Sunday, February 26, 2012

Are They Right? Is it Time to Leave?

Time to go!For the last few years — beginning under the Bush administration, but continuing under Commander-in-Chief Barack Hussein Obama — the American military has been increasingly solicitous of and obsequious towards its Afghan “allies” and their thin-skinned Muslim sensibilities. Soldiers are advised in great detail on how to respect Islam. They have been prohibited from taking a leak in the direction of Mecca. They are trained to revere the Koran as if it were their very own holy book.

The recent Koran-burning incident at Bagram shows just how successful this doctrine has been. The name “Hussein” afforded our president no protection: he is being hanged and burned in effigy on the streets of Kabul and Kandahar. Afghan mobs are still rioting and shooting and burning things all over the country.

As reported in last night’s news feed, two American military advisers, a lieutenant-colonel and a major, were shot in the back of the head yesterday by an Afghan. This wasn’t some random attack on the street: the murders were committed in a heavily guarded area of a secure facility in the interior ministry building in Kabul, and the suspected gunman is a police intelligence officer:

AN AFGHAN police intelligence officer is reportedly being sought over the weekend killings of two senior US NATO officers at the Interior Ministry in Kabul amid fears violent protests over the burning of the Koran at a NATO military base would continue.

Abdul Saboor, 25, was the main suspect and had fled the ministry following Saturday’s attack, counter-terrorism officials told the BBC last night.

Saboor had served in several Afghan ministries and had worked at the Interior Ministry for some time, officials said.

He was reportedly responsible for security arrangements and had access to secure radio communication channels used by the ministries.

So how’s that COIN doctrine doing, fellows? Isn’t it about time to consider a different doctrine for Afghanistan?

Well, no.

A reader named HD sent us a tip about the latest analysis posted in The Stars and Stripes, the official news outlet of the U.S. military. As he says, “I can't let this one pass... the propaganda arm of the DOD has released the biggest piece of dhimmi garbage I have yet read on the S&S site.”

The article glosses over the murder of the two soldiers, saying only that “two U.S. officers who were shot Saturday by an Afghan worker”. Worker. Not “police intelligence officer”. Nothing to see here. Move along.

The rest of the report is just as bad. Notice that the author is an American journalist, but “Zubair Babakarkhail contributed to this report”. “Babakarkhail” is an exclusively Afghan surname, and Afghanistan is a 100% Muslim nation — except for those vile infidel soldiers and aid workers, of course.

In other words: The Stars and Stripes subbed out the research on the article to a representative of the enemy. Mind you, the U.S. military doesn’t consider Afghan Muslims the enemy, but rather our good friends and allies. However, a significant proportion of Afghanistan’s Muslims consider us their enemy, and we would be better off if our military leaders could acknowledge that and remember it.

Not a chance, though. Here’s what the article says:

Quran Crisis Reveals Lack of Awareness

by Martin Kuz

KABUL — Afghans seethed for a sixth day over the burning of Qurans at a U.S. base, and as the violence persists and the death toll rises, an unanswered question pulses at the heart of the crisis.

How could this happen?

Now, anybody who reads this blog or other Counterjihad sites can tell them how this could happen: Afghanistan is a Muslim country ruled by sharia — we wrote it into their constitution, remember? — and sharia considers the presence of non-believers within Muslim-ruled territory to be an intolerable offense. The only way such infidels may be allowed to live under those circumstances is if they acknowledge the supremacy of Islam, act in the approved subservient fashion, and pay up.

Anytime they violate those rules — well, they might find themselves summarily shot in the back of the head.

But the S&S doesn’t examine the issue from that perspective. The article continues:
The question pertains less to the specific decisions that led soldiers at Bagram Air Field to burn copies of the Quran than to why they even considered doing so, given the book’s sacredness to Muslims.

Davood Moradian, a former adviser to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, offered a pointed explanation.

“It’s the incompetence of ISAF,” he said, referring to the International Security Assistance Force, the U.S.-led coalition battling the Taliban insurgency.

That’s it! It should be obvious: if only the American soldiers weren’t so incompetent, they wouldn’t get shot in the back of the head.

That’s quite true, of course, but not in the way the authors intended.

“They have been here for more than 10 years and they still fail to understand the sensitivities of Afghanistan,” said Moradian, an assistant professor of political science at The American University in Kabul. “For Afghans, [burning the Quran] is an unacceptable, unforgivable incompetence.”

Actually, NATO troops are well aware of this fact. It has been drummed into them, day in and day out, for ten years. But they slipped up, so they must pay, and pay dearly.

Their outrage remained evident Sunday. Seven U.S. military trainers were reported wounded when a protester threw a grenade into a coalition base during a demonstration in the northern province of Kunduz.

One protester was killed when troops fired on the crowd, and Afghan police killed a second demonstrator.

More than 30 people have been killed and hundreds injured across the country since reports emerged Tuesday that soldiers at Bagram Air Field burned several copies of the Muslim holy book.

The death toll includes two U.S. officers who were shot Saturday by an Afghan worker inside the Ministry of Interior building in Kabul. On Thursday, an Afghan soldier shot and killed two U.S. soldiers at a base in Nangarhar province.

Pay attention to this next part, because it is quite true:

As recently as the Persian Gulf War in 1991, U.S. infantry soldiers required little, if any, awareness of another nation’s religious customs. They invaded, they fought, they went home.

The prolonged U.S. presence in Afghanistan and the military’s mission to win the “hearts and minds” of Afghans have created expectations unknown to previous generations of soldiers.

Upon reading these words, a hypothetical reasonable person might reasonably ask, “Does this mean that the whole ‘winning hearts and minds’ policy was actually a mistake? Wouldn’t it be better to return to the old ways?”

But no. That is one question that may no longer be asked. We don’t fight wars, we build nations.

And an enemy is just a friend we haven’t yet flattered, cosseted, placated, and bribed sufficiently.

“There is a lack of cultural understanding with the U.S. soldiers that should have been addressed by now,” said Waliullah Rahmani, executive director of the Kabul Center for Strategic Studies, a nonpartisan think tank. “With their constant rotations — the new units coming in every year — knowledge does not get passed on.”

As a result, Rahmani added, “Most of the soldiers here don’t know the Afghans or that they are a mostly religious people whose interpretation of the world is a religious one. They don’t understand that the reaction to the Quran burning is a natural Afghan reaction that comes from religious motivations.”

This is nonsense. How could the soldiers possibly not know that?

It has been drummed into them virtually every day during their training. Every time their president opens his mouth on television he talks about it. It’s written up in all the manuals. They witness their officers bowing and scraping to Islam at every opportunity, issuing groveling apologies at the slightest perceived offense.

How could they not know?

Muslims revere the Quran as the literal word of God spoken through the angel Gabriel to the prophet Muhammad.

“For [Christians], the Bible is a book and treated as such,” said Martine van Bijlert, co-director of the Kabul-based Afghanistan Analysts Network. “For Muslims, destroying the Quran is worse than civilian casualties.”

Some Christians do revere the Bible. Maybe not in the same fashion as Muslims revere their own book. But it offends them deeply if someone burns it or defaces it or spits on it.

Yet taking to the streets and burning things and shooting people is not the customary Christian response to such incidents.

In contrast, that sort of behavior — and far worse reactions, such as stoning, beheading, impaling, and burning people alive — is de rigueur in all Muslim-majority countries at a mere rumor of an insult to Islam. It’s even prevalent in some countries that don’t have a Muslim majority, such as France and Britain.

So what will the NATO response be? You guessed it: more training.

Allen’s call for additional training suggests a realization that U.S. soldiers have yet to grasp the meaning of the Quran to Muslims.

“There has been a complete failure by ISAF to engage the clergy in Afghanistan,” said Moradian, of American University. “They have had years to work with the religious community here but there has been almost no progress.”

Fury over the burning of the holy texts has mushroomed despite Afghans acknowledging the soldiers might have acted out of ignorance rather than malice.

“Even if they did not mean it, what is the good of burning the Quran?” asked Ahmad Silam, 43, who runs a small shop in Kabul where he sells audio recordings of the Quran on CD and tape. He keeps his copy of the Quran, bound in black leather, on a corner shelf behind the front counter. “It is the word of God to us. It is wrong to destroy it.”

The last paragraph in the article is one with which I most heartily concur:

“We want to stop having such insults in our country because this is not the first or second time that [foreign troops] have disrespected us. It is time for them to leave.”

I can’t wait. From his mouth to Allah’s ears. Please.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yes, America and NATO should leave Afghanistan. Tomorrow preferably.

Robert Pinkerton said...

"Nation-building" = milking the he-goat into the sieve.

Anonymous said...

ChristianInfidel says:

Thank you, Baron!

First, for anyone who has ears to hear, a wonderfully clear quote from your article:

"Now, anybody who reads this blog or other Counterjihad sites can tell them how this could happen: Afghanistan is a Muslim country ruled by sharia — we wrote it into their constitution, remember? — and sharia considers the presence of non-believers within Muslim-ruled territory to be an intolerable offense. The only way such infidels may be allowed to live under those circumstances is if they acknowledge the supremacy of Islam, act in the approved subservient fashion, and pay up."

This quote, combined with the news that Muhammad commanded Muslims to conquer the world by whatever means necessary and place it under permanent subjugation to Islam-- this is the core information that changed my worldview and caused me to join the Counterjihad.

Add in the astonishingly galling concept of fitna, the dhimma contract's enshrined oppression of non-Muslims, and a few more details; then simmer it all in the soup of Muhammad's evil example and words as found in the finest Muslim sources, and presto: Islam, probably the worst ideology in human history.

I hope some Gates of Vienna visitors today are awakened by your words. May the seed you planted keep bearing fruit.

laine said...

Leave, yes, but not tail between the legs spouting apologies a la Hussein Obama. It must be made clear that the civilized world is leaving people who have proved themselves barbarian to their own devices. Say quite crisply: "It has come to our attention that our efforts on Muslims in Afghanistan are unappreciated to the extent of endangering the lives of our soldiers. The United States does not tolerate harm to its military BY Afghanistan's people when the sole reason for their continuing presence after routing the Taliban government that aided Al Quaeda and the 9/11 attack has been to HELP the Afghanistan people. Afghanis will have to make their own sacrifices from now on if they wish to take their place among civilized nations. The American military will be back only if Afghanistan's leaders again make the mistake of harboring enemies and attackers of the United States. It is our hope they will expend all their energies instead on improving the lives of their own people where there is so much amiss. We cannot build your country for you since you chose to found it on sharia law, when the world's experience is that no such nation provides its citizens with liberty and equal rights under the law that are sacrosanct to us. Good luck and goodbye."

Lawrence said...

Yes. It is time for us to exit Afghanistan. We've helped them all we can, and I don't think they can withstand any more help from us.

I'm pro-U.S. military and all that, but the recent appology by Obama accepting all the wrong kind of responsiblity in this instance has made our objectives there impossible to achieve.

Lawrence said...

Infusing Sharia into the culture is just another strategy of replacement theology to undermine the Biblical theology on which Western Culture is based.

Obama’s church under Rev. Wright is a Black Liberation church. Their agenda is primarily to repace White people. To do this they have to replace both the white people’s church and the white people’s state.

Liberal/secular theology is to turn the state into their church.

Islamic theology is to turn their church into the state.

See how all this converges right now and allies are found between the liberals and islamists and the racists from within the circle of enemies?

If this was a white-people agenda behind all this it would be deemed racist and deemed a hate crime.

Chiu ChunLing said...

I have to draw the line at suggestions that Muslims are somehow specially depraved and uncivilized. Anyone that has a wide experience of humanity knows that criminality varies far more as a function of the existence of personal consequences for criminal behavior than as a function of complete ideological justification for it. I've known a few "anarchists" that could talk a great game about all the things they 'should' be allowed to do, but never do them for the very simple reason that they wouldn't be allowed to get away with them.

And I've seen far too many piously moralistic icons fall into depraved behavior the moment they thought they wouldn't get caught. Some people say "character is who you are when nobody is looking". Perhaps it is. But I would rather rely on someone very much convinced that somebody was always watching than trust the 'character' of someone who was pretty sure that they could get away with it if they wanted.

Is God that "somebody always watching" you? Or does your God wink at certain offenses? Perhaps you don't believe in any God at all. For me...I believe in darkness, that nothing is hidden in darkness because darkness is the ultimate witness and final reward of all who choose to avoid the light. It is darkness that knows what God cannot, by His nature, fathom. It is darkness that will never cease its hunt, and devour those who do not flee it at every turn. I trust only in the power of evil to administer perfectly the just reward of wickedness.

When I'm a bit incautious, I revel in that certainty, that those who hide their works in darkness will pay the price. Because darkness doesn't rest, or sleep, or tire. It is never satiated or appeased. You can escape for a time it by fleeing to light, but it will always be there when you want to hide...in return for letting the darkness eat away a bit more of your heart, mind, and will.

Until you have lost the power to escape toward the light, and darkness encompasses you forever.

But as for what the military should do in Afghanistan or anywhere else, they should of course fight a war (you know, where you concentrate on killing the enemy till they give up or are exterminated) or leave.

I personally like the "one-two" approach, where you kill the enemy until nobody is left who is not trying very hard to avoid giving you any excuse to kill them, then you leave. But that's just me. I'm easily bored.

Chiu Chun-Ling.

Alan W. Wright said...

This Is How Obama SHOULD Have Apologized!

Anonymous said...

Chiu ChunLing, I think you are a little bit crazy.

Lawrence said...

Chiu ChunLing said... "And I've seen far too many piously moralistic icons fall into depraved behavior the moment they thought they wouldn't get caught."

That pretty much defines all of humanity.

If we could just take the human equation out of the equation, everything would run like clockwork. Too bady we are all individual decision makers instead of one big collective of entities answering to a single command-er(dictate)-or.

I do get your point, btw, and I agree with your ultimate strategy and purpose for war.

Go in, win, and then get out. Our military is not a global police force, even though we seem to want to use it that way.

Dymphna said...

@ Chiu ChunLing, who says...

And I've seen far too many piously moralistic icons fall into depraved behavior the moment they thought they wouldn't get caught. Some people say "character is who you are when nobody is looking". Perhaps it is.

"Perhaps"? But you don't really believe that do you? Definitely "nature red in tooth and claw" for you.

No thanks. I worked with a young juvenile deliquent once. He had to write an essay on why stealing was wrong, to give to the judge. When he interviewed ppl about their own moral code, the ones who left him gob-smacked were boys who said, surprised by his own attitude, "heck, no! I don't steal. What kind of world would we be in if we all did that to one another? It's not about getting caught at all. It's about who you are and how you see yourself..."

Get ye back into the darkness Chui. Whoever it was who questioned your sanity may be on to something there. No wonder you talk about the individual all the time! I just groked your idea: no one else can be trusted.

Must suck to really believe that. I'm so sorry...

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