God, remind me never to let Hugh Fitzgerald near my house if I need help fixing storm damage or something. He'll rip out the walls and floors, then when the job half done and I can't finish it on my own, leave me in the lurch saying "Hey, it was a screwed up when I got here." Sheeh, what a dick.

Regarding the item about Sistani, Dawa and SCIRI are contesting the December election separately. This is in contrast to January's elections where they ran jointly as the major parts of the United Iraq Alliance. Which is good, because it suggests the December elections will present people with a real choice.

Hi all:
al-Zarqawi has officially jumped the shark and will dicredit Al Qu'ida in the process. Way to go!
To quote Mark Shea: sin makes you stupid. In secular jargon: rejecting constructive criticism ensures continued errors.

xavier

I'm rather curious to see what happens if there's enough turnout for a "no" vote in Anbar, Sala Ah Din, and Ninawah. Of course, given that Ninawah has a high number of Kurds, there seems to be little chance of getting enough people out voting to turn the thing down.

The fact that the vote is in doubt is important. This is one of those strange situations where if either side had a lock on the results, the vote wouldnt happen, or at least not in an acceptable way. Counterintuitive perhaps, but the mere fact that no-one can say who will win adds legitimacy to the procedure.

God, remind me never to let Hugh Fitzgerald near my house if I need help fixing storm damage or something. He'll rip out the walls and floors, then when the job half done and I can't finish it on my own, leave me in the lurch saying "Hey, it was a screwed up when I got here." Sheeh, what a dick.

I've been reading Hugh Fitzgerald for a while, waiting for the time when his views, which are so obviously in conflict with most of the political blogosphere, would be more widely spread and debated. Looks like that may be starting to happen.

Hugh would say that his attitude would only apply to you if you held a deep belief that you were superior to all others outside your household; that it was thus only fitting for those others to repair the damage to your house, not as an act of generosity but one of due entitlement; that, through the will of God, your household was eventually destined to rule all others; and that any means was justified in achieving that end.

Hugh has always considered our involvement in Iraq and in most of the rest of the Islamic world as weak-minded foolishness based on ignorance of that world and its beliefs.

Fitzgerald's basic premise is that the world of Islam always has been and always will be fundamentally opposed to the world of infidels, regardless of any beneficial actions we perform, because it sees those acts not as generosity but merely as tribute that it is entitled to anyway. Thus he views that any aid or assistance whatsoever by infidels to any part of the Islamic world is utter folly. He believes the Islamic world should be completely cut off: no immigration, no aid, no trade, nothing but a giant blockade and quarantine, until the internal dysfunctions and conflicts of Islam cause its collapse.

Fitzgerald has little or no sympathy whatsoever for the majority of Muslims, except for the fact that they were born into a system imposed upon them which forbids them from leaving it. The only people from that world he is prepared to wholeheartedly support are ex-Muslims--those who have explicitly renounced Islam. He doesn't care what belief system they take up instead; he himself is an atheist. He believes that the fundamental policy of infidels should be to encourage other Muslims to renounce Islam, by making living under Islam untenable.

It's also important to acknowledge that strong dissagreement is normal for any democracy. Just think of how many people didn't vote for Bush last November.

We're kind of being lead to believe that 50% of the people in a few Suuni provinces voting 'no' on the referrentum, and it passing regardless, will automatically translate into those Suuni picking up guns and joining Zarquawi. Not so. What usually happens when people get dissapointed in an election is they grumble about it, but then look forward to the next election. Which is because casting a vote in a legitimate election is still a better way to get what you want than risking your life shooting at the army.

As long as the referrendum doesn't look rigged, the December elections remain a better way for Suunis to get a voice than violence (which isn't a high bar), and Zarquawi shouldn't see a boost, regardless of the outcome (which is much of the reason why he's still trying to stop it).

"Hugh has always considered our involvement in Iraq and in most of the rest of the Islamic world as weak-minded foolishness based on ignorance of that world and its beliefs."

That's an argument to stay out initially. Like, nevermind 2003, we should have never butt-in between Iraq and Kuwait, or having done that we should never have put in the no-fly zones to protect the Kurds and Shia, or never imposed the sanctions, or before that even gotten involved with the Iran-Iraq war, or even before that tried to manipulate Iran's politics gong back to the 50's for that matter.

It's one thing to promote isolationism, it's another thing to use that as an excuse to not finish what you've started, or try to convince yourself you're not involved when you are.

Like it or not, we've been meddling in the affairs of those Muslems for decades, and once you start meddling in something, you accept a share of the responsibility for what happens. In this case that means you stay at least until they have a perminent government and an army again, for crissakes.

Just thanks for the valuable info and the links -Back to the "comment pros"

"Hugh would say that his attitude would only apply to you if you held a deep belief that you were superior to all others outside your household; that it was thus only fitting for those others to repair the damage to your house, not as an act of generosity but one of due entitlement; that, through the will of God, your household was eventually destined to rule all others; and that any means was justified in achieving that end."

1 -I see no particular evidence that the Shiia of southern Iraq have ever lived by such a POV.

2 - Fitzgerald's basic premise is that the world of Islam always has been and always will be fundamentally opposed to the world of infidels,

I take it sees the world of Islam as a monolithic entity (converts from Islam apart)? Is he familiar with say, Kemal Attaturk, with the Druze, with Kurdish politics, etc?

Does that no trade with the Muslims include oil?

I fear that in replying this late, no one will read the responses, but since people asked the questions, they deserve answers.

I'll start with a's first, being the shortest:

Does that no trade with the Muslims include oil?

It especially includes oil. One of Hugh's continuing themes is that we need to be spending far more effort on alternative energy sources, of whatever sort, in order to dry up the Islamic world's principal source of income.

On to Seth:

"Hugh has always considered our involvement in Iraq and in most of the rest of the Islamic world as weak-minded foolishness based on ignorance of that world and its beliefs."

That's an argument to stay out initially. Like, nevermind 2003, we should have never butt-in between Iraq and Kuwait, or having done that we should never have put in the no-fly zones to protect the Kurds and Shia, or never imposed the sanctions, or before that even gotten involved with the Iran-Iraq war, or even before that tried to manipulate Iran's politics gong back to the 50's for that matter.

I don't think he would disagree with much of that, although there is the issue of historical context--sometimes you have to aid a potential enemy to defeat a present one. But I think he'd say most of the people devising these policies had little inkling of what they were messing with.

It's one thing to promote isolationism, it's another thing to use that as an excuse to not finish what you've started, or try to convince yourself you're not involved when you are.

Oh, I don't think he's convincing himself that we're not involved. He's arguing that we shouldn't be involved, that we're wasting our own resources and lives, that we're throwing good money after bad, that it is fundamentally impossible for us to get any long-term benefit from helping Iraq.

As for promoting isolationism, I think the only isolationism he's interested in promoting is isolating the Islamic world from the rest of the world.

Like it or not, we've been meddling in the affairs of those Muslems for decades, and once you start meddling in something, you accept a share of the responsibility for what happens. In this case that means you stay at least until they have a perminent government and an army again, for crissakes.

I think he would prefer that we keep them from ever having either, because he is convinced that without a focused attack on the Islamic belief system, any permanent government and army are inevitably going to bend against us and our interests.

Personally, I think such a policy would be doomed to failure, but I don't think he's advocating it out of mere selfishness. He's doing it out of a deep-seated belief that we are spending lots of our own blood and treasure in aiding an implacable, mortal enemy.

And finally liberalhawk:

"Hugh would say that his attitude would only apply to you if you held a deep belief that you were superior to all others outside your household; that it was thus only fitting for those others to repair the damage to your house, not as an act of generosity but one of due entitlement; that, through the will of God, your household was eventually destined to rule all others; and that any means was justified in achieving that end."

1 -I see no particular evidence that the Shiia of southern Iraq have ever lived by such a POV.

I wouldn't know one way or the other, but I think Hugh would argue that the fundamental Islamic texts and legal rulings drive them in that direction, whether or not individual Shia are diligent in living up to those texts.

2 - Fitzgerald's basic premise is that the world of Islam always has been and always will be fundamentally opposed to the world of infidels,

I take it sees the world of Islam as a monolithic entity (converts from Islam apart)? Is he familiar with say, Kemal Attaturk, with the Druze, with Kurdish politics, etc?

Oh, he seems quite familiar with all of them. My impression, judging by the torrent of historical and academic references he tends to make, is that he's spent much of his life studying this stuff. If anything, he's most scornful of modern academic Middle Eastern studies, which he sees as deluded at best and downright corrupted or traitorous at worst. (Traitorous, as he sees it, not merely to the U.S., but to the entire West and the world of the infidels at large.)

Ataturk comes up frequently in his writings. He's sees Ataturk's victory as only a partial and momentary one which had to be constantly reinforced by military power. Its foundations do seem to be under threat in today's Turkey, which is definitely seeing a strong Islamic revival.

I don't think he sees the Islamic world as a monolith, but he seems to see the Islamic texts as very rigid, leaving little room for reinterpretation, and I suppose that one factor in this is the large body of legal rulings by Islamic law scholars, let alone the nature of the original texts themselves. You could well argue that many parts of the Islamic world are somewhat lax in observing many of the principles in those texts; Indonesia seems to be a good example of this. But there is an Islamic revitalization going on throughout the Islamic world, led by followers from Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, which hammers home to Muslims that the texts demand for them to behave in such and such a way, and that they have been lax in following them.

I don't really wish to be an apologist for Hugh. Better that you read him for yourself. (He's certainly written enough on Jihad Watch; if anything one of his biggest problems is that he hasn't learned the virtues of keeping his writing simple and sticking to the point.) Frankly I think he should propagate and defend his own ideas in larger circles.

I also get the feeling he has the classic problem of many who have discovered an unrecognized unifying principle--he tends to exaggerate its importance, perhaps at times to the point of ridiculousness. Sometimes I get the feeling that he sees Islam as this practically invulnerable mental meme, which no other idea can ever successfully overturn once established, simply because nothing ever has before. Well, there's always a first time. History is full of unforeseeable transformations that completely rewrite the rule book. We're certainly in the midst of a bunch of them now.