That page of course only has room for one… But thats later.

The geopolitical gurus at Stratfor make the following analysis of the ongoing negotiations between the US and Iran (subscription only):

Iran handed over a proposal to [U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan] Crocker during a brief encounter at the May 5-6 Sharm el-Sheikh summit in Egypt, but also chose to unofficially publicize its terms for Iraq through the Saudi-owned, British-based daily Al Hayat. The Iranian Foreign Ministry likely chose Al Hayat, a major Arab news outlet, to make a back-channel broadcast of what concessions it is prepared to make to allay Sunni concerns in the region.

In sum, this Iranian proposal called for a non-rushed withdrawal and relocation of U.S. troops to bases inside Iraq, a rejection of all attempts to partition Iraq, a commitment by the Sunni bloc to root out the jihadists and acknowledgement by Washington that the Iranian nuclear file cannot be uncoupled from the Iraq negotiations. In return, Iran would rein in the armed Shiite militias, revise the de-Baathification law and Iraqi Constitution to double Sunni political representation, create a policy to allow for the fair distribution of oil revenues (particularly to the Sunnis) and use its regional influence to quell crises in areas such as Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian territories.

The terms put forth by the Iranians are so close to the U.S. position on Iraq that, with little exception, they could have been printed on State Department stationary and no one would have noticed the difference. If these are the terms Washington and Tehran are in fact discussing, then we are witnessing an extraordinary turn in the Iraq war in which the U.S. and Iranian blueprints for Iraq are finally aligning. It does not surprise us, then, that Crocker said after his meeting in Baghdad that the Iranian position “was very close to our own” at the level of policy and principle.

Extraordinary indeed. So is this finally a light at the end of tunnel? Maybe, except for a few small problems. Stratfor lists the problems as follows:

• The transnational Sunni Jihadists with their dreams of an Islamic State of Iraq
• the severely and perhaps irreconcilably split Iraqi Shia who are likely to a little rough on each other sooner rather than later
• the much less splintered Iraqi Sunnis, who, although by and large online with these negotiations must be satisfied of their future safety and a slice of the pie in the Shia dominated Iraq (these guarantees are already part of the deal)
• the Iraqi Kurds, who are the Iraqi faction that stands to lose most out of the above settlement and are not about to give up what they’ve worked so hard to finally achieve in Kurdistan
• Ultraconservatives in Washington and Tehran who “can’t negotiate with those people”
• Sunni Regional Powers with that whole Shia Crescent thing on their mind
• Syria, who is feeling pretty important, if not immune right now while the Great Satan is all tied up elsewhere and they are useful to Iran
• Russia, which has really been making the best of the US and Iranian preoccupation in Iraq and would be quite unhappy to have to start caring what the Americans (and even the much closer Iranians) think again

How is that light looking now?

Thus ended a commentary by Ahmad Ragab, who is apparently “one of the most widely read columnists in Egypt”, in Al-Akhbar, “a mass circulation Egyptian daily”, in response to the endless, ceaseless, senseless, Palestinian infighting.

Hmm, what did they expect, when for a generations their children have been tought that violence is a solution to their problems, violence is a noble cause, violence is in itself a means to a glorious eternal end?

You know. This kind of thing.

No, this one is not about Iran.

Vanity Fair has an edited excerpt from Ronald Reagan’s diary, which is going to be published this month, containing this entry:

Tues. Dec. 7, 1982 • The weather turned out fine for the official greeting ceremony for Pres. Zia of Pakistan. We got along fine. He’s a good man (cavalry). Gave me his word they were not building an atomic or nuclear bomb. He’s dedicated to helping the Afghans & stopping the Soviets.

(via Judith Klinghoffer, who draws attention to the potentially catastrophic trouble brewing in Pakistan)

Speaking of broken promises, here’s another entry from the diary:

Fri. July 22, 1983 • Today was Pres. Gemayal (Lebanon) day. We had a good meeting & lunch. I think he is reassured that we are not going to abandon them. While we were meeting word came that Beirut was under rocket attacks by the Syrians. We are going to send them the latest in Radar art which can zero in on exactly where the rockets are coming from.

If you’re wondering what “Islamic Revolutionary state” in the title has to do with Pakistan, here’s one more entry for you:

Thurs. June 16, 1988 • Zia has declared Islamic Law is law of Pakistan. That puts them into the Fundamentalist Revolution with the Ayatolah & Qaddafi.

And onward round the circle we go.

I haven’t had much time to post this week, as I’ve been very busy with work, but did finally got around to bashing out some quick posts yesterday (by doubling the caffeine quota). This one is a bit of a collage of what remains, that was originally going to be broken up into several posts. Some good reading in there, enjoy, I am pretty much offline again ’til next week, when hopefully things should clear up a little. Have a great weekend!

First up, a brilliant presentation by Melanie Phillips on the worldwide struggle between modernity and medievalism (via LGF):

First of all, let me define my terms and say what I mean by Islamism and liberalism. Islamism is the politicised version of Islam which mandates jihad, or holy war against the infidel and conquest of the non-Islamic world for Islam. I’m well aware of the argument that there’s no difference between Islamism and Islam: that’s a theological argument for others to have.

By liberalism I mean the commitment to a free society, founded above all on the separation of secular government from religious worship — from which follow the concepts of equal respect for all people, freedom of conscience, tolerance and the rule of law.

These two concepts, Islamism and liberalism, are currently engaged in a fight to the death. My argument is that liberalism is in danger of losing this fight because it has so badly undermined itself and departed from its own core concepts that it is now paralysed by moral and intellectual muddle.

[..]

The Islamist goal is to destroy the virus of freedom and modernity before it infects the Islamic world, and to replace it with Islam. That is the core of the profound threat it poses to the west, a threat mounted through the pincer movement of both terrorism and cultural takeover.

This cultural takeover, or the aim to Islamise the west, was explicitly laid out in a programme of subversion for Europe by the Wahabbi Muslim Brotherhood almost 30 years ago. In 1978, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference sponsored a seminar in London which said Muslim communities in western countries must establish autonomous institutions with help from Muslim states, and lobby the host country to grant Muslims recognition as a separate religious community as a step towards eventual political domination.

In Britain in 1980, a book called ‘The Islamic Movement in the West’ by Khuram Murad advocated an ‘organised struggle to change the existing society into an Islamic society…and make Islam…supreme and dominant especially in the socio-political spheres…’ A Muslim Brotherhood document seized in Switzerland in 2001, known as ‘The Project’, outlined a twelve-point strategy to ‘establish an Islamic government on earth’. And the Brotherhood has now set up an intricate network of bodies across Europe to put all this into action.

Many Muslims in Britain and around the world are deeply opposed to this; indeed Muslims are the most numerous victims of the jihad. That’s why I use the term Islamism, to distinguish those who believe in Islamic conquest from those who merely draw upon Islam for spiritual sustenance. But at the same time, it is false to deny that Islamism is the dominant force in the Muslim and Arab world, false to deny that it is radicalising millions of Muslims in the west, and false to deny the huge inroads it has made into western society through this pincer movement of terrorism and cultural pressure.

But many in the west do deny it. They ignore the clear evidence of the goal of Islamising the west.

Read the whole thing, its excellent.

At the core of Melanie’s presentation is the following dire indictment of Western civilization:

Our corrupted liberal culture has torn up the key precepts of liberalism so that it no longer knows what they are, let alone stands ready to defend them to the death. Authentic liberalism was a doctrine of social progress based on maximising the good in people’s behaviour and minimising the bad. It thus depended upon making moral distinctions between good and bad.

But these distinctions have been destroyed by a combination of hyper-individualism —which grew out of liberalism — and a form of cultural Marxism whose agenda is to destroy liberal values. Between them, these trends tore up the concepts of objectivity, authority and the Judeo-Christian moral codes underpinning western values and substituted emotion, subjectivity, and moral and cultural relativism. [..]

Under the banner of liberal values, this actually destroyed the core precept of liberalism — the distinction between right and wrong, good and bad, truth and lies. Instead, feelings and emotion became most important. The particulars of a culture were deemed hurtful and thus illegitimate because by definition they divided one culture from another. The nation, rooted as it is in the particulars of history, religion, law, language and tradition, became seen as the cause of all the ills of the world from prejudice to war. And the culture of a nation had to be replaced by multiculturalism.

In this interview in “Reset - Dialogues on Civilizations” Ayaan Hirsi Ali raises similar points and suggest how to proceed in the battle against the Islamists, citing confronting people like Tariq Ramadan in open debate as an example:

I am a liberal in the classical liberal sense, so I do not like what Tariq Ramadan says. In fact, I think his message is the worst kind of message against liberalism, but in a free society, we have to give even those who have ideas that we do not like the freedom to debate them with us. I think this is a characteristic of this civilization. The European and Western civilization relies on that idea. So for him and me to debate, and for him to come to Rome, the US or France is fine. But what he is saying and campaigning for is against liberal and liberalism. Let Ramadan speak, and let us refute what he says, because the message that he wants to convey is more embarrassing than his presence. I have been in debate with him, and seen that he gets very angry when I touched on the core issue of what he says. He wants to take away fundamental freedoms from you and from me, and put them in the hands of God. And when I told him “If you do that for yourself it is fine, but why are you propagating it?”, then he got very angry.

[..]

When fathers remove girls from schools, when they force them into marriage, when genital mutilation is taking place and when the Socialist or the Social-democratic party says “this is their culture, this is multiculturalism, let us protect it and rule like this”, then I think they are not being left-wing. If left-wing were about individual rights as in classical 19th-century liberalism, I would define myself as leftwing. But left-wing these days is all about groups: workers, men and women, poor and rich, and that sort of thing. It is not about just human individuals.

On Pyjamas Media the Pastor of Comunidad de Gracia A.C. in Mexico City, Bruce Moon gets a little carried away with words expressing his frustration of the West’s insanity in the face of the Islamist threat:

Even a population hopelessly blinkered from national obsession with food and sex, with entertainment and health, with self-esteem and self-promoting ‘spirituality,’ cannot begin to explain why, as it adores its excesses, it seems not to give a flip for its own very survival. Lack of oxygen to the brain because of frequent overdoses of “Sex and the City”, Dr. Dre, or Krispy Kremes can only go so far to explain the massive synaptic misfires we are increasingly seeing. Something deeper and more sinister must be at work.

Some viral idea has crept into our collective national consciousness, offering us a false wisdom and a feigned hope, while it meanwhile shuts down vital parts of our mental operational systems designed to initiate self-survival programs. We are fast approaching the point where either we must reject the pterodactyl-like hallucinations of irrational humanistic constructs that only produce mind-boggling complacent stupor, political correctness contrivances, and cowardice, or we will become a pitiful specter of our former selves through our utter stupidity.

Laura Mansfield gets to the point with a frightening example of political correctness that may have had tragic conquences:

“Dude, I just saw some really weird s-. I don’t know what to do. Should I call someone or is that being racist?”

Anton Efendi at Across the Bay slams American academic apologists and appeasers of Middle Eastern thugs (I recommend visiting his blog for excellent insights into the developing situation in Lebanon):

But I should make another comment here, just to clarify things. I mean, we shouldn’t really be shocked at the Syrian regime’s behavior. Here, let Bashar Assad’s apologist in American academia explain things to us simpletons: “America, I think, is going to be forced to bend to [Syria’s extortionist demands]. If it continues to resist [giving Lebanon back to Damascus], we’re going to see more violence.”

It’s quite simple really. I mean, Washington is refusing to “abandon the Seniora government.” So what do you expect!? I mean, come on! After all, the problem is simple. You see, Syria “makes American allies pay a high price!” And as long as we pursue a tribunal to stop Assad from killing people, he will continue to kill people until we say he can continue killing people unmolested! I mean, as that academic recently said, “This Hariri court stands in the way”! I know, what a drag…

And finally Judith Apter Klinghoffer notes something that those academics can’t seem to understand, quoting Barry Rubin, the author of “The Truth About Syria”:

   The lessons about these regimes’ extremist behavior should be clear by now. When someone extends its hand in offered friendship, they interpret this as hands raised in surrender.

I do wonder what Nancy Pelosi is thinking just about now in regards to what Syria is orchestrating in Lebanon. Although I am assure I’d be disappointed if I found out. I see someone has gone and created a reading list just for her. And there’s Barry Rubin again.

A fascinating insight into what went on behind the scenes in Israel in the lead up to the Second Lebanese War, from an article by Caroline Glick:

At first glance the [Winograd Committee’s] report reads like an ideological indictment. The commission wrote that a great portion of the blame for the lack of preparedness of both the government and the IDF was rooted in the belief that “the era of big wars had ended.” Yet that belief did not stand on its own. It is rooted in the Left’s peace ideology.

This ideology maintains that even if a country is forced to fight a war, the aim of the war is to remain at the starting gate and give the enemy what it wants, not to defeat it. The belief that the era of wars is over stems directly from the Left’s ideological commitment to the belief that everyone is a potential negotiating partner.

The report demonstrates that from the outset of the war, it was this view that informed the decisions of both the government and the IDF. The report relates a notable exchange between Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Halutz during the cabinet meeting on July 12 when the decision to go to war was made. Livni asked Halutz, “What is victory?”

Halutz responded, “There is no victory here….What we need to do is to respond with a sufficiently strong reaction that will call the international forces to get involved and to intervene at the proper intervention points in order to place pressure on the right forces.”

Livni testified before the commission that the next day the Foreign Ministry began preparing position papers setting out the government’s preferred end state: foreign forces on the border separating the IDF from an undefeated Hizbullah.

And now to a far more important piece of the puzzle: evoking the “Away From My Desk” effect. More revealing quotes, this time from an Israeli General Staff meeting in the lead-up to the war (h/t Normblog):

Gentleman C: On the table before each of you, you’ll find a comprehensive study compiled by Middle East 101, looking at the academic year factor in Israel’s wars since 1948. What we’ve done is a statistical comparison of the amount of anti-Israel verbiage expended by American and European professors in all of Israel’s wars. I draw your attention to Table 8. You’ll see that in every war, our military operations have taken less incoming criticism during summer months. We call this the “Away From My Desk” effect. Professors on summer break are less likely to write op-eds and show up in the media. There aren’t any students to attend their campus teach-ins, and there’s no student press to cover them.

Bottom line is that summer remains an ideal time to launch a war. The operational readiness of academe is at its lowest.

But back to the serious stuff. The former IDF chief of General Staff Dan Halutz may no longer believe in victory. But here are some people that do. The following quotes from a sermon from Friday before last by the acting Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, Sheik Ahmad Bahr:

   Ahmad Bahr began: ‘“You will be victorious” on the face of this planet. You are the masters of the world on the face of this planet. Yes, [the Koran says that] “you will be victorious,” but only “if you are believers.” Allah willing, “you will be victorious,” while America and Israel will be annihilated. I guarantee you that the power of belief and faith is greater than the power of America and Israel. They are cowards who are eager for life, while we are eager for death for the sake of Allah. That is why America’s nose was rubbed in the mud in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Somalia, and everywhere.

   Bahr continued and said that America will be annihilated, while Islam will remain. The Muslims ‘“will be victorious, if you are believers.” Oh Muslims, I guarantee you that the power of Allah is greater than America, by whom many are blinded today. Some people are blinded by the power of America. We say to them that with the might of Allah, with the might of His Messenger, and with the power of Allah, we are stronger than America and Israel.’

   The Hamas spokesperson concluded with a prayer, saying: ‘Oh Allah, vanquish the Jews and their supporters. Oh Allah, count their numbers, and kill them all, down to the very last one. Oh Allah, show them a day of darkness. Oh Allah, who sent down His Book, the mover of the clouds, who defeated the enemies of the Prophet, defeat the Jews and the Americans, and bring us victory over them.’

Melanie Phillips comments:

Horrifying? Undoubtedly. Unequivocal? Most assuredly. No-one who is sentient and decent could possibly have anything to with such a bunch of genocidal psychopaths. Right?

Er, not quite. There is someone. It happens to be the British Prime Minister.

Last February, Tony Blair suggested that the British government might be prepared to do business with ‘the more sensible elements of Hamas’ in order to restore negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. This was about as rational as suggesting in 1942, say, that one might do business with the more sensible elements of the SS. But hey — this is Britain. It does appeasement. Produce a sect of fanatics who are totally beyond reason and bent on wiping out every last Jew and American, defeating the west and taking over the world and Britain will be beating a path to their door, cap in hand. This is because, in its unsurpassed cynicism, Britain believes there is no-one on the planet who is not basically turnable, susceptible to bribes or threats or flattery or what have you because everyone is out for their own self-interest.

Not quite alright, genocidal psychopaths abound as do Tony Blairs willing to “do business” with them, as Diana West points out:

Marvelous, isn’t it, that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice traveled to an Egyptian resort for a summit on stabilizing Iraq that was attended by, among other “neighbors” and interested parties, Iran and Syria? I mean, who better to discuss stabilizing Iraq than the very countries that are actually trying to de-stabilize it?

   Such wily statecraft. Now I see how it works: Only honest-to-goodness state sponsors of terrorism like Iran or Syria can really understand what it takes to stabilize a country, since it’s only honest-to-goodness state sponsors of terrorism like Iran and Syria that really understand what it takes to de-stabilize it — what it takes to smuggle into Iraq men and munitions, including deadly IEDs, what it takes to organize and sustain resistance to our utopian efforts. Iranian and Syrian expertise on such matters will prove invaluable to those same utopian efforts, right? After all, as Miss Rice put it, “Iraq’s neighbors have everything at stake here. Iraq is at the center of a stable Middle East or an unstable Middle East. We should therefore align our policies in ways that contribute to stability.”

   “Therefore.” Isn’t that brilliant? Never mind that Iran and Syria are in many ways responsible for the unstable Middle East Miss Rice is talking about. Let’s “therefore align our policies” just the same. Meanwhile, why haven’t we thought of talking with terror-states before?

Edward Luttwak on the anti-democratic goals of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which grew from the ashes of an Islamist party banned for extremism:

Since coming to power, the AKP has done nothing revolutionary, but it does have a revolutionary agenda. For all their suavity, its leaders seek to transform the country into a Sunni Muslim republic. This collides with institutions and laws strictly limiting Islam’s role in public life, and with a long-standing security alliance with Israel.

It also collides with democracy itself, for no Koranic state can have a sovereign parliament free to legalise such abominations as equal rights for women and homosexuals or the drinking of alcohol.

A sinister slogan attributed to the AKP is that democracy is ‘a bus we can ride until we reach our station’. Under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his foreign secretary Abdullah Gul, the party has been cautious until now.

But abroad the AKP has been more strident. Turkey has stepped up relations with Muslim countries and cooled them with Israel. They have capitalised on public suspicion of the Western war on terror and yet have pursued Turkey’s application to join the EU.

There is no inconsistency. The AKP’s apparent ambitions in Europe are its most strategic deceptions. Ostensibly, the aim is simply to accelerate Turkey’s climb to prosperity.

However, a key condition imposed by the EU is the army’s abrogation of political authority - which suits the AKP just fine, for the military is the greatest barrier to Islamization. Moreover, the party shares the Islamist belief that Europe will inevitably be conquered by the high birthrates of its Muslim inhabitants - and Turkey’s entry would immediately add some 70 million.

There is also some essential Luttwak reading in this month’s Prospect too, on why the Middle East is “less relevant than ever” and the rest of the world should learn to ignore it. Interesting theory, if only that were possible and “it” hadn’t gotten so damn good at drawing attention to itself. Any ideas on how to distract all the Christians, Muslims and Jews of the world?

If thats not enough Luttwak controversy for you in one post, check out “Give War a Chance” and “Civil war: the only way to bring peace to Iraq”. Although the titles sound like they could be for same article they were in fact written seven years apart.

Lebanese terrorist propaganda rag Al-Akhbar had this positively gorgeous photograph of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on their front page a couple of days ago
(h/t The Ouwet Front):

Today they’ve gone for a cross-eyed Commie retard with a shit-eating grin. The guy next to her doesn’t seem impressed.

They are protesting at Lebanese University on a rumour that US Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman was going to accompany Craig Barrett, the chairman of Intel Corporation, on his visit to the University yesterday afternoon.

Al Akhbar was launched during last summer’s war by rabidly anti-American and pro-Hezbollah far left nationalists. Its newspaper license was leased from the Lebanese Communist Party. Looks like the LCP donated much more than just a newspaper license.

From an interview with Larry Elder, for WorldNetDaily:

Larry Elder: You are of Christian Lebanese descent. When you heard what Rosie O’Donnell said, that Christian extremism is as bad as Islamic extremism, how did you react?

Brigitte Gabriel: Well, I do not know what land she is living in, but I do not recall when the last time I saw a Christian behead anybody on television, or behead somebody and advertise it on the Internet. I do not recall hearing a Christian preach that Muslims are apes and pigs because they are cursed by Jesus, the way that Muslims are teaching that we are apes and pigs. I do not recall the last time a Christian went into an elementary school, hijacked children and started shooting them in the back like the Muslims did in Beslan in Russia when they went into a schoolyard and took over the children and started butchering them and killing them. [Rosie] better be thankful that she is living in America, because if she were living in Iran and spoke against her country – or any Arabic country – she would be beheaded or actually buried halfway in the ground, to be stoned to death.
[..].

Elder: You were raised in Lebanon. You were 10 years old and living in southern Lebanon when militant Muslims … poured into your country and declared jihad against Lebanese Christians such as yourself.

Gabriel: Yes, my 9-11 happened to me in 1975 when I was a 10-year-old child, living and minding my own business [in] a small town in south Lebanon. I was an only child to a businessman and his wife. I was blessed with a wonderful childhood. … They showered me with love and everything life had blessed them with. However, our lives were turned upside down because in 1975, the Muslims declared holy war on the Christians of Lebanon. My home exploded around me, buried in the rubble, wounded as the perpetrators shouted, “Allahu Akbar” [God is great]. My only crime was that I was a Christian living in a Christian town. I learned at 10 years old the meaning of the word “infidel.” I had a crash course in survival not in the Girl Scouts, but in the bomb shelter that I lived for seven years of my life in freezing cold, pitch darkness, drinking stale water and eating grass to live. I remember at the age of 13, I dressed in my burial clothes going to bed at night, waiting to be slaughtered. By the age of 20, I had buried most of my friends, who were slaughtered by Muslims.
[..]

The rest on WorldNetDaily.

Taqiyya: easy as ABC.

Yvonne Ridley ducks, weaves, splutters, lies, goes berzerk on the ABC’s AM radio program last Saturday:

JANE COWAN: Can you categorically condemn suicide bombing?

YVONNE RIDLEY: You know, the greatest purveyors of suicide bombing are the Tamil Tigers, a Marxist-Leninist organization, largely of the Hindu faith; I’m not really quite sure why it is being attached specifically towards Muslims.

JANE COWAN: But if you’ve been reported as saying you support suicide bombing, would you now here condemn it, no matter who perpetrates it?

YVONNE RIDLEY: I condemn shoddy journalism and poor research, and people like you should know better than to try and tackle people like me over things that have allegedly been said or not said.

ANE COWAN: But this is an opportunity for you to clarify your views, and …

YVONNE RIDLEY: I’ve clarified them. What don’t you understand?

Listen, I have told you exactly what I have said, now you tell me why you need me to condemn something that is as plain as, you know, as the language that I’ve just said. What didn’t you understand about what I have just said?

JANE COWAN: My question is, do you or do you not support suicide bombing?

YVONNE RIDLEY: Of course I don’t.

Feel free to read the whole thing, just to make sure she is not being taken out of context and that it still makes no sense what-so-ver. There is not much more to it.

Anyhow, of course she doesn’t support suicide bombing. The term that is. She much prefers the more glorifying description of martyrdom operations:

A: Yvonne Ridley - “Muslims have lost confidence since September 11th. Something as simple as suicide bombers being martyrs is being denied by prominent sheikhs. The dictionary definition of a martyr is a person who gives up their life for a cause - suicide bombers are martyrs.”

Now, about that bit on the Tamil Tigers and why oh why, as Yvonne wonders indignantly above, is suicide bombing associated with Islam.

Suicide bombing: 1980 - 2001

Lets start with the following numbers on Wikipedia and go from there:

“Lebanon saw the first bombing, but it was the LTTE Tamil Tigers who perfected the tactic and inspired its use elsewhere [2]. Their Black Tiger unit has committed between 76 and 168 (estimates vary) suicide bombings since 1987.

That first statement is a strange one to make, considering the Black Tigers carried out their first suicide bombing in 1987, by which time they were already common place in Lebanon, for example the suicide car bombing of the Iraqi embassy by Islamists in 1981, the bombing of the U.S. embassy by Hezbollah in 1983 and the bombing of the American and French barracks, also in 1983 and also by Hezbollah and Iran. In the least the word “bombing” above should be plural. Further, for a decade after 1987, most of the suicide bombings perpetrated by groups other than the Tamil Tigers were carried out by groups originating either in Lebanon or Israel, ie Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Al-Aqsa Brigades. Did Hamas need inspiration from Sri Lanka, when they already had plenty from next door in Lebanon, where they were also involved in the Lebanese uncivil free-for-all?

A quick look at those numbers on Black Tiger bombings - “between 76 and 168″.

The lower number, 76, is taken from Robert Pape’s book, “Dying to Win”:

Pape says that the group [the Tamil Tigers] accounted for 76 of 315 suicide attacks carried out around the world from 1980 through 2003, compared with 54 for the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, and 27 for Islamic Jihad.

The higher number, 168, is taken from this report by Jane’s Intelligence Review (note these numbers stop just before the start of the intifada in Israel in 2000, see more recent figures from that region further down):

NUMBER OF SUICIDE ATTACKS BETWEEN 1980 - 2000

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka and in India    168
Hizbullah and pro-Syrian groups in Lebanon, Kuwait and Argentina           52
Hamas in Israel                                                                       22
The Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) in Turkey                                     15
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in Israel                                       8
Al Quaida in East Africa                                                               2
The Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) in Croatia                                       1
The Islamic Group (IG) in Pakistan                                                 1
Barbar Khalsa International (BKI) in India                                          1
The Armed Islamic Group (GIA) in Algeria                                       1

What we have above is 10 groups out of which 7 are Islamic, 2 are Marxists-Leninist nationalists (the LTTE and the PKK, although the latter began reclaiming their Islamic identity from the late 1980s on) and one Sikh separatist group, BKI. What we also have, by the way, is numbers pretty damn different to Robert Pape, whom everyone (and especially Islamist apologists) seems to quote, usually out of context, as an expert on suicide bombing.

The list from Jane’s seem far from exhaustive, for example the suicide bombing of the Iraqi embassy in 1981 in Beirut was carried out by the Islamic Dawa Party, which is a militant Shiite party, to which the current Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki belongs. Others were also carried out in Lebanon by groups like Amal and even the schitzophrenically fascist Syrian Social Nationalist Party, who are credited with the first suicide bombing by a woman. Overall however, terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman calculates that 31 out of the 35 groups that have carried out suicide bombings since 1980 are Islamic (2005 figure).

Suicide bombing since 2001.

Looking at the numbers above, Yvonne would have had a point had she made her statement, often repeated by Islamist apologists, 5 or more years ago. Since then however the picture has changed completely, no matter how you look at it. As the number below will show, 95% - 97% of the suicide attacks in the last 5-6 years have been carried out by Islamists, with a large number against civilian targets.

In 2002 a ceasefire was signed in Sri Lanka and the suicide bombings ceased, until renewed hostilities in 2004. In the three years since 16 suicide bombings have been carried out by the Tamil Tigers. Taking the 168 from the Jane’s article, and adding the 16 recent one, plus 7 that occured between October 2000 (when the Jane’s article was published) and the ceasefire and we get a total of 191 in 20 years. Note however that most although certainly not all, of these were against military targets.

In the meantime the Second intifada started in Israel in September 2000. In 2002, as a ceasefire was signed in Sri Lanka, the intifada was at its peak - 42 suicide bombings were carried out by Palestinian Islamists that year, killing 228 people. Dozens more followed since. About 130 suicide bombings have been carried out in Israel in the last 15 years, about 75 of those by Hamas, 22 by Al-Aqsa Martyrs brigades and 32 by Islamic Jihad. The number would be much higher had it not been for the excellent work of the Israeli security services and the security wall. And then came Iraq. There were about 30 suicide bombings in Iraq in 2003. Then two to three times that in 2004. In 2005 the numbers went off the chart, as this Washington Post article from July 2005 that I’ve already quoted above documents:

The numbers in Iraq alone are breathtaking: About 400 suicide bombings have shaken Iraq since the U.S. invasion in 2003, and suicide now plays a role in two out of every three insurgent bombings. In May, an estimated 90 suicide bombings were carried out in the war-torn country — nearly as many as the Israeli government has documented in the conflict with Palestinians since 1993.

Hundreds more have followed in Iraq since. A November 2006 estimate by David Cook put the number at 540, with a death toll between 16,000 and 18,000. Stratfor put the number above 500 for 2005 alone (subscription only). Dozens more have followed in other countries. In the 1980x only three countries experienced suicide attacks - Labanon, Kuwait and Sri Lanka. By 2002 this had risen to 15, including countries as far and wide as Croatia and Argentina, Russia (23 suicide attacks since 2000, 6 against civilian targets) and Algeria. The number is now above 30 (hint: the Tamil Tigers have not expanded their area of operation). The Tamil Tigers have long been superseded by the various Islamist groups in terms of number bombings and even more so in number of casualties, especially civilian casualties. Islamist terrorist groups are responsible for the most deadly suicide attacks - at least the top 10, the suicide attacks that killed the most civilians - again easily the top 10, and the attacks that used the most bombers at one time. The genocidal Islamist terrorist organization Lashkar e-Toiba pioneered the use of suicide squads (fedayeen) in their operations. Just in 2005 Islamist groups in Iraq alone carried out more attacks than all non-Islamist groups in the last 30 years combined, the civilian death toll has also been proportionally larger. Islamists have flown planes into building killing thousands of civilians, blown themselves up to kill hundreds on trains, in mosques, and in crowded markets, walked into weddings, cafes, nightclubs and onto buses killing dozens or more. All the while they were screaming “Allahu Akbar!”, fantasizing of virgin flesh and yearning to please Allah. In the background of the carnage Islamic clerics have been issuing fatwas that support these suicide attacks, not only against military targets, but also against civilians. Is it clear yet why the question is being asked specifically in relation to Muslims yet, Yvonne?

Perhaps it isn’t, after all, this is Yvonne Ridley we’re talking about, so lets continue.

So how about your pals, the Taliban then, who claim to have 2000 suicide bombers (and 10,000 fighters) ready for the imminent spring offensive? OK, we all know thats bullshit, but even if we go with the much lesser estimate given by the commander of US forces in Afghanistan Major General David Rodriguez, who says they have more like 500 suicide bombers and 3,000 fighters, thats still a substantial number. Potentially record breaking even. Speaking of breaking records, lets see - Afghanistan had 25 bombings in 2004, 139 in 2005 and about 30 so far this year, targeting not only military targets but also civilian buses and markets, with 84% of the victims of these attacks being civilians (Feb 2007 figure). Add to that their 8 suicide attacks in Pakistan this year so far (ie not even looking at previous years) we get a total of 201, thus making the Taliban greater “purveyors of suicide bombing” than the Tamil Tigers (in 3 years versus 20). And all they are trying to do is catch up with their friends in Iraq.

Speaking of Pakistan, last week the chief cleric of the Red Mosque [Lal Masjid] in Islamabad had this to say:

“Our youth will commit suicide attacks, if the government impedes the enforcement of the Sharia and attacks Lal Masjid and its sister seminaries,” Maulana Abdul Aziz, the in-charge of the mosque said in his Friday sermon. The fresh suicide bombing threat is stated to be the strongest given so far by the hard-line clerics of the Lal Masjid, intensifying fear among Islamabad residents.

How about Morocco, where 4 bombers were killed or killed themselves yesterday and another detonated himself last month, his exposition leading the the uncovering of a plot involving at least 12 bombers? These bombers were working in Casablanca, by the way, where 45 people died in the Islamist suicide bombings in 2003 carried out by 14 bombers from the Al-Qaeda linked group Salafia Jihadia. The list goes on and on - London, Bali, Moscow, Riyadh. Islamists, Islamists, Islamists, Islamists. And the latest news - a twin suicide car bombing in Algeria, that killed 30 people. What kind of group may the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) be? Oh sorry, I see they’ve recently changed their name to the Al-Qa’ida Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb.

The “martyrdom-seeking nation of Iran”.

No martyrdom-seeking roll call can be complete without the “martyrdom-seeking nation of Iran”:

In an earlier interview with Parto-Sokhan, Jaafari [commander of the “Lovers of Martyrdom Garrison”] announced that more than 50,000 individuals had been enlisted in the Iranian military garrison opened to recruit and train volunteers for “martyrdom-seeking operations”.

He added that several military divisions of the “Lovers of Martyrdom Garrison” had already been established in several of Iran’s provinces and others were presently being formed to “confront threats by America and Israel”.

The leader of the glorious Iranian bullshit-spinning entity praised his death-seeking fanatical compatriots a couple of weeks ago: “Suicide bombers in this land showed us the way, and they enlighten our future”, brimming with pride that Iran is capable of recruiting “hundreds of suicide bombers a day”.

In the name of Islam.

Perhaps its time to hear from a Muslim, here’s Yasmin Al-Mas in “Something has gone wrong” where she looks at challenging the Islamic justification for suicide terror, used by the Salafi-Jihadists, Q-News Magazine, November 2005:

Worldwide, in merely three years after 9/11, the number of suicide bombings in the name of Islam had increased three-fold than it had over two decades whilst the number of people killed had doubled.  Suicide bombing in the name of Islam had now occurred in 26 countries: Lebanon [1981], Kuwait [1983], Argentina [1992], Panama, Israel and Occupied Palestinian Territories [1994], Pakistan, Croatia [1995], Saudi Arabia [1996], Tanzania, Kenya [1998], Yemen, Chechnya [2000], USA, Kashmir, Afghanistan [2001], Tunisia, Indonesia, Algeria [2002], Morocco, Russia, India, Iraq, Turkey [2003], Uzbekistan and Spain [2004] and the United Kingdom [2005].

The bigger picture.

Here’s Walid Phares, with some more numbers (Feb 2007):

Asked to estimate the number of jihadist insurgents worldwide, Phares had some unsettling news.

“It depends on what the duty of such people [insurgents] would be,” he told NewsMax. “Suicide bombers would be lower in number than of those who will fight, those who will spy, those who will provide funds. There are about from 5% to 6% to 8% jihadist sympathizers in the Muslim world, which is 1.1 billion, so we are talking about 50 to 60 million who sympathize with these ideas.

“They are all not committed, but out of those you have probably 1% of people who would fight. That’s an army of 1 million. Among those, if you want to go to the most narrow dimension, there are about 100,000 suicide bombers around the world. For example, in Iraq there are probably 5,000, in Iran another 8,000 to 10,000, and within Hezbollah, 2,000.

“There is a pool of 100,000 people who have received this jihadist ideology and could be recruited for suicide bombing. Internationally, from an operational standpoint, there are somewhere around 5,000, and that’s a huge number of suicide bombers. Look at England, for example the operation of [July 7, 2005 — the subway bombings] involved eight terrorists The next year, in the operation that wanted to bring down the airliners, there were about 50. So it grows geometrically.”

Why you should verify what you read on Wikipedia.

While we’re on the subject of “shoddy” reporting, take a look at this Wikipedia article on the Tamil Tigers:

LTTE had carried out more suicide bombings than any other organization on the face of the earth. According to the experts at Janes securities, between 1980 to 2000, LTTE had carried out a total number of 1,680 suicide attacks on civilians, political, and military targets. The number of suicide attacks easily exceeded the combine total of Hizbullah and Hamas suicide attacks carried out during the same period.[48]

Reference 48 is the Jane’s article which I quoted above. As you can see the original Jane’s article seems to be missing that extra 0.

UPDATE: I compiled the data above into the table below.

Top perpetrators of suicide attacks since 1980.

Al Qaeda in Iraq/Islamic State of Iraq (ISI)                                 500-800
Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan                                            200+
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka and in India   190+
Hamas in Israel                                                                    75
Hizbullah and pro-Syrian groups in Lebanon, Kuwait and Argentina        52
Al-Aqsa Martyr Brigades                                                         32
Chechen groups in Russia                                                       23
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in Israel                                      22
Al Qaeda outside of Iraq                                                        20+
The Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) in Turkey                                   15

Note: Where I am not quoting other sources, for attacks where multiple attackers were involved I am adding up the number og targets attacked, not the number of attackers. Thus for the Casablanca 2003 bombings, there were 5 targets attacked, with 14 bombers, 12 of which detonated successfully, so I am counting that as 5. I wanted to avoid skewing the numbers by counting it as either 1 or 14.

Regarding the Al Qaeda in Iraq estimate, in 2006 Ayman Al Zawahiri, claimed Al Qaeda carried out 800 suicide bombings in Iraq. Al Zawahiri is of course exaggerating, but the total number of attacks over the last 4 years would be approaching that number. Also according to a report from the Gulf Research Center (see last link), there is four groups other than Al Qaeda that have carried out suicide attacks in Iraq. The same report also states that suicide attacks in Afghanistan increased 750% between 2001 and 2006, jumping from 21 to 180, suggesting a total far higher than what I’ve stated above, so as you can see I am playing it safe with the numbers.

Trackposted to Right Pundits, Outside the Beltway, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, Perri Nelson’s Website, Maggie’s Notebook, basil’s blog, Stuck On Stupid, The Bullwinkle Blog, The Amboy Times, Cao’s Blog, The Pet Haven, Conservative Cat, Conservative Thoughts, , Bumpshack, third world county, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, The World According to Carl, The Pink Flamingo, Planck’s Constant, CORSARI D’ITALIA, Dumb Ox Daily News, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

“Can you do that Michael Jackson thing you do, again, Nancy?”

Michael Young with a reminder for Nancy Pelosi:

We can thank the US speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, for having informed Syrian President Bashar Assad, from Beirut, that “the road to solving Lebanon’s problems passes through Damascus.” Now, of course, all we need to do is remind Pelosi that the spirit and letter of successive United Nations Security Council resolutions, as well as Saudi and Egyptian efforts in recent weeks, have been destined to ensure precisely the opposite: that Syria end its meddling in Lebanese affairs.

The Lebanese people with a different take on what lies for Lebanon on the road through Damascus.

and with another reminder on the nature of Hezbollah:

For years, pundits and analysts have spoken of Hizbullah’s “integration into Lebanese society.” Their underlying premise was that the party somehow desired this. Optimists pointed to Hizbullah’s participation in successive parliamentary elections as an example of its willingness to “assimilate.” The naivete deployed was remarkable.

It rarely occurred to the experts that Hizbullah did not start as, nor truly is, a social services organization. It is an Iranian-financed military and security enterprise overseeing a vast and competent patronage system designed to win Shiite backing, allowing Hizbullah to retain its weapons. It never occurred to the experts that Hizbullah’s objective in participating in the political system was not to jettison its military identity, but rather to safeguard it within the confines of Lebanese institutions it could thereafter influence. And it never occurred to the experts that Hizbullah was not interested in integration at all, at least on terms that would require surrendering its autonomy, even if it readily exploited its stake in the state as an additional means of patronage, much like other Lebanese political actors.

h/t Across the Bay, which has an excellent post on the topic.

By the way, apparently the Alawites, a pseudo-Islamic sect that Syrian President Bashar Assad belongs to, believe women do not have souls:

The father of Syrian President Bashar Assad, the late Hafez Assad, led a regime dominated by the belief that women do not have souls.

Assad originated from the Alawite religious minority, though in essence a sect of Shiite Islam is a world apart from Islam in doctrine and practice.

“The secretive faith—in name indicating followers of Ali, son-in-law of Islam’s founding Prophet Mohammed—also combines elements of Christianity and astrology.” (Apologetics Index).

Peculiar to the Alawites is the belief that women do not have souls.

Politically Bashar Assad is a chip off the proverbial old block. Shaped by his father’s lifetime crusade against Israel, he has steadfastly resisted Israeli and American pressure to abandon support for Hezbollah.

Head scarf for the mosque, mini-skirt for the Presidential Palace. I see where she is going with this.

Baby Assad: “Don’t give me that smile, I know what you’re trying to do. I’ve seen Basic Instinct.”

(h/t Wake up America)

So many friends, so little time.

I am having a visual day, evidently.