As Dr. Albright so vividly pointed out, Al-Qaeda has nothing to offer but death and destruction. Islamic terrorism wants nothing less than the destruction of western civilization itself. That includes fascism, capitalism, communism, socialism, humanism, and secularism. The terror nexus has opened many fronts across the globe, recruiting disparate groups of individuals for her cause. Enemies of western civilization are colluding for her downfall. In fact, I see things getting much, much worse before they get better. I wouldn?t doubt a nuclear holocaust before May Day, 2010 or as late as the Summer Olympic Games, 2012, possibly going off somewhere in Europe or the Near East. Speculations, but Iran and Pakistan will play a pivotal role in the War of No Choice/War on Terror, with Saudi Arabia and her Gulf neighbors providing the financial to fund some operations. Armed to the teeth with nuclear/chemical/biological and information technology (we have the Chinese to thank for this) and the call of the believers, both nations will unleash the full force of the nexus on Man via asymmetrical warfare. The anger/failure of Islam will be felt on every corner of the globe.
In truth, I believe that the war we are currently engaged in is much bigger than Islamic terrorism. It is between success and failure. Failed ideals, beliefs, and systemic schemas have left those carrying the heaviest burdens to lash out against the successors, egged on by nominal supporters whose real intentions are to imitate the winners and become part of the club. The leaders of these down-trodden groups look deep into the human psyche and find the only suitable tool, fear; they can use to mold the believers to fight. Stateless, they have varying degrees of freedom to act. Deeply afraid of fear, they turn to what they fear the most as their guide. But their innermost fears are being manipulated by their leaders; and their leaders have their own paymasters to adhere to. In the end everyone in the nexus is being manipulated somehow. At the lowest level it is fear; at the highest level, it is power.
We are just beginning to understand who are really behind the terror that we?ve been engaging. In the case of Al Qaeda, the real power behind the throne may be the ISI. In the case of Iran, it most likely is Yahya (with Mugneyah in the South American outpost). Hell, these players may have their own paymasters, maybe in the West. The problem with the powers is that we can?t destroy them without destroying the whole house. This is not unlike bombing a chemicals weapons factory. You may get your target, but what you unleash may be uncontrollable and even deadlier.
So we fight the foot-soldiers and their masters, while plotting to undermine, if not destroy, the core of the nexus in a controlled manner. Some favor the top-down approach, while others favor the opposite. In reality, modern-day terrorism has to be dealt with the same way one defuses a time-bomb. First, one must clear the area. Next, isolate the device. Third, try to understand its make, model, and the bomb-maker?s style. Finally, defuse with the utmost care and precision.
It will take Nimrodian savagery, democracy, globalization, and education to win this war. But things are bound to get worse before they get better. Until then, we need steadfast support from our allies. While academic and intellectual debates may be a good place for multilateralism, our allies must come under our aegis when war is declared on one front or another of the terror-hydra. By wasting time and resources arguing over logistics, we only invite more terror.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Axis of Envy
Why Israel and the United States both strike the same European nerve
Anti-Israelism and anti-Americanism travel together. In the Arab Middle East, the link is standard fare, but a more interesting case in point is Europe. Take José Bové, who first gained notoriety around the world in 1999 by leading the charge of a "deconstructivist" mob against a McDonald's restaurant in France. In March 2002, he showed up in Ramallah, denouncing Israel and pledging enthusiastic support to Yasir Arafat while the latter's headquarters was being surrounded by Israeli tanks. Arafat's cause was Bové's cause, this mise-en-scène suggested-never mind that the Israeli army had not simply dropped in for a little oppression but in defense against mounting terrorist attacks.
Pick a peace-minded demonstration in Europe these days or a publication of the extreme left or right, and you'll find anti-Israeli and anti-American resentments side by side-in the tradition first invented by the Khomeinists of Iran, whose demonology abounds with references to the "small" and "great Satan."
What explains this linkage? First, Israel and the United States are the most successful states in their respective neighborhoods: Israel in the regional arena, the United States on the global beat. They boast the most fearsome armies, they command impressive technological infrastructures, and the Israeli economy vastly outperforms those of each of its neighbors while the United States has the world's number one economy. Moreover, both are stable, vibrant democracies. One need not invoke Dr. Sigmund Freud to infer that success breeds envy and resentment. The resentment is compounded by the rampant modernity both countries epitomize. Relentless change, as inflicted from outside, does not sit well with European societies, which obey a very different social contract-one that favors social and economic protection against the effects of the market and rapid technological transformation. The unconscious syllogism goes like this: Globalization is Americanization, and both have found their most faithful disciple in Israel.
Second, there is an element of bad old anti-Semitism. A hallowed place in its mythos is the Jewish quest for world domination. Now "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" come with a new twist. The Jews, so the lore goes, finally achieved global domination by having conquered the United States: Jews control the media, the U.S. Congress, and the economy. Assisted by American Jewry, Israel has built up the most powerful lobby in Washington-one that delivers almost $3 billion worth of aid per year. And thus, with the help of the "hyperpower," a term coined by the former French Foreign Minister Hubert Védrine, Jews actually do rule the world.
Third, the United States and Israel may not be unique, but they stand out because of their strong senses of national identity. For all their multiculturalism-indeed, both the United States and Israel are microcosms of the world-these two countries share a keen sense of self. They know who they are and what they want to be. They define themselves not through ethnicity but through ideologies that transcend class and tribe. Or to use a less charged term, they define themselves in terms of documents, be it the Torah or the U.S. Constitution. Their senses of nationality are rooted in the law, as received at Sinai or promulgated in Philadelphia.
Compare this mind-set to that of the mature states of Europe. It might well be said that the countries extending from Italy via Germany and the Low Countries into Scandinavia are already in a post-national stage. The European Union is fitfully undoing national sovereignty while failing to provide its citizens with a common European identity. Europe is a matter of practicality, not of pride-at least, not yet. As a work in progress, it lacks the underpinning of emotion and "irrational" attachment. Europeans might become all wound up when their national soccer teams win or lose, but the classical nationalism that drove millions into the trenches in the 20th century has vanished.
Finally, because Israel and the United States are still national societies, they do not hesitate to back up their interests with force. Indeed, no Western nation has ever used force as frequently as have those two in the last 50 years. Conversely, post-national Europe cherishes its "civilian power," its attachment to international regimes and institutions. European armies are no longer repositories of nationhood (and career advancement) but organizations that have as much social status as the post office or the labor exchange. Europeans, in fact, pride themselves in having overcome the atavism of war in favor of compromise, cooperation, and international institutions. This view imbues them with a sense of moral superiority vis-à-vis those retrogrades that are the United States and Israel.
Perhaps many Europeans resent unconsciously what they no longer have-the exact qualities that once made them fierce and fearsome players in the international arena. They resent those two nations in the Western family for doing what they no longer can-or dare-do. Considering that Europe was the fountainhead of the two greatest evils of the 20th century (fascism and communism) that is not the worst of outcomes. But this divergence won't increase harmony and understanding between Europe and its two outriggers, the United States and Israel. Anti-Israelism and anti-Americanism will continue to march together until that day when Israel and the United States turn post-national, too.
Those chances, though, are slim. Strong traces of post-nationalism are evident in Tel Aviv's Sheinkin Street, as well as among the denizens of California's Silicon Valley. But Israel will remain a threatened polity, and the United States the world's number one, for the rest of this century. So regardless of what insight comes from examining national psyches, in the end, there are the stark and incontrovertible facts of power and position in the international arena. The anatomy of the international system, to borrow once more from Freud, is destiny. Tout court, where you sit is where you stand-post-nationalism, postmodernism, and all.
link
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AL QAEDA'S AGENDA FOR IRAQ
'IT is not the American war machine that should be of the utmost concern to Muslims. What threatens the future of Islam, in fact its very survival, is American democracy." This is the message of a new book, just published by al Qaeda in several Arab countries.
The author of "The Future of Iraq and The Arabian Peninsula After The Fall of Baghdad" is Yussuf al-Ayyeri, one of Osama bin Laden's closest associates since the early '90s. A Saudi citizen also known by the nom de guerre Abu Muhammad, he was killed in a gun battle with security forces in Riyadh last June.
The book is published by The Centre for Islamic Research and Studies, a company set up by bin Laden in 1995 with branches in New York and London (now closed). Over the past eight years, it has published more than 40 books by al Qaeda "thinkers and researchers" including militants such as Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's No. 2.
Al-Ayyeri first made his name in the mid '90s as a commander of the Farouq camp in eastern Afghanistan, where al Qaeda and the Taliban trained thousands of "volunteers for martyrdom."
Al-Ayyeri argues that the history of mankind is the story of "perpetual war between belief and unbelief." Over the millennia, both have appeared in different guises. As far as belief is concerned, the absolutely final version is represented by Islam, which "annuls all other religions and creeds." Thus, Muslims can have only one goal: converting all humanity to Islam and "effacing the final traces of all other religions, creeds and ideologies."
Unbelief (kufr) has come in numerous forms and shapes, but with a single objective: to destroy faith in God. In the West, unbelief has succeeded in making a majority of people forget God and worship the world. Islam, however, is resisting the trend because Allah means to give it final victory.
Al-Ayyeri then shows how various forms of unbelief attacked the world of Islam in the past century or so, to be defeated in one way or another.
The first form of unbelief to attack was "modernism" (hidatha), which led to the caliphate's destruction and the emergence in the lands of Islam of states based on ethnic identities and territorial dimensions rather than religious faith.
The second was nationalism, which, imported from Europe, divided Muslims into Arabs, Persians, Turks and others. Al-Ayyeri claims that nationalism has now been crushed in almost all Muslim lands. He claims that a true Muslim is not loyal to any particular nation-state.
The third form of unbelief is socialism, which includes communism. That, too, has been defeated and eliminated from the Muslim world, Al-Ayyeri asserts. He presents Ba'athism, the Iraqi ruling party's ideology under Saddam Hussein, as the fourth form of unbelief to afflict Muslims, especially Arabs. Ba'athism (also the official ideology of the Syrian regime) offers Arabs a mixture of pan-Arabism and socialism as an alternative to Islam. Al-Ayyeri says Muslims "should welcome the destruction of Ba'athism in Iraq."
"The end of Ba'ath rule in Iraq is good for Islam and Muslims," he writes. "Where the banner of Ba'ath has fallen, shall rise the banner of Islam."
The author notes as "a paradox" the fact that all the various forms of unbelief that threatened Islam were defeated with the help of the Western powers, and more specifically the United States.
The "modernizing" movement in the Muslim world was ultimately discredited when European imperial powers forced their domination on Muslim lands, turning the Westernized elite into their "hired lackeys." The nationalists were defeated and discredited in wars led against them by various Western powers or, in the case of Nasserism in Egypt, by Israel.
The West also gave a hand in defeating socialism and communism in the Muslim world. The most dramatic example of this came when America helped the Afghan mujaheeden destroy the Soviet-backed communist regime in Kabul. And now the United States and its British allies have destroyed Ba'athism in Iraq and may have fatally undermined it in Syria as well.
What Al-Ayyeri sees now is a "clean battlefield" in which Islam faces a new form of unbelief. This, he labels "secularist democracy." This threat is "far more dangerous to Islam" than all its predecessors combined. The reasons, he explains in a whole chapter, must be sought in democracy's "seductive capacities."
This form of "unbelief" persuades the people that they are in charge of their destiny and that, using their collective reasoning, they can shape policies and pass laws as they see fit. That leads them into ignoring the "unalterable laws" promulgated by God for the whole of mankind, and codified in the Islamic shariah (jurisprudence) until the end of time.
The goal of democracy, according to Al-Ayyeri, is to "make Muslims love this world, forget the next world and abandon jihad." If established in any Muslim country for a reasonably long time, democracy could lead to economic prosperity, which, in turn, would make Muslims "reluctant to die in martyrdom" in defense of their faith.
He says that it is vital to prevent any normalization and stabilization in Iraq. Muslim militants should make sure that the United States does not succeed in holding elections in Iraq and creating a democratic government. "If democracy comes to Iraq, the next target [for democratization] would be the whole of the Muslim world," Al-Ayyeri writes.
The al Qaeda ideologist claims that the only Muslim country already affected by "the beginning of democratization" and thus in "mortal danger" is Turkey.
"Do we want what happened in Turkey to happen to all Muslim countries?" he asks. "Do we want Muslims to refuse taking part in jihad and submit to secularism, which is a Zionist-Crusader concoction?"
Al-Ayyeri says Iraq would become the graveyard of secular democracy, just as Afghanistan became the graveyard of communism. The idea is that the Americans, faced with mounting casualties in Iraq, will "just run away," as did the Soviets in Afghanistan. This is because the Americans love this world and are concerned about nothing but their own comfort, while Muslims dream of the pleasures that martyrdom offers in paradise.
"In Iraq today, there are only two sides," Al-Ayyeri asserts. "Here we have a clash of two visions of the world and the future of mankind. The side prepared to accept more sacrifices will win."
Al-Ayyeri's analysis may sound naive; he also gets most of his facts wrong. But he is right in reminding the world that what happens in Iraq could affect other Arab countries - in fact, the whole of the Muslim world.
link
In truth, I believe that the war we are currently engaged in is much bigger than Islamic terrorism. It is between success and failure. Failed ideals, beliefs, and systemic schemas have left those carrying the heaviest burdens to lash out against the successors, egged on by nominal supporters whose real intentions are to imitate the winners and become part of the club. The leaders of these down-trodden groups look deep into the human psyche and find the only suitable tool, fear; they can use to mold the believers to fight. Stateless, they have varying degrees of freedom to act. Deeply afraid of fear, they turn to what they fear the most as their guide. But their innermost fears are being manipulated by their leaders; and their leaders have their own paymasters to adhere to. In the end everyone in the nexus is being manipulated somehow. At the lowest level it is fear; at the highest level, it is power.
We are just beginning to understand who are really behind the terror that we?ve been engaging. In the case of Al Qaeda, the real power behind the throne may be the ISI. In the case of Iran, it most likely is Yahya (with Mugneyah in the South American outpost). Hell, these players may have their own paymasters, maybe in the West. The problem with the powers is that we can?t destroy them without destroying the whole house. This is not unlike bombing a chemicals weapons factory. You may get your target, but what you unleash may be uncontrollable and even deadlier.
So we fight the foot-soldiers and their masters, while plotting to undermine, if not destroy, the core of the nexus in a controlled manner. Some favor the top-down approach, while others favor the opposite. In reality, modern-day terrorism has to be dealt with the same way one defuses a time-bomb. First, one must clear the area. Next, isolate the device. Third, try to understand its make, model, and the bomb-maker?s style. Finally, defuse with the utmost care and precision.
It will take Nimrodian savagery, democracy, globalization, and education to win this war. But things are bound to get worse before they get better. Until then, we need steadfast support from our allies. While academic and intellectual debates may be a good place for multilateralism, our allies must come under our aegis when war is declared on one front or another of the terror-hydra. By wasting time and resources arguing over logistics, we only invite more terror.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Axis of Envy
Why Israel and the United States both strike the same European nerve
Anti-Israelism and anti-Americanism travel together. In the Arab Middle East, the link is standard fare, but a more interesting case in point is Europe. Take José Bové, who first gained notoriety around the world in 1999 by leading the charge of a "deconstructivist" mob against a McDonald's restaurant in France. In March 2002, he showed up in Ramallah, denouncing Israel and pledging enthusiastic support to Yasir Arafat while the latter's headquarters was being surrounded by Israeli tanks. Arafat's cause was Bové's cause, this mise-en-scène suggested-never mind that the Israeli army had not simply dropped in for a little oppression but in defense against mounting terrorist attacks.
Pick a peace-minded demonstration in Europe these days or a publication of the extreme left or right, and you'll find anti-Israeli and anti-American resentments side by side-in the tradition first invented by the Khomeinists of Iran, whose demonology abounds with references to the "small" and "great Satan."
What explains this linkage? First, Israel and the United States are the most successful states in their respective neighborhoods: Israel in the regional arena, the United States on the global beat. They boast the most fearsome armies, they command impressive technological infrastructures, and the Israeli economy vastly outperforms those of each of its neighbors while the United States has the world's number one economy. Moreover, both are stable, vibrant democracies. One need not invoke Dr. Sigmund Freud to infer that success breeds envy and resentment. The resentment is compounded by the rampant modernity both countries epitomize. Relentless change, as inflicted from outside, does not sit well with European societies, which obey a very different social contract-one that favors social and economic protection against the effects of the market and rapid technological transformation. The unconscious syllogism goes like this: Globalization is Americanization, and both have found their most faithful disciple in Israel.
Second, there is an element of bad old anti-Semitism. A hallowed place in its mythos is the Jewish quest for world domination. Now "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" come with a new twist. The Jews, so the lore goes, finally achieved global domination by having conquered the United States: Jews control the media, the U.S. Congress, and the economy. Assisted by American Jewry, Israel has built up the most powerful lobby in Washington-one that delivers almost $3 billion worth of aid per year. And thus, with the help of the "hyperpower," a term coined by the former French Foreign Minister Hubert Védrine, Jews actually do rule the world.
Third, the United States and Israel may not be unique, but they stand out because of their strong senses of national identity. For all their multiculturalism-indeed, both the United States and Israel are microcosms of the world-these two countries share a keen sense of self. They know who they are and what they want to be. They define themselves not through ethnicity but through ideologies that transcend class and tribe. Or to use a less charged term, they define themselves in terms of documents, be it the Torah or the U.S. Constitution. Their senses of nationality are rooted in the law, as received at Sinai or promulgated in Philadelphia.
Compare this mind-set to that of the mature states of Europe. It might well be said that the countries extending from Italy via Germany and the Low Countries into Scandinavia are already in a post-national stage. The European Union is fitfully undoing national sovereignty while failing to provide its citizens with a common European identity. Europe is a matter of practicality, not of pride-at least, not yet. As a work in progress, it lacks the underpinning of emotion and "irrational" attachment. Europeans might become all wound up when their national soccer teams win or lose, but the classical nationalism that drove millions into the trenches in the 20th century has vanished.
Finally, because Israel and the United States are still national societies, they do not hesitate to back up their interests with force. Indeed, no Western nation has ever used force as frequently as have those two in the last 50 years. Conversely, post-national Europe cherishes its "civilian power," its attachment to international regimes and institutions. European armies are no longer repositories of nationhood (and career advancement) but organizations that have as much social status as the post office or the labor exchange. Europeans, in fact, pride themselves in having overcome the atavism of war in favor of compromise, cooperation, and international institutions. This view imbues them with a sense of moral superiority vis-à-vis those retrogrades that are the United States and Israel.
Perhaps many Europeans resent unconsciously what they no longer have-the exact qualities that once made them fierce and fearsome players in the international arena. They resent those two nations in the Western family for doing what they no longer can-or dare-do. Considering that Europe was the fountainhead of the two greatest evils of the 20th century (fascism and communism) that is not the worst of outcomes. But this divergence won't increase harmony and understanding between Europe and its two outriggers, the United States and Israel. Anti-Israelism and anti-Americanism will continue to march together until that day when Israel and the United States turn post-national, too.
Those chances, though, are slim. Strong traces of post-nationalism are evident in Tel Aviv's Sheinkin Street, as well as among the denizens of California's Silicon Valley. But Israel will remain a threatened polity, and the United States the world's number one, for the rest of this century. So regardless of what insight comes from examining national psyches, in the end, there are the stark and incontrovertible facts of power and position in the international arena. The anatomy of the international system, to borrow once more from Freud, is destiny. Tout court, where you sit is where you stand-post-nationalism, postmodernism, and all.
link
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AL QAEDA'S AGENDA FOR IRAQ
'IT is not the American war machine that should be of the utmost concern to Muslims. What threatens the future of Islam, in fact its very survival, is American democracy." This is the message of a new book, just published by al Qaeda in several Arab countries.
The author of "The Future of Iraq and The Arabian Peninsula After The Fall of Baghdad" is Yussuf al-Ayyeri, one of Osama bin Laden's closest associates since the early '90s. A Saudi citizen also known by the nom de guerre Abu Muhammad, he was killed in a gun battle with security forces in Riyadh last June.
The book is published by The Centre for Islamic Research and Studies, a company set up by bin Laden in 1995 with branches in New York and London (now closed). Over the past eight years, it has published more than 40 books by al Qaeda "thinkers and researchers" including militants such as Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's No. 2.
Al-Ayyeri first made his name in the mid '90s as a commander of the Farouq camp in eastern Afghanistan, where al Qaeda and the Taliban trained thousands of "volunteers for martyrdom."
Al-Ayyeri argues that the history of mankind is the story of "perpetual war between belief and unbelief." Over the millennia, both have appeared in different guises. As far as belief is concerned, the absolutely final version is represented by Islam, which "annuls all other religions and creeds." Thus, Muslims can have only one goal: converting all humanity to Islam and "effacing the final traces of all other religions, creeds and ideologies."
Unbelief (kufr) has come in numerous forms and shapes, but with a single objective: to destroy faith in God. In the West, unbelief has succeeded in making a majority of people forget God and worship the world. Islam, however, is resisting the trend because Allah means to give it final victory.
Al-Ayyeri then shows how various forms of unbelief attacked the world of Islam in the past century or so, to be defeated in one way or another.
The first form of unbelief to attack was "modernism" (hidatha), which led to the caliphate's destruction and the emergence in the lands of Islam of states based on ethnic identities and territorial dimensions rather than religious faith.
The second was nationalism, which, imported from Europe, divided Muslims into Arabs, Persians, Turks and others. Al-Ayyeri claims that nationalism has now been crushed in almost all Muslim lands. He claims that a true Muslim is not loyal to any particular nation-state.
The third form of unbelief is socialism, which includes communism. That, too, has been defeated and eliminated from the Muslim world, Al-Ayyeri asserts. He presents Ba'athism, the Iraqi ruling party's ideology under Saddam Hussein, as the fourth form of unbelief to afflict Muslims, especially Arabs. Ba'athism (also the official ideology of the Syrian regime) offers Arabs a mixture of pan-Arabism and socialism as an alternative to Islam. Al-Ayyeri says Muslims "should welcome the destruction of Ba'athism in Iraq."
"The end of Ba'ath rule in Iraq is good for Islam and Muslims," he writes. "Where the banner of Ba'ath has fallen, shall rise the banner of Islam."
The author notes as "a paradox" the fact that all the various forms of unbelief that threatened Islam were defeated with the help of the Western powers, and more specifically the United States.
The "modernizing" movement in the Muslim world was ultimately discredited when European imperial powers forced their domination on Muslim lands, turning the Westernized elite into their "hired lackeys." The nationalists were defeated and discredited in wars led against them by various Western powers or, in the case of Nasserism in Egypt, by Israel.
The West also gave a hand in defeating socialism and communism in the Muslim world. The most dramatic example of this came when America helped the Afghan mujaheeden destroy the Soviet-backed communist regime in Kabul. And now the United States and its British allies have destroyed Ba'athism in Iraq and may have fatally undermined it in Syria as well.
What Al-Ayyeri sees now is a "clean battlefield" in which Islam faces a new form of unbelief. This, he labels "secularist democracy." This threat is "far more dangerous to Islam" than all its predecessors combined. The reasons, he explains in a whole chapter, must be sought in democracy's "seductive capacities."
This form of "unbelief" persuades the people that they are in charge of their destiny and that, using their collective reasoning, they can shape policies and pass laws as they see fit. That leads them into ignoring the "unalterable laws" promulgated by God for the whole of mankind, and codified in the Islamic shariah (jurisprudence) until the end of time.
The goal of democracy, according to Al-Ayyeri, is to "make Muslims love this world, forget the next world and abandon jihad." If established in any Muslim country for a reasonably long time, democracy could lead to economic prosperity, which, in turn, would make Muslims "reluctant to die in martyrdom" in defense of their faith.
He says that it is vital to prevent any normalization and stabilization in Iraq. Muslim militants should make sure that the United States does not succeed in holding elections in Iraq and creating a democratic government. "If democracy comes to Iraq, the next target [for democratization] would be the whole of the Muslim world," Al-Ayyeri writes.
The al Qaeda ideologist claims that the only Muslim country already affected by "the beginning of democratization" and thus in "mortal danger" is Turkey.
"Do we want what happened in Turkey to happen to all Muslim countries?" he asks. "Do we want Muslims to refuse taking part in jihad and submit to secularism, which is a Zionist-Crusader concoction?"
Al-Ayyeri says Iraq would become the graveyard of secular democracy, just as Afghanistan became the graveyard of communism. The idea is that the Americans, faced with mounting casualties in Iraq, will "just run away," as did the Soviets in Afghanistan. This is because the Americans love this world and are concerned about nothing but their own comfort, while Muslims dream of the pleasures that martyrdom offers in paradise.
"In Iraq today, there are only two sides," Al-Ayyeri asserts. "Here we have a clash of two visions of the world and the future of mankind. The side prepared to accept more sacrifices will win."
Al-Ayyeri's analysis may sound naive; he also gets most of his facts wrong. But he is right in reminding the world that what happens in Iraq could affect other Arab countries - in fact, the whole of the Muslim world.
link
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