HOORAY: We got him. Good news, period.

On a day when some liberal bloggers shoot themselves in the foot, Andrew Sullivan does too by saying this:

This event must, of course, come as a terrible blow to many ordinary Arabs, who have been fed for years on the possibility that Saddam might be the next Caliph.

How can such an highly educated man be typing this kind of crap? The mind boggles.

I haven't blogged in the past two weeks and I don't expect to until around Christmas. Later.

"TRAITOR" WOULD BE APT: Right-wing magazine Frontpage exposes and details Grover Norquist’s dealings with terrorists. Not only did he support the enemy and help the so-called Fifth Column, he helped tarnish the image of Muslims in the United States. For that, he should be forcefully condemned and investigated.

Although Reynolds tries to find a way to blame Democrats in the process, he has missed Atrios’ exposé weeks ago.

SECULAR EXTREMISM: I can't understand the amount of crap coming from France. A 12 year old girl was expelled for--get this--insisting to wear clothes "of ostentatious religious sign on purpose to harass her colleagues, which runs counter to the secular nature of the school." Furthermore, Jacques Chirac said there's "something aggressive" about the hijab. Oh, and it's also "ostentatious [sic] signs of religious proselytism." Edit your dictionaries, people.

Hijab: weapon of harassment; agressive; sign of religious proselytism

Al-Muhajabah has an excellent response. Kudos, once again. Makes your blood boil, doesn't it? If the Muslim ghettos in France start to riot, it'll be for the good. A fatwa will do some good too.

UPDATE: Say shalom to Grand Rabbi Joseph Sitruk! Kudos to the Rabbi for opposing militant secularism.

HE DOESN'T WANT MONEY: How do you know when people haven't listened to hip-hop? When they claim that Eminem is threathening the President's life. These are the alleged lyrics:

Fuck money/
I don't rap for dead presidents/
I'd rather see the president dead/

"Dead presidents" refers to the dead Presidents on bills, hence "fuck money." Get it? There's a group called "Dead Prez" and another called "Dead Presidents." Dead Prez raps about the white order and how to defeat it. (They actually called Bush as bad as bin Laden.) Dead Presidents raps mostly about pimping, hos and bitches. And how to make money, of course.

Stick to blogging about how Howard Dean is an appeaser to the Islamofascists and how liberals are destroying this country. It's amusing enough.

SULLIVAN WELCOMES KILLING OF MUSLIMS: I never realized that Andrew Sullivan regularly writes for the Washington Times--better known as the "Moonie Times" because of its infamous owner. But thanks to the good people of Sullywatch and Bob Somerby, I found my way to last Friday's op-ed by Sully. But Sully's standard, many liberals, is so low that it's not an odd thing to be dissappointed after reading him. This time, however, the dissappointment is stranger than usual. Or more hateful and uglier than usual.

It might seem odd, but this past week has made me more optimistic about the chances of success in Iraq. I didn't see it that way at first, because the news of the Ramadan suicide bombing campaign seemed so dispiriting. But, onreflection, thesehideous murders mark a new era. For the first time, the Islamist forces of terror are targeting Arabs. They are targeting innocent civilians in Iraq; and they are doing so with no concern for any religious propriety or military decency. They have bombed mosques and the International Red Cross. At some point, Iraqis will see something that was obscured before. These terrorists are the enemies of Arab self-government, of Arab democracy, of Arab freedom and of Islam itself. While they targeted Western targets and murdered Westerners, this truth was obscured. Now it isn't. Iraqis are beginning to see this more clearly; and the free press in that country will help illuminate it even more.

Hey, Roger Simon, who's being the pro-fascist now?

Anyway, the basic message: "Muslims need to experience the terror that we poor Jews, Christians and atheists experience. That'll teach 'em." Yeah... because oppression by their own governments for, well, as long as they've lived, isn't enough right? Oh, and the piece is titled "Reasons to be cheerful." Disgusting, indeed. Sullivan has managed to get himself on the same-level as those who sent this guy hate-mail because of his sexuality.

TOM FRENCH-FRIED MAN: Has Thomas Friedman been reading Tacitus? After reading his latest op-ed, one would suspect so.

ISLAM WILL DESTROY THE LEFT: I found this rather strange denounciation of the anti-war people as "pro-fascists" by Roger Simon, who than changes course a bit and says:

What is presently going on in Europe is the hijacking of the left by the Islamic cause, an Alice-in-Wonderland inversion of reality considering Islam's institutionalized oppression of women and homosexuals, once mainstays of the left (not to mention the separation of church and state, etc.). People here who support the European left are essentially agreeing, or at least acquiescing, with this, whether they like or not. It is time to face reality, folks. That's why I used such a harsh (and, yes, insulting) term as "pro-fascist."

I don't know if it's me, but I don't quite understand what point is being made.

The blog being linked to is called "Belmont Club." The author touches upon the subject of Tariq Ramadan's admission to the European Social Forum--a moderate Muslim joining the ranks of the Left is horrific, of course--which, according to the author, translates into the overtaking of the left by Islam. (The author put it more bluntly: the Left is "staring up at a patch of ceiling from the bottom of an Islamic dustbin.")

And evidence of all this? Tariq. Ramadan. His grandfather was the founder of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and his brother is somehow linked to an al-Qaeda financier, which makes Ramadan an evil radical. Not quite so. He's an outspoken critic of anti-Semitism and calls for the integration of disaffected Muslim populations in Europe. Recently, he criticized a number of Jewish intellectuals and one non-Jewish intellectual (an half-assed attack, I admit) for supporting the war in Iraq.

Deride the European left all you want, although I find it a waste of time. I have one question, however: How does the admission of Ramadan, a renowned reformist, at an anti-globalism conference translate into support of the "oppression of women and homosexuals." Had there been posters of Osama bin Laden or Mohammad Atta all over the place, than I'd have agreed with you. But that wasn't the case.

NOTE: Ramadan sees a concern for the rights of the poor as integral to Islam, which also prohibits interest-bearing loans, such as those from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. This train of thought is the one that leads Ramadan to be active in Europe's antiglobalization movement.

Furthermore, in the wake of the controversy three Socialist Party leaders disowned their collaboration with Ramadan in the antiglobalization movement, writing in Le Nouvel Observateur that Ramadan preached hate and echoed the rhetoric of far-right leader Jean-Marie LePen, a stance only to accomodate political correctness.

As for the accuastion of him being connected to Al-Qaeda: the Swiss government has cleared him of suspicion and Ramadan has continued to condemn terrorism.

GENEVA ACCORDS: My thoughts on the Geneva Accords: The most common misconception about the Accords is that it’s a replacement of the (currently half-dead) Roadmap, but it’s not. The Accords are complimentary to the Roadmap and it serves as the final plan which resolves all the issues that Oslo didn’t touch—Jerusalem, the refugees, the borders, etc. This is what I said a while ago:

You need to deal with the issues and root causes. The current roadmap lacks a destination. Freeze the settlements? Alright. Ending terrorism? Of course. So what comes next? What about Jerusalem? How do the millions of refugees end up? How are you going to deal with the wall? What are the borders going to be? How are we going to guarantee to security? If none of these issues are addressed, we're going to end up in destination "unknown”… If issues aren't solved, you are left with a process without substance and a roadmap to nowhere.

The Accords simply add the missing piece of the puzzle—and a (previously missing) destination for the Roadmap.

DAMNIT: An assistant professor of Philosophy (!) writes a piece on why Islam needs a pope and it automatically translates into expert opinion. Glenn, Andrew: I beg you. Stick to blogging about South Park and gay-marriage alright? Thanks.

PUBLIC SERVINCE ANNOUNCEMENT: There will be light blogging into the coming weeks and I'll be posting on the weekends only.

SHORTER VERSIONS: Summarizing the recent orgy of, well, idiocy.

Shorter Daniel Pipes: Surrender, Mohammedans. Give your Mohammedan women equal rights and we shall reward you Mohammedans with close scruttiny because of the faith you practice.

Shorter Mark Steyn: We should've invaded Iraq back in June of 2002, so we wouldn't have encountered the post-war mess we are encountering now. But the currently critical situation in Iraq, created by Jacques Chirac and the anti-war movement, really taught me a lesson: let's invade 5 more countries!

Shorter Tom Friedman: Look, I agree with the war but disagree with Bush. Why is the left protesting Bush? Can't they vindicate me and protest Bush at the same time?

Shorter Diane West: The censure of a report on anti-Semitism is a very bad thing, but two censured anti-Islamic books of bigotry will likely solve the problem.

GIVING THANKS: Well, the Taliban were certainly good at two things: beating women and squashing opium-production. This time, however, they're lovin' the opposite.

Don't forget to read the Thanksgiving letter from the Post's Dana Milbank in Kabul.

OVERREACTION: Well, Tacitus wasn't the only one in overreacting to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani's objections to the CPA and Governing Council's plan to handover power. The New York Times, with its half-ass reporting, is partly guilty of misleading its readers into thinking that Sistani is out to set up the Americans, install Muqtada Sadr ("Muqty") as the leading ayatollah and create another Khomeinist-theocracy. The Post has a far better balanced report on this. The Financial Times confirms what Iwrote yesterday: that the Shiites are afraid of the secularization of Iraq.

(Speaking of the Post, it seems that Andrew Sullivan is quite angered by Dana Milbank's reporting on Bush's flight to Iraq, calling her "one of the most ferociously anti-Bush White House reporters." That's the same Milbank who broke the Lewinsky-story. It's called objectivity and accountability, Andrew. Furthermore, Walter Pincus is an excellent reporter. Just because he cares about accountability [he co-authored the "16 words" stories] doesn't make him a bad writer nor anti-Bush. Address the substance, don't attack the writers.)

The indispensable Juan Cole summarizes all the reports including from the Arab press.

I'll be on top of this story for the coming days. I also found out that Tacitus has been fooling himself all this time (see the comments section) by suggesting that an "Islamic character" won't be a part of the new Iraq. But that flies smack into the face of reality. Because Islam will be a part of the new Iraq, no matter what. It's what we call in America "the will of the people."

TRODDING DOWN THE PATH OF DEMOCRACY: Tacitus is nice enough to offer a "few brief observations" from Nairobi:

I'm disgusted with the continuing ability of the Ayatollah Sistani to jerk around the CPA [...] are we really hitting a snag because our plans don't recognize Iraq's Islamic character? The hell with that -- no American should have to fight and die to establish an Islamic state. We already trod that path, to our eternal shame, in Afghanistan; doing the same in Iraq would be catastrophic both to our honor and to our dreams of a truly free Middle East.

Do me a favor: read the Times article on Sistani "jerking around the CPA." The major problem is Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani insisting that a directly chosen electorate write the constitution instead of an un-elected and unrepresentative interim government, which is exactly what happened in Afghanistan. Tacitus elaborates in the comments section:

We shouldn't consent to the establishment of Islamic Republics even in principle. It's contrary to our own values, and certainly has brought nothing but grief to those who live under them.

Who the hell cares what American values are? Ahmed Chalabi doesn't and an overwhelming majority of Iraqis certainly don't either. Nor was I aware of the notion that we came to Iraq to implement American values in Iraq. If Iraqis want an Afghan-style Islamic Republic, than shouldn't we give it to them? Isn't that what democracy, according to President Bush, is about? It seems that Tacitus is simply opposed to the will of the people.

You can interpret the "Islamic character"-line in a couple of ways, but here is my take on it. Sistani, along with a lot other Iraqi Muslims, is afraid, and rightfully so, that the new interim government is going to, either a) secularize Iraq and be handpicked by the Americans, b) secularize Iraq and decide according to the developments surrounding the 2004 elections or c) secularize Iraq and act as American puppets.

(Ahmed Chalabi explains option B: "The whole thing was set up so President Bush could come to the airport in October for a ceremony to congratulate the new Iraqi government. When you work backwards from that, you understand the dates the Americans were insisting on.")

But if you want to ignore what I just wrote and listen to Tacitus, than go ahead and damn those hate-filled Islamic clerics. In my view, Tacitus delivered a sermon that totally misinterprets the situation.

FORGOTTEN, NOT LEFT BEHIND: Short commentary on Matthew's post from yesterday on Afghanistan. The title of the post ("A DAY LATE AND A BUCK SHORT") is far more appropriate than the post itself. In it, Matt argues:

we're already gone from Afghanistan. We shouldn't have left but it seems to me that it would be very awkward politically to go invade again just for the sake of getting it right the second time. Moreover, there's the small problem that our army is now in Iraq. My guess would be that forces will be substantially withdrawn from Iraq well before any liberals, armed or otherwise, get to have any say in the matter anyways.

I don't think that we have left Afghanistan. Abandoned? Not that either. We're right up there with 11,000 troops at Bagram Airport and a U.S.-backed interim government led by Hamid Karzai. It seems to me, at least, that we've forgotten Afghanistan.

I accept the premise that American troops are there to fight the al-Qaeda-Taliban-Gulbudding insurgency and unavailable for nation-buidling (although, after the developments in Iraq, I'm perplexed by Bush's blatant hypocricy). More than 400 Afghan soldiers, police officers and civilians have been killed in the current insurgency. The Taliban holds several provinces in Paktika and the U.N. refugee and mining agency have left. The security situation is dire, especially in the south. Bottom line: we're not doing enough fighting. We need to fight more, harder, better and faster. We also need to fight diplomatically, because we need Pakistan to act.

The secondary problem is funding and reconstruction, but nevertheless important. Those who promised to deliver--Arab countries, but especially the Europeans and Japan--aren't. A prime example is the highway between Kabul and Kandahar, which Bush hopes is going to be finished by the end of this year. To have it finished by 2005, we're only providing one layer instead of the usual three, so it won't be of any use anyway. (SPECIAL NOTE TO THE EUROPEANS: Come on! Get off your lazy asses and deliver.)

We need to get serious--before it's too late for the American people and the Afghans themselves.

KING AHMED: I almost forgot to note a fascinating piece from yesterday's Post on Ahmed Chalabi. It's a bit hostile, but rightly so.

Lang raises the question of the millions that were appropriated by Congress for the Iraqi National Congress primarily because Chalabi lobbied for it. "Where did it go?" he asks.

State Department officials have suggested that Chalabi ran off with the money, according to several sources. The State Department conducted an audit that found nothing to indicate the money had been misused, but found few receipts to show how it had been spent. But then, according to a State Department staffer, word filtered down from the White House: no more audits of Chalabi. That infuriated the people at State.

Trust me, this article has lots of ammunition for us anti-Chalabis. And it seems that both Paul Wolfowitz and Bush himself aren't satisfied with King Ahmed either.

After the meeting with Rice, Chalabi reports that it went well but that Rice told him his "message has to be better." A senior administration official says that Wolfowitz also "read him the riot act." Clearly the White House was still irritated by his statement at the U.N. siding with the French.

[...] Jordan's King Abdullah didn't help matters: When he met with Bush recently, he is said to have delivered a broadside against his old nemesis, who was convicted of embezzling millions from a Jordanian bank. According to a friend of Abdullah's, the president reacted to the information with outrage at Chalabi.

I don't think he's not being the puppet the Pentagon wants him to be, but he's just corrupt and out for himself. It's not like he's switched sides. Not by a long shot.

EID-AL FITR: Eid Mubarak! The month of Ramadan was a time in which Muslims strenghten their faith and spirituality while developing their sense of social justice. Ramadan also involves acts of solidarity. In France, they have the "cousciyse de l'amitie" where food is provided on university campuses to vulnerable people like the unemployed and homeless. For American Muslims, these acts have developed in the Muslim consciousness of being at home in the West of serving their community. These activities also help Muslims come in contact with everday people, whether helping local groups fight against violence, drugs and illiteracy. Anything to improve the quality of life, even those who want to restart their lifes in prison. The commitment to solidarity toward the whole society, with Muslims or non-Muslims as partners, is growing, especially here in America. And that, of course, is a good thing.

Coverage of Ramadan in the media has been about increased violence during this month, but other positive stories aren't covered. One such story is of a young black female named Yaphett who led a life of partying, drinking and drugs. The local Muslims here in the area somehow got in touch (via some sort of program) with Yaphett and helped her lead the straight path. Six months later, Yaphett visited the local mosque and converted to Islam to everybody's surprise. No more partying, no more drinking and no more drugs. There are so many stories like thse, but it's one of those stories that you won't here about.

NOTE: No worry, I'll start blogging on Afghanistan again soon.

NO BIGOT BUT NOT FUNNY EITHER: Nathan Hamm responds to my post on Johnny Hart's cartoon. I won't put away the crack pipe just yet, but I still don't know whether it was a veiled attack on Muslims or a cartoon that simply wasn't funny and unworthy of being published in 1,600 newspapers. At least we can agree that he wasn't funny. I wouldn't even have noticed the stupid cartoon if it wasn't for the Post article and the “SLAM” between the first and second frame.

Changing subjects here. If you're bored, you should visit a blog called "Three-Toed Sloth" and read all the articles the author links to. The author also comments on the public reaction after the killing of U.N. worker that I wrote about a couple of days ago:

Hospitable, sentimental, vengeful, fundamentally decent but hopelessly, hopeless disorganized: that sounds like the Afghans I know.

Sounds about right.

JFK REMEMBERED: I really hate to Middle-Easternize John F. Kennedy. What I mean by that is that I don't want to judge him on his accomplishments in the Middle East, because he was much, much bigger than that. He was big--and big on a world scale. Anyway, I spent some time in the local library and I stumbled on reactions on his assassination from different sources. It must be noted that the perception of the Unites States was largely positive; and JFK was seen in the Arab world as a progressive with no grudge or hostile intent to Arab nationalism. His tragic assassination, however, briefly united Middle Eastern adversaries. So here's a list of reactions from the Middle-East:

- Egyptian President Nasser was at a loss for what to do with himself and walked into his office. He reacted by saying "My God, why have I dressed, why have I come here? There is nothing any of us can do about it." A book for condolences left out by the American Embassy in Cairo for three days was signed by more than a thousand people, including Vice President Anwar al-Sadat, the Egyptian army chief of Staff General Amr, as did the foreign ministers of Yemen and Algeria who were in town that day. Enite staffs of many embassies stopped by. Nasser al-Din Nashashibi, a rabidly anti-American columnist, delivered a ten-minute eulogy on television. Cairo television showed Kennedy's funeral in its entirety four times. One Egyptian wrote to the American embassy that he had names his new son Kennedy, even enclosing a copy of the birth certificate; another man apologized for the delay in his note of condolences, explaining that his only son had died days earlier. Cairo's Joseph Cathedral, which can seat only 600, somehow managed to cram in more than 4,000.
- In Tehran, Navab Street, which ran from the downtown to Mehrabad Airport was renamed after the late President.
- In Basra, the southern Iraqi city, hundreds of Iraqis crowded the streets in silence during memorial services for Kennedy.
- In Beirut, flags flew at half-mast and the long-planned anniversary of the celebrations of the founding of the Phalange were cancelled and replaced by a session of eulogies for the late President. The headmistress of Beirut's College Protestant des Jeunes Files wrote on her blackboard: "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."
- King Abdullah was the first person to call the American embassy in Amman; the government Yemen closed all their offices on November 24 and 25 in honor of JFK.
- Algeria had a special relationship with the President because of his 1957 Senate speech in which he backed Algerian independence. The Algerian government sent its foreign minister to Washington for the funeral and flew flags at half-staff for a week. President Ahmed Ben Bella renamed the main square in Algiers "Place John Kennedy."
- In Saudi Arabia, there was a crowd waiting to sign the embassy condolence; one man had come all the way from Medina. An ailing finance minister, Shaykh Abdullah Sulayman had to be carried as he signed the book.

And the Middle East may have been the first place where conspiracy theories began to crisscross the region, long before the Warren Commission and Oliver Stone's movie. Most blamed it on segregationists, or "les partisans de la segregation raciale as Ben Bella claimed, or Communists. Even Zionists were blamed, mostly in Palestinian territories.