plight of Kashmiri Hindus or other issues which are unrelated! It is a tribal mentality. Just because a bunch of hooligans torched a train compartment (an assumption which has been questioned) unjustly killing more than 50 people it is given as the justification by so many in Gujarat and the right wing for the rape and massacre of thousands of Muslims. This sort of logic is an anathema to any justice system or to any major religion. Not only that, but it is the murder of the very teachings of the religion that they who justify these acts claim to profess. What more shameful would have been than to hear the then Prime Minister of India Mr. Vajpayee, in the BJP conclave after sensing the mood of the gathering, saying ‘But who started it?’ In other words the former Prime Minister put a collective guilt on 140 million Muslims of India for the utterly inhuman act of a mob in Godhra! So much from the Prime Minister of a country of more than a billion people!
Though I personally think that Vajpayee was driven by political motives and he did not agree with many in his party but there are times when you have to take a moral ground which is rooted in your own traditions. He would have learnt something from Mahatma Gandhi, a Gujarati, who in the toughest situations picked up the moral position that he was convinced about and then stood by it. His fasts-unto-death, which were to strive for issues that were often completely against the public mood, make it evident. When the country was burning at the time of partition his strong stand brought in a sense of sanity in many parts particularly in Bengal.
That takes us to the party that talks about standing by the ideals of Gandhi. Congress has recently been shown the door in Uttaranchal and Punjab. A few weeks before that it got the drubbing in Maharashtra Municipal elections. The factor that is being ignored in the Maharashtra defeat is the Muslim vote factor. The state Congress had to pay by taking unprincipled stand on a few sensitive issues. The investigation in the Malegaon blasts has been skewed. Secondly, even though the TADA cases in the Mumbai blasts are going on in full steam right now (and that is how they should be), no one hears about the Sri Krishna report. It needs to be seen in perspective that the systematic damage to the life and property of the Muslims in Mumbai happened even before the Mumbai blasts. The scale of damage was even wider than the Mumbai blasts. But while the progress on one has happened there is almost no progress on the other. Perhaps Congress is too afraid to open the cupboard full of skeletons from its own rule.
The same confusing message came when recent violence happened in Gorakhpur. While the violence was still going on the state unit of the Congress was more inclined in deriving political mileage from the situation. The Central Government took a strong position and sent in paramilitary forces but the local unit did not act in any way that is worthy of mentioning.
What Congress needs to understand is that for the Indian Muslims security of life and property is the most important priority. Now that priority is for all, but in other cases it is taken for granted that it will be there. The Indian Muslim has to consciously think about it and it has got inbuilt in the psyche. The ghettoization of the Muslim communities across the country is a symptom of this feeling. It is evident that two Chief Ministers, Mulayam Singh Yadav and Laloo Yadav, who were involved in mere tokenism, were still voted by Muslims time and again just because they gave a sense of security. Maintaining law and order is the basic function of an administration and the surprising part is that it is this that often becomes too much to be asked for. If you maintain that with an iron hand and bring to task whoever breaks it, whether he is a Hindu or a Muslim, you set the right expectations. There needs to be a consistent policy of zero tolerance for violence. That will be good politics not bad politics.
It will be naive on the part of Congress to think that the message from one state is not heard by people in other states. Gujarat is an example. Any party that supported BJP was drubbed aside by the Muslim voters. Ask Chandra Babu Naidu. Congress needs to introspect and take the moral high-ground at times without thinking about the politics involved in it. The Congress high-command needs to send this message to its state units in Maharashtra and Gujarat and to all the rest. We want a Congress that not only follows Manmohonomics but also that remains rooted in Gandhian principles sans rhetoric. People are intelligent enough to separate rhetoric from sincerity. Then only they will vote for Congress with full conviction instead of a Mulayam or a Laloo.
It is sad that in United States where the Black History Month is being commemorated and many are highlighting Martin Luther King’s ‘pilgrimage’ to Gandhi’s Gujarat as his tribute to non-violence, in the same Gujarat we have a Chief Minister who continues to rule over a majority which has lost part of its moral compass somewhere. A state where extra-constitutional force have a upper-hand in stopping, boycotting or banning voices which do not follow their lines. They can stop a Parzania or a Fanaa just because they did not like the movie or the actor. This is not democracy but fascism under the skin of democracy. And we know from China that societies without respect for true democracy can be economically successful. Gujarat confirms that even further. But we need to understand that as a nation we take pride that we are the biggest democracy on the planet. The Gujarat pogrom five years back was a blot. The healing can start only with an acknowledgment by one and all. Then only many can see the monster that is sitting dormantly and will be able to defeat it. Indian did this successfully with the 1984 anti-Sikh violence and it can do this again with the 2002 anti-Muslim violence. But it is perhaps too much to ask for from many of those who have in the past glorified the Nazis and Hitler!
Source: http://indianmuslims.in/remembering-gujarat-and-lessons-for-congress/
It is a moral darkness because for many people there is not even an acknowledgment that something utterly inhuman happened five years back. Reading through the comments put by readers on Internet forums or in reply to the articles on Gujarat pogrom one will find that they consistently pose the question ‘Who started it?’ or they attempt to hide it under the plight of Kashmiri Hindus or other issues which are unrelated! It is a tribal mentality. Just because a bunch of hooligans torched a train compartment (an assumption which has been questioned) unjustly killing more than 50 people it is given as the justification by so many in Gujarat and the right wing for the rape and massacre of thousands of Muslims. This sort of logic is an anathema to any justice system or to any major religion. Not only that, but it is the murder of the very teachings of the religion that they who justify these acts claim to profess. What more shameful would have been than to hear the then Prime Minister of India Mr. Vajpayee, in the BJP conclave after sensing the mood of the gathering, saying ‘But who started it?’ In other words the former Prime Minister put a collective guilt on 140 million Muslims of India for the utterly inhuman act of a mob in Godhra! So much from the Prime Minister of a country of more than a billion people!
Though I personally think that Vajpayee was driven by political motives and he did not agree with many in his party but there are times when you have to take a moral ground which is rooted in your own traditions. He would have learnt something from Mahatma Gandhi, a Gujarati, who in the toughest situations picked up the moral position that he was convinced about and then stood by it. His fasts-unto-death, which were to strive for issues that were often completely against the public mood, make it evident. When the country was burning at the time of partition his strong stand brought in a sense of sanity in many parts particularly in Bengal.
That takes us to the party that talks about standing by the ideals of Gandhi. Congress has recently been shown the door in Uttaranchal and Punjab. A few weeks before that it got the drubbing in Maharashtra Municipal elections. The factor that is being ignored in the Maharashtra defeat is the Muslim vote factor. The state Congress had to pay by taking unprincipled stand on a few sensitive issues. The investigation in the Malegaon blasts has been skewed. Secondly, even though the TADA cases in the Mumbai blasts are going on in full steam right now (and that is how they should be), no one hears about the Sri Krishna report. It needs to be seen in perspective that the systematic damage to the life and property of the Muslims in Mumbai happened even before the Mumbai blasts. The scale of damage was even wider than the Mumbai blasts. But while the progress on one has happened there is almost no progress on the other. Perhaps Congress is too afraid to open the cupboard full of skeletons from its own rule.
The same confusing message came when recent violence happened in Gorakhpur. While the violence was still going on the state unit of the Congress was more inclined in deriving political mileage from the situation. The Central Government took a strong position and sent in paramilitary forces but the local unit did not act in any way that is worthy of mentioning.
What Congress needs to understand is that for the Indian Muslims security of life and property is the most important priority. Now that priority is for all, but in other cases it is taken for granted that it will be there. The Indian Muslim has to consciously think about it and it has got inbuilt in the psyche. The ghettoization of the Muslim communities across the country is a symptom of this feeling. It is evident that two Chief Ministers, Mulayam Singh Yadav and Laloo Yadav, who were involved in mere tokenism, were still voted by Muslims time and again just because they gave a sense of security. Maintaining law and order is the basic function of an administration and the surprising part is that it is this that often becomes too much to be asked for. If you maintain that with an iron hand and bring to task whoever breaks it, whether he is a Hindu or a Muslim, you set the right expectations. There needs to be a consistent policy of zero tolerance for violence. That will be good politics not bad politics.
It will be naive on the part of Congress to think that the message from one state is not heard by people in other states. Gujarat is an example. Any party that supported BJP was drubbed aside by the Muslim voters. Ask Chandra Babu Naidu. Congress needs to introspect and take the moral high-ground at times without thinking about the politics involved in it. The Congress high-command needs to send this message to its state units in Maharashtra and Gujarat and to all the rest. We want a Congress that not only follows Manmohonomics but also that remains rooted in Gandhian principles sans rhetoric. People are intelligent enough to separate rhetoric from sincerity. Then only they will vote for Congress with full conviction instead of a Mulayam or a Laloo.
It is sad that in United States where the Black History Month is being commemorated and many are highlighting Martin Luther King’s ‘pilgrimage’ to Gandhi’s Gujarat as his tribute to non-violence, in the same Gujarat we have a Chief Minister who continues to rule over a majority which has lost part of its moral compass somewhere. A state where extra-constitutional force have a upper-hand in stopping, boycotting or banning voices which do not follow their lines. They can stop a Parzania or a Fanaa just because they did not like the movie or the actor. This is not democracy but fascism under the skin of democracy. And we know from China that societies without respect for true democracy can be economically successful. Gujarat confirms that even further. But we need to understand that as a nation we take pride that we are the biggest democracy on the planet. The Gujarat pogrom five years back was a blot. The healing can start only with an acknowledgment by one and all. Then only many can see the monster that is sitting dormantly and will be able to defeat it. Indian did this successfully with the 1984 anti-Sikh violence and it can do this again with the 2002 anti-Muslim violence. But it is perhaps too much to ask for from many of those who have in the past glorified the Nazis and Hitler!
Source: http://indianmuslims.in/remembering-gujarat-and-lessons-for-congress/
And What Is My Issue With Vande Mataram?
Vande Mataram issue is again hogging the limelight and political denominations of all hue are palnning to make a killing. I have nothing to say of them. Such people have been squarely criticized at this blog and elsewhere. For me the issue is that of an individual’s right to practise his religion and be a patriotic citizen at the same time. Suppose I don’t sing Vande Mataram because it clashes with my religious beliefs. Would that make me any less Indian? Would that weaken my resolve to fight and die for the country? More importantly, as a citizen of a democratic society, do I have a choice to to say no to things that are not mandatory, and by not doing them I am not causing any harm to others? We talk about freedom of religion and secularism all the time but still have a blinkered view of them. Why do I need to adhere by somebody else’s benchmark of patriotism. If we are still thinking in terms of society and not individuals and expect everyone to submerge into some greater-common-patriotism then how different are we from let’s say China or Saudi Arabia. Does an individual has the space to stand alone and be different in our society? Would we have that in 10-20 years?
As an Indian Muslim I have to prove my patriotism to others, many times and many times over. A bomb blast, no Sir, please believe us, we did not do it, we condemn it in strongest terms. Does anyone asks hard questions about the failure of our intelligence apparatus, about how many people have ran away to other countries after selling sensitive information, about how it has compromised the security of the common citizen? Vir Sangvi writes about our amazing ability to gloss over facts in lieu of our anti-terror paranoia. Oh and these guys are not singing Vande Mataram. Didn’t I tell you, they are unpatriotic. There loyalties lie elsewhere. Come on, let us make them sing Vande Mataram.
Pankaj Vohra, political editor of Hindustan Times has written a piece on the Vande Mataram issue. He seems to have presumed a lot. I would like to address some of the issues he raises in his article.
1.) Debate over the issue is settled:
No, it is not. Had it been so, Vande Mataram would have been our national anthem and not national song. Muslims have had genuine issues with the text of the song and the context in which it was originally written and consquently used in Anand Math. The committee under Nehru in 1937 which Pankaj cites in his article has this to say of the issue:
The Constituent Assembly reached a compromise decision to accord it the status of national song. Gandhi ji advised Muslims to appreciate its historic association but counselled against any imposition. “No doubt, every act… must be purely voluntary on the part of either partner,” he said at Alipore on August 23, 1947. Now, we have the President of the largest opposition party in India saying that it would be made mandatory in the BJP ruled states.
Bottomline: Vande Mataram can’t and shoudn’t be enforced, neither on an individual nor on a community.
2.) It is AIMPLB and mad mullahs again:
Now we are increasingly seeing educated Muslims that do not toe the line of either All India Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) or rent-a-fatwa-mullahs and are willing to stand up and speak out for themselves. I am totally against mullahs rendering fatwas on the issue. Forcing someone not to sing Vande Mataram is akin to forcing someone to sing the song. Individuals should be able to decide for themselves. I have had my differences with both these groups. This is not about them, this is about me.
Bottomline: I don’t really care what is their stand on the issue.
3.) Vande Mataram is secular:
It is not. Had it been so, there was no need to expunge the last three stanzas of the song. People are acting as if the first two stanzas were written by someone else for a totally different purpose than the last three stanzas. It was basically a song meant to arouse the sentiments of Bengali Hindus against the ruling Muslims by using religious imagery. Nirad C. Chaudhuri writes, “The historical romances of Bankim Chatterjee and Ramesh Chandra Dutt glorified Hindu rebellion against Muslim rule and showed the Muslims in a correspondingly poor light. Chatterjee was positively and fiercely anti-Muslim. We were eager readers of these romances and we readily absorbed their spirit.” It is true that the song acquired a nationalistic tone during the freedom struggle. It still does not absolve it of its history. For the right-wing backers of the song, this is just a start. Already there are talks of why only two stanzas, why not the entire song? And Rajeev Srinivasan is arguing “mohammedans in india should follow indian norms. after all, they expect indians in saudi arabia to follow saudi norms.” Not many years ago, BJP government in Uttar Pradesh tried to make the recital of Saraswati Vandana compulsory in schools.
Bottomlime: All this makes me wonder what ‘being Indian’ translates to them and their ‘real’ intentions.
4.) Hey its just Sankritized Bengali, in Urdu it is just fine:
Pankaj Vohra quotes an Urdu translation by none other than Arif Muhammad Khan (messiah of Muslims, beacon of hope, harbinger of glad tidings and a surrendered member to BJP). Being a former Union minister and President of A.M.U. are cited as his qualifications. I have heard about sarkaari poets, we have had our fair share of them. But this is the first time I am hearing about a sarkaari translator. I am not a Sankrit pandit (I read it till class 12th) but I am sure what Vande Mataram would translate to in Urdu. Again, people are trying to take two stanzas, out of text and out of context, and making it appear like well-what’s-the-problem-with-it?
Bottomline: The last thing India needs to progress in the 21st century is sarkaari patriotism.
Amidst all this, I have hope for the future. Many of the popular Indian bloggers on the web have supported the individual freedom position. Many Indians who were not aware of the original text and context of the song and the reason why Muslims are uncomfortable with the song are taking a more nuanced position. The only way forward for our country is the Gandhian position of mutual respect and no imposition. Not singing Vande Mataram does not lessen my committment to my country and I would always fight for the right of my fellow Indians (of whatever religion) to recite the song. Others should respect mine.
P.S. Some quotes have been taken from A.G. Noorani’s article, How secular is Vande Mataram?. If you have not read it, please do so. It is worth it.
Source: http://indianmuslims.in/and-what-is-my-issue-with-vande-mataram/
As an Indian Muslim I have to prove my patriotism to others, many times and many times over. A bomb blast, no Sir, please believe us, we did not do it, we condemn it in strongest terms. Does anyone asks hard questions about the failure of our intelligence apparatus, about how many people have ran away to other countries after selling sensitive information, about how it has compromised the security of the common citizen? Vir Sangvi writes about our amazing ability to gloss over facts in lieu of our anti-terror paranoia. Oh and these guys are not singing Vande Mataram. Didn’t I tell you, they are unpatriotic. There loyalties lie elsewhere. Come on, let us make them sing Vande Mataram.
Pankaj Vohra, political editor of Hindustan Times has written a piece on the Vande Mataram issue. He seems to have presumed a lot. I would like to address some of the issues he raises in his article.
1.) Debate over the issue is settled:
No, it is not. Had it been so, Vande Mataram would have been our national anthem and not national song. Muslims have had genuine issues with the text of the song and the context in which it was originally written and consquently used in Anand Math. The committee under Nehru in 1937 which Pankaj cites in his article has this to say of the issue:
“Taking all things into consideration, therefore, the Committee recommend that, wherever Bande Mataram is sung at national gatherings, only the first two stanzas should be sung, with perfect freedom to the organisers to sing any other song of an unobjectionable character, in addition to, or in the place of, the Bande Mataram song.”
The Constituent Assembly reached a compromise decision to accord it the status of national song. Gandhi ji advised Muslims to appreciate its historic association but counselled against any imposition. “No doubt, every act… must be purely voluntary on the part of either partner,” he said at Alipore on August 23, 1947. Now, we have the President of the largest opposition party in India saying that it would be made mandatory in the BJP ruled states.
Bottomline: Vande Mataram can’t and shoudn’t be enforced, neither on an individual nor on a community.
2.) It is AIMPLB and mad mullahs again:
Now we are increasingly seeing educated Muslims that do not toe the line of either All India Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) or rent-a-fatwa-mullahs and are willing to stand up and speak out for themselves. I am totally against mullahs rendering fatwas on the issue. Forcing someone not to sing Vande Mataram is akin to forcing someone to sing the song. Individuals should be able to decide for themselves. I have had my differences with both these groups. This is not about them, this is about me.
Bottomline: I don’t really care what is their stand on the issue.
3.) Vande Mataram is secular:
It is not. Had it been so, there was no need to expunge the last three stanzas of the song. People are acting as if the first two stanzas were written by someone else for a totally different purpose than the last three stanzas. It was basically a song meant to arouse the sentiments of Bengali Hindus against the ruling Muslims by using religious imagery. Nirad C. Chaudhuri writes, “The historical romances of Bankim Chatterjee and Ramesh Chandra Dutt glorified Hindu rebellion against Muslim rule and showed the Muslims in a correspondingly poor light. Chatterjee was positively and fiercely anti-Muslim. We were eager readers of these romances and we readily absorbed their spirit.” It is true that the song acquired a nationalistic tone during the freedom struggle. It still does not absolve it of its history. For the right-wing backers of the song, this is just a start. Already there are talks of why only two stanzas, why not the entire song? And Rajeev Srinivasan is arguing “mohammedans in india should follow indian norms. after all, they expect indians in saudi arabia to follow saudi norms.” Not many years ago, BJP government in Uttar Pradesh tried to make the recital of Saraswati Vandana compulsory in schools.
Bottomlime: All this makes me wonder what ‘being Indian’ translates to them and their ‘real’ intentions.
4.) Hey its just Sankritized Bengali, in Urdu it is just fine:
Pankaj Vohra quotes an Urdu translation by none other than Arif Muhammad Khan (messiah of Muslims, beacon of hope, harbinger of glad tidings and a surrendered member to BJP). Being a former Union minister and President of A.M.U. are cited as his qualifications. I have heard about sarkaari poets, we have had our fair share of them. But this is the first time I am hearing about a sarkaari translator. I am not a Sankrit pandit (I read it till class 12th) but I am sure what Vande Mataram would translate to in Urdu. Again, people are trying to take two stanzas, out of text and out of context, and making it appear like well-what’s-the-problem-with-it?
Bottomline: The last thing India needs to progress in the 21st century is sarkaari patriotism.
Amidst all this, I have hope for the future. Many of the popular Indian bloggers on the web have supported the individual freedom position. Many Indians who were not aware of the original text and context of the song and the reason why Muslims are uncomfortable with the song are taking a more nuanced position. The only way forward for our country is the Gandhian position of mutual respect and no imposition. Not singing Vande Mataram does not lessen my committment to my country and I would always fight for the right of my fellow Indians (of whatever religion) to recite the song. Others should respect mine.
P.S. Some quotes have been taken from A.G. Noorani’s article, How secular is Vande Mataram?. If you have not read it, please do so. It is worth it.
Source: http://indianmuslims.in/and-what-is-my-issue-with-vande-mataram/
How secular is Vande Mataram?
The Bharatiya Janata Party's attempt to make 'Vande Mataram', originally a song expressing Hindu nationalism, into an obligatory national song is unconstitutional.
A.G. NOORANI
UTTAR PRADESH Minister for Basic Education Ravindra Shukla declared on November 17 that "the order to make the singing of 'Vande Mataram' compulsory stands, and will be enforced". That the "order" would not cover schools run by the minority communities does not detract from its unconstitutional nature. It clearly violates Article 28 (1) and (3) of the Constitution. "(1) No religious instruction shall be provided in any educational institution wholly maintained out of state funds" and "(3) No person attending any educational institution recognised by the State or receiving aid out of State funds shall be required to take part in any religious instruction that may be imparted in such institution or to attend any religious worship that may be conducted in such institution or in any premises attached thereto unless such person or, if such person is a minor, his guardian has given his consent thereto." (emphasis added throughout). The language could not have been broader. It hits at the actual practice, regardless of a formal order and at attendance even if there is no participation in the worship.
What applies to Vande Mataram applies also to Saraswati Vandana, a hymn to the Goddess Saraswati. The Supreme Court's ruling that the singing of the National Anthem cannot be made obligatory applies both to Vande Mataram and Saraswati Vandana with yet greater force.
The U.P. Minister, who belongs to the Bharatiya Janata Party, revealed on November 17 that "the order" did exist and "will be enforced". But a few days later, on November 21, Union Home Minister L.K.Advani said that the "factual position" needed to be ascertained though he was against the singing of that song being made "mandatory". (Shukla has since been dropped from the Ministry.) More royalist than the BJP king, the Samata Party said on November 23: "Vande Mataram has no religious connotation". This is utterly false.
Else, in 1937 the Congress Working Committee would not have said: "The Committee recognise the validity of the objection raised by Muslim friends to certain parts of the song." It declared that "only the first two stanzas should be sung". A poem which needs surgical operation cannot command universal acceptance.
The song 'Vande Mataram' occurs in Bankimchandra Chatterjee's novel Anand Math published in 1882.
In his Autobiography of an Unknown Indian, Nirad C. Chaudhuri has aptly described the atmosphere of the times in which the song was written.1 "The historical romances of Bankim Chatterjee and Ramesh Chandra Dutt glorified Hindu rebellion against Muslim rule and showed the Muslims in a correspondingly poor light. Chatterjee was positively and fiercely anti-Muslim. We were eager readers of these romances and we readily absorbed their spirit."
R.C. Majumdar, the historian, has written an objective account of it.2 "During the long and arduous struggle for freedom from 1905 to 1947 'Bande Mataram' was the rallying cry of the patriotic sons of India, and thousands of them succumbed to the lathi blow of the British police or mounted the scaffold with 'Bande Mataram' on their lips. The central plot moves round a band of sanyasis, called santanas or children, who left their hearth and home and dedicated their lives to the cause of their motherland. They worshipped their motherland as the Goddess Kali;... This aspect of the Ananda Math and the imagery of Goddess Kali leave no doubt that Bankimchandra's nationalism was Hindu rather than Indian. This is made crystal clear from his other writings which contain passionate outbursts against the subjugation of India by the Muslims. From that day set the sun of our glory - that is the refrain of his essays and novels which not unoften contain adverse, and sometimes even irreverent, remarks against the Muslims" (emphasis added). As Majumdar pithily puts it, "Bankimchandra converted patriotism into religion and religion into patriotism."
The novel was not anti-British, either. In the last chapter, we find a supernatural figure persuading the leader of the sanyasis, Satyananda, to stop fighting. The dialogue that follows is interesting:3
"He: Your task is accomplished. The Muslim power is destroyed. There is nothing else for you to do. No good can come of needless slaughter.
"S: The Muslim power has indeed been destroyed, but the dominion of the Hindu has not yet been established. The British still hold Calcutta.
"He: Hindu dominion will not be established now. If you remain at your work, men will be killed to no purpose. Therefore come.
"S: (greatly pained) My lord, if Hindu dominion is not going to be established, who will rule? Will the Muslim kings return?
"He: No. The English will rule."
Satyananda protests, but is persuaded to lay down the sword.
"He: Your vow is fulfilled. You have brought fortune to your Mother. You have set up a British government. Give up your fighting. Let the people take to their ploughs. Let the earth be rich with harvest and the people rich with wealth.
"S: (weeping hot tears) I will make my Mother rich with harvest in the blood of her foes.
"He: Who is the foe? There are no foes now. The English are friends as well as rulers. And no one can defeat them in battle. (emphasis added).
"S: If that is so, I will kill myself before the image of my Mother.
"He: In ignorance? Come and know. There is a temple of the Mother in the Himalayas. I will show you her image there.
"So saying, He took Satyananda by the hand."
Anti-Muslim references are spread all over the work. Jivananda with sword in hand, at the gate of the temple, exhorts the children of Kali: "We have often thought to break up this bird's nest of Muslim rule, to pull down the city of the renegades and throw it into the river - to turn this pig-sty to ashes and make Mother earth free from evil again. Friends, that day has come."
The use of the song 'Vande Mataram' in the novel is not adventitious, and it is not only communal-minded Muslims who resent it because of its context and content. M.R.A. Baig's analysis of the novel and the song deserve attention. "Written as a story set in the period of the dissolution of the Moghul Empire, the hero of the novel, Bhavananda, is planning an armed rising against the Muslims of Bengal. While busy recruiting, he meets Mahendra and sings the song 'Bande Mataram' or 'Hail Mother'. The latter asks him the meaning of the words and Bhavananda, making a spirited answer, concludes with: 'Our religion is gone, our caste is gone, our honour is gone. Can the Hindus preserve their Hinduism unless these drunken Nereys (a term of contempt for Muslims) are driven away?'... Mahendra, however, not convinced, expresses reluctance to join the rebellion. He is, therefore, taken to the temple of Ananda Math and shown a huge image of four-armed Vishnu, with two decapitated and bloody heads in front, "Do you know who she is?" asks the priest in charge, pointing to an image on the lap of Vishnu, "She is the Mother. We are her children Say 'Bande Mataram'" He is taken to the image of Kali and then to that of Durga. On each occasion he is asked to recite 'Bande Mataram'. In another scene in the novel some people shouted 'kill, kill the Nereys'. Others shouted 'Bande Mataram' 'Will the day come when we shall break mosques and build temples on their sites? 4
The song has five stanzas. Of these only the first two are the "approved ones". Jawaharlal Nehru was 'opposed to the last two stanzas'. The approved stanzas read:
"I bow to thee, Mother, richly watered, richly fruited,
cool with the winds of the south,
dark with the crops of the harvests,
the Mother!
Her nights rejoicing in the glory of
the moonlight, her hands clothed
beautifully with her trees in flowering
bloom, sweet of laughter, sweet of
speech, the Mother, giver of boons
giver of bliss!
The third stanza refers to 'Thy dreadful name', evidently, a reference to the Goddess Kali. The fourth is in the same vein. 'Thou art Durga, Lady and Queen, with her hands that strike and her swords of sheen'.
It is essentially a religious homage to the country conceived as a deity, 'a form of worship' as Majumdar aptly called it. The motherland is "conceived as the Goddess Kali, the source of all power and glory."
This, in the song itself. The context makes it worse. "The land of Bengal, and by extension all of India, became identified with the female aspect of Hindu deity, and the result was a concept of divine Motherland".5 How secular is such a song? The objection was not confined to mere bowing and it was voiced early in the day.
In his presidential address at the Second Session of the All-India Muslim League held in Amritsar on December 30, 1908, Syed Ali Imam said:
"I cannot say what you think, but when I find the most advanced province of India put forward the sectarian cry of 'Bande Mataram' as the national cry, and the sectarian Rakhibandhan as a national observance, my heart is filled with despair and disappointment; and the suspicion that under the cloak of nationalism Hindu nationalism is preached in India becomes a conviction. Has the experiment tried by Akbar and Aurangzeb failed again? Has 50 years of the peaceful spread of English education given the country only a revival of denominationalism? Gentlemen, do not misunderstand me. I believe that the establishment of conferences, associations and corporate bodies in different communities on denominational lines is necessary to give expression to denominational views, so that the builders of a truly national life in the country may have before them the crystallised need and aspirations of all sects...
"Regard for the feelings and sentiments, needs and requirements of all is the key-note to true Indian nationalism. It is more imperative where the susceptibilities of the two great communities, Hindus and Musalmans, are involved. Unreconciled, one will be as great a drag on the wheel of national progress as the other. I ask the architects of Indian nationalism, both in Calcutta and Poona, do they expect the Musalmans of India to accept 'Bande Mataram' and the Sivaji celebration? The Mohammedans may be weak in anything you please, but they are not weak in cherishing their traditions of their glorious past. I pray the Congress leaders to put before the country such a programme of political advancement as does not demand the sacrifice of the feelings of the Hindu or the Mohammedan, the Parsee or the Christian."
The Congress Working Committee, which met in Calcutta on October 26, 1937, under the presidentship of Nehru, adopted a long statement on the subject.6 It asked that the song should "be considered apart from the book." Recalling its use in the preceding 30 years, the resolution said:
"The song and the words thus became symbols of national resistance to British Imperialism in Bengal especially, and generally in other parts of India. The words 'Bande Mataram' became a slogan of power which inspired our people and a greeting which ever remind us of our struggle for national freedom.
"Gradually the use of the first two stanzas of the song spread to other provinces and a certain national significance began to attach to them. The rest of the song was very seldom used, and is even now known by few persons. These two stanzas described in tender language the beauty of (the) motherland and the abundance of her gifts. There was absolutely nothing in them to which objection could be from the religious or any other point of view... The other stanzas of the song are little known and hardly ever sung. They contain certain allusions and a religious ideology which may not be in keeping with the ideology of other religious groups in India.
"The Committee recognise the validity of the objection raised by Muslim friends to certain parts of the song. While the Committee have taken note of such objection insofar as it has intrinsic value, the Committee wish to point out that the modern evolution of the use of the song as part of National life is of infinitely greater importance than its setting in a historical novel before the national movement had taken shape. Taking all things into consideration, therefore, the Committee recommend that, wherever Bande Mataram is sung at national gatherings, only the first two stanzas should be sung, with perfect freedom to the organisers to sing any other song of an unobjectionable character, in addition to, or in the place of, the Bande Mataram song."
'National' songs do not need political surgery; the songs which do, do not win national acceptance. Against this was the fact of history that, however ill-advised, the song had come to be associated with the struggle for freedom. Gandhi advised Muslims to appreciate its historic association but counselled against any imposition. "No doubt, every act... must be purely voluntary on the part of either partner," he said at Alipore on August 23, 1947.
THE Government of India acquired this emotion-charged legacy. Its stand was defined in a statement by Prime Minister Nehru to the Constituent Assembly (Legislative) on August 25, 1948:7 Nehru said:
"The question of having a national anthem tune, to be played by orchestras and bands became an urgent one for us immediately after 15th August 1947. It was as important as that of having a national flag. The 'Jana Gana Mana' tune, slightly varied, had been adopted as a national anthem by the Indian National Army in South-East Asia, and had subsequently attained a degree of popularity in India also... I wrote to all the provincial Governors and asked their views about our adopting 'Jana Gana Mana' or any other song as the national anthem. I asked them to consult their Premiers before replying... Every one of these Governors, except one (the Governor of the Central Provinces), signified their approval of 'Jana Gana Mana'. Thereupon the Cabinet considered the matter and came to the decision that provisionally 'Jana Gana Mana' should be used as the tune for the national anthem, till such time as the Constituent Assembly came to a final decision. Instructions were issued accordingly to the provincial governments...
''It is unfortunate that some kind of argument has arisen as between 'Vande Mataram' and 'Jana Gana Mana'. 'Vande Mataram' is obviously and indisputably the premier national song of India, with a great historical tradition, and intimately connected with our struggle for freedom. That position it is bound to retain and no other song can displace it. It represents the position and poignancy of that struggle, but perhaps not so much the culmination of it. In regard to the national anthem tune, it was felt that the tune was more important than the words... It seemed therefore that while 'Vande Mataram' should continue to be the national song par excellence in India, the national anthem tune should be that of 'Jana Gana Mana', the wording of 'Jana Gana Mana' to be suitably altered to fit in with the existing circumstances.
"The question has to be considered by the Constituent Assembly, and it is open to that Assembly to decide as it chooses. It may decide on a completely new song or tune, if such is available."
A MORE definitive statement was made by the President of the Constituent Assembly, Rajendra Prasad, on January 24, 1950. He said: "There is one matter which has been pending for discussion, namely, the question of the national anthem. At one time it was thought that the matter might be brought up before the House, and a decision taken by the House by way of a resolution. But it has been felt that, instead of taking a formal decision by means of a resolution, it is better if I make a statement with regard to the national anthem. Accordingly, I make this statement... The composition consisting of the words and music known as 'Jana Gana Mana' is the national anthem of India, subject to such alterations in the words as the Government may authorise as occasion arises; and the song 'Vande Mataram', which has played a historic part in the struggle for Indian freedom, shall be honoured equally with Jana Gana Mana and shall have equal status with it. (Applause) I hope that will satisfy the Members."8
Mutual understanding will lead to the Gandhian formula - respect for the song but no imposition. But even more than that, if the problem were understood in depth, what would emerge is a far better appreciation of the reasons why the Muslims and the Congress drifted away from each other. Those reasons have many a lesson for us today as we build a secular India. Attempts at imposition reflect a conscious decision to break with the national secular ideal.
REFERENCES
1. Jaico; page 235.
2. British Paramountcy and Indian Renaissance, Part II: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1965; page 478.
3. Sources of Indian Tradition compiled by William Theodore de Bary and others; Columbia University Press; 1958; page 715.
4. Vide his essay "The Partition of Bengal and its Aftermath; The Indian Journal of Political Science; Volume XXX, April-June 1969, Number 2, pages 120-122.
5. D.F.Smith: India as a Secular State; Princeton University Press; 1963; page 90
6. Indian Annual Register, 1937, Volume II, p. 327.
7. Official Report on "Constituent Assembly Debates"; Third session, Part I, Volume VI, August 9-31, 1948.
8. Constituent Assembly Debates, Volume XII; January 24, 1950.
Source: http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl1601/16010940.htm
A.G. NOORANI
UTTAR PRADESH Minister for Basic Education Ravindra Shukla declared on November 17 that "the order to make the singing of 'Vande Mataram' compulsory stands, and will be enforced". That the "order" would not cover schools run by the minority communities does not detract from its unconstitutional nature. It clearly violates Article 28 (1) and (3) of the Constitution. "(1) No religious instruction shall be provided in any educational institution wholly maintained out of state funds" and "(3) No person attending any educational institution recognised by the State or receiving aid out of State funds shall be required to take part in any religious instruction that may be imparted in such institution or to attend any religious worship that may be conducted in such institution or in any premises attached thereto unless such person or, if such person is a minor, his guardian has given his consent thereto." (emphasis added throughout). The language could not have been broader. It hits at the actual practice, regardless of a formal order and at attendance even if there is no participation in the worship.
What applies to Vande Mataram applies also to Saraswati Vandana, a hymn to the Goddess Saraswati. The Supreme Court's ruling that the singing of the National Anthem cannot be made obligatory applies both to Vande Mataram and Saraswati Vandana with yet greater force.
The U.P. Minister, who belongs to the Bharatiya Janata Party, revealed on November 17 that "the order" did exist and "will be enforced". But a few days later, on November 21, Union Home Minister L.K.Advani said that the "factual position" needed to be ascertained though he was against the singing of that song being made "mandatory". (Shukla has since been dropped from the Ministry.) More royalist than the BJP king, the Samata Party said on November 23: "Vande Mataram has no religious connotation". This is utterly false.
Else, in 1937 the Congress Working Committee would not have said: "The Committee recognise the validity of the objection raised by Muslim friends to certain parts of the song." It declared that "only the first two stanzas should be sung". A poem which needs surgical operation cannot command universal acceptance.
The song 'Vande Mataram' occurs in Bankimchandra Chatterjee's novel Anand Math published in 1882.
In his Autobiography of an Unknown Indian, Nirad C. Chaudhuri has aptly described the atmosphere of the times in which the song was written.1 "The historical romances of Bankim Chatterjee and Ramesh Chandra Dutt glorified Hindu rebellion against Muslim rule and showed the Muslims in a correspondingly poor light. Chatterjee was positively and fiercely anti-Muslim. We were eager readers of these romances and we readily absorbed their spirit."
R.C. Majumdar, the historian, has written an objective account of it.2 "During the long and arduous struggle for freedom from 1905 to 1947 'Bande Mataram' was the rallying cry of the patriotic sons of India, and thousands of them succumbed to the lathi blow of the British police or mounted the scaffold with 'Bande Mataram' on their lips. The central plot moves round a band of sanyasis, called santanas or children, who left their hearth and home and dedicated their lives to the cause of their motherland. They worshipped their motherland as the Goddess Kali;... This aspect of the Ananda Math and the imagery of Goddess Kali leave no doubt that Bankimchandra's nationalism was Hindu rather than Indian. This is made crystal clear from his other writings which contain passionate outbursts against the subjugation of India by the Muslims. From that day set the sun of our glory - that is the refrain of his essays and novels which not unoften contain adverse, and sometimes even irreverent, remarks against the Muslims" (emphasis added). As Majumdar pithily puts it, "Bankimchandra converted patriotism into religion and religion into patriotism."
The novel was not anti-British, either. In the last chapter, we find a supernatural figure persuading the leader of the sanyasis, Satyananda, to stop fighting. The dialogue that follows is interesting:3
"He: Your task is accomplished. The Muslim power is destroyed. There is nothing else for you to do. No good can come of needless slaughter.
"S: The Muslim power has indeed been destroyed, but the dominion of the Hindu has not yet been established. The British still hold Calcutta.
"He: Hindu dominion will not be established now. If you remain at your work, men will be killed to no purpose. Therefore come.
"S: (greatly pained) My lord, if Hindu dominion is not going to be established, who will rule? Will the Muslim kings return?
"He: No. The English will rule."
Satyananda protests, but is persuaded to lay down the sword.
"He: Your vow is fulfilled. You have brought fortune to your Mother. You have set up a British government. Give up your fighting. Let the people take to their ploughs. Let the earth be rich with harvest and the people rich with wealth.
"S: (weeping hot tears) I will make my Mother rich with harvest in the blood of her foes.
"He: Who is the foe? There are no foes now. The English are friends as well as rulers. And no one can defeat them in battle. (emphasis added).
"S: If that is so, I will kill myself before the image of my Mother.
"He: In ignorance? Come and know. There is a temple of the Mother in the Himalayas. I will show you her image there.
"So saying, He took Satyananda by the hand."
Anti-Muslim references are spread all over the work. Jivananda with sword in hand, at the gate of the temple, exhorts the children of Kali: "We have often thought to break up this bird's nest of Muslim rule, to pull down the city of the renegades and throw it into the river - to turn this pig-sty to ashes and make Mother earth free from evil again. Friends, that day has come."
The use of the song 'Vande Mataram' in the novel is not adventitious, and it is not only communal-minded Muslims who resent it because of its context and content. M.R.A. Baig's analysis of the novel and the song deserve attention. "Written as a story set in the period of the dissolution of the Moghul Empire, the hero of the novel, Bhavananda, is planning an armed rising against the Muslims of Bengal. While busy recruiting, he meets Mahendra and sings the song 'Bande Mataram' or 'Hail Mother'. The latter asks him the meaning of the words and Bhavananda, making a spirited answer, concludes with: 'Our religion is gone, our caste is gone, our honour is gone. Can the Hindus preserve their Hinduism unless these drunken Nereys (a term of contempt for Muslims) are driven away?'... Mahendra, however, not convinced, expresses reluctance to join the rebellion. He is, therefore, taken to the temple of Ananda Math and shown a huge image of four-armed Vishnu, with two decapitated and bloody heads in front, "Do you know who she is?" asks the priest in charge, pointing to an image on the lap of Vishnu, "She is the Mother. We are her children Say 'Bande Mataram'" He is taken to the image of Kali and then to that of Durga. On each occasion he is asked to recite 'Bande Mataram'. In another scene in the novel some people shouted 'kill, kill the Nereys'. Others shouted 'Bande Mataram' 'Will the day come when we shall break mosques and build temples on their sites? 4
The song has five stanzas. Of these only the first two are the "approved ones". Jawaharlal Nehru was 'opposed to the last two stanzas'. The approved stanzas read:
"I bow to thee, Mother, richly watered, richly fruited,
cool with the winds of the south,
dark with the crops of the harvests,
the Mother!
Her nights rejoicing in the glory of
the moonlight, her hands clothed
beautifully with her trees in flowering
bloom, sweet of laughter, sweet of
speech, the Mother, giver of boons
giver of bliss!
The third stanza refers to 'Thy dreadful name', evidently, a reference to the Goddess Kali. The fourth is in the same vein. 'Thou art Durga, Lady and Queen, with her hands that strike and her swords of sheen'.
It is essentially a religious homage to the country conceived as a deity, 'a form of worship' as Majumdar aptly called it. The motherland is "conceived as the Goddess Kali, the source of all power and glory."
This, in the song itself. The context makes it worse. "The land of Bengal, and by extension all of India, became identified with the female aspect of Hindu deity, and the result was a concept of divine Motherland".5 How secular is such a song? The objection was not confined to mere bowing and it was voiced early in the day.
In his presidential address at the Second Session of the All-India Muslim League held in Amritsar on December 30, 1908, Syed Ali Imam said:
"I cannot say what you think, but when I find the most advanced province of India put forward the sectarian cry of 'Bande Mataram' as the national cry, and the sectarian Rakhibandhan as a national observance, my heart is filled with despair and disappointment; and the suspicion that under the cloak of nationalism Hindu nationalism is preached in India becomes a conviction. Has the experiment tried by Akbar and Aurangzeb failed again? Has 50 years of the peaceful spread of English education given the country only a revival of denominationalism? Gentlemen, do not misunderstand me. I believe that the establishment of conferences, associations and corporate bodies in different communities on denominational lines is necessary to give expression to denominational views, so that the builders of a truly national life in the country may have before them the crystallised need and aspirations of all sects...
"Regard for the feelings and sentiments, needs and requirements of all is the key-note to true Indian nationalism. It is more imperative where the susceptibilities of the two great communities, Hindus and Musalmans, are involved. Unreconciled, one will be as great a drag on the wheel of national progress as the other. I ask the architects of Indian nationalism, both in Calcutta and Poona, do they expect the Musalmans of India to accept 'Bande Mataram' and the Sivaji celebration? The Mohammedans may be weak in anything you please, but they are not weak in cherishing their traditions of their glorious past. I pray the Congress leaders to put before the country such a programme of political advancement as does not demand the sacrifice of the feelings of the Hindu or the Mohammedan, the Parsee or the Christian."
The Congress Working Committee, which met in Calcutta on October 26, 1937, under the presidentship of Nehru, adopted a long statement on the subject.6 It asked that the song should "be considered apart from the book." Recalling its use in the preceding 30 years, the resolution said:
"The song and the words thus became symbols of national resistance to British Imperialism in Bengal especially, and generally in other parts of India. The words 'Bande Mataram' became a slogan of power which inspired our people and a greeting which ever remind us of our struggle for national freedom.
"Gradually the use of the first two stanzas of the song spread to other provinces and a certain national significance began to attach to them. The rest of the song was very seldom used, and is even now known by few persons. These two stanzas described in tender language the beauty of (the) motherland and the abundance of her gifts. There was absolutely nothing in them to which objection could be from the religious or any other point of view... The other stanzas of the song are little known and hardly ever sung. They contain certain allusions and a religious ideology which may not be in keeping with the ideology of other religious groups in India.
"The Committee recognise the validity of the objection raised by Muslim friends to certain parts of the song. While the Committee have taken note of such objection insofar as it has intrinsic value, the Committee wish to point out that the modern evolution of the use of the song as part of National life is of infinitely greater importance than its setting in a historical novel before the national movement had taken shape. Taking all things into consideration, therefore, the Committee recommend that, wherever Bande Mataram is sung at national gatherings, only the first two stanzas should be sung, with perfect freedom to the organisers to sing any other song of an unobjectionable character, in addition to, or in the place of, the Bande Mataram song."
'National' songs do not need political surgery; the songs which do, do not win national acceptance. Against this was the fact of history that, however ill-advised, the song had come to be associated with the struggle for freedom. Gandhi advised Muslims to appreciate its historic association but counselled against any imposition. "No doubt, every act... must be purely voluntary on the part of either partner," he said at Alipore on August 23, 1947.
THE Government of India acquired this emotion-charged legacy. Its stand was defined in a statement by Prime Minister Nehru to the Constituent Assembly (Legislative) on August 25, 1948:7 Nehru said:
"The question of having a national anthem tune, to be played by orchestras and bands became an urgent one for us immediately after 15th August 1947. It was as important as that of having a national flag. The 'Jana Gana Mana' tune, slightly varied, had been adopted as a national anthem by the Indian National Army in South-East Asia, and had subsequently attained a degree of popularity in India also... I wrote to all the provincial Governors and asked their views about our adopting 'Jana Gana Mana' or any other song as the national anthem. I asked them to consult their Premiers before replying... Every one of these Governors, except one (the Governor of the Central Provinces), signified their approval of 'Jana Gana Mana'. Thereupon the Cabinet considered the matter and came to the decision that provisionally 'Jana Gana Mana' should be used as the tune for the national anthem, till such time as the Constituent Assembly came to a final decision. Instructions were issued accordingly to the provincial governments...
''It is unfortunate that some kind of argument has arisen as between 'Vande Mataram' and 'Jana Gana Mana'. 'Vande Mataram' is obviously and indisputably the premier national song of India, with a great historical tradition, and intimately connected with our struggle for freedom. That position it is bound to retain and no other song can displace it. It represents the position and poignancy of that struggle, but perhaps not so much the culmination of it. In regard to the national anthem tune, it was felt that the tune was more important than the words... It seemed therefore that while 'Vande Mataram' should continue to be the national song par excellence in India, the national anthem tune should be that of 'Jana Gana Mana', the wording of 'Jana Gana Mana' to be suitably altered to fit in with the existing circumstances.
"The question has to be considered by the Constituent Assembly, and it is open to that Assembly to decide as it chooses. It may decide on a completely new song or tune, if such is available."
A MORE definitive statement was made by the President of the Constituent Assembly, Rajendra Prasad, on January 24, 1950. He said: "There is one matter which has been pending for discussion, namely, the question of the national anthem. At one time it was thought that the matter might be brought up before the House, and a decision taken by the House by way of a resolution. But it has been felt that, instead of taking a formal decision by means of a resolution, it is better if I make a statement with regard to the national anthem. Accordingly, I make this statement... The composition consisting of the words and music known as 'Jana Gana Mana' is the national anthem of India, subject to such alterations in the words as the Government may authorise as occasion arises; and the song 'Vande Mataram', which has played a historic part in the struggle for Indian freedom, shall be honoured equally with Jana Gana Mana and shall have equal status with it. (Applause) I hope that will satisfy the Members."8
Mutual understanding will lead to the Gandhian formula - respect for the song but no imposition. But even more than that, if the problem were understood in depth, what would emerge is a far better appreciation of the reasons why the Muslims and the Congress drifted away from each other. Those reasons have many a lesson for us today as we build a secular India. Attempts at imposition reflect a conscious decision to break with the national secular ideal.
REFERENCES
1. Jaico; page 235.
2. British Paramountcy and Indian Renaissance, Part II: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1965; page 478.
3. Sources of Indian Tradition compiled by William Theodore de Bary and others; Columbia University Press; 1958; page 715.
4. Vide his essay "The Partition of Bengal and its Aftermath; The Indian Journal of Political Science; Volume XXX, April-June 1969, Number 2, pages 120-122.
5. D.F.Smith: India as a Secular State; Princeton University Press; 1963; page 90
6. Indian Annual Register, 1937, Volume II, p. 327.
7. Official Report on "Constituent Assembly Debates"; Third session, Part I, Volume VI, August 9-31, 1948.
8. Constituent Assembly Debates, Volume XII; January 24, 1950.
Source: http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl1601/16010940.htm
In support of Dr. Haneef
Dr. Mohammad Haneef is innocent. Not enough evidence is out there to suggest he was in anyway involved with people who were arrested in UK for failed terrorist plan. But in the new jungle law of post-9/11 world, you are guilty until proven innocent. Case of Dr. Haneef is most extreme. Even Australian Court did not think that there is any evidence to link him to any terrorist or their activities and therefore granted him bail.
But of course, we are forgetting that Dr. Haneef is a Muslim and even when court agreed that he is innocent he was not released. Australian Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews revoked his visa. Sure, Australia has any right to revoke their visa but then deport him to India, his country of origin.
But alas that did not happen and India bound doctor is behind bars. They can do this because they have no respect for Indians and contempt for Muslims. A Double whammy for the poor doctor, who was in Australia to serve Australians and earn a respectable living.
Unfortunately, Indian Muslims have remained silent on this issue, no vigil, no protest, no rally. Indian Muslim leaders and Indian Muslim organizations who are quick to condemn terrorism should also be quick in championing issues that concern us and protesting things that bother us.
If we are serious in making sure that terrorism does not find home amongst Indian Muslims then our intellectuals, leaders, and organizations need to be more outspoken. They should be able to speak their mind without fear. A major reason for support of Al-Qaida in the Arab world is due to the fact that only Al-Qaida was speaking what Arabs wanted to hear from their leaders.
Let this not happen in India. Let not terrorist and extremist take control of the debate and issues. Moderates can not be timid, they have to lead or lose the leadership position and all respect. This is what has happened in Arab countries. India provides democracy, stability and freedom that moderates can take advantage of nip all extremist tendencies in the bud by discussing and addressing all grievances.
I am happy that India has rightfully protested the illegal detention of one of its own by summoning Australian diplomat and complaining. GOI should be forceful and loud in their protest. Let the world know that an Indian life is not cheaper than any Australian, American or British. A nation of one billion and the largest democracy in the world deserve some respect.
Source: http://indianmuslims.in/in-support-of-dr-haneef/
But of course, we are forgetting that Dr. Haneef is a Muslim and even when court agreed that he is innocent he was not released. Australian Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews revoked his visa. Sure, Australia has any right to revoke their visa but then deport him to India, his country of origin.
But alas that did not happen and India bound doctor is behind bars. They can do this because they have no respect for Indians and contempt for Muslims. A Double whammy for the poor doctor, who was in Australia to serve Australians and earn a respectable living.
Unfortunately, Indian Muslims have remained silent on this issue, no vigil, no protest, no rally. Indian Muslim leaders and Indian Muslim organizations who are quick to condemn terrorism should also be quick in championing issues that concern us and protesting things that bother us.
If we are serious in making sure that terrorism does not find home amongst Indian Muslims then our intellectuals, leaders, and organizations need to be more outspoken. They should be able to speak their mind without fear. A major reason for support of Al-Qaida in the Arab world is due to the fact that only Al-Qaida was speaking what Arabs wanted to hear from their leaders.
Let this not happen in India. Let not terrorist and extremist take control of the debate and issues. Moderates can not be timid, they have to lead or lose the leadership position and all respect. This is what has happened in Arab countries. India provides democracy, stability and freedom that moderates can take advantage of nip all extremist tendencies in the bud by discussing and addressing all grievances.
I am happy that India has rightfully protested the illegal detention of one of its own by summoning Australian diplomat and complaining. GOI should be forceful and loud in their protest. Let the world know that an Indian life is not cheaper than any Australian, American or British. A nation of one billion and the largest democracy in the world deserve some respect.
Source: http://indianmuslims.in/in-support-of-dr-haneef/
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Israel 'used kids as human shields'
March 09, 2007 10:06am
THE Israeli army used two Palestinian children as "human shields" during an operation in the West Bank town of Nablus, an Israeli human rights group claimed today.
"During the recent Israeli army operation in Nablus, soldiers used two Palestinian children (a boy aged 15 and girl of 11) and a 24-year-old man as human shields,'' said B'Tselem.
A military spokesman said the army was looking into the charge.
The rights group, citing witness testimony, said soldiers had forced the three civilians to accompany them as they entered Nablus homes in search of Palestinian militants and weapons.
The soldiers were apparently "afraid that armed fighters could be hiding in the homes or that they could have been rigged with explosives", the group said.
"So what the two minors and the adult were forced to do posed a clear danger and the soldiers were aware of that,'' it said.
Israel's supreme court banned the use of human shields by the army in October 2005 as contrary to international law.
The army carried out several days of searches for arms factories and wanted militants in Nablus that ended on March 1.
One Palestinian was killed during the operation and several others were arrested.
Source: Australian News
THE Israeli army used two Palestinian children as "human shields" during an operation in the West Bank town of Nablus, an Israeli human rights group claimed today.
"During the recent Israeli army operation in Nablus, soldiers used two Palestinian children (a boy aged 15 and girl of 11) and a 24-year-old man as human shields,'' said B'Tselem.
A military spokesman said the army was looking into the charge.
The rights group, citing witness testimony, said soldiers had forced the three civilians to accompany them as they entered Nablus homes in search of Palestinian militants and weapons.
The soldiers were apparently "afraid that armed fighters could be hiding in the homes or that they could have been rigged with explosives", the group said.
"So what the two minors and the adult were forced to do posed a clear danger and the soldiers were aware of that,'' it said.
Israel's supreme court banned the use of human shields by the army in October 2005 as contrary to international law.
The army carried out several days of searches for arms factories and wanted militants in Nablus that ended on March 1.
One Palestinian was killed during the operation and several others were arrested.
Source: Australian News
Olmert 'planned Lebanon war before soldiers' kidnap'
By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem
Published: 09 March 2007
Ehud Olmert's decision to go to war in Lebanon in response to abductions of soldiers was taken as early as March 2006, according to a leak of his evidence to the commission investigating the war.
The report means that the military strategy was decided more than three months before it was triggered by Hizbollah's abductions of two soldiers on Israel's northern border in July. Israeli officials said this was broadly in line with what the Prime Minister has already told the cabinet.
Mr Olmert partly used his appearance two weeks ago before the Winograd Commission to defend himself against charges that the government stumbled unprepared into the five-week war.
But the report will fuel claims by some international critics of the operation that Israel, and perhaps the US, had for some time decided in favour of a military confrontation with the Lebanese group.
The report, in Haaretz, also suggests that Mr Olmert was told in May that Lebanon was ready to enforce UN resolution 1559, which prescribed the disarming of Hizbollah in return for withdrawal from Shaba Farms, the border zone occupied by Israel which is projected as a casus belli by Hizbollah, but which is also claimed by Syria. It says he passed the message to President Bush, Tony Blair and President Jacques Chirac.
According to the paper, Mr Olmert told the commission that he had held a series of meetings after becoming Prime Minister and had decided that in the event of abductions there should be air attacks, accompanied by a limited ground operation. He told the military that he wanted to decide ahead of any such event rather than make a snap decision at the time.
He also defended the much criticised expansion of the ground invasion in the last 48 hours of the war after the UN had agreed on a ceasefire-an operation, which cost the lives of 33 Israeli soldiers. He said the objective had been to influence the draft UN resolution, which he regarded as too unfavourable to Israel.
* The Israeli military said last night it was looking into a report by the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem that it used an 11-year-old girl, a 15-year-old boy and a 24-year-old man as "human shields" while searching for gunmen in its sweep of Nablus last month.
Source
Published: 09 March 2007
Ehud Olmert's decision to go to war in Lebanon in response to abductions of soldiers was taken as early as March 2006, according to a leak of his evidence to the commission investigating the war.
The report means that the military strategy was decided more than three months before it was triggered by Hizbollah's abductions of two soldiers on Israel's northern border in July. Israeli officials said this was broadly in line with what the Prime Minister has already told the cabinet.
Mr Olmert partly used his appearance two weeks ago before the Winograd Commission to defend himself against charges that the government stumbled unprepared into the five-week war.
But the report will fuel claims by some international critics of the operation that Israel, and perhaps the US, had for some time decided in favour of a military confrontation with the Lebanese group.
The report, in Haaretz, also suggests that Mr Olmert was told in May that Lebanon was ready to enforce UN resolution 1559, which prescribed the disarming of Hizbollah in return for withdrawal from Shaba Farms, the border zone occupied by Israel which is projected as a casus belli by Hizbollah, but which is also claimed by Syria. It says he passed the message to President Bush, Tony Blair and President Jacques Chirac.
According to the paper, Mr Olmert told the commission that he had held a series of meetings after becoming Prime Minister and had decided that in the event of abductions there should be air attacks, accompanied by a limited ground operation. He told the military that he wanted to decide ahead of any such event rather than make a snap decision at the time.
He also defended the much criticised expansion of the ground invasion in the last 48 hours of the war after the UN had agreed on a ceasefire-an operation, which cost the lives of 33 Israeli soldiers. He said the objective had been to influence the draft UN resolution, which he regarded as too unfavourable to Israel.
* The Israeli military said last night it was looking into a report by the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem that it used an 11-year-old girl, a 15-year-old boy and a 24-year-old man as "human shields" while searching for gunmen in its sweep of Nablus last month.
Source
Beyond Quagmire
A panel of experts convened by Rolling Stone agree that the war in Iraq is lost. The only question now is: How bad will the coming explosion be?
TIM DICKINSON
How bad will it be? Tell us what you think here.
The war in Iraq isn't over yet, but -- surge or no surge -- the United States has already lost. That's the grim consensus of a panel of experts assembled by Rolling Stone to assess the future of Iraq. "Even if we had a million men to go in, it's too late now," says retired four-star Gen. Tony McPeak, who served on the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Gulf War. "Humpty Dumpty can't be put back together again."
Those on the panel -- including diplomats, counterterror analysts and a former top military commander -- agree that President Bush's attempt to secure Baghdad will only succeed in dragging out the conflict, creating something far beyond any Vietnam-style "quagmire." The surge won't bring an end to the sectarian cleansing that has ravaged Iraq, as the newly empowered Shiite majority seeks to settle scores built up during centuries of oppressive rule by the Sunni minority. It will do nothing to defuse the powder keg that an independence-minded Kurdistan, in Iraq's northern provinces, poses to the governments of Turkey, Syria and Iran, which have long brutalized their own Kurdish separatists. And it will only worsen the global war on terror.
"Our invasion and occupation has created a cauldron that will continue to draw in the players in the Middle East for the foreseeable future," says Michael Scheuer, who led the CIA's hunt for Osama bin Laden. "By taking out Saddam, we have allowed the jihad to move 1,000 kilometers west, where it can project its power, its organizers, its theology into Turkey -- and from Turkey into Europe."
How bad will things get in Iraq -- and what price will the world ultimately pay for the president's decision to prolong the war? To answer those questions, we asked our panel to sketch out three distinct scenarios for Iraq: the best we can hope for, the most likely outcome and the worst that could happen.
The Rolling Stone Panel
Zbigniew Brzezinski
National security adviser to President Carter
Richard Clarke
Counterterrorism czar from 1992 to 2003
Nir Rosen
Author of In the Belly of the Green Bird, about Iraq’s spiral into civil war, speaking from Cairo, where he has been interviewing Iraqi refugees
Gen. Tony McPeak (retired)
Member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Gulf War
Bob Graham
Former chair, Senate Intelligence Committee
Chas Freeman
Ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War; president of the Middle East Policy Council
Paul Pillar
Former lead counterterrorism analyst for the CIA
Michael Scheuer
Former chief of the CIA’s Osama bin Laden unit; author of Imperial Hubris
Juan Cole
Professor of modern Middle East history at the University of Michigan
BEST-CASE SCENARIO
CIVIL WAR IN IRAQ AND A STRONGER AL QAEDA
Zbigniew Brzezinski: If we are willing to engage with all of Iraq's neighbors -- including Iran -- in a regional effort to contain the violence, the best we can hope for is an Iraq that is politically passive but hostile toward America.
Gen. Tony McPeak: It's not a question of whether we're going to leave Iraq -- it's a question of when. And everybody in Iraq knows that. So they say, "Fine. We'll stock arms and wait for you guys to leave. And then we'll do what we want."
But the administration has repeatedly highlighted the potential for chaos in Iraq after our departure as a reason we must stay and fight.
Richard Clarke: All the things they say will happen are already happening. Iraq is already a base for terrorists; there is already a civil war. We've got 150,000 troops there now and we can't stop it.
Nir Rosen: There is no best-case scenario for Iraq. It's complete anarchy now. No family is untouched by kidnappings, murders, ethnic cleansing -- everybody lives in a constant state of terror. Leaving aside Kurdistan, which is very different, there's nobody in Iraq who is safe. You can get killed for being a Sunni, for being a Shia, for being educated, for being part of the former regime, for being part of the current regime. The Americans are still killing Iraqi civilians left and right. There's no government in Iraq; it doesn't exist outside of the Green Zone. That's not only the government's fault, that's our fault: We deliberately created a weak government so that we would have final authority over everything in Iraq.
Michael Scheuer: Even in the best-case scenario, the disaster we're seeing now is nothing compared to the disaster that we'll see after we leave. The real issue here is American interest: The longer we stay, the more people we get killed. I don't think the longer we stay, the better we make Iraq. Probably the reverse.
What happens to the civil war between Iraq's Sunni and Shia Arabs when we leave?
Juan Cole: The civil war will go on for five or ten years -- that's inevitable. But the best-case scenario is, at the end of it they find a way to come back together as a nation-state, like Lebanon did in 1989.
Rosen: People are talking about a reconciliation process, but Iraqi Shias don't want to compromise with the Sunnis. They don't have to. There's going to be a genocide of Sunnis in Baghdad. The Shia have the numbers to do it; they can absorb all the Sunni car bombs it takes. The Americans aren't capable of stopping it; they can't tell a Sunni from a Shia. The best you can hope for is that it doesn't spill into the neighboring countries.
McPeak: You have to hope that Iraq devolves into a federal state with three strong regional governments. But that has its downsides: The Turks would go berserk. They would see Kurdistan as a base for the Kurdish insurgency inside Turkey, which has bedeviled them like the IRA in Ireland or the Basques in Spain. And if Iraq devolves into three separate "stans," then it's going to be pretty tough for Sunnistan not to provide a retirement home for Al Qaeda agents. It's got warts all over it -- but among the "don't call my baby ugly" possibilities in this world, that looks the prettiest.
So even in the best of scenarios, Al Qaeda has a lasting base in Iraq?
Paul Pillar: The president made it sound like Osama bin Laden is poised to march into Baghdad and take up residence in one of Saddam's old palaces and rule this terrorist state. Nothing of the sort is possible -- even as a worst-case scenario. It is true that five years from now, the same people honing their skills in Anbar province may form the cell that will try to pull off another 9/11. But that's going to happen regardless of what we do. We have the best chance of minimizing those sorts of costs by getting out. At least that takes away the anti-American cause célèbre effect of our presence there.
Scheuer: No matter what happens now, the Islamists will have beaten both of the superpowers -- first the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and now the United States in the heart of Islam. The impact of that in Islamic civilization is going to be enormous. We have made bin Laden a prophet: His organizing concept for Al Qaeda was "The Russians are a lot tougher than the Americans. If we can beat the Russians, then we can eventually beat the Americans." Even more important, Al Qaeda will have contiguous territory on the Arab peninsula to attack from.
Where does that leave Israel?
Scheuer: The neoconservatives and their war in Iraq have made Israeli security worse than at any time since 1967. You'll see more and more people trying to launch attacks in Israel who are not Palestinian or Lebanese. None of it bodes well for a Middle East peace settlement.
MOST LIKELY SCENARIO
YEARS OF ETHNIC CLEANSING AND WAR WITH IRAN
McPeak: We're going to see a full-scale intercommunal war that may not burn out until one side is all dead, all gone. The Kurds would like to sit on the sidelines, but I don't see how they stay out, especially up in the Kirkuk area, where they sit on a lot of oil. This is going to be ethnic cleansing like we had in Kosovo or Bosnia -- but written big, in capital letters. And we can't stop it.
Bob Graham: If you're looking for an analogy, it's going to be a heightened version of the civil war that ravaged Lebanon for fifteen years.
Scheuer: There isn't any upper limit to how many people could get killed. Depending on how long the war lasts -- a million casualties?
So what kind of government is Iraq most likely to be left with when all is said and done?
McPeak: A Shia dictatorship headed by some lieutenant colonel who we don't even know yet. It's a restoration of Saddam Hussein, except now he's Shia, and maybe he's in religious robes rather than a uniform.
So forget about democracy?
Pillar: Stability and lowering the bloodshed is the range of outcomes and expectations we ought to be talking about now, not looking for Switzerland on the Tigris or anything remotely resembling a liberal democracy. A Shia Saddam -- without nearly as much brutality, but still a strongman -- is actually one of the best hopes.
Chas Freeman: The most efficient way to avoid mass killings is to help the Shiites win fast, consolidate their damn dictatorship and get the hell out. The level of anarchy and hatred and emotional disturbance is such that it's very hard to imagine anything except a Saddam-style reign of terror succeeding in pacifying the place.
Where does that leave us with regard to Iran?
McPeak: Iran's influence will have been increased geometrically. We're already the losers in this, and now we become the big-time losers.
Freeman: The net effect of our policies has been to make the area safe for Iran, which I guess is why we're now threatening attacks on Iran.
Rosen: Our Sunni allies in the region, the so-called moderate states -- dictatorships like Jordan and Saudi Arabia -- are pushing the U.S. to switch sides and support the Sunnis. We've been working up to that, obviously. The whole buildup to a new war against Iran, which sounds so much like the buildup in 2002, is part of that. You no longer hear about Al Qaeda in Iraq. More and more we're hearing about Iran and Shias.
Graham: This administration seems to be getting ready to make -- at a much more significant, escalated level -- the same mistake we made in Iran that we made in Iraq. If Iraq has been a disaster, this would be multiple times Iraq. The extent to which this could be the horror of the twenty-first century is hard to exaggerate.
Brzezinski: If the war continues without any American willingness to accommodate regionally and to pull out, the Iraq War will be extended to Iran. And if we get involved in a war with Iran, that raises the prospect of a twenty-year-long involvement in protracted violence in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and probably Pakistan. I'm not a prophet, but if the president doesn't change course, then the more grim prognosis is a likely one.
WORST-CASE SCENARIO
WORLD WAR III
Freeman: This could become the Islamic equivalent of the Thirty Years War between Protestants and Catholics in Europe in the 1600s -- a religious schism that blossoms into overt mayhem and murder and massacres and warfare. The various Iraqi factions will obtain the backing of other Middle Eastern states as they conduct their ideological and ethnic struggles. It will be a free-for-all that spreads beyond the anarchic zone of Iraq.
Scheuer: The Shiites in Iran will not tolerate the re-emergence of a Sunni government in Iraq. And the last thing the Saudis, Kuwaitis, Egyptians, Jordanians and the rest of the Sunni-dominated states will tolerate is letting the Shia control another oil-rich state in the Muslim heartland. So you're going to see those states running guns and money to Sunni fighters in Iraq. For Jordan and Egypt, this is a golden opportunity to send their young firebrands to fight in Iraq as they did in Afghanistan. It's kind of a pressure-release valve for Sunni dictatorships: People who would be out causing problems because their governments aren't Islamic enough will be out in Iraq fighting the ultimate heretics, the Shia.
So this could explode into a wider regional conflict?
Clarke: I find it difficult to walk through the scenario which creates the wider regional war. The Saudi, Jordanian and Syrian leaders are all rational. The Iranians, despite what we may think of them, are very rational actors, from their perspective. So the idea that any of these nations is going to want to have a multination war is hard to understand. These scenarios the administration talks about for wider regional war remind me of the "domino effect" in Vietnam. We were always told while in Vietnam that if we pulled out, it would result in the fall of Indonesia, the fall of Malaysia, the fall of Thailand, the fall of the Philippines. And, of course, it didn't.
Graham: I disagree. I believe the chance that the chaos in Iraq could bring countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia into the mix is in the forty to fifty percent range. The big danger is what I call the August 1914 Syndrome. The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo -- what would have been in the scale of history a minor event -- set in motion activities that turned out to be beyond the ability of the Western powers to control. And they ended up in one of the most brutal wars in man's history by accident. If the Saudis come in heavily on the side of the Sunnis, as they have threatened to do, and the Iranians -- directly or through shadow groups like Hezbollah -- become active on behalf of the Shiites, and the Turks and the Kurds get into a border conflict, the flames could spread throughout the region. The real nightmare beyond the nightmare is if the large Islamic populations in Western Europe become inflamed. Then it could be a global situation.
Rosen: Iraq will be the battleground where the Sunni-Shia conflict will be fought, but it won't be limited to Iraq. It will spread. Pandora's box is open. We didn't just open it, we opened it and threw fuel into it and threw matches into it. You'll soon see Sunni militias destabilizing countries like Jordan and Syria -- where the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood is very strong. It took about ten years for the Palestinians to become politicized and militarized when they were first expelled from Palestine. You're likely to see something like that occurring in the huge Iraqi refugee populations in Syria and Jordan. King Abdullah of Jordan is resented for being an American stooge and an accomplice with Israel. I'm convinced that the monarchy in Jordan will fall as a result of this, and Israel will be confronted with a frontline state on its longest border with an Arab country.
Scheuer: I can't help but think we've signed Jordan's death warrant. The country is already on a simmering boil because of the king's oppression of Islamists. It could turn into a police state like Egypt, or an incoherent, revolving-door-type government like Lebanon is becoming now.
Rosen: You're going to see borders changing, governments falling. Lebanon is already on the precipice. Throughout the region, government officials are terrified. Nobody knows how to stop it. This is World War III. How far will it spread? Anywhere there are Islamic movements, like in Somalia, in Sudan, in Yemen. Pakistan has always had Sunni-Shia fighting. The flow of Iraqi refugees will at some point affect Europe.
McPeak: The worst case? Iraq's Sunnis begin to be backed into a corner, then the Sunni governments -- Jordan, Saudi Arabia -- jump in. Israel sees that it's threatened by these developments. Once the Israelis get involved, then everybody piles on. And you've got nuclear events going off in the Middle East. That would be about as bad as it could get.
Not to be crass, but what does that kind of conflict do to the global oil supply?
Cole: During the war between Iraq and Iran, Saddam and Khomeini didn't destroy each other's oil-producing capabilities, because they knew it would make each of them a Fourth World country. But if you get a big multicountry guerrilla war, guerrillas could do what they've been doing in northern Iraq: Hit the oil pipelines. Guerrillas aren't calculating it the way states are as far as mutually assured destruction. If you got pipeline sabotage in Iran and Saudi Arabia and southern Iraq, you could take twelve percent of the world's petroleum production off the market. That looks like the second Great Depression.
McPeak: This is a dark chapter in our history. Whatever else happens, our country's international standing has been frittered away by people who don't have the foggiest understanding of how the hell the world works. America has been conducting an experiment for the past six years, trying to validate the proposition that it really doesn't make any difference who you elect president. Now we know the result of that experiment [laughs]. If a guy is stupid, it makes a big difference.
Source
TIM DICKINSON
How bad will it be? Tell us what you think here.
The war in Iraq isn't over yet, but -- surge or no surge -- the United States has already lost. That's the grim consensus of a panel of experts assembled by Rolling Stone to assess the future of Iraq. "Even if we had a million men to go in, it's too late now," says retired four-star Gen. Tony McPeak, who served on the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Gulf War. "Humpty Dumpty can't be put back together again."
Those on the panel -- including diplomats, counterterror analysts and a former top military commander -- agree that President Bush's attempt to secure Baghdad will only succeed in dragging out the conflict, creating something far beyond any Vietnam-style "quagmire." The surge won't bring an end to the sectarian cleansing that has ravaged Iraq, as the newly empowered Shiite majority seeks to settle scores built up during centuries of oppressive rule by the Sunni minority. It will do nothing to defuse the powder keg that an independence-minded Kurdistan, in Iraq's northern provinces, poses to the governments of Turkey, Syria and Iran, which have long brutalized their own Kurdish separatists. And it will only worsen the global war on terror.
"Our invasion and occupation has created a cauldron that will continue to draw in the players in the Middle East for the foreseeable future," says Michael Scheuer, who led the CIA's hunt for Osama bin Laden. "By taking out Saddam, we have allowed the jihad to move 1,000 kilometers west, where it can project its power, its organizers, its theology into Turkey -- and from Turkey into Europe."
How bad will things get in Iraq -- and what price will the world ultimately pay for the president's decision to prolong the war? To answer those questions, we asked our panel to sketch out three distinct scenarios for Iraq: the best we can hope for, the most likely outcome and the worst that could happen.
The Rolling Stone Panel
Zbigniew Brzezinski
National security adviser to President Carter
Richard Clarke
Counterterrorism czar from 1992 to 2003
Nir Rosen
Author of In the Belly of the Green Bird, about Iraq’s spiral into civil war, speaking from Cairo, where he has been interviewing Iraqi refugees
Gen. Tony McPeak (retired)
Member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Gulf War
Bob Graham
Former chair, Senate Intelligence Committee
Chas Freeman
Ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War; president of the Middle East Policy Council
Paul Pillar
Former lead counterterrorism analyst for the CIA
Michael Scheuer
Former chief of the CIA’s Osama bin Laden unit; author of Imperial Hubris
Juan Cole
Professor of modern Middle East history at the University of Michigan
BEST-CASE SCENARIO
CIVIL WAR IN IRAQ AND A STRONGER AL QAEDA
Zbigniew Brzezinski: If we are willing to engage with all of Iraq's neighbors -- including Iran -- in a regional effort to contain the violence, the best we can hope for is an Iraq that is politically passive but hostile toward America.
Gen. Tony McPeak: It's not a question of whether we're going to leave Iraq -- it's a question of when. And everybody in Iraq knows that. So they say, "Fine. We'll stock arms and wait for you guys to leave. And then we'll do what we want."
But the administration has repeatedly highlighted the potential for chaos in Iraq after our departure as a reason we must stay and fight.
Richard Clarke: All the things they say will happen are already happening. Iraq is already a base for terrorists; there is already a civil war. We've got 150,000 troops there now and we can't stop it.
Nir Rosen: There is no best-case scenario for Iraq. It's complete anarchy now. No family is untouched by kidnappings, murders, ethnic cleansing -- everybody lives in a constant state of terror. Leaving aside Kurdistan, which is very different, there's nobody in Iraq who is safe. You can get killed for being a Sunni, for being a Shia, for being educated, for being part of the former regime, for being part of the current regime. The Americans are still killing Iraqi civilians left and right. There's no government in Iraq; it doesn't exist outside of the Green Zone. That's not only the government's fault, that's our fault: We deliberately created a weak government so that we would have final authority over everything in Iraq.
Michael Scheuer: Even in the best-case scenario, the disaster we're seeing now is nothing compared to the disaster that we'll see after we leave. The real issue here is American interest: The longer we stay, the more people we get killed. I don't think the longer we stay, the better we make Iraq. Probably the reverse.
What happens to the civil war between Iraq's Sunni and Shia Arabs when we leave?
Juan Cole: The civil war will go on for five or ten years -- that's inevitable. But the best-case scenario is, at the end of it they find a way to come back together as a nation-state, like Lebanon did in 1989.
Rosen: People are talking about a reconciliation process, but Iraqi Shias don't want to compromise with the Sunnis. They don't have to. There's going to be a genocide of Sunnis in Baghdad. The Shia have the numbers to do it; they can absorb all the Sunni car bombs it takes. The Americans aren't capable of stopping it; they can't tell a Sunni from a Shia. The best you can hope for is that it doesn't spill into the neighboring countries.
McPeak: You have to hope that Iraq devolves into a federal state with three strong regional governments. But that has its downsides: The Turks would go berserk. They would see Kurdistan as a base for the Kurdish insurgency inside Turkey, which has bedeviled them like the IRA in Ireland or the Basques in Spain. And if Iraq devolves into three separate "stans," then it's going to be pretty tough for Sunnistan not to provide a retirement home for Al Qaeda agents. It's got warts all over it -- but among the "don't call my baby ugly" possibilities in this world, that looks the prettiest.
So even in the best of scenarios, Al Qaeda has a lasting base in Iraq?
Paul Pillar: The president made it sound like Osama bin Laden is poised to march into Baghdad and take up residence in one of Saddam's old palaces and rule this terrorist state. Nothing of the sort is possible -- even as a worst-case scenario. It is true that five years from now, the same people honing their skills in Anbar province may form the cell that will try to pull off another 9/11. But that's going to happen regardless of what we do. We have the best chance of minimizing those sorts of costs by getting out. At least that takes away the anti-American cause célèbre effect of our presence there.
Scheuer: No matter what happens now, the Islamists will have beaten both of the superpowers -- first the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and now the United States in the heart of Islam. The impact of that in Islamic civilization is going to be enormous. We have made bin Laden a prophet: His organizing concept for Al Qaeda was "The Russians are a lot tougher than the Americans. If we can beat the Russians, then we can eventually beat the Americans." Even more important, Al Qaeda will have contiguous territory on the Arab peninsula to attack from.
Where does that leave Israel?
Scheuer: The neoconservatives and their war in Iraq have made Israeli security worse than at any time since 1967. You'll see more and more people trying to launch attacks in Israel who are not Palestinian or Lebanese. None of it bodes well for a Middle East peace settlement.
MOST LIKELY SCENARIO
YEARS OF ETHNIC CLEANSING AND WAR WITH IRAN
McPeak: We're going to see a full-scale intercommunal war that may not burn out until one side is all dead, all gone. The Kurds would like to sit on the sidelines, but I don't see how they stay out, especially up in the Kirkuk area, where they sit on a lot of oil. This is going to be ethnic cleansing like we had in Kosovo or Bosnia -- but written big, in capital letters. And we can't stop it.
Bob Graham: If you're looking for an analogy, it's going to be a heightened version of the civil war that ravaged Lebanon for fifteen years.
Scheuer: There isn't any upper limit to how many people could get killed. Depending on how long the war lasts -- a million casualties?
So what kind of government is Iraq most likely to be left with when all is said and done?
McPeak: A Shia dictatorship headed by some lieutenant colonel who we don't even know yet. It's a restoration of Saddam Hussein, except now he's Shia, and maybe he's in religious robes rather than a uniform.
So forget about democracy?
Pillar: Stability and lowering the bloodshed is the range of outcomes and expectations we ought to be talking about now, not looking for Switzerland on the Tigris or anything remotely resembling a liberal democracy. A Shia Saddam -- without nearly as much brutality, but still a strongman -- is actually one of the best hopes.
Chas Freeman: The most efficient way to avoid mass killings is to help the Shiites win fast, consolidate their damn dictatorship and get the hell out. The level of anarchy and hatred and emotional disturbance is such that it's very hard to imagine anything except a Saddam-style reign of terror succeeding in pacifying the place.
Where does that leave us with regard to Iran?
McPeak: Iran's influence will have been increased geometrically. We're already the losers in this, and now we become the big-time losers.
Freeman: The net effect of our policies has been to make the area safe for Iran, which I guess is why we're now threatening attacks on Iran.
Rosen: Our Sunni allies in the region, the so-called moderate states -- dictatorships like Jordan and Saudi Arabia -- are pushing the U.S. to switch sides and support the Sunnis. We've been working up to that, obviously. The whole buildup to a new war against Iran, which sounds so much like the buildup in 2002, is part of that. You no longer hear about Al Qaeda in Iraq. More and more we're hearing about Iran and Shias.
Graham: This administration seems to be getting ready to make -- at a much more significant, escalated level -- the same mistake we made in Iran that we made in Iraq. If Iraq has been a disaster, this would be multiple times Iraq. The extent to which this could be the horror of the twenty-first century is hard to exaggerate.
Brzezinski: If the war continues without any American willingness to accommodate regionally and to pull out, the Iraq War will be extended to Iran. And if we get involved in a war with Iran, that raises the prospect of a twenty-year-long involvement in protracted violence in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and probably Pakistan. I'm not a prophet, but if the president doesn't change course, then the more grim prognosis is a likely one.
WORST-CASE SCENARIO
WORLD WAR III
Freeman: This could become the Islamic equivalent of the Thirty Years War between Protestants and Catholics in Europe in the 1600s -- a religious schism that blossoms into overt mayhem and murder and massacres and warfare. The various Iraqi factions will obtain the backing of other Middle Eastern states as they conduct their ideological and ethnic struggles. It will be a free-for-all that spreads beyond the anarchic zone of Iraq.
Scheuer: The Shiites in Iran will not tolerate the re-emergence of a Sunni government in Iraq. And the last thing the Saudis, Kuwaitis, Egyptians, Jordanians and the rest of the Sunni-dominated states will tolerate is letting the Shia control another oil-rich state in the Muslim heartland. So you're going to see those states running guns and money to Sunni fighters in Iraq. For Jordan and Egypt, this is a golden opportunity to send their young firebrands to fight in Iraq as they did in Afghanistan. It's kind of a pressure-release valve for Sunni dictatorships: People who would be out causing problems because their governments aren't Islamic enough will be out in Iraq fighting the ultimate heretics, the Shia.
So this could explode into a wider regional conflict?
Clarke: I find it difficult to walk through the scenario which creates the wider regional war. The Saudi, Jordanian and Syrian leaders are all rational. The Iranians, despite what we may think of them, are very rational actors, from their perspective. So the idea that any of these nations is going to want to have a multination war is hard to understand. These scenarios the administration talks about for wider regional war remind me of the "domino effect" in Vietnam. We were always told while in Vietnam that if we pulled out, it would result in the fall of Indonesia, the fall of Malaysia, the fall of Thailand, the fall of the Philippines. And, of course, it didn't.
Graham: I disagree. I believe the chance that the chaos in Iraq could bring countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia into the mix is in the forty to fifty percent range. The big danger is what I call the August 1914 Syndrome. The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo -- what would have been in the scale of history a minor event -- set in motion activities that turned out to be beyond the ability of the Western powers to control. And they ended up in one of the most brutal wars in man's history by accident. If the Saudis come in heavily on the side of the Sunnis, as they have threatened to do, and the Iranians -- directly or through shadow groups like Hezbollah -- become active on behalf of the Shiites, and the Turks and the Kurds get into a border conflict, the flames could spread throughout the region. The real nightmare beyond the nightmare is if the large Islamic populations in Western Europe become inflamed. Then it could be a global situation.
Rosen: Iraq will be the battleground where the Sunni-Shia conflict will be fought, but it won't be limited to Iraq. It will spread. Pandora's box is open. We didn't just open it, we opened it and threw fuel into it and threw matches into it. You'll soon see Sunni militias destabilizing countries like Jordan and Syria -- where the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood is very strong. It took about ten years for the Palestinians to become politicized and militarized when they were first expelled from Palestine. You're likely to see something like that occurring in the huge Iraqi refugee populations in Syria and Jordan. King Abdullah of Jordan is resented for being an American stooge and an accomplice with Israel. I'm convinced that the monarchy in Jordan will fall as a result of this, and Israel will be confronted with a frontline state on its longest border with an Arab country.
Scheuer: I can't help but think we've signed Jordan's death warrant. The country is already on a simmering boil because of the king's oppression of Islamists. It could turn into a police state like Egypt, or an incoherent, revolving-door-type government like Lebanon is becoming now.
Rosen: You're going to see borders changing, governments falling. Lebanon is already on the precipice. Throughout the region, government officials are terrified. Nobody knows how to stop it. This is World War III. How far will it spread? Anywhere there are Islamic movements, like in Somalia, in Sudan, in Yemen. Pakistan has always had Sunni-Shia fighting. The flow of Iraqi refugees will at some point affect Europe.
McPeak: The worst case? Iraq's Sunnis begin to be backed into a corner, then the Sunni governments -- Jordan, Saudi Arabia -- jump in. Israel sees that it's threatened by these developments. Once the Israelis get involved, then everybody piles on. And you've got nuclear events going off in the Middle East. That would be about as bad as it could get.
Not to be crass, but what does that kind of conflict do to the global oil supply?
Cole: During the war between Iraq and Iran, Saddam and Khomeini didn't destroy each other's oil-producing capabilities, because they knew it would make each of them a Fourth World country. But if you get a big multicountry guerrilla war, guerrillas could do what they've been doing in northern Iraq: Hit the oil pipelines. Guerrillas aren't calculating it the way states are as far as mutually assured destruction. If you got pipeline sabotage in Iran and Saudi Arabia and southern Iraq, you could take twelve percent of the world's petroleum production off the market. That looks like the second Great Depression.
McPeak: This is a dark chapter in our history. Whatever else happens, our country's international standing has been frittered away by people who don't have the foggiest understanding of how the hell the world works. America has been conducting an experiment for the past six years, trying to validate the proposition that it really doesn't make any difference who you elect president. Now we know the result of that experiment [laughs]. If a guy is stupid, it makes a big difference.
Source
Israel recalls 'naked ambassador'
Israel has recalled its ambassador to El Salvador after he was found drunk and naked apart from bondage gear.
Reports say he was able to identify himself to police only after a rubber ball had been removed from his mouth.
A foreign ministry official described Ambassador Tzuriel Refael's behaviour as an unprecedented embarrassment.
The incident, which happened two weeks ago, has renewed calls for a radical overhaul of the way Israel appoints and promotes its diplomats.
San Salvador was Mr Refael's first post as ambassador. He was promoted in 2006 from a technical position in the ministry which had involved several foreign postings.
He was being recalled, although he had not broken any laws, foreign ministry spokeswoman Zehavit Ben-Hillel told reporters.
She confirmed that lurid reports of the incident in the Israeli press were accurate.
"We're talking about behaviour that is unbecoming of a diplomat," she said.
Israel has been rocked by a recent series of misconduct and corruption scandals, shaking public confidence in the political leadership.
Haaretz website reports that police found Mr Refael in the Israeli embassy compound where he had been found bound, gagged and naked apart from sado-masochistic sex accessories.
In 2006, Israel's diplomatic service was criticised by the public watchdog for its appointments system.
The state comptroller's report singled out the foreign ministry appointments committee for its inadequate examination of candidates and lack of transparency.
Source
Reports say he was able to identify himself to police only after a rubber ball had been removed from his mouth.
A foreign ministry official described Ambassador Tzuriel Refael's behaviour as an unprecedented embarrassment.
The incident, which happened two weeks ago, has renewed calls for a radical overhaul of the way Israel appoints and promotes its diplomats.
San Salvador was Mr Refael's first post as ambassador. He was promoted in 2006 from a technical position in the ministry which had involved several foreign postings.
He was being recalled, although he had not broken any laws, foreign ministry spokeswoman Zehavit Ben-Hillel told reporters.
She confirmed that lurid reports of the incident in the Israeli press were accurate.
"We're talking about behaviour that is unbecoming of a diplomat," she said.
Israel has been rocked by a recent series of misconduct and corruption scandals, shaking public confidence in the political leadership.
Haaretz website reports that police found Mr Refael in the Israeli embassy compound where he had been found bound, gagged and naked apart from sado-masochistic sex accessories.
In 2006, Israel's diplomatic service was criticised by the public watchdog for its appointments system.
The state comptroller's report singled out the foreign ministry appointments committee for its inadequate examination of candidates and lack of transparency.
Source
U.S. Soldiers Accused of Shooting Civilians in Sadr City
BAGHDAD, March 9 — American soldiers were accused Friday of opening fire on a car carrying a family in the Baghdad district of Sadr City, killing a man and his two young daughters and wounding his son.
The allegations were made by the man’s wife, who was in the car, and members of the Iraqi police, who were at the scene. The American military command said in a statement on Friday that it was investigating an episode in Sadr City involving “an escalation of force,” but it could not confirm any details of the account given by the man’s wife.
The woman, Ikhlas Thulsiqar, said her family had turned from an alleyway onto a main street guarded by American soldiers. Seconds later, she said, a fusillade of bullets ripped into the car.
“They killed the father of my children! The Americans killed my daughters!” she sobbed, sitting crumpled on the floor of Imam Ali Hospital in Sadr City where rescuers had taken the victims, including her daughters, 9 and 11, and her son, 7.
“That is a serious allegation, and we’ll take a look and figure out what happened,” Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a military spokesman in Baghdad, said late Friday.
The deadly shooting appeared to be the first in the working-class district involving either the Iraqi or American military since a joint force of more than 1,100 American and Iraqi troops began a house-to-house search for weapons and militants there last Sunday.
The episode had the potential to inflame anti-American sentiment in the neighborhood and reawaken the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia that has largely controlled the district but has agreed to stand down to allow the sweep to take place.
The military operation in Sadr City, part of an effort to pacify the capital by flooding the streets with security forces, has served as a test of a new, fragile relationship between the authorities and Moktada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric who controls the Mahdi Army and commands a vast following among poor Shiites.
The military incursion followed protracted negotiations between representatives of Mr. Sadr, neighborhood leaders and government officials. Mr. Sadr vowed not to impede the crackdown in Sadr City or elsewhere, and privately ordered his fighters not to resist the military sweeps regardless of the level of provocation.
But Mr. Sadr, a fierce nationalist who has long demanded a rapid American withdrawal from Iraq, has also complained publicly about the American involvement in the Sadr City operation.
Local leaders, in turn, have also warned that a heavy-handed or prolonged American engagement in Sadr City might incite the residents and their militia to retaliate. But in the past few days, residents say, American forces have moved with great care through the neighborhood and have mostly remained on the street while their Iraqi counterparts have conducted the house-to-house searches.
Also Friday, the purported leader of an insurgent umbrella group, the Islamic State of Iraq, was captured in a raid on the western outskirts of Baghdad, according to Iraqi state television and The Associated Press, which quoted a top Iraqi military spokesman.
The spokesman, Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, told The A.P. that the man, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, was caught in a raid in the Abu Ghraib district and was identified by another detainee. American officials had no confirmation of the capture.
Last Sunday, Iraqi officials announced that they may have captured Mr. Baghdadi in Diyala Province, north of Baghdad, but the suspect turned out to be someone else. The Islamic State of Iraq has claimed responsibility for numerous major attacks in Iraq, including the kidnapping last week of 18 people, most of them police officers, who were subsequently killed.
In Diyala, American forces on Friday shot and killed three Iraqi Army soldiers in a military pickup truck after they failed to obey an American order to stop, Iraqi military officials said.
The spokesman for the Defense Ministry, Muhammad al-Askary, said the military was investigating the episode, which took place north of Baquba, though it appeared to be “a mistake.” He said the soldiers were wearing uniforms and were in a vehicle with military markings.
According to Colonel Garver, the American military was also investigating the matter. “We understand there were three Iraqi Army soldiers killed in this engagement, and it is too early to tell the details surrounding the event,” he said.
American and Iraqi forces are fighting a growing Sunni insurgent threat in Diyala, which has become one of the bloodiest sectarian battlegrounds in Iraq. On Friday, the American commander for northern Iraq, Maj. Gen. Benjamin R. Mixon, said he had asked for more troops in the province.
General Mixon told reporters at the Pentagon in a videolink from Iraq that he had already shifted troops to Diyala from elsewhere in northern Iraq and requested reinforcements from the central command in Baghdad.
He did not reveal how many additional troops he had requested, but he told reporters to “keep an eye on what goes on in Diyala over the next couple of weeks.” On Thursday, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, said Diyala would “very likely” get more troops.
In Hibhib, a town in Diyala with an entrenched insurgency, gunmen from the Islamic State of Iraq laid siege to a police station on Friday, killing one policeman and forcing others to flee. They then looted it of weapons and equipment, burned several police cars and blew up the building before escaping, police officials said.
Four people in Baghdad, each in a different neighborhood, were killed by sniper fire on Friday, according to an official at the Interior Ministry. The official also said at least 10 bodies were found dumped around the capital.
The American military reported that a marine was killed Friday during a combat operation in Anbar Province.
On Friday, the satellite channel Al Jazeera reported that Raouf Abdel-Rahman, the Iraqi judge who sentenced Saddam Hussein to death, had asked for asylum in Britain. The British Home Office would not confirm the report, saying it does not discuss individual cases.
Ahmad Fadam contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Baghdad and Baquba.
Source
The allegations were made by the man’s wife, who was in the car, and members of the Iraqi police, who were at the scene. The American military command said in a statement on Friday that it was investigating an episode in Sadr City involving “an escalation of force,” but it could not confirm any details of the account given by the man’s wife.
The woman, Ikhlas Thulsiqar, said her family had turned from an alleyway onto a main street guarded by American soldiers. Seconds later, she said, a fusillade of bullets ripped into the car.
“They killed the father of my children! The Americans killed my daughters!” she sobbed, sitting crumpled on the floor of Imam Ali Hospital in Sadr City where rescuers had taken the victims, including her daughters, 9 and 11, and her son, 7.
“That is a serious allegation, and we’ll take a look and figure out what happened,” Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a military spokesman in Baghdad, said late Friday.
The deadly shooting appeared to be the first in the working-class district involving either the Iraqi or American military since a joint force of more than 1,100 American and Iraqi troops began a house-to-house search for weapons and militants there last Sunday.
The episode had the potential to inflame anti-American sentiment in the neighborhood and reawaken the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia that has largely controlled the district but has agreed to stand down to allow the sweep to take place.
The military operation in Sadr City, part of an effort to pacify the capital by flooding the streets with security forces, has served as a test of a new, fragile relationship between the authorities and Moktada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric who controls the Mahdi Army and commands a vast following among poor Shiites.
The military incursion followed protracted negotiations between representatives of Mr. Sadr, neighborhood leaders and government officials. Mr. Sadr vowed not to impede the crackdown in Sadr City or elsewhere, and privately ordered his fighters not to resist the military sweeps regardless of the level of provocation.
But Mr. Sadr, a fierce nationalist who has long demanded a rapid American withdrawal from Iraq, has also complained publicly about the American involvement in the Sadr City operation.
Local leaders, in turn, have also warned that a heavy-handed or prolonged American engagement in Sadr City might incite the residents and their militia to retaliate. But in the past few days, residents say, American forces have moved with great care through the neighborhood and have mostly remained on the street while their Iraqi counterparts have conducted the house-to-house searches.
Also Friday, the purported leader of an insurgent umbrella group, the Islamic State of Iraq, was captured in a raid on the western outskirts of Baghdad, according to Iraqi state television and The Associated Press, which quoted a top Iraqi military spokesman.
The spokesman, Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, told The A.P. that the man, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, was caught in a raid in the Abu Ghraib district and was identified by another detainee. American officials had no confirmation of the capture.
Last Sunday, Iraqi officials announced that they may have captured Mr. Baghdadi in Diyala Province, north of Baghdad, but the suspect turned out to be someone else. The Islamic State of Iraq has claimed responsibility for numerous major attacks in Iraq, including the kidnapping last week of 18 people, most of them police officers, who were subsequently killed.
In Diyala, American forces on Friday shot and killed three Iraqi Army soldiers in a military pickup truck after they failed to obey an American order to stop, Iraqi military officials said.
The spokesman for the Defense Ministry, Muhammad al-Askary, said the military was investigating the episode, which took place north of Baquba, though it appeared to be “a mistake.” He said the soldiers were wearing uniforms and were in a vehicle with military markings.
According to Colonel Garver, the American military was also investigating the matter. “We understand there were three Iraqi Army soldiers killed in this engagement, and it is too early to tell the details surrounding the event,” he said.
American and Iraqi forces are fighting a growing Sunni insurgent threat in Diyala, which has become one of the bloodiest sectarian battlegrounds in Iraq. On Friday, the American commander for northern Iraq, Maj. Gen. Benjamin R. Mixon, said he had asked for more troops in the province.
General Mixon told reporters at the Pentagon in a videolink from Iraq that he had already shifted troops to Diyala from elsewhere in northern Iraq and requested reinforcements from the central command in Baghdad.
He did not reveal how many additional troops he had requested, but he told reporters to “keep an eye on what goes on in Diyala over the next couple of weeks.” On Thursday, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, said Diyala would “very likely” get more troops.
In Hibhib, a town in Diyala with an entrenched insurgency, gunmen from the Islamic State of Iraq laid siege to a police station on Friday, killing one policeman and forcing others to flee. They then looted it of weapons and equipment, burned several police cars and blew up the building before escaping, police officials said.
Four people in Baghdad, each in a different neighborhood, were killed by sniper fire on Friday, according to an official at the Interior Ministry. The official also said at least 10 bodies were found dumped around the capital.
The American military reported that a marine was killed Friday during a combat operation in Anbar Province.
On Friday, the satellite channel Al Jazeera reported that Raouf Abdel-Rahman, the Iraqi judge who sentenced Saddam Hussein to death, had asked for asylum in Britain. The British Home Office would not confirm the report, saying it does not discuss individual cases.
Ahmad Fadam contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Baghdad and Baquba.
Source
Americans Have Lost Their Country
By Paul Craig Roberts
03/01/07 "ICH" -- The Bush-Cheney regime is America’s first neoconservative regime. In a few short years, the regime has destroyed the Bill of Rights, the separation of powers, the Geneva Conventions, and the remains of America’s moral reputation along with the infrastructures of two Muslim countries and countless thousands of Islamic civilians. Plans have been prepared, and forces moved into place, for an attack on a third Islamic country, Iran, and perhaps Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon as well.
This extraordinary aggressiveness toward the US Constitution, international law, and the Islamic world is the work, not of a vast movement, but of a handful of ideologues--principally Vice President Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Lewis Libby, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams, Zalmay Khalilzad, John Bolton, Philip Zelikow, and Attorney General Gonzales. These are the main operatives who have controlled policy. They have been supported by their media shills at the Weekly Standard, National Review, Fox News, New York Times, CNN, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page and by “scholars” in assorted think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute.
The entirety of their success in miring the United States in what could become permanent conflict in the Middle East is based on the power of propaganda and the big lie.
Initially, the 9/11 attack was blamed on Osama bin Laden, but after an American puppet was installed in Afghanistan, the blame for 9/11 was shifted to Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, who was said to have weapons of mass destruction that would be used against America. The regime sent Secretary of State Colin Powell to tell the lie to the UN that the Bush-Cheney regime had conclusive proof of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
Having conned the UN, Congress, and the American people, the regime invaded Iraq under totally false pretenses and with totally false expectations. The regime’s occupation of Iraq has failed in a military sense, but the neoconservatives are turning their failure into a strategic advantage. At the beginning of this year President Bush began blaming Iran for America’s embarrassing defeat by a few thousand lightly armed insurgents in Iraq.
Bush accuses Iran of arming the Iraqi insurgents, a charge that experts regard as improbable. The Iraqi insurgents are Sunni. They inflict casualties on our troops, but spend most of their energy killing Iraqi Shi’ites, who are closely allied with Iran, which is Shi’ite. Bush’s accusation requires us to believe that Iran is arming the enemies of its allies.
On the basis of this absurd accusation--a pure invention--Bush has ordered a heavy concentration of aircraft carrier attack forces off Iran’s coast, and he has moved US attack planes to Turkish bases and other US bases in countries contingent to Iran.
In testimony before Congress on February 1 of this year, former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski said that he expected the regime to orchestrate a “head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large.” He said a plausible scenario was “a terrorist act blamed on Iran, culminating in a ‘defensive’ US military action against Iran.” He said that the neoconservative propaganda machine was already articulating a “mythical historical narrative” for widening their war against Islam.
Why is the US spending one trillion dollars on wars, the reasons for which are patently false. What is going on?
There are several parts to the answer. Like their forebears among the Jacobins of the French Revolution, the Bolsheviks of the communist revolution, and the National Socialists of Hitler’s revolution, neoconservatives believe that they have a monopoly on virtue and the right to impose hegemony on the rest of the world. Neoconservative conquests began in the Middle East because oil and Israel, with which neocons are closely allied, are both in the MIddle East.
The American oil giant, UNOCAL, had plans for an oil and gas pipeline through Afghanistan, but the Taliban were not sufficiently cooperative. The US invasion of Afghanistan was used to install Hamid Karzai, who had been on UNOCAL’s payroll, as puppet prime minister. US neoconservative Zalmay Khalilzad, who also had been on UNOCAL’s payroll, was installed as US ambassador to Afghanistan.
Two years later Khalilzad was appointed US ambassador to Iraq. American oil companies have been given control over the exploitation of Iraq’s oil resources.
The Israeli relationship is perhaps even more important. In 1996 Richard Perle and the usual collection of neocons proposed that all of Israel’s enemies in the Middle East be overthrown. “Israel’s enemies” consist of the Muslim countries not in the hands of US puppets or allies. For decades Israel has been stealing Palestine from the Palestinians such that today there is not enough of Palestine left to comprise an independent country. The US and Israeli governments blame Iran, Iraq, and Syria for aiding and abetting Palestinian resistance to Israel’s theft of Palestine.
The Bush-Cheney regime came to power with the plans drawn to attack the remaining independent countries in the Middle East and with neoconservatives in office to implement the plans. However, an excuse was required. Neoconservatives had called for “a new Pearl Harbor,” and 9/11 provided the propaganda event needed in order to stampede the public and Congress into war. Neoconservative Philip Zelikow was put in charge of the 9/11 Commission Report to make certain no uncomfortable facts emerged.
The neoconservatives have had enormous help from the corporate media, from Christian evangelicals, particularly from the “Rapture Evangelicals,” from flag-waving superpatriots, and from the military- industrial complex whose profits have prospered. But the fact remains that the dozen men named in the second paragraph above were able to overthrow the US Constitution and launch military aggression under the guise of a preventive/preemptive “war against terrorism.”
When the American people caught on that the “war on terror” was a cloak for wars of aggression, they put Democrats in control of Congress in order to apply a brake to the regime’s warmongering. However, the Democrats have proven to be impotent to stop the neoconservative drive to wider war and, perhaps, world conflagration.
We are witnessing the triumph of a dozen evil men over American democracy and a free press.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.
03/01/07 "ICH" -- The Bush-Cheney regime is America’s first neoconservative regime. In a few short years, the regime has destroyed the Bill of Rights, the separation of powers, the Geneva Conventions, and the remains of America’s moral reputation along with the infrastructures of two Muslim countries and countless thousands of Islamic civilians. Plans have been prepared, and forces moved into place, for an attack on a third Islamic country, Iran, and perhaps Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon as well.
This extraordinary aggressiveness toward the US Constitution, international law, and the Islamic world is the work, not of a vast movement, but of a handful of ideologues--principally Vice President Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Lewis Libby, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams, Zalmay Khalilzad, John Bolton, Philip Zelikow, and Attorney General Gonzales. These are the main operatives who have controlled policy. They have been supported by their media shills at the Weekly Standard, National Review, Fox News, New York Times, CNN, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page and by “scholars” in assorted think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute.
The entirety of their success in miring the United States in what could become permanent conflict in the Middle East is based on the power of propaganda and the big lie.
Initially, the 9/11 attack was blamed on Osama bin Laden, but after an American puppet was installed in Afghanistan, the blame for 9/11 was shifted to Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, who was said to have weapons of mass destruction that would be used against America. The regime sent Secretary of State Colin Powell to tell the lie to the UN that the Bush-Cheney regime had conclusive proof of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
Having conned the UN, Congress, and the American people, the regime invaded Iraq under totally false pretenses and with totally false expectations. The regime’s occupation of Iraq has failed in a military sense, but the neoconservatives are turning their failure into a strategic advantage. At the beginning of this year President Bush began blaming Iran for America’s embarrassing defeat by a few thousand lightly armed insurgents in Iraq.
Bush accuses Iran of arming the Iraqi insurgents, a charge that experts regard as improbable. The Iraqi insurgents are Sunni. They inflict casualties on our troops, but spend most of their energy killing Iraqi Shi’ites, who are closely allied with Iran, which is Shi’ite. Bush’s accusation requires us to believe that Iran is arming the enemies of its allies.
On the basis of this absurd accusation--a pure invention--Bush has ordered a heavy concentration of aircraft carrier attack forces off Iran’s coast, and he has moved US attack planes to Turkish bases and other US bases in countries contingent to Iran.
In testimony before Congress on February 1 of this year, former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski said that he expected the regime to orchestrate a “head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large.” He said a plausible scenario was “a terrorist act blamed on Iran, culminating in a ‘defensive’ US military action against Iran.” He said that the neoconservative propaganda machine was already articulating a “mythical historical narrative” for widening their war against Islam.
Why is the US spending one trillion dollars on wars, the reasons for which are patently false. What is going on?
There are several parts to the answer. Like their forebears among the Jacobins of the French Revolution, the Bolsheviks of the communist revolution, and the National Socialists of Hitler’s revolution, neoconservatives believe that they have a monopoly on virtue and the right to impose hegemony on the rest of the world. Neoconservative conquests began in the Middle East because oil and Israel, with which neocons are closely allied, are both in the MIddle East.
The American oil giant, UNOCAL, had plans for an oil and gas pipeline through Afghanistan, but the Taliban were not sufficiently cooperative. The US invasion of Afghanistan was used to install Hamid Karzai, who had been on UNOCAL’s payroll, as puppet prime minister. US neoconservative Zalmay Khalilzad, who also had been on UNOCAL’s payroll, was installed as US ambassador to Afghanistan.
Two years later Khalilzad was appointed US ambassador to Iraq. American oil companies have been given control over the exploitation of Iraq’s oil resources.
The Israeli relationship is perhaps even more important. In 1996 Richard Perle and the usual collection of neocons proposed that all of Israel’s enemies in the Middle East be overthrown. “Israel’s enemies” consist of the Muslim countries not in the hands of US puppets or allies. For decades Israel has been stealing Palestine from the Palestinians such that today there is not enough of Palestine left to comprise an independent country. The US and Israeli governments blame Iran, Iraq, and Syria for aiding and abetting Palestinian resistance to Israel’s theft of Palestine.
The Bush-Cheney regime came to power with the plans drawn to attack the remaining independent countries in the Middle East and with neoconservatives in office to implement the plans. However, an excuse was required. Neoconservatives had called for “a new Pearl Harbor,” and 9/11 provided the propaganda event needed in order to stampede the public and Congress into war. Neoconservative Philip Zelikow was put in charge of the 9/11 Commission Report to make certain no uncomfortable facts emerged.
The neoconservatives have had enormous help from the corporate media, from Christian evangelicals, particularly from the “Rapture Evangelicals,” from flag-waving superpatriots, and from the military- industrial complex whose profits have prospered. But the fact remains that the dozen men named in the second paragraph above were able to overthrow the US Constitution and launch military aggression under the guise of a preventive/preemptive “war against terrorism.”
When the American people caught on that the “war on terror” was a cloak for wars of aggression, they put Democrats in control of Congress in order to apply a brake to the regime’s warmongering. However, the Democrats have proven to be impotent to stop the neoconservative drive to wider war and, perhaps, world conflagration.
We are witnessing the triumph of a dozen evil men over American democracy and a free press.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
US soldier admits gang raping and murdering a girl
A second US soldier's plea of guilty to the gang rape of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and the killing of her and her family has been accepted by a judge.
Sgt Paul Cortez admitted four murders, rape and conspiracy to rape. His plea means he will avoid the death penalty.
In November, Specialist James Barker, 24, admitted rape and murder over the killings and was jailed for 90 years.
Cortez broke down as he confessed to raping the girl as her parents and sister were shot dead in another room.
The case is one of several in which US troops are accused of killing Iraqis.
According to the plea agreement, Cortez admitted conspiring with three other soldiers, Private First Class Jesse Spielman, Specialist Barker and Steven Green, a now discharged soldier, to rape Abeer Qassim al-Janabi.
Card game
Pte Spielman and another man, Bryan Howard, are awaiting court martial on charges related to the attack.
Mr Green is being tried as a civilian because he was discharged from the army before his superiors knew of his suspected involvement. He denies the charges against him.
All five belonged to the 101st Airborne Division based at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, which is also where the hearing took place.
In court, Cortez admitted the plan was hatched as they played cards and that the girl had been targeted because there was only one male in her house, making it an easy target.
Family murdered
He said: "During the time me and Barker were raping Abeer, I heard five or six gunshots that came from the bedroom.
"After Barker was done, Green came out of the bedroom and said that he had killed them all, that all of them were dead."
Cortez added: "Green then placed himself between Abeer's legs to rape her. When Green was finished, he stood up and shot Abeer in the head two or three times."
The entire crime took about five minutes and the girl knew her parents and sister had been shot while she was being raped, the hearing heard.
Source: BBC
Sgt Paul Cortez admitted four murders, rape and conspiracy to rape. His plea means he will avoid the death penalty.
In November, Specialist James Barker, 24, admitted rape and murder over the killings and was jailed for 90 years.
Cortez broke down as he confessed to raping the girl as her parents and sister were shot dead in another room.
The case is one of several in which US troops are accused of killing Iraqis.
According to the plea agreement, Cortez admitted conspiring with three other soldiers, Private First Class Jesse Spielman, Specialist Barker and Steven Green, a now discharged soldier, to rape Abeer Qassim al-Janabi.
Card game
Pte Spielman and another man, Bryan Howard, are awaiting court martial on charges related to the attack.
Mr Green is being tried as a civilian because he was discharged from the army before his superiors knew of his suspected involvement. He denies the charges against him.
All five belonged to the 101st Airborne Division based at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, which is also where the hearing took place.
In court, Cortez admitted the plan was hatched as they played cards and that the girl had been targeted because there was only one male in her house, making it an easy target.
Family murdered
He said: "During the time me and Barker were raping Abeer, I heard five or six gunshots that came from the bedroom.
"After Barker was done, Green came out of the bedroom and said that he had killed them all, that all of them were dead."
Cortez added: "Green then placed himself between Abeer's legs to rape her. When Green was finished, he stood up and shot Abeer in the head two or three times."
The entire crime took about five minutes and the girl knew her parents and sister had been shot while she was being raped, the hearing heard.
Source: BBC
Monday, January 29, 2007
Bush: After Iraq, Iran?
By Vincent Jauvert
Le Nouvel Observateur
Le Nouvel Observateur
Week of Thursday 25 January 2007
Intimidation or Strike Preparations?
The American president assured Jacques Chirac that he still favored diplomacy with respect to Iran. Yet indicators of war preparations against the Islamic Republic are increasing.
John Rockefeller is one of the best-informed men in the United States. The most important civilian and military officials file through his office. Chairman of the powerful Senate intelligence committee, he has access to most top-secret documents produced by the Bush administration. Ordinarily, this Democratic senator is not talkative. Yet, last Friday, he saw fit to confide in the New York Times. He is very worried about White House plans for Iran. "To be honest," he said, "I'm afraid it will be Iraq all over again."
He's not alone. Last week, several Democratic leaders rang the same alarm bell: according to them, the White House is secretly preparing America for a war against the Islamic Republic. Many specialists share their concerns. A former military professor, Colonel Sam Gardiner, is closely following the deployment of American forces to the Persian Gulf. He explains: "Soon there will be two aircraft carriers in the regions: the USS Eisenhower, which arrived several weeks ago, and the USS Stennis, which sailed January 16th." Yet, every time America has deployed two aircraft carriers to the region, bombing ensued.
There are other indications of war preparations against Iran. When, at the beginning of January, he presented his new battle plan for Iraq, George Bush announced that America was about to deploy Patriot anti-missile batteries in the region - probably the Gulf States. "Why is he doing that? What has it got to do with the war in Iraq?" asks Trita Parsi, a specialist in American-Iranian relations based in Washington. "The Iraqi insurgents have no ballistic missiles, so what good does it do to install anti-missile batteries? I can see only one reason: last year, Iranian officials let the Gulf States know that if America attacked Iran from their territory, the Islamic Republic would strike back at them. Consequently, Washington wants to protect them against such a riposte. [This seems to be] proof that an attack is being seriously contemplated."
That's not all. George Bush has just named Admiral William J. Fallon as commander of American forces in the Europe-Middle East region. Why an admiral for such a position, when the war in Iraq is a ground war? Several specialists see it as an obvious signal that the aircraft carriers will soon come into action against Iran. The same observers note that the number of American submarines crossing the Gulf has increased to the point where accidents with civilian vessels are on the rise. They also observe that after three years of slowed operations, the Incirlik American Air Force base in Turkey, close to Iran, is now operating at full capacity and that several F-16 are stationed there again. They add that the F-16 can carry the B61-11 atomic mini-bombs, the so-called "bunker busters," i.e. able to destroy bunkers - and consequently the nuclear installations Iran is hiding underground.
The White House intimates that all of that is only gesticulation, that the preparations have no other motive than to intimidate Iran, to force Tehran to give up supporting Shia militia in Iraq, and to demonstrate more flexibility with respect to the nuclear issue. At the Elysee, they say they believe this version. "In September, George Bush repeated to Jacques Chirac that, with respect to the Iranian matter, he did not favor the military route, but diplomacy," an adviser to the French president explains. "We think he is still of the same mind." A great many American politicians, including Republicans, are not so optimistic. They think that in spite of the Iraqi quagmire - or perhaps because of it - George Bush has decided to dispose of the "Iranian threat," alone or with Israel; that he wants to go down in history as the one who rid the West of the devil Ahmadinejad. Alarmed by the sound of boots, several senators are looking for a way to prevent such a catastrophic scenario. Some even intend to adopt a law prohibiting the president from starting a nuclear war against Iran without Congress's approval. And they want to act quickly.
Because it's becoming urgent. "The military preparations will be complete by the end of February," Colonel Gardiner explains. And this timing is in no way coincidental. Several casus belli will offer themselves at that time. First, the deadline given Iran to execute Security Council Resolution 1737 will be up at that time. Second, Russia will deliver nuclear fuel for the Busher reactor in Iran - which could, after use, serve to manufacture an atomic weapon. Finally, Ahmadinejad will probably announce that the 3,000 Natanz centrifuges have begun uranium enrichment: a point of no return in the race to the bomb, assert the Israeli hawks and neo-conservatives close to Bush - who are burning for a fight.
Source: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/012607G.shtml
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