Comments on: Get well soon

By: Dan Hardie

Dan Hardie — Mon, 16 Aug 2004 09:14:32 +0000

On behalf of every sane, non-anti-Semitic person here, especially those who want to hear from Iraqi and Iranian posters about the Middle East, thank you very much Abbas for your comments. ‘Lance Boyle’’s remarks are utterly disgusting: if you don’t have the guts to post under your real name, pal, choose a better pseudonym: ‘Pathological Jew-hater’ is my first suggestion.

By: J Thomas

J Thomas — Mon, 16 Aug 2004 07:42:19 +0000

The problem I have with demonizing Sadr is that if iraq is heading toward democracy, then Sadr the man will be mostly irrelevant. If a lot of people want what he offers (blue laws, puritanical behaviors enforced by government) then they’ll vote for somebody else who offers that if Sadr is gone. If they don’t want that, they won’t vote for Sadr even if he gets to run for election. I haven’t seen how many iraqis agree with Sadr—we’d find out with an election. Say it’s 10% of the population. The USA is not going to be involved in killing 10% of the iraqi population, not in a couple of years. So those people will survive and will vote. We can kill thousands of them but not enough to reduce the size of their voting block much at all. For that we’d have to kill at least hundreds of thousands. If we don’t like the way they think we need to persuade them otherwise. That’s the democratic way. Killing Sadr won’t help that. But Sadr says it’s a puppet government, he says it’s rigged. He’s at least partly right, the nondemocratic 100-person assembly for the IG is designed to make it much easier for members to win elections fot the TG. He can run as an outsider and win a lot of seats, but what if he boycots the election and announces to everybody that it’s still a puppet government? Maybe he should be asked what he things would be needed for a democratic government. He wants the US troops out, what else does he want? Maybe the changes he’d want to believe it’s really representative government are things the IG would agree to.

By: Abbas

Abbas — Mon, 16 Aug 2004 03:43:13 +0000

I work with instinct when the facts aren’t clear… Very wise. Even when they’re clear. Facts can be so troublesome. Your presence here at CT has been consistently Zionist I guess that settles it, eh? What a brilliant diagnosis. On the basis of only two comments! You’re the expert on Iraq, on Iran, on Shiism… and now “Zionism”. Hmm… I work with physicians and surgeons in a large city hospital, and many of my colleagues are Jewish. I wonder, could “Zionism” be infectious?

By: Lance Boyle

Lance Boyle — Sun, 15 Aug 2004 23:36:43 +0000

Abbas- Your use of the approved terminology seems kind of rote “uprising” “insurgents” “thug”. These terms appear all at once in the media, out of some agreed-upon lexicon that shifts with events. You can track it if you have the time and access. It literally occurs within hours sometimes. The assumption I think being most people don’t read widely enough to notice it. you still haven’t responded to the request for contrast. Which doesn’t mean you’re wrong about Sadr’s men committing what are atrocious crimes, as you detail them. It does mean that without corroboration from someone who’s not so obviously toeing the party line I’ll have to disregard your testimony. Or the uncle of your friend’s testimony. It reeks of the outraged “Cubans” and their hatred of Castro. Which makes a lot more sense when their ties to the morally corrupt and vicious crime syndicates that Batista ennabled are made plain. That you seem incapable of contrasting the crimes you insist the Al-Mahdi Army is guilty of with the crimes we all know the invaders are guilty of, makes your position even more suspect. Your presence here at CT has been consistently Zionist, as far as I’ve encountered it. One of the distinguishing features of that position generally is the rote repetition of stock phrases, a tool employed by the media to great effect, regardless of its veracity. You say you use these “gangster” terms because nothing else fits, but then you’ll need something even more heinous for the invader/occupiers, won’t you? If you’re going to be honest, I mean. If you’re not going to be honest, then of course you can use whatever terms you want. The rhetorical device that will end this conversation is that even someone who has been in Iraq for the last ten years, and who speaks fluent Arabic in the local dialects, has no way of knowing if the Al Mahdi Army has done what you say they’ve done even if they were there, unless they were accompanied by al Sadr himself while it was happening. Too much of your position is too precisely an echo of the image-makers and their media drones for me to trust what you say. I’m sorry but that’s how it is. I work with instinct when the facts aren’t clear, and as I said in my last post, I’ll risk embarrassment, or being wrong publicly, to defend what my heart says needs it. Al Sadr may prove to be a thug – I doubt it enough that I’ll make this stand publicly – but even if he does prove to be that morally tainted, compared to the innocent blood spilled by Bremer and his golems he should be much lower on the list of priorities, when it’s time to kill women and children to save the people of Iraq. The assumption there being that the welfare of the people of Iraq, especially the poor, means anything to you and the people you keep apologizing for by ellision. ÷÷÷ derrida- I thought religious fanatic was the point. It’s what John Brown had in common with Che that makes them comparable. In their vastly different ways they stood against an overwhelmingly superior force that was in the wrong. There’s a tendency to demand moral perfection from the boat-rockers that is not applied to the boat. There are religious fanatics deciding the course of the United States, right now, it’s just that they’re well-fed and on-track. So the hysteria and desperation, which is what you’ve been trained to see as John Brown’s entire persona, aren’t there. He was fighting people who kept human beings as property. How much fanaticism will you grant him?

By: Abbas

Abbas — Sun, 15 Aug 2004 15:02:37 +0000

I have no interest in getting involved with you, Mr. Boyle, but since you insist… I was born in Iran of half “Persian” and half Arab parentage (all Shiites). Together with my wife, who is from Kuwait (and 100% Sunni Arab), we have many relatives in Iraq. We live in Canada now but we last visited both Iran and Iraq (8 days, our first visit to the country since Hussein fell) in May. From your comments, you appear to have not the slightest knowledge of (the history of) what is occurring in Iraq, which, in western terms, is simply a jockeying for power among various religious, political and ethnic groups. Muqtada al-Sadr’s (hard core) gang is one of the worst. He is trading on his father’s reputation and realizes that the only way he can muscle in on the “action” (I’m using gangster’s terms because that’s all he is) is by being more militant than the others. He has no political or social program beyond vague references to Sharia and the usual collection of “anti” slogans. In practice, his gang has been conducting a murderous campaign to eliminate rival supporters, not excluding those of Sistani. That doesn’t make the news because it’s only Iraqis killing Iraqis, but it is as vicious as you might imagine, including the barricading of an entire family in their house and throwing in grenades (3 died), and the rape of two young girls (their father had requested that Sadr’s men leave the neighbourhood so that it wouldn’t become a battleground). These are some of the Sadr activities I know firsthand (the girls’ uncle went to school with me). I have heard many others, even from people who were firm supporters of his father. The uprising he instigated in southern Iraq in April has failed. His gang has regrouped in Najaf and parts of other cities. The sooner he is eliminated the better it will be for all Iraqis.

By: derrida derider

derrida derider — Sun, 15 Aug 2004 14:12:14 +0000

Lance, I don’t really know enough about Sadr to express an opinion on his value or otherwise to Iraq – though I agree with John that the coalition’s handling of him seems less than skilful. But what makes me think you really are off with the fairies on this issue is your admiring comparison with John Brown – an unhinged religious fanatic – and with Guevara – a man too dogmatic and bloodthirsty even for Fidel’s taste. I don’t agree with Abiola about many things, but I do on this.

By: Lance Boyle

Lance Boyle — Sun, 15 Aug 2004 07:06:59 +0000

Steve Carr- I’m not a champion of Islam, or any Abramic religion for that matter, but I will risk embarrassment, or worse, in defense of someone whose valor and integrity shine as brightly as al Sadr’s does, in contrast to those who would have him killed. Che Guevara was not John Brown, Mao was not Thomas Jefferson, Mohammed was not Jesus…we could do that all day. What they have in common makes the comparison apt, and valid. Selfless courage and a willingness to risk death for humane principle, and for a people who are being ill-used at best, and enslaved and killed at worst. For you to use the “feminist” argument is rich, considering how many women and children have been murdered by the people al Sadr is fighting, which I suppose would be you, loosely. To mewl about women’s rights in Iraq, or anywhere, is convenient but it’s not the motive of anyone who’s actually prosecuting this war on the Muslim poor, it’s merely a selling point, part of the scam. Something to gull the big dumb public with, to keep the money and the votes lined up – like missing numbers for the mysteriously uncountable Iraqi civilian dead. Or hiding those flag-draped coffins the leftist internet brought the war home with. A proxy war conceived, financed, directed, and gleefully observed from a distance, by merchants and ad-men. – The Third World has been on the receiving end of scorn since before the name was applied. So what. It’s the same sneering racism that made it possible for slavery and the Ten Commandments to coexist. “They’re inferior and it’s good for the economy.” Al Sadr’s never raped anybody – you know that as well as I do. If it takes the veil and a code of religious austerity to protect my women from the feral hedonists of an outlaw military, I’m getting real interested. To say the Shi’ites want a theocracy, as though Israel isn’t a theocracy, as though the religious right in the US doesn’t want a de facto theocracy, as though that desire is happening in a vacuum on a blank slate, out of some delusional pathology, rather than as a response to oppression and the Satanic corruption of the West, is more con and scam. High-grade manipulative p.r. Like parents whose punishment creates the rebellion it punishes, the sickness perpetuates itself. You’ve lost your chance at moderate compromise, but that was never the goal anyway, was it? – I’m not waiting for the day one of you rah-rah boys acknowledges the courage al Sadr’s shown by his defiance – against the US Army for God’s sake! – because I don’t think you have the honor necessary to do it. You keep saying al Sadr’s a thug. Example one has yet to be delivered. And if you’re going to make him responsible for every act committed by Muslim fundamentalists anywhere, then be prepared to take responsibility yourselves for every act committed by Judeo-Christian fundamentalists, anywhere. The list of nauseating crimes done by the invaders that we know about is pretty lengthy for a 17 month-old campaign. You and I both know there’s a lot more. And on the nonsensical talking point of “the veil” – applying that to the US, where the rights of black men and women to vote had to be enforced at the point of a gun, after the absurd necessity of having to pass a specific law granting them that right, just a few decades ago, well really… And are feminists in America satisfied with the status quo ante? News to me if they are. Just keep repeating that “thug” “thug” “thug” “he’s a thug”. Eventually you might start believing it. I won’t. – Lapite- I didn’t “lecture” abbas about anything, certainly not about conditions in Iran, which is where he purports to be from. Which would make him, I believe, Persian. And his glib anatomical imagery aside, there are men and women in America who can trace their lineage to the 17th century Pilgrims who know only what their own prejudices tell them of the hearts of the people who were here before they arrived; and who know only what they tell each other of the hearts of the American service class that maintains their comfort. ____ Make a list of the known atrocities committed by the invading forces, then count the civilian dead, especially the “collaterally” killed women and children, place that next to the known crimes of the al-Mahdi Army and their collateral damage. Then make some kind of moral argument, I’d like to hear it.

By: dsquared

dsquared — Sat, 14 Aug 2004 12:16:47 +0000

While we’re at it, the “Lance Boyle” character who saw fit to lecture someone who’s actually from the region The “Abiola Lapite” character who saw fit to lecture the author of the post and one poster who’s a British solider about what they really thought was also a bit much. That really is a case of the mosque calling the hijab Islamic.

By: Abiola Lapite

Abiola Lapite — Sat, 14 Aug 2004 09:10:02 +0000

“Nigeria also has theocratic elements in its government, with somewhat less success” To put it mildly. All of you on here who are arguing for the inclusion of individuals like Sadr in government clearly have absolutely no firsthand experience of what it’s like to live under threat from would-be theocrats, or you wouldn’t be so concerned for the survival of a thug like Muqtada al-Sadr (for whom I have a simple and elegant solution – death). While we’re at it, the “Lance Boyle” character who saw fit to lecture someone who’s actually from the region, and who was born into the very religion Sadr is trying to use to climb to power, as to what Shiites are feeling – or at least ought to be feeling, were they not suffering from media-induced “false consciousness” – is just the most egregious example of a strain of self-delusion driven by partisan Bush-hatred that is currently running through the left. I know that if some foreign idler were ever to suggest that the answer to Nigerian Islamist violence was to provide a place at the table for those inciting the violence, I’d curse that person and the womb that bore him. I’ve already made this suggestion once before, but it can’t hurt to do so again: if there are any of you who really are interested in how the people of Iraq view the events going on there, rather than how you think they ought to view them, I suggest you branch out in your blog reading from sites like “Riverbend” that can be relied upon to reinforce your prejudices, and also take in blogs like “Healing Iraq”, mentioned earlier in this thread. It doesn’t matter how many papers Juan Cole has read – nothing can substitute for getting the impressions of those who are actually on the ground, and right now you obviously aren’t getting the whole picture if you imagine that Iraqis are uniformly so unintelligent as to be unable to recognize a theocratic thug for what he is when they see one. For all you know, those supposedly impressive displays of support for al-Sadr might be every bit as intimidation-driven as those we saw for Saddam on TV before the invasion occurred. Of course, in writing this I’ve been assuming that at least a few of you genuinely have both the good interests of the Iraqis and Anglo-American troops at heart; now it’s time to see whether that was a case of hope triumphing over cynical experience.

By: Steve Carr

Steve Carr — Sat, 14 Aug 2004 08:26:56 +0000

Lance, Sadr wants to establish a regime in which women are forced to wear the veil, denied education, and perhaps even denied the vote, a regime in which laws will not be determined by the ongoing democratic vote of the people who live under them, but will rather reflect the will of God as expressed in Sharia. He is hardly John Brown or Che Guevara. He is immoral and, given the chance, he would become a champion oppressor, much like the ayatollahs in Iran. And the fact that he resisted Baathism, while it’s to his credit, is utterly irrelevant to whether or not he’s a menace to freedom in Iraq—which he absolutely is. Mao did a great job of resisting the Japanese. He was still an appalling tyrant in his own right once he got the chance. If there’s anyone here who’s adolescent, it’s you, with your warmed-over Third-Worldism and your utter indifference to what a radical Islamist regime actually looks like to those who have to live under it.

By: Steve Carr

Steve Carr — Sat, 14 Aug 2004 08:15:10 +0000

I’ve been MIA all day, so I missed most of these comments, but in response to Dsquared’s post, I don’t think any of those examples are especially good analogies to what figures like Sadr represent, with one exception—Algeria. The only problem is that Dsquared’s analysis of what happened in Algeria is off-base. The FIS was not moderated by being included in the political process. It was moderated by being, to all intents and purposes, wiped out. Even so, those Islamic fundamentalist “politicians” who remain have made no bones about the fact that their idea of democracy is, roughly speaking, one vote, one time. If they were ever allowed to take office, Sharia would become the law of the land, and it would be removed from the democratic process. Algeria may have accommodated itself to the Islamists who remain alive, but the Islamists have not accommodated themselves to democracy. Also, it’s not true that in Algeria the atrocities and appalling behavior were committed only by the anti-Islamists. Before the 1992 election, as the FIS was building support, it regularly used low-level terroristic activity against potential opponents or those engaging in non-Islamic behavior, including imposing 6 pm curfews on female university students, beating up women who did not wear the hijab, intimidating journalists, burning down the house of a woman who was a public opponent, and smashing the windows of bars that served alcohol. This was, of course, relatively tame stuff compared to what came after. In the years immediately after they were barred from power by the military coup, when the Islamists still held hope of regaining power relatively peacefully, they wrecked hundreds of schools and murdered hundreds of teachers. They also murdered intellectuals, and between 1992 and 1999 killed nearly 100 journalists. Then, in the late 1990s, the Islamists in the GIA embarked on a scorched-earth campaign during which, at a minimum, they murdred tens of thousands of Algerians. There’s considerable debate, still, about whether the GIA or the government security forces were responsible for the lion’s share of the deaths, but there is no disagreement among outside observers that the Islamists killed many many people. That doesn’t mean the Algerian generals were/are not awful men. But Algeria is in no sense an example that should make us feel optimistic about how fundamentalist Islamists would treat those who oppose the establishment of an Islamist state.

By: Lance Boyle

Lance Boyle — Sat, 14 Aug 2004 08:01:35 +0000

abbas- Your flippancy would have had more sting if you had laid out the reasons you share the media-generated view of the general public about al Sadr. And I might have felt chagrined if you had been able to give examples of his purported thuggery that were as verifiable as the carnage and waste of innocent lives that’s being done to take him down. Right now. By the proxy soldiers of America. Geronimo was paraded across the US and his degradation gloated on by spirits much like those exhibited here. Cowardice is vicious and loud when it feels safe. Al Sadr’s father was murdered by Saddam Hussein, and al Sadr himself was resisting the Baathist regime when Rumsfeld was in Iraq fellating whoever he was told to, back in the mirror-world of the early 80’s. It’s a lie and an egregious one that Al Sadr’s been targeted because he’s immoral. It is exactly his morality that is the cause of this obscene bloodbath. That, and the complete lack of morality in the craven, cunning hearts of his enemies.

By: DaveC

DaveC — Sat, 14 Aug 2004 05:23:57 +0000

“I hope we win” echoing Lileks Does that mean I am for getting shed of Sadr? Yes. Unsophisticted, ignorant. Well I suppose so, if not wanting Hizbollah or Hamas or Tawhid or Ansar Al Islam to run things in that part of the world is ignorant. “They are not anti-war. They are just for the other side.”

By: DaveC

DaveC — Sat, 14 Aug 2004 05:17:13 +0000

Very unsophisticated of me to say this, but “I hope we win” (echoing Lileks) If this means getting rid of Sadr, so be it.

By: Abbas

Abbas — Sat, 14 Aug 2004 03:32:30 +0000

Most of you know nothing of the Arab heart and mind. And you do, Mr. Boyle? I’m not expert on “the Arab mind” (not even my wife’s) but I’m an anesthesiologist and I’ve participated in surgery on over 150 Arab hearts. They beat like all others. Oh, by the way, I was born (Iranian) Shiite; my wife and I both think Sadr is a thug.