Savages

Apparently Nowhere Girl was being harassed in Real Life about her blog, and deleted it.

I use the "Next Blog" button to hop around reading blogs sometimes. Recently I bounced on one in which there was a post which, if I recall correctly, asked why "everyone and their grandmother" felt expert enough to have an opinion about whether we are winning or losing in Iraq. I am paraphrasing from memory. The premise seemed to me to be: Leave it to the authorities to decide. That struck me as absurd and undemocratic. So, hoping to stir up some thought, I left a sarcastic comment along the lines of "Pretty soon people will be trying to chose their own president." The implication is that in a society like ours, the people are supposed to evaluate foreign policy and come to their own conclusions. We function better that way.

Because of the mysteries of Blogger, it is not uncommon for me to bounce at random onto the same blog more than once per day, or even the next day. I don't recall whether that is what happened, or whether the blogger "Hooah Wife" came and commented on my blog. But I found myself back on her blog, and saw that she had responded to my sarcastic comment with something along the lines of "You are so right!"

Thinking that she just didn't get me yet, I nonetheless read her blog for a few days. I made comments, less sarcasic, and awaited the unfortunate moment that someone would call me a liberal, idiot, or traitor.

That moment was a long time coming, and "Hooah Wife" (Greta), whose husband has been serving in Iraq, didn't seem to mind me commenting. She seems nice.

I wound up in a long comment exchange with a reader/contributor named "Silke." Amazingly, still no one called me a liberal idiot traitor. Greta suggested we look at a site with what appeared to me to be hermetic, rightist, choir-preaching pieces, dramatic but unsourced.

Silke and I went back and forth about one, and then Greta suggested we read "What the Arab World Thinks"¹.

My experience with the Hooah Wife blog to date has been an affirmation that nice people really can have different views on politics, and still talk.

Anyway, I read the piece. Because Greta asked for comments, here is my review:

The basic thesis is: Those people are as savage and heartless as animals. This is extended into two corollaries:

1. There is no need to obey your own standards of decency when responding to their outrages (e.g., it would be OK to use torture against them).

2. Anyone who urges that we obey our own standards of decency is a fool -- and is helping the enemy.

But the real purpose of this illogical and uninformed piece (which does not even address whether torture is effective) is the concluding seven paragraphs, 395 of the piece's 1062 words.

The point is to attack a single politician, Illinois Democratic Senator Richard Durbin, who is portrayed as "aiding and abetting the goals and strategy of Islamic jihadists who have declared war on the United States".

Judging from the comments that follow the post, the author is not alone in these views. Of the first 17 comments, only two commenters showed any independent thinking ("Toad734" and "Greta (Hooah Wife)"), while the rest showed agreement.

Toad734 challenged the initial premise: "So are you saying since they torture it's ok for us to do it?"

Referring to a video linked in the piece, Greta (Hooah Wife) asked, "So where did you get this video from and has it been authenticated?"

A more typical comment was "Why has everyone forgotten we are supposed to hate our enemies? Win at all costs? I don't care what our guys do to them. This crap about, 'We treat them nice so they'll treat us nice upon capture' is a daggone joke."

"Win at all costs" might presumably include the cost of maintaining a well-considered national strategy of restraint in treatment of prisoners. But this piece encourages people to throw their intellect aside.

Some commenters felt that a linked video (of the enemy engaged in torture) were "suspect" and "manufactured." Unfortunately, this was the typical response: "Still, without the video, the words of this post are just as graphic and need to be read by all who think one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter!"

While intended to be highly emotional, this piece is largely devoid of content, and seeks to tap the suffering and gravity of our times for a crass partisan political purpose.



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Thursday, December 08, 2005


What The Arab World Thinks
Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE
This is graphic, and I think you should each watch it and tell your friends. Click on the websites, either one (they are the same)
Subject: FW: from the horse's mouth

This is a discussion of the attitudes of Arabs towards the Western idea of peace and tranquility and civilization. Written by an Arab, not some think-tanker who thinks he/she might know what's going on. This is what we face; this is how we are viewed.
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WHAT THE ARAB WORLD THINKS By Brigitte Gabriel
Torture is accepted and even expected in the Arab world. Yes, I know what you're thinking-that's not politically correct in most mainstream media. And you know some nice Arabs who have immigrated to America. But it's the truth in the Arab world. Might makes right. Real men don't eat quiche. They prove their manhood by the way they treat their enemy. After all it's what Muhammad did to the nonbelievers - Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians in the Quoran - the 'holy book' allegedly mishandled in Guantanamo prison.

Arab Muslim men gain honor by shaming, belittling, abusing and torturing their enemy in the most horrific ways. Just look at how the Palestinians treat so-called collaborators by disemboweling them and hanging them upside down in Manger Square in Bethlehem. Look at the terrorist torture chambers that the coalition forces recently uncovered in Iraq.
When people refer to the prisons of Saddam Hussein and his regime they think he is the extreme exception. Not! The t! ruth is his torture tactics are quite the norm in the Arab world. If you want to see torture that is beyond what any Westerner can ever imagine please go to ( http://www.masada2000.org/impalement.asx
)

Yes, you read it right, impalement. You'll get a glimpse of what the Arabs do to their own people.
As someone who came from the Arab world and knows how they think, it frustrates me to see self-appointed righteous minded politicians and media pundits oblivious to Arabic culture and thinking, criticizing America's actions at Guantanamo. These are a bunch of al Qaeda jihadists who were captured while bent on killing us - the kaffirs or 'unbelievers. They lau gh watching our government bend over backwards, forwards and sideways trying to appease the critics. The more we stumble over ourselves questioning our goals and tactics, the more they think we are weak and easy to defeat.

They smirk because they believe that Americans have demonstrated how stupid and weak they are by caving in to stories about maltreatment of Guantanamo detainees. They are watching our critics in this country and counting on them to embolden the radical Islamic cause and weaken our resolve.

Actually Gitmo is a joke as far as the Arabs are concerned. Prison? You call that a prison? Let me tell you what some of the prisoners call Guantanamo, "Al muntazah al-dini lilmujaheden al Muslimin," The Religious Resort for Islamic Militants. They are given three halal meals a day in accordance to their religious dictates. How man! y kosher prisons are there in the Arabic world? None. Jews captured in the Arab world are butchered like those obscene pictures taken in Ramallah during the frenzied slaughter of two Israeli reservists who got lost. Remember the Palestinian man holding his red, Jewish blood dripping hands, high above his head in victory? Remember Nick Berg's head being held high also?

Most of these detainees never had three meals a day in their entire life. They are gaining weight, and are living in what they refer to in Arabic as "Al-Jannah," paradise. They have radio, television, soccer games, air-conditioning, clean clothes, servants, meaning American GIs, who wait on them hand and foot. They have Islamic chaplains and handed Qu'rans, the social hate guide against Infidels, by people so concerned as not to offend that they wear latex gloves and carry the book with two hands.

Many Muslims in the Middle East would gladly give up their poverty, dictatorial governments, corrupt! leaders and social bondage to enjoy the relative luxuries Guantanamo offers. They have free medical care, better than millions of uninsured Americans and our military men and women serving on the jihadists' battlefield. Some of them who couldn't afford to see an optometrist now have glasses and can see and read their Qu'ran. Others who never had the opportunity to see a dentist now have a free dental plan. It has become such a joke; we even stop interrogations to let them take prayer breaks demanded by their religion.

As an Arab, I can tell you that Illinois Democratic Senator Richard Durbin is aiding and abetting the goals and strategy of Islamic jihadists who have declared war on the United States. Where was Durbin's comparison to the Nazis when we found the torture chambers in Iraq? Where was Durbin's comparison to Soviet gulags when we found the hundreds of thousands of bodies in Saddam's mass graves?

Where was Durbin's head when he compared prisoners captured on the field of battle to the internment of Japanese American civilians during WWII? OK, apologize to unarmed citizens, not fighters with weapons in their hands.

Where was Durbin when he compared Gitmo and Abu Ghraib to the industry of death that murdered 6 million Jewish men, women and children during WWII? If anything his heart and mind were in the jihadists terrorists' camp. If you see what story is being downloaded and shared by viewers of the al Jazeera web site you will find the story on Durbin's comments the winner.

If I were an Islamic terrorist I would be thanking Durbin and forwarding his views to all my fellow fanatics. His reckless comments fuel the fanatic frenzied jihadists, motivating them to blow themselves up in the midst of innocent civilians, savagely cut the heads of helpless hostage! s and devote themselves to killing the infidel who could be your neigh bor stationed in Iraq. Just like the Quran says they should.

Dick Durbin is an unwitting champion of Islamic radical fundamentalists. His comments should be known from this day forward as a "Durbinization" of the facts. To demonize something grossly out of proportion to what the enemy is doing is to Durbinize.

Gitmo and Abu Ghraib have been Durbinized and the Arab world loves it. They laugh at Durbin because he's supporting their belief in the destruction of our country and civilization. The shame is Durbin doesn't have a clue as to what he's done. As far as he's concerned, he did the right thing for the Islamic radical detainees living high on the proverbial hog in Gitmo. What he really did was made them laugh.

Laugh at us for being fools and not real men. Now it's time to see if the voters in Illinois and his fellow members of Congress are men and women enough to tell the Moslem world Durbin isn't our real man.
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Brigitte Gabriel is the former news anchor of World News for Middle East television, and now a Contributing Editor of FamilySecurityMatters.com and the founder of AmericanCongressforTruth