Ironically the circumstances surrounding the death of Osama Bin Laden tends to confirm the theory that terrorism, rather than being a spontaneous meme that floats above the planet, is in fact deeply rooted in the intelligence agencies and regimes of certain states. Thus, neither Hamas nor Hezbollah are creations of some kind of rage any more than than September 11 was wholly the result of some kind of amorphous resentment. Osama Bin Laden had backers; people with uniforms, ranks and the resources of bureaucracies behind them. Those who believe that the War on Terror is nothing but a law enforcement problem must ask themselves whether it is really rather larger than that.
Old and Busted: Birthers. The New Hotness: Deathers. That’s right, Cindy Sheehan (remember her?) doesn’t think than Bin Laden is dead. Oh, she also refers to The United States of America as “This lying, murderous Empire.” Remember when all the left was crowing about her “absolute moral authority”? Whatever happened to them?
David Pryce-Jones says that Bin Laden’s death marks the end of his monstrous fantasy of a 21st century Islamic caliphate. I’m not so sure. Dreams, even wicked, impossible dreams, have a way of lingerong on long past their expiration date, and both Saudi Arabia and Iran have smaller-scale versions of that dream as part of their national strategy.
And now I need to embed the totally sweet Tiawanese animation on the event:
(Hat tips: Ace of Spades, Instapundit, the Right Side of Austin.)
This was an important victory, but the war against terror continues. Al Qaeda has a decentralized command structure, so cutting off the head won’t kill the beast.
The fact that it took us just under a decade to track Bin Laden down does not reflect well on the CIA. Human intelligence takes a while to develop, but ten years is ridiculous. We’re lucky he hadn’t died from natural causes already.
It proves, once again, that Pakistan is not our friend. I suspect, fairly strongly, that members of the Pakistani ISI (and possibly higher levels of Pakistan’s government) have been sheltering Bin Laden ever since we routed the Taliban.
Unlike Dwight, I do not believe that Bin Laden’s death ensures Obama’s reelection. It certainly doesn’t hurt, but it’s over a year and a half before the election in a horrible economy upon which stagflation is now taking a firm grip. If the Misery Index is at Jimmy Carter levels come November 2012, Osama’s capture will be a very distant memory indeed.
Why has the picture of Bin Laden’s corpse not been released? Nobody cares how gruesome it is, we want to see it to silence doubters and those who will rave about “Zionist plots” to claim he’s still alive.
Why on earth did we afford Osama bin laden a “proper” Islamic burial at sea? He’s Osama Bin Freaken Laden. We should have stuck it on a spike with a dead pig carcass and let it rot a few days. Those who would get upset at such treatment for the murderer of over 3,000 people aren’t the sort we can win over anyway.
Richard Cohen says the Bosnian no-fly zone was a sham to assuage the west’s guilt over genocide and asks: “Should President Barack Obama lead a coordinated, Arab League-backed Western military intervention in Libya to stop Qaddafi?”.
There’s one unqualified success story in the Middle East that Arab countries could use as a template to improve their societies. The problem? It’s Israel.
Geert Wilders: “All over Europe multicultural elites are waging total war against their populations. Their goal is to continue the strategy of mass-immigration, which will ultimately result in an Islamic Europe – a Europe without freedom: Eurabia.”
The big Jihad news this week, of course, was the Moscow bombing. But that was hardly the only thing of note:
The Moscow bombers were evidently trained in Pakistan. “An al-Qaeda linked website said that the group Islamic Caucasus Emirate, led by the rebe Doku Umarov, was poised to claim it had staged the attack. It said that Russia’s harsh military measures against independence activists in the Caucasus had provoked the attack. It said: ‘You disbelievers are the firewood of Hell. You will enter it.'” (I’m guessing “rebe” is short for “rebel,” though I have not heretofore heard it used.)
Dokka Umerov has repeatedly made it very clear that he wants nothing to do with al Qaeda, or bin Laden.
The latter point reveals the following about the global War on Terror. First, the US and British efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq have succeeded in destroying al Qaeda’s reputation amongst Islamist organizations. If an Islamist cause as major as the Caucasus Emirate wants to stay clean of al Qaeda, it means that al Qaeda equals trouble. Al Qaeda involvement means interference from the world’s great powers.
Second, Russia’s situation reveals that the US and British efforts have failed to do significant damage to the ideology of Islamism. If a nationalist movement turns itself into a movement with Islamist objectives in order to make itself stronger, then it proves that the ideals to which al Qaeda subscribes have not been significantly damaged.
Australian artist receives death threats from left-wingers and islamists for anti-burqua mural. Once again we see the alliance of the left and radical Islam.
New Imam of Ground Zero Mosque says that all apostates from Islam should be jailed. This is a great improvement from the standard clerical opinion that they should be killed…
All you Islamophobes who say Mohammed was a pedophile are way off base. Sure, Mohammed married a 6 year old, but all Islamic experts agree that he refrained from having sex with her until she reached the ripe old age of 9.
Islamic man in Buffalo texts his wife that he can’t live without her. Twenty minutes later he beheaded her.
This is not good news. Imagine if the governor of California or Texas were assassinated in broad daylight by his own bodyguard. Well, that’s what happened to Punjab Governor Salman Taseer in Pakistan. Of course, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was also assassinated, and Indian PM Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her own bodyguards, in large measure due to policies regarding Sikhs in the Indian portion of Punjab.
As for who is responsible, who knows? It could be a freelance jihadist, it could be al Quada, it could be Taliban, or it could be some of the Islamist elements of the Pakistani ISI. (Given the circumstances, I’m assuming it wasn’t Kashmiri nationalists, though stranger things have happened.) In any case, it’s bad news for a nuclear-armed nation that always seems to be inching ever closer to become a failed state.
I don’t have any particular insight into Pakistani, so I direct you to the odd piece by the ever-interesting Christopher Hitchens, which are long on insight and short on hope. Sometimes, as in the Middle East, there are simply no good options.
(Hat tip: The usual suspects under “Jihad” on your right.)
As a side note, I would be interested to hear if anyone actually finds these weekly roundups useful. I put these up and get very little feedback on them…
Even The New York Timesnotices Britain’s jihad schools. All it took was a program on the BBC. Maybe the Beeb could do a piece on how higher taxes and bigger government are actually unpopular among Americans…
It’s not a surprise when Pakistani officials defend the Taliban, since they were essentially created by the Pakistani ISI. However, it’s a bit more surprising when it comes from the Minister of Tourism.
Of course, The Pakistani ISI are not to be confused with the Islamic State of Iraq terrorist group, which is currently railing against…Microsoft? (You have to be an MEMRI subscriber to see the full report. I may have to sign up…)
This week’s winner in Irrational Fatwa Bingo is…blood donations.
Some are wondering if this demonstration of First Amendment rights will have any influence on the real world. Given that the Pakistani government has blocked Facebook over the Everybody Draw Mohammed Day group there, I would say that it already has. If we allow ourselves to have the limits of our freedom of expressions set by the most extremist elements of global radical Islam, then the First Amendment is doomed.
So all those who oppose letting the First Amendment wither under the twin assaults of radical Islam and political correctness should get drawing!