In case you missed it – sectarianism ‘Literally’ dead in Iraq

[Via the Allahpundit] Much like the Germans before them, after seeing the alternative up close – Iraqi’s appear to have chosen sides:

“The escalating violence in Iraq gives a bleak impression of that country’s future,” Moaddel said. “Sectarian conflict seems to be increasing on a daily basis, with militias massacring hundreds of Sunnis and Shi’is solely on the basis of their religious identities.

“Yet it would be a mistake to think that this bloodlust represents widespread sentiment among Iraqis as a whole. While neither American nor Iraqi security officials have yet found a way to tame the militias, the Iraqi public is increasingly drawn toward a vision of a democratic, non-sectarian government for the country.”

Download the PowerPoint of their report here.

Syria modernizes

This is what happens when you have no oil and no nukes – you get progress:

Take a drive around Damascus and roadside billboards offering the latest deals and gizmos are slowly replacing the portraits of political leaders that once dominated the landscape.

In the chic Abu Rummaneh district, crowds window-shop under the gaze of coffee aficionados apparently captivated by the low-slung hipsters, bare bellies and tight T-shirts currently in vogue.

Read the rest here

Friends of Jack

This is from a report on Al Qaeda in Iraq:

At first, he said, they would only target Shia, but over time the new al Qaeda directed attacks against Sunni, and then anyone who thought differently. The official reported that on a couple of occasions in Baqubah, al Qaeda invited to lunch families they wanted to convert to their way of thinking. In each instance, the family had a boy, he said, who was about 11-years-old. As LT David Wallach interpreted the man’s words, I saw Wallach go blank and silent. He stopped interpreting for a moment. I asked Wallach, “What did he say?” Wallach said that at these luncheons, the families were sat down to eat. And then their boy was brought in with his mouth stuffed. The boy had been baked. Al Qaeda served the boy to his family.

Read the rest here

Fact checking is depressing

I was reading an article by Mark Steyn on why it’s ok to burn flags and I came to this paragraph:

“At last year’s Democratic Convention, when the Oscar-winning crockumentarian Michael Moore was given the seat of honor in the Presidential box next to Jimmy Carter, I wonder how many TV viewers knew that the terrorist “insurgents” – the guys who kidnap and murder aid workers, hack the heads off foreigners, load Down’s syndrome youths up with explosives and send them off to detonate in shopping markets – are regarded by Moore as Iraq’s Minutemen.”

That part in bold – I’ve heard that before. So whenever I hear or read something like that, I do a fact-check. More often than not, the statement turns out to be true.

This is Amar. Amar has had down’s syndrome. He usually spent his days wandering around his neighbourhood playing with kids and he’d stay out until a kind neighbour would bring him home. On election day, his parents went off to vote and left Amar to his daily routines…

“After voting at 7.30am, Amar’s parents joined their extended family for a celebration that became a lunch of chicken and rice, soup and orange juice, at the home of a relative.

The sound of the explosion interrupted the party. But, the cousin said, it was assumed to be a mortar shell, a follow-up to the barrage across the city in the first hours of voting…

Everyone was very happy and excited, but news came that a mongoli had been a bomber. Ahmed and Fatima became distressed and they raced home. They got neighbours to search and one of them identified Amar’s head where it lay on the pavement and his body was broken into pieces.”

His neighbours reckon that he was kidnapped.  He didn’t have the mind for politics and what’s more, he’s a Shia Muslim and would have no reason to help the Sunni Al Qaeda attack his own kind.

You can read the rest here.

Dilbert: Bush was right.

When was the last time you read something and thought: “Holy crap, I’ve never heard that before”?  Right so – here it is – “Bush was right”. Got it? But wait, there’s more! ‘Bush has solved the Al Qaeda problem.’ – brilliant.

Dilbert explains why:

I knew a guy who worked privately as “muscle” to get rid of stalkers for women who could afford his services. He was an expert on stalker mentality. His view, based on years of experience, is that you can’t make a stalker give up stalking. The best you can do is encourage him to stalk someone new. His job was to make it so dangerous to stalk his client that the stalker would move on to a new and more accessible victim.

We have the same stalker mentality situation with Al-Qaeda. Our best bet is to divert their focus to more accessible targets, just as the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan shifted their focus to us. Ironically, the civil war in Iraq might have accidentally accomplished through irrational means what good foreign policy could not. Al-Qaeda is using far more resources fighting other Muslims than fighting the U.S.

I think for the most part he’s right. No matter what we do we could never piss off Al Qaeda as much as the Shia could. Does this mean we should leave Iraq? No, it means we should stay in Iraq. As long as America is there, it’s fighting and showing Al Qaeda it’s the meanest, toughest guy on the block. If it runs away, it starts to look like a soft target.

Don’t take my word for it, listen to Bin Laden (pre 9-11) talking about the American retreat from Somalia:

“You have been disgraced by Allah and you withdrew. The extent of your impotence and weaknesses has become very clear,” he said. “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse.”

And according to Dilbert, if you have a live horse that can kick you and a dead horse that won’t – you’re gonna beat the dead horse.