War to eliminate terrorism in the cradle of terrorism is in full swing. The NYT laissez-faire pundits and those who consider US actions as having gone astray should learn one thing well that had it not been for the exhibition of the US to counter terror, this kind of ‘terror elimination encounters’ highlighted later in htis post would not have happened in the 'cradle of violence.'
Today, Annan slammed the US for pre-emptive strike policy however I wished he would have spared some thoughts to eunuchlike inaction of the UN in Rwanda and in Serbia where mass campaign to cleanse ethnicity was conducted. Until US decided to go ahead under Clinton and reign in the Belgrade butcher no one in Europe could take any action. Annan spoke with hindsight but hindsight is always 20/20. Annan overlooked the consequences of the wars that the tyrant of the ME waged on his own people, in this decade Iran-Iraq war cost 850,000 lives, UN was unable to act there too. With the tyrant gone some universal laws and sensitive diplomatic balance may have been broken but peace for the region has been secured. I doubt blood of young Iraqis or Iranians will be spilled in the callous manner the way it use to be under Saddam, if UN means appeasement and turning blind eye to mass killing than may be some laws are meant to be broken.
<<Saudi policeman, three militants dead in shootout
At least one policeman and three militants are reported to have been killed in a shootout at a hospital compound in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Interior Ministry has released a statement saying that five militants were involved in the incident, in which four other policemen were slightly wounded. Details of the incident remain sketchy, but there are reports that the shooting ensued after unidentified gunmen took a number of hostages at the hospital. It happened in the southern province of Jizan near the border with Yemen.>>
A paranoia arose, with the jihad becoming "a bogey in the West for centuries" this paranoia is exemplified best by Edward Gibbon's account of Sultan Abd al-Rahman's defeat at the "Battle of Poitiers" by Charles Martel in 732:
. . . the Rhine is not more impassable than the Nile or the Euphrates, and the Arabian fleet might have sailed without a naval combat into the mouth of the Thames. Perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet. From such calamities was Christendom delivered by the genius and fortune of one man [Martel].
Gibbon seemed to have been under the belief the al-Rahman's intention was a continuation of the jihad, which was false. The Sultan "had been invited into Christendom by Eudo, Duke of Aquitaine", and had no intention of continuing the jihad or conquering Europe. However in case of Osama bin Laden the goal is quite clear it is a perpetual jihad against the world at large, it is his interpretation of extremist political Islam or the Talebinised version of medievalism presented by this cave man as revered thoughts of prophet of Islam. From his pulpits he demonstrates to an already vicious circumcised people the virtues of rage of lost opportunities only one power stands between achieving his purpose of kingdom of God on earth and conversion of the entire Islamic world to his brand of radicalism that one power is resolve of US to defend basic rights of human to express and believe in society that is democratic and tolerant. |
