Ghost of a flea

Are you sure that these people want anything like Spain? I do think they want to achieve an end just impose misery with some pretext towards an end. They can't want an Islamic state as they offend Islam in everything they do. They do not want to mobilize the masses as the bit they mobilize get blown up. There is no Caliphate to create, no administration of a society of any kind in the wings waiting to be rolled out, no people to govern. Not even old school territorial anti-semetic militants like Hezbolah runs to join them in a joint effort. Al Queda are nihilist anarchist cultists wrapped in the thin gauze of the false prophet. They, the simply Satanic leadership, just each need to be found and killed because, other than the few at the top, there is nothing to them. Once they are dead, no one will pick up their banner as it makes no sense.

Nick I know you are angry, but why are you angry with the left? The bombers are the ones you should be angry with (and rightly so). I consider myself a leftist and I condemn any act of violence against innocent people.

By your lights I am sort of a good person because I think that Bush was completely right to have invaded Afghanistan. However, I think Bush was tragically wrong to have invaded Iraq. Does that negate my "right thinking" about Afghanistan? Also, if you think that you are going to install democracies in Syria and Saudi Arabia by killing Iraqis, you are just plain wrong (and by the way, you won't see many leftists holding hands with Saudi Princes either. Think about that.).

I will fight for your right to say anything you want to about me or anyone else. I will also fight for the rights of women and gays (on that score, remember which party spearheaded SSM in this country. It wasn't any party on the right, I can tell you that for a fact. It was the evil socialist party!) Finally, I will fight to protect the rights of innocent Muslims to live their lives in peace. If you have a problem with that, then I will fight you too.

I think they are trying to send a message to the British people to get them to cave. I do not think its going to work rather. Even some of the apologists are getting spines. Red Ken on the other hand is looking a wee bit tarnished.

Alan: more on the Caliphate tomorrow depending on the number of posts in the pipe!

Greg: I think there are perfectly good reasons to have opposed the operation in Iraq and better reasons to disagree with the handling of events since then. This is an entirely different thing than blaming the recent massacre in London on the UK's decision to participate in liberating Iraq. Despite our disagreement about the wisdom of taking on the fascists in Iraq, or the best course to take now, I doubt we disagree about the mistake many are making in taking seriously the idea that Al Qaeda represents the freedom of Iraq, that their suicide attacks on children work toward the rights of innocent Muslims to live in peace or that UK policy in Iraq motivates, let alone justifies, the bombings. Yes, I am angry with the bombers and their ideological fellow travellers. I am so angry I have no words to express the feeling. Perhaps that is why I am posting something about the ideas and actions of people with whom I can have a rational disagreement. Though it should be noted that in the case of at least one trainee Guardian journalist the war in Iraq is secondary to his active support of Al Qaeda. I do not believe this is a small matter and I believe it is important to point it out and to oppose it. I do not believe he is a man of "the left" but is an old fashioned fascist. But I also believe all too many on the left, the Guardian editorial board in particular, are providing him cover in an old fashioned red/brown tactical alliance.

Further, it is one thing for this blog to have a misplaced sense of priority but something else for a publication like the Guardian to twist the atrocity to its own political ends before the bodies had been extricated from the Underground. So, even if I am wrong to be wasting my time on the nonsense rhetoric of some on the left I am less wrong than the voices at the CBC or the BBC or the Guardian, etc. and so forth if only because my misplaced priorities are relatively inconsequential in their effects.

I would appreciate your thoughts as to why it is relatively easy to muster protestors against United States policy but so difficult to interest those protestors in marching against state terror in, for example, Syria or Iran. And I could not agree with you more about the hypocrisy of almost every western government in continued cooperation with the regime running "Saudi" Arabia. I would be delighted to link to any post you would write on the subject.

Finally, if you are a regular reader of this blog, or for that matter of my posts today, you will note I am no fan of the Canadian Conservative party and have taken more criticism in my support for same-sex marriage than on any other subject. There is easily enough hypocrisy on the right to balance the hypocrisy of the left I am writing against in this post. In point of fact, it is because of my views about same-sex marriage and the increasingly ugly rhetoric of the CCP and some of its supporters that I will be voting Liberal in the next federal election. So, I apologize if I gave the impression is directed at you or opponents of the war in Iraq per se. It was directed at people who would use the recent atrocity to justify their opposition to the Iraq war before any other consideration.

Andrew: We are, as usual, in perfect agreement. Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn!

Syria is an abstract concept to most people in the West. The U.S. on the other hand is more concrete. It is a democratic super power, which unlike a thug state like Syria waves "our" (meaning the west's) banner. It stands for freedom and is democracy's biggest representative. When I see it is not living up to its own ideals, I get angry. When Syria misbehaves it doesn't have the same impact, because it stands only for thugishness.

I am not going to waste your time by suggesting that no one marching out there (where have those marches gone anyway?) is motivated by anti-Americanism, because some are. Most however merely mistrust the motives of a government that has a history of lying to its own people (most notably, but not exclusively during the Vietnam War) and siding with very unsavory groups over the past 50 years.

As for Iraq, I think it is irrelevant to Al Qaeda other than as a propaganda tool. They could care less how many Iraqis are slaughtered as long as it the Americans doing the slaughtering. It is a recruiting tool and a very effective one.

Finally, I didn't think you aimed your remarks at me, but you must remember that socialists in this country do stand for rights. We stood up against the internment of the Japanese and against arbitrary arrests in 1970 and we fought hard for SSM (at some personal cost to some of our MP's). So, I get a bit touchy when I see you writing that we would stand by and watch women get oppressed and gay men killed. I am sure you understand that and I know you were angry when you wrote your post.

I know

It is precisely because the left has (at points) stood up for the rights of women and gay men that I am baffled so many on the left turn to cultural relativism to defend the systematic persecution of women and gay men elsewhere in the world. I will not need to remind you of Bob Rae's broken promises vis a vis the rights of gay people in Ontario or how the International Socialists used to boot people, almost always gay men, for their bourgeois vice of "homosexuality". Neither of those issues are ancient history. I know someone who was kicked out of the IS for being gay and it raises bile in my throat every time I see those opportunists at Pride. It is an act of will to restrain myself from grabbing one of their black and white signs and beating them about the heads with it. So, my anger with some on the left is not specific to this post but is an ongoing matter.

Just so we are clear, I have not forgotten the all too recent votes of many in the Liberal party vis a vis gay men. Their Damascus road conversion to civil rights is not terribly credible. And as for those Conservatives who want to oppose fundamentalism provided it is of the Islamic variety, it is obvious they need to take more care to consider the Christian variety that has become all too influential in setting CPC policy.

Lots more to say...

I agree Syria is at best an abstraction for most people. I doubt many people have heard of Alawi Muslims let alone know what they have endured at the hands of Wahhabis. The Hama massacre is not even a blip on the radar.

I also think it is only rational and reasonable to hold the United States to a higher standard. I only wish some portion of the outrage directed at US foreign policy was directed toward our own government's complicity in big oil, appeasement of China and so forth. And I could not agree more about the limited effect of street demonstrations. I once dated an anarchist who believed welfare was a plot to keep poor people from overthrowing capitalism. Sometimes I think street protests are a plot to keep opponents of government policy from doing something productive and effective like, for example, convincing enough people to elect representatives who could act on their points of view.

When I see it is not living up to its own ideals, I get angry.

What in blue blazes makes you think we have any ideals? Ideals takes ideas and that leads to ideology and nobody likes to imagine what that can lead to.

No, the closest ideals we have are quite simple ones. They are: "Shut up, already", "You and what Army?" and "Show us the money".

We don't like anybody and would much rather ignore you but those 3 'ideals' keep getting violated. We spent the first 150 years or so as an isolationist nation, remember, and we still consider it as the best of courses when we think on foreign policy at all. Isolationism was great for us but it was great, too, for the Kaiser and Hitler and Stalin. We still haven't sorted that out.

You gotta kinda/sorta know Americans really well to understand the humor - and truth - of the above.

I think I have a better handle about who you mean when you say the left. It is a very, tiny minority. The IS is the Christian Heritage Party of the left in Canada (and even that is being generous). As for Bob Rae, well what can I say? He was a big disappointment to many in the party too. He broke a lot of promises to a lot of people. It is not for nothing that he is now more associated with the Liberal Party than the NDP.

There is a really good op ed piece in the NY Times this morning by Olivier Roy http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/22/opinion/22roy.html . Give it a read if you get the chance. It is interesting that it is there just as we are discussing this. It summarizes my feeling exactly about what Al Qaeda is. To my mind, what Blair is doing in Britain right now is the best way to combat them.

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