Missing Saddam

As the Bush administration winds down, Democrats are actually increasing their attacks. It’s like Wile E. Coyote just found out ACME was going out of business, and he only has two days left to catch the Roadrunner.

Democrats are especially unhappy about Bush's success in Iraq. That's because they were wrong when he was right, and because he stepped up in a way they never would. In the closing hours they're redoubling their lying claims that Bush lied and broke the law to get us into Iraq, and repeating as often as they can that, in spite of apparent successes in Bush's “so called war on terror,” we still aren’t any safer.

Applying myself to this logic, I’ve spent some time trying to imagine how the world would look come Inauguration Day 2009 (aka “The Moment”), had we not made things so much worse by deposing Hussein. These are only a few things that would be much better now if we had only listened to Joe Wilson:

ITEM: Saddam would still be Dictator of Iraq (or “President of a Sovereign Iraq” as he is described in Middle Eastern studies departments).

ITEM: CNN would still be able to broadcast from Iraq, in exchange for slavish willingness to lie about Saddam’s popularity and his brutal methods of maintaining control.

ITEM: Instead of 17 UN resolutions Saddam would be disregarding, there would now be 25 or 30, still a low number compared to what’s been piling up against Israel.

ITEM: Uday and Qsay would still be in line to succeed their father, guaranteeing what the State Department calls “stability” in the region, and what sane people call “rape and murder” for thousands of female Iraqis and their spouses, for decades to come.

ITEM: Iran, still feverishly working on getting the Bomb, would now have Saddam and his nuclear scientists next door to provide a “balance of power” in the region, a “stabilizing” factor considering the last war between these two bitter enemies--even without nukes--cost 300,000 dead and possibly 1-2 million casualties, or, as Reuters might report, was nearly as bad as the recent Israeli invasion of Gaza.

ITEM: The economies of the West Bank and Gaza would still be benefitting from Saddam’s $25,000 payouts to the family of every suicide bomber.

ITEM: Jacques Chirac, Kofi Annan and his son, and myriad other international parasites, would still be receiving illegal Iraqi oil credits in exchange for applying pressure through the UN to get rid of sanctions “containing” Iraq.

ITEM: By now, the sanctions/”containment” regime (long since denounced by the world as “American genocide against Iraq”), would have been lifted, with a resulting flood of medicine, foodstuffs, and dual-use technology flowing into the grateful hands of a small number of Baathist black marketeers, Saddam’s weapons scientists, and none of his people.

ITEM: The Shias in Iraq would not be suffering power outages as they sometimes do now, because Saddam would still be excluding them from the power grid.

ITEM: The Kurds in the North would not be suffering power outages as they sometimes do now, because Saddam would still be excluding them from the power grid.

ITEM: 28 million Iraqis would not be squabbling over political power as they do now, because they would be supporting Saddam’s re-election with 100% of the vote.

ITEM: Iran would not be forced to carry the burden of being the only Islamic nation in the region strong enough to wipe Israel off the map, as Saddam would still be able to make the same threats, too.

ITEM: Rather than suffer sectarian and religious divisions, Iraq’s Shia, Sunnis, Christians, and Kurds would all be united in the common national purpose of cringing in fear of the arbitrary madness of Saddam Hussein and his idiot sons.

ITEM: Rather than being forced into unemployment by colonial American powers, the Iraqi Revolutionary Guard would still be intact, and hard at work carrying out its duties of suppressing the Iraqis, punishing the Kurds, assisting in tortures and murders, having liaisons with al Qaeda, and firing anti-aircraft weapons at U.S. planes enforcing the No-Fly zone in the south for the 16th year in a row.

ITEM: Libya’s madman Khadaffi would not have been so “troubled” by U.S. actions in Iraq that he impulsively gave up his nuclear program.

ITEM: Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal, in his guest suite at the Saddam House International Inn, would not have become so “troubled” by U.S. actions in Iraq that he shot himself in the head six times.

ITEM: Saudi Arabia would still be graciously welcoming the infidel U.S. Military (NO BIBLES OR CROSSES!) on Allah’s soil, as protection against another invasion from Saddam.

ITEM: We would not be hated by Frenchmen for our adventurism in Iraq. Instead, we would only be hated by Frenchmen for our liberation of their country in 1944 and 1914,

ITEM: We would not be hated by every Third World member of the United Nations for our adventurism in Iraq. Instead, we would only be hated by every Third World member of the United Nations for supporting Israel.

ITEM: Abu Ghraib prison, instead of becoming the notorious setting for prisoners forced to get naked or wear underwear on their heads on direct orders of Dick Cheney, would preserve its solid but little-known reputation as a place where Saddam’s torturers cut off people’s hands, tongues, heads, or genitals, and nailed their tongues to boards, and as the place where 30,000 Iraqis were murdered--but at least no one would have his junk pointed at by a girl soldier.


ITEM: Instead of Iraq becoming a gathering place for poorly trained al Qaeda operatives from throughout the Ummah, (“troubled” by U.S. actions in Iraq), and who promptly get martyred at the hands of coalition forces within days of arriving, the AQ fighters would have remained in their home countries, peacefully training, plotting, studying in madrasses, no threat to anyone or “troubled” by anything we’re doing (except maybe that military base in Saudi thing, or the support for Israel thing, or the infidel thing, or the 72 virgins thing, or the Crusades thing).

ITEM: Instead of America’s image abroad being that of a “cowboy nation” that “goes to war at the drop of a hat,” we would still be enjoying our immense pre-9/11 popularity as a “paper tiger” who either ignores terrorist acts of war, (out of sympathy for “root causes”), or defers to “international law,” (the UN Security Council) to guarantee our interests abroad and the safety of our homeland.

ITEM: Instead of exposing our “kids” in the armed forces to risk of death in combat in a war of liberation, we settle for exposing our “kids” in the armed forces to risk of being murdered abroad defenselessly in their barracks, on shipboard, or in discothèques or embassies by cowardly terrorists convinced we will never fight back.

ITEM: Seeing the logic of moral giants like Susan Sarandon (“What did the Iraqis ever do to us? (sob)”), we would not only refrain from invading Iraq, but we’d also promptly withdraw from Afghanistan and let it revert to the Taliban, because, to be fair, the Afghanis didn’t attack us on 9/11, either-- nor did the Taliban. Those hijackers were a lot of Saudis, a couple Egyptians, a Lebanese, and a guy from United Arab Emirates. America would thereafter try out a simpler, “fairness-based” terrorism policy by which we would only punish nations that actually produced terrorists who attacked Americans. But once we realized we’d still have to invade Iraq, in addition to Lebanon, Egypt, the West Bank, Gaza, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Syria, Iran, Jordan, Pakistan, the UAE, Qtar, Somalia, Indonesia, and probably France, Canada, and Denmark, this short-lived policy would be revised so we could just let the UN tell us what we can do, the way they do with population control.

ITEM: Instead of relying on “cowboy diplomacy” as a defensive posture, America would have adopted the much less threatening “helpless townsperson” defensive posture. This entails State Department personnel gathering in coveralls and slouch hats, wringing their hands and wondering forlornly "when someobody’s going to do something about them goldurng Dalton brothers?" Inexplicably, neither the French nor the Arabs hate us any less when we act this way.

ITEM: During Hurricane Katrina, 150,000 troops who weren’t being wasted on national defense in Iraq would have been available to be deployed to New Orleans to stop a Force 5 hurricane. During the much larger rescue operation that would have become necessary when 150,000 soldiers became stranded as a result of being deployed below sea level in the path of a Force 5 hurricane, not to mention confusion caused by the headlong abandonment of the city by the New Orleans Police Department, the nation learns to its shame that race is still a very potent factor in the slow response to the rescue of minority troops. Jesse Jackson demands to know why the armed forces weren’t deployed out of the country where it was safe.

ITEM: Had we not invaded Iraq in March 2003, the media and Democrats, not one day later than April 1, 2003, would have begun denouncing the war in Afghanistan as a “quagmire.” They would dub it “Bush’s war,” “endless,” and “lost.” They would complain that it had already lasted longer than American’s involvement in World War I. They would charge that Afghanistan caused us to “take our eye off the ball” in the war on terror. They would say bin Laden was in Pakistan, not Afghanistan, so why weren't we at war there?

The Audacity of Despair: Pelosi on Iraq

From page 11A of the Detroit News:

Iraq OKs provincial elections, sets stage for political change

Steven R. Hurst and Qassim Abdul-Zahra / Associated Press
BAGHDAD -- Parliament cleared the way Wednesday for provincial elections this year that could give Sunnis a stronger voice and usher in vast changes to Iraq's power structure.

The new law -- which set the vote for Oct. 1 -- is one of the most sweeping reforms pushed by the Bush administration and signals that Iraq's politicians finally, if grudgingly, may be ready for small steps toward reconciliation.

Passage of benchmark reforms on healing the country's sectarian and ethnic rifts -- along with a reduction in violence -- were the primary goals of the 30,000-strong U.S. troop increase that President Bush ordered early last year.

We'll see how much attention this gets. Just this past Sunday, Nancy Pelosi was on CNN refusing to admit that any progress had been made at all in Iraq. She told Wolf Blitzer Iraq was nothing but a “war without end” and a “disaster.”

Pelosi calls Iraq a ‘failure’

By Mike Allen
Feb 10, 2008

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said twice Sunday that Iraq “is a failure,” adding that President Bush’s troop surge has “not produced the desired effect.”

“The purpose of the surge was to create a secure time for the government of Iraq to make the political change to bring reconciliation to Iraq,” Pelosi said on CNN’s “Late Edition.” “They have not done that.”

The speaker hastened to add: “The troops have succeeded, God bless them.” …

Pelosi’s comment came during a discussion of her call for “the redeployment of our troops out of Iraq.”

Anchor Wolf Blitzer asked: “Are you not worried, though, that all the gains that have been achieved over the past year might be lost?”

“There haven’t been gains, Wolf,” the speaker replied. “The gains have not produced the desired effect, which is the reconciliation of Iraq. This is a failure. This is a failure. The troops have succeeded, God bless them. We owe them the greatest debt of gratitude for their sacrifice, their patriotism, and for their courage and to their families as well…

“Afghanistan is not settled because the president took his eye off the ball and took the full attention that should have been in Afghanistan, and shifted some of that to Iraq, a war without end, without a plan, without a reason to go in, without a plan to win, without a strategy to leave. This is a disaster … we cannot perpetuate.” …

Though she spoke before Wednesday’s parliamentary vote, Ms. Pelosi already knew about the months of steady and dramatic reductions in violence, the routing of Al Qaeda with Sunni assistance, the de-Baathification reforms passed weeks ago, and the progress in the sharing of oil revenues. But there was no political capital in saying that.

Mecca to Dearborn: 'Take a Day Off'

The Dearborn Public School system has just made a last-minute announcement that, rather than Winter Break starting on Thursday, December 20th, it is being moved back a day to Wednesday, the 19th. The change is going to mess up the schedules of students and working parents, and the district has now had to rush negotiations with the “teachers union and the non-instructional union, which includes the bus drivers, custodians, food service, paraprofessionals and secretaries” about adjusting mandated and negotiated days off.

Here is what happened, as reported in the Dearborn Press and Guide. (“Late Eid scheduling throws district a curve ball”).

School officials met with union leaders last week to change the start of winter break to accommodate the Islamic celebration of Eid al-Adha.

Superintendent John Artis told the Board of Education at its Monday meeting the district anticipated the holiday would be celebrated Thursday.

Then school officials were notified that the High Judiciary Council in Saudi Arabia set the date for Wednesday.

“It wasn't until Monday [December 10] that Saudi Arabia announced it would be the 19th,” said David Mustonen, the district's communications director. “We tried to anticipate it and set the day, putting some buffer time in there.”

Another difficulty setting the date is that Sunni and Shia Muslims celebrate the first day of the holiday on different days.

“We received a fax from the Islamic Center of America that all the imams got together and said the 20th is when Eid would be celebrated,” Mustonen said.

DPS Trustee James Schoolmaster said,

“Leaving the calendar as is would result in high absentee rates among students and staff, which would translate into loss of state aid for the day, [DPS Superintendent John] Artis told the board.”

Eid al-Adha celebrates Ibraham’s (Abraham’s) willingness to sacrifice his son, Ishmael. Eid also marks the conclusion of Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. Because the date of Eid is determined on a lunar calendar, its date is always different on the Gregorian solar calendar used by our public schools. The date may also vary from country to country as the moon is visible from those places or not.

Reports do not indicate why it is that Saudis had so much trouble figuring out the predictable lunar cycles before the last minute.

Unhappy parents and critics of this level of accommodation are going to have it pointed out to them that the school schedule already includes “Christian holidays,” so Muslim holidays should be entitled to the same consideration.

In Dearborn, they already do receive the same consideration, and then some extra consideration, too, as this episode shows. Namely, the need for the Dearborn Public School system, all its teachers, 18,000 students and their parents, and all DPS staff, to adjust their calendar on barely a week’s notice to facilitate the religious needs of the district’s Sunni Muslim population, which in turn has to wait for date rulings concerning Eid from the High Judiciary Council in Saudi Arabia.

Dearborn's nonMuslims don't begrudge anyone time off to keep religious holidays. But it doesn't look so good when there's an appearance that taxpayer-funded schools have to stand up, sit down, and turn around at the say-so of, literally, foreign princes. Remember all the flak JFK from fundamentalists worried he was going to get his orders from the Pope? This is sort of like that, except Rome never interfered with JFK, and even if it had, the Pope was never going to call up the White House on December 21st to announce a change in the date of Christmas.

This is one of those situations where, if Dearborn's Sunni leaders are smart, they'll graciously acknowledge that it was their own Saudi clerics who caused all this inconvenience, and show some remorse for the trouble its caused their neighbors, and even show some gratitude that the school system so readily cooperated. But I'm afraid that, as usual, Dearborn's Muslims will just take the DPS's above-and-beyond accomodation as nothing more than what Muslims are due by divine right.

Which is exactly what drives their nonMuslim neighbors crazy.

Bin Laden Admits There Are Extremists in Islam

I guess this is why he’s the leader.

Advising his local chapter in Iraq to cool the bloodthirsty behavior that lost them popular support and Sunni cooperation in Anbar, Usama Bin Laden said in his newest video that “Everybody can make a mistake, but the best of them are those who admit their mistakes…Mistakes have been made during holy wars but mujahedeen have to correct their mistakes." (“Bin Laden" audiotape: He even advises himself not to be "extreme").

So, if UBL can admit that Islamic jihadists are guilty of extremism without being called “Islamophobic,” then why can’t anyone else? And why can’t CAIR and the ADC call for moderation, instead of making excuses for terrorists?

DU has been unable to confirm with our translators that, later on in the tape, Bin Laden tries to blame the violence and brutality of AQI on a small number of “extremists” who have “hijacked” his peaceful jihadist movement.