Just when you thought it was safe.....

Rightwingsparkle Not Blogging, Day 11

Been away. Lets round up some news


Leaked No 10 dossier reveals Al-Qaeda’s British recruits

"AL-QAEDA is secretly recruiting affluent, middle-class Muslims in British universities and colleges to carry out terrorist attacks in this country, leaked Whitehall documents reveal. "

Some folks blather about the "root causes" of terrorism, a few are sincerely trying to figure out the enemy and therefore how best to defeat them. Mostly, imo, the "Root Causes Caucas" are rationalizing their own chickenshit need to appease terrorists in hopes they will go away.

One of the sillier "root causes" notions is that poverty creates terror. Nonsense. Poor people are too busy feeding their families and putting clothes on the backs of their children. No, terrorism germinates among the affluent, people with the leisure to join causes to give some kind of meaning to their lives.

Terrorists operate in impoverished places. Waltz in with cash and armed men - who is going to stop you? Poor people are merely the first victims of terrorist schemes. They set up camps, buy.... er, "marry" some local chief's daughter to insure his compliance... er, loyalty, and use the locals for cover and cannon fodder.
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Jihad Is Knocking

"Already the standard narrative is being trotted out: evildoers created by what the New York Times predictably called the “root causes of terrorism”: autocracy, or economic stagnation, or Palestinian suffering, or globalization's dislocations, or Western historical sins, or the war in Iraq (the cause will depend on the political prejudices of the pundit) have “hijacked” Islam and distorted its peaceful message. And now they are using Islam to justify murder in order to further their own ambitions or dysfunctional psychic needs. Given this explanation, so the story goes, we must be careful not to demonize all Muslims and assure them that we respect their religion and culture. The tale is then wrapped up with fierce threats against the terrorists and protestations of admiration for Islam."

"Believing this delusion requires that one ignores fourteen centuries of Islamic jihad against the West, a war of conquest and colonization ratified by centuries of Islamic theology and jurisprudence. Indeed, what we call Islamic radicals are in fact Islamic traditionalists; it is the so-called “moderates” — those wanting to compromise Islam so it can coexist with Western ideas such as secular government, separation of church and state, and human rights — who are the radicals and innovators. The terrorists are simply fulfilling the traditional and orthodox command of their religion to battle the infidels who resist the revelation of Mohammed and the global socio-political order mandated by Islam."

How to Lose a War

"Autocratic regimes, statist economies, gender apartheid, corruption, the absence of a free press — all that and more retard economic growth from the Gulf to Morocco. In response, theocratic regimes like the Taliban and the Iranian mullocracy blame the West for their own self-inflicted misery and inadequacies. But more often, clever dictators such as a Baathist Saddam, the Saudi Royal family, an Egyptian kleptocracy, or the Pakistani military regime allow Islamicists some rein, if not covert support, to deflect blame from their own failures onto the United States and the "Jews."

"A shamed Islamic street — ill-housed, ill-fed, and ill-informed — is nourished on the mythology that a purer creed and a return to the 8th century alone can reclaim past glories of the caliphate, and stop the decadent intrusion of Western consumerism and popular culture"
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The wrong thing to do in the face of terror:

Please Appease Me
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Retrieving bodies is nightmare for London rescuers

"Retrieval teams working deep underground to recover bodies after the London bomb attacks are battling ghastly conditions that one expert compared to a "foetid drain."

Uncommon devotion to duty is heroism.
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Sauerkraut Wrestling Proposed For Lawmakers

"If New Ulm's mayor gets his way, the governor and legislative leaders will duke out their differences in a wrestling ring filled with sauerkraut."

I believe Arizona settles election ties by cutting cards. More disputes should be settled by some unconventional competition instead of letting it fester. Entertaining too.
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Debunking 8 Anti-War Myths About The Conflict In Iraq
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The Left doesn't support the troops and should admit it

"In order to understand this, we need to first have a working definition of the term "support the troops." Presumably it means that one supports what the troops are doing and rooting for them to succeed. What else could "support the troops" mean? If you say, for example, that you support the Yankees or the Dodgers, we assume it means you want them to win."

" But most of the Left does not want the troops to win in Iraq. The Left's message is this: "You troops may think you are winning; you may think you are doing good and moral things in Iraq; you may believe you are fighting the worst human beings of our age and protecting us against the scourge of Islamic terror. But we on the Left believe none of that. We believe this war is being fought for oil and for Halliburton and other corporations; we believe you are waging a war that is both illegal and immoral; we believe you have invaded a country for no good reason and have killed a hundred thousand Iraqis [the Left's generally mentioned number] for no good reason; but, hey, we sure do support you."

"Honest people on the Left need to understand that the two positions are not reconcilable"
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A leftist who does actually support the troops:
Foreign Service

"The Iraqi civilians were very nice to us again, even though Samarra had a lot of insurgents for much of my time there. And the kids love us, especially the little girls, who seem to feel all this democratic change will be good for them in particular. The whole ‘mission’ is starting to feel like Peace Corps work, albeit you still have to be well armed. I am a political left-winger on most things, but on the Middle East business I think we are doing the right thing, mainly because that’s what all these Iraqi civilians kept telling me. Not sure why you don’t hear that kind of stuff on the media, except that most civilians there would consider it suicide to say good things about Americans on-camera.”
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Homeowner thwarts break-in with handgun - Good man. Give him a medal.
Trotsy's Pick - Dispute over the weapon used to kill Trotsky. Weird
The Right Hates Freedom & America - Ooooo! Ouch.
44-car train abandondoned - Unions.....
Ron Reagan gets spanked
Rescuing the Laws of War - Military academic papers often strike me as more.... objective