Fighting hate
Belmont Club:
"One response to the Mogadishu-like mutilation of civilian contractors ambushed in Fallujah, in the heart of Iraq's Sunni triangle would be to pull American troops out entirely, an event eagerly awaited by some in the Shi'ite majority, the same ones who have been asking the US for permission to constitute and arm their militias. Just a month ago, 182 Shi'ite worshippers were massacred outside mosques in Karbalah and Baghdad on the holy day of the Ashura. Not a stone would be left on stone in the heartland of Iraq's former ruling elite, filled with men of whose sense of entitlement is only exceeded by the ignorance, were they not guarded by the US forces. (The Kurds might also like a shot at the thugs of Falluja--Prairiepundit.)
...
"But since it is Al Qaeda's policy to precipitate civil war in Iraq and America's goal to hold it together, the Sunnis in Fallujah will be safe from massive reprisal for the present, though the perpetrators of this recent outrage are living out their last hours. Yet even if the challenge can be met without destroying Fallujah it is uncertain whether it can be accomplished without destroying Fallujah's culture. In a wider sense the ritual dragging and meathook hangings, the passing out of sweets and cold drinks to celebrate the death of the infidel are things not confined to Sunni triangle. The West Bank festivities after September 11, the famous scene of Palestinian youths holding out their bloodstained hands in almost sexual ecstasy as they tear a Jew limb from limb, or troops pursuing Islamic rebels on a Philippine island seemingly littered with detached heads poses an existential problem for Western democracy. They are the 21st century equivalents of finding the crematoriums of Auschwitz and Dachau or being forced to watch, with unaverted eyes, the wholesale extermination of a Chinese city under the banner of the Greater Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. They leave us wondering whether there are ideas on earth which cannot claim the protection of tolerance and democratic space."
Belmont Club:
"One response to the Mogadishu-like mutilation of civilian contractors ambushed in Fallujah, in the heart of Iraq's Sunni triangle would be to pull American troops out entirely, an event eagerly awaited by some in the Shi'ite majority, the same ones who have been asking the US for permission to constitute and arm their militias. Just a month ago, 182 Shi'ite worshippers were massacred outside mosques in Karbalah and Baghdad on the holy day of the Ashura. Not a stone would be left on stone in the heartland of Iraq's former ruling elite, filled with men of whose sense of entitlement is only exceeded by the ignorance, were they not guarded by the US forces. (The Kurds might also like a shot at the thugs of Falluja--Prairiepundit.)
...
"But since it is Al Qaeda's policy to precipitate civil war in Iraq and America's goal to hold it together, the Sunnis in Fallujah will be safe from massive reprisal for the present, though the perpetrators of this recent outrage are living out their last hours. Yet even if the challenge can be met without destroying Fallujah it is uncertain whether it can be accomplished without destroying Fallujah's culture. In a wider sense the ritual dragging and meathook hangings, the passing out of sweets and cold drinks to celebrate the death of the infidel are things not confined to Sunni triangle. The West Bank festivities after September 11, the famous scene of Palestinian youths holding out their bloodstained hands in almost sexual ecstasy as they tear a Jew limb from limb, or troops pursuing Islamic rebels on a Philippine island seemingly littered with detached heads poses an existential problem for Western democracy. They are the 21st century equivalents of finding the crematoriums of Auschwitz and Dachau or being forced to watch, with unaverted eyes, the wholesale extermination of a Chinese city under the banner of the Greater Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. They leave us wondering whether there are ideas on earth which cannot claim the protection of tolerance and democratic space."
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