Arthur Chrenkoff: The antidote to the Beeb
BBCA’s newscast this morning spent at least 15 minutes discussing that we’re all going to hell on a handbasket and it’s all America’s fault, from two stories: The Chatham House and Economic and Social Research Council report said that
Supporting the US-led invasion of Iraq put the UK more at risk from terrorist attack, a report has said.
The Chatham House and Economic and Social Research Council report also said the invasion had boosted al-Qaeda.UK involvement in operations against Osama Bin Laden’s network had also raised the attack risk.
and that the insurgents terrorists are making reconstruction difficult in Iraq, which will be discussed during the two day conference in Jordan between Iraq and donor countries.
The second story showed a new power plant that “had to be fortified like a military base”. Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather. Who’d thunk it? A suicide bomber aims to kill the grieving parents of the children who were killed on Wednesday, and the Beeb’s surprised that public services need to be fortified.
What does the Beeb propose? Folding up camp and retreating to the safety of Savoy Hill, the Beeb’s home in the 1920s? Because that would still not solve anything: as Robert Spencer points out,
The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928 as a direct reaction to the abolition of the caliphate in 1924, and its violent activity, as well as its propagandizing, makes it true in a sense that the doctrines of violent jihad were newly present among Muslims beginning in the 1930s. But they were not new in the 1930s. The Ottomans declared jihad (futilely) as late as 1914. Jihads are found throughout Islamic history.
In the early 1920s Arab nationalists were killing people in what is now Israel (emphasis mine):
In the spring of 1920, spring of 1921 and summer of 1929, Arab nationalists opposed to the Balfour declaration, the mandate and the Jewish National Home, instigated riots and pogroms against Jews in Jerusalem, Hebron, Jaffa and Haifa. The violence led to the formation of the Hagana Jewish self-defense organization in 1920. The riots of 1920 and 1921 reflected opposition to the Balfour declaration and fears that the Arabs of Palestine would be dispossessed, and were probably attempts to show the British that Palestine as a Jewish National home would be ungovernable.
which is the same aim as the current terrorist attacks on the Shiites in Baghdad. As Chrenkoff said “it is a war alright, but not really a civil one, in that Shia are being targeted mostly by foreign jihadis, not Iraqi Sunnis.” I would add, it’s a war against democracy and human rights.
Patrick Bishop’s article, The doctrine that drives young men to murder explains (emphasis mine),
Qutb’s conviction, shared by many Islamic terrorists, was that democracy and human rights raised a barrier between man and God and must therefore be destroyed.
This belief that all truth is contained in the Koran means that the terrorists have no political agenda with which the West can engage.
America is powerless to take any action that would assuage the killers. Even if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were solved overnight the violence would continue, while if American troops withdraw from Iraq it is likely to intensify. Those who fight in the name of al-Qa’eda hate the Shia majority as much as they do the occupiers.
These immovable, unappeasable views have enormous appeal to a wide range of Islamic youth. The perpetrators of the September 11 attacks came from wealthy families, and many of the jihadis flooding into Iraq have never experienced want or discrimination.
The very narrowness of the creed is a major attraction, providing a rock of certainty in a confusing world.
Joining the jihad also means joining a brotherhood that provides loyalty and acceptance, so long as belief remains unwavering.
In this world, violence to others is not merely justified but glorified and celebrated. Osama bin Laden’s representative in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was praised recently by one of his legion of admirers as the “sheikh of the slaughterers”. And violence to oneself is a means to a yearned-for end. With “martyrdom” in battle or through suicide bombing, a place in paradise is guaranteed.
Back in the 1920s the Arab nationalists were trying to prove that a Jewish National home would be ungovernable — and nowadays the state of Israel has Palestinians in its Parliament while Palestinians are treated like outcasts in other Arab states and the Palestinian region itself has proved ungovernable; today Isalmofacists try to prove that a democratic Iraq is ungovernable.
When Hitchens calls this war an assault on all civilisation he knows that’s the truth. This is a war we must, and will, win.
Today Arthur perseveres in bringing us Good news from Iraq, part 31. Arthur’s not alone — good news gets around and Kurdistan in Northern Iraq is attracting Chinese workers. Arthur states,
Nation-building is never quick and never easy; hard-work and heartache are today, and the results often only years if not decades ahead. But the Iraqi people, with the assistance of the Coalition, have commenced their journey, and despite all the hardships, every day is another step forward.
Chrenkoff, antidote to the Beeb.
