Nov 19 2007
Does al-Qaeda Dare To Destroy The New Found Peace Of Iraqis Muslims?
While there is reasonable caution that things in Iraq could still reverse, I think those reasons are swiftly vanishing. Let me first start with the new picture of Iraqi life, as presented by Newsweek:
Meanwhile, though, I can contemplate activities that were once unthinkable: like going out to dinner. Baghdad’s famous mazghouf restaurants, selling barbecued river carp on the banks of the Tigris, have come back to life. At one of them, called the Karrada Sports Club, owner Mundar al Haidar recently checked the big circular pools of live carp, and watched as his workers splayed the fish on staves to grill them over a bonfire made of lemontree wood. They were preparing for the evening rush, when these days the restaurant fills to capacity. “You go out now and you feel safe,” he says. “The only explosions are far away. I myself left here at midnight last night.” Haidar even invited me to lunch at his home, something both of us would have considered foolhardy, even suicidal, only last summer. If insurgents didn’t kill me before I left, they would have killed him after.
People who have long lived like fugitives can now do the most normal things. Zuhair Humadi, a high-ranking Iraqi official who lives in the Green Zone, recently attended a public wedding celebration in Baghdad without a massive security detail. The Shorja bazaar in old Baghdad, hit by at least six different car bombs killing hundreds in the last year, is again crowded with people among the narrow tented stalls. On nearby Al Rasheed Street, the famous booksellers are back in business, after being driven into hiding by assassins and bombs. People are buying alcohol again—as they always had in Baghdad, until religious extremists forced many neighborhood liquor shops to close.
Iraq is, as Bin Laden noted, the heart and soul of Arabia and Islam in many ways. It is Mesopotamia and all it means to the Arab culture. Can the crippled and now hated al-Qaeda afford to further alienate Islam by destroying this new found peace for Iraq’s Arab Muslims? With word spreading of al-Qaeda’s atrocities in Iraq, can the organization really shatter these images of peace and Muslim happiness with bombs and blood and dead children?
I don’t think it can. Right now al-Qeada is on the knife-edge of credibility in terms of the Muslim street. I think they cannot afford any more Muslim deaths due to their actions without the entire world of Islam rising up to destroy al-Qaeda, as Iraqi Sunnis did in Iraq’s Anbar Province. al-Qaeda is a deadly cancer in the eyes of the West – which is dangerous enough for them. If they become a deadly cancer that must be eliminated in the eyes of Islam as well, they are dead – literally.
So I doubt seriously al-Qaeda will wage any more attacks in Iraq. It would mean their utter destruction in the Muslim world, at the hand of the Muslim world. No one will sanction the al-Qaeda crushing these images of hope for Iraqis Muslims, least of all Muslims. I firmly believe this means al-Qaeda has lost Iraq and Iraq will become reconciled and healed.
I hate to disagree with your optimisim, but you still seem to believe that members of Al Qaeda still have some shreds of sanity and rationality left.
I do not believe that.
I believe they are mad dogs who will attack, attack, and attack until they are all put down, and like mad dogs they will attack whoever is closest to them no matter how much it hurts their cause. They are no longer rational enough to even understand what hurts them or what helps them – they are dedicated killers who can do nothing but kill and who will continue to kill until they are all gone.
The optimistic part is that ordinary Iraqi’s may finally feel empowered enough to hunt down and execute all of these vipers that are still in their midst.
WWS,
al-Qaeda has been trying that all year and failing. The fact it is the attacks are droppin WAY off. So my optimism is being born out on the numbers.
But even so, if al-Qaeda does continue then they march onward to oblivion.
win-win for our side right now.
I have not heard of Al Queda or any other Islamic group losing strength anywhere EXCEPT in Iraq. Quite to the contrary, these groups are gaining in strength in Lebanon, Pakistan, Africa, etc. It’s great that they have been Militarily Defeted in Iraq, but this was suppose to be a global war, and if you look around the Globe, their influence isn’t on the decline.
Hell, we have had over 10,025 Islamic Terrorist attacks AFTER 9/11.
And everyday, there are more. Al Queda is but a small piece of the puzzle.
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com
The lists are there.
in todays news:
Iraq: Suicide bomber kills children, U.S. troops who were distributing toys
More barbarism. “Bombs strike children, US troops in Iraq,” by Kim Gamel for the Associated Press:
Hizballah rebuilds South Beirut
Winning hearts and minds. Tiny Minority of Extremists Update: the Hizballah jihadists seem to have support in south Lebanon that is so considerable that it has been able to amass a sizable amount in international donor funds.
“Hezbollah rebuilds south Beirut,” by Bassem Mroue for Associated Press:
“He’s lucky. Because he killed one medic. The second medic saved his life.”
The story of this youthful jihadist illustrates the difference between civilization and the barbarism he was fighting to impose upon the world. “Omar Khadr: The Youngest Terrorist?,” from CBS (thanks to Jeffrey Imm):
Nov. 18, 2007(CBS) Omar Khadr seems an unlikely poster boy for the war on terror. Khadr is a Canadian citizen, he likes Harry Potter, and he was only 15 years old when he was captured by the U.S. Army in Afghanistan. And that’s what makes his case so controversial: his age.
Asked if the medic described the kid, Morris tells Simon, “All he said was, ‘Man, we got up on that kid and he begged us to kill him.’ He said ‘Just kill me.'”
And he said it in perfect English.
Thought for the day [Mark Steyn]
This is a long interview with Tony Blair on the background to the liberation of Iraq, but the sobering bit comes right at the end. The former Prime Minister, one of life’s boundless optimists, is slumped in near-Steynian pessimism:
The enemy that we are fighting I am afraid has learnt . . . that our stomach for this fight is limited and I believe they think they can wait us out. Our determination has got to match theirs and our will has got to be stronger than theirs and at the moment I think it is probably not.
11/18 10:23 AM
It may not be the time to get overly excited.