What is to be Done, Theoretically?

Theory? Is it a good idea or a bad one? We face a current of conflict with Islam and our own reactionary Left, and to my mind it means war in the physical sense. It means to me a matter of preparing and planning and organizing for the war that is here and now and that builds daily in our lives. War, the kind in which people are killed and things are wrecked, and civilizations die and the life of Man is transformed, for the worse, for the better, or maybe just wrecked for no good reason at all. Still, war is here and worsening. I see it, I engage in it. War, and it needs a theory to make it work for us in our own minds so we might reify our victory in the world. We require, as those engaged in war and warfare, an idea of why we are at war and a clear, written presentation of our goals that we might share and build alliances with our programme.

We can be trapped by our own devices as thinkers, stuck in our own delusions of final answers to questions that have no answers, fooling ourselves into believing that ours are the answers for all times and all people everywhere. This can be both utopian and apocalyptic thinking. If we theorize and attempt to clarify our approaches to the nature of things we might well find that we've precluded other paradigms by doing so, blocking creative attempts that don't reside within our perimeters of analysis. To do this as people involved in politics or science is a sure mistake, one that leads to totalitarian thinking, of 'Our way or the highway.' I'm not convinced, of course, that such is certain. Yes, writing has its pitfalls, but they are not written in stone, and those who write are not Moses, so the problem of being followed is unlikely to arise for most of us. Writing is an attempt toward, even when it's written in stone as eschatology. Personally, I shrug. The future, though unknowable and unguessable is still not exactly something we can, as thinkers, pretend has no bearing on our lives in the current. The flying fickle finger of Fate writes, and having writ, moves on: nor all thy piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line nor all thy tears wash out a word of it. So concludes Omar Khayyam. He wrote, and Rowan and Martin wrote, and life goes on, no one paying particular attention to the finer details of any of it. And Moses. They wrote, and Fate writes, and Life continues its petty pace from day to day.... Leaving open the future unknowable is to leave open the future whether we attempt to usher in the Millenium or we don't, things of Nature not following our wishes anyway, History never slowing down simply due to a barricade of paper in the way, Clio's light feet never really touching the pages of even our greatest. All is Vanity.

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Macbeth Act 5, scene 5, 19–28

But I write of war in our day, not of Nothing. Below is a conversational account of Fourth Generation War. Nothing changes. Whether we theorize or we don't life will continue right on past us. Sooner if we're dead wrong about the few things we might try to anticipate if we anticipate wrong. I don't see any problem with the following attempt at clarifying and theorizing on the ways of war. I do see it as an attempt to redefine the wheel. It's a worthwhile essay regardless if only to bring about the chance to write about war as filibuster, which I will do briefly at the conclusion of this piece immediately below.

Understanding Fourth Generation War

by William S. Lind

Rather than commenting on the specifics of the war with Iraq, I thought it might be a good time to lay out a framework for understanding that and other conflicts. The framework is the Four Generations of Modern War.

I developed the framework of the first three generations ("generation" is shorthand for dialectically qualitative shift) in the 1980s, when I was laboring to introduce maneuver warfare to the Marine Corps. Marines kept asking, "What will the Fourth Generation be like?", and I began to think about that. The result was the article I co-authored for the Marine Corps Gazette in 1989, "The Changing Face of War: Into the Fourth Generation." Our troops found copies of it in the caves at Tora Bora, the al-Qaeda hideout in Afghanistan.

The Four Generations began with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the treaty that ended the Thirty Years' War. With the Treaty of Westphalia, the state established a monopoly on war. Previously, many different entities had fought wars – families, tribes, religions, cities, business enterprises – using many different means, not just armies and navies (two of those means, bribery and assassination, are again in vogue). Now, state militaries find it difficult to imagine war in any way other than fighting state armed forces similar to themselves.

The First Generation of Modern War runs roughly from 1648 to 1860. This was war of line and column tactics, where battles were formal and the battlefield was orderly. The relevance of the First Generation springs from the fact that the battlefield of order created a military culture of order. Most of the things that distinguish "military" from "civilian" - uniforms, saluting, careful gradations or rank – were products of the First Generation and are intended to reinforce the culture of order.

The problem is that, around the middle of the 19th century, the battlefield of order began to break down. Mass armies, soldiers who actually wanted to fight (an 18th century's soldier's main objective was to desert), rifled muskets, then breech loaders and machine guns, made the old line and column tactics first obsolete, then suicidal.

The problem ever since has been a growing contradiction between the military culture and the increasing disorderliness of the battlefield. The culture of order that was once consistent with the environment in which it operated has become more and more at odds with it.

Second Generation warfare was one answer to this contradiction. Developed by the French Army during and after World War I, it sought a solution in mass firepower, most of which was indirect artillery fire. The goal was attrition, and the doctrine was summed up by the French as, "The artillery conquers, the infantry occupies." Centrally-controlled firepower was carefully synchronized, using detailed, specific plans and orders, for the infantry, tanks, and artillery, in a "conducted battle" where the commander was in effect the conductor of an orchestra.

Second Generation warfare came as a great relief to soldiers (or at least their officers) because it preserved the culture of order. The focus was inward on rules, processes and procedures. Obedience was more important than initiative (in fact, initiative was not wanted, because it endangered synchronization), and discipline was top-down and imposed.

Second Generation warfare is relevant to us today because the United States Army and Marine Corps learned Second Generation warfare from the French during and after World War I. It remains the American way of war, as we are seeing in Afghanistan and Iraq: to Americans, war means "putting steel on target." Aviation has replaced artillery as the source of most firepower, but otherwise, (and despite the Marine's formal doctrine, which is Third Generation maneuver warfare) the American military today is as French as white wine and brie. At the Marine Corps' desert warfare training center at 29 Palms, California, the only thing missing is the tricolor and a picture of General Gamelin in the headquarters. The same is true at the Army's Armor School at Fort Knox, where one instructor recently began his class by saying, "I don't know why I have to teach you all this old French crap, but I do."

Third Generation warfare, like Second, was a product of World War I. It was developed by the German Army, and is commonly known as Blitzkrieg or maneuver warfare.

Third Generation warfare is based not on firepower and attrition but speed, surprise, and mental as well as physical dislocation. Tactically, in the attack a Third Generation military seeks to get into the enemy's rear and collapse him from the rear forward: instead of "close with and destroy," the motto is "bypass and collapse." In the defense, it attempts to draw the enemy in, then cut him off. War ceases to be a shoving contest, where forces attempt to hold or advance a "line;" Third Generation warfare is non-linear.

Not only do tactics change in the Third Generation, so does the military culture. A Third Generation military focuses outward, on the situation, the enemy, and the result the situation requires, not inward on process and method (in war games in the 19th Century, German junior officers were routinely given problems that could only be solved by disobeying orders). Orders themselves specify the result to be achieved, but never the method ("Auftragstaktik"). Initiative is more important than obedience (mistakes are tolerated, so long as they come from too much initiative rather than too little), and it all depends on self-discipline, not imposed discipline. The Kaiserheer and the Wehrmacht could put on great parades, but in reality they had broken with the culture of order.

Characteristics such as decentralization and initiative carry over from the Third to the Fourth Generation, but in other respects the Fourth Generation marks the most radical change since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. In Fourth Generation war, the state loses its monopoly on war. All over the world, state militaries find themselves fighting non-state opponents such as al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the FARC. Almost everywhere, the state is losing.

Fourth Generation war is also marked by a return to a world of cultures, not merely states, in conflict. We now find ourselves facing the Christian West's oldest and most steadfast opponent, Islam. After about three centuries on the strategic defensive, following the failure of the second Turkish siege of Vienna in 1683, Islam has resumed the strategic offensive, expanding outward in every direction. In Third Generation war, invasion by immigration can be at least as dangerous as invasion by a state army.

Nor is Fourth Generation warfare merely something we import, as we did on 9/11. At its core lies a universal crisis of legitimacy of the state, and that crisis means many countries will evolve Fourth Generation war on their soil. America, with a closed political system (regardless of which party wins, the Establishment remains in power and nothing really changes) and a poisonous ideology of "multiculturalism," is a prime candidate for the home-grown variety of Fourth Generation war – which is by far the most dangerous kind.

Where does the war in Iraq fit in this framework?

I suggest that the war we have seen thus far is merely a powder train leading to the magazine. The magazine is Fourth Generation war by a wide variety of Islamic non-state actors, directed at America and Americans (and local governments friendly to America) everywhere. The longer America occupies Iraq, the greater the chance that the magazine will explode. If it does, God help us all.

For almost two years, a small seminar has been meeting at my house to work on the question of how to fight Fourth Generation war. It is made up mostly of Marines, lieutenant through lieutenant colonel, with one Army officer, one National Guard tanker captain and one foreign officer. We figured somebody ought to be working on the most difficult question facing the U.S. armed forces, and nobody else seems to be.

The seminar recently decided it was time to go public with a few of the ideas it has come up with, and use this column to that end. We have no magic solutions to offer, only some thoughts. We recognized from the outset that the whole task may be hopeless; state militaries may not be able to come to grips with Fourth Generation enemies no matter what they do.

But for what they are worth, here are our thoughts to date:


If America had some Third Generation ground forces, capable of maneuver warfare, we might be able to fight battles of encirclement. The inability to fight battles of encirclement is what led to the failure of Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan, where al Qaeda stood, fought us, and got away with few casualties. To fight such battles we need some true light infantry, infantry that can move farther and faster on its feet than the enemy, has a full tactical repertoire (not just bumping into the enemy and calling for fire) and can fight with its own weapons instead of depending on supporting arms. We estimate that U.S. Marine infantry today has a sustained march rate of only 10-15 kilometers per day; German World War II line, not light, infantry could sustain 40 kilometers.


Fourth Generation opponents will not sign up to the Geneva Conventions, but might some be open to a chivalric code governing how our war with them would be fought? It's worth exploring.


How U.S. forces conduct themselves after the battle may be as important in 4GW as how they fight the battle.


What the Marine Corps calls "cultural intelligence" is of vital importance in 4GW, and it must go down to the lowest rank. In Iraq, the Marines seemed to grasp this much better than the U.S. Army.


What kind of people do we need in Special Operations Forces? The seminar thought minds were more important than muscles, but it is not clear all U.S. SOF understand this.


One key to success is integrating our troops as much as possible with the local people.


Unfortunately, the American doctrine of "force protection" works against integration and generally hurts us badly. Here's a quote from the minutes of the seminar:

"There are two ways to deal with the issue of force protection. One way is the way we are currently doing it, which is to separate ourselves from the population and to intimidate them with our firepower. A more viable alternative might be to take the opposite approach and integrate with the community. That way you find out more of what is going on and the population protects you. The British approach of getting the helmets off as soon as possible may actually be saving lives."


What "wins" at the tactical and physical levels may lose at the operational, strategic, mental and moral levels, where 4GW is decided. Martin van Creveld argues that one reason the British have not lost in Northern Ireland is that the British Army has taken more casualties than it has inflicted. This is something the Second Generation American military has great trouble grasping, because it defines success in terms of comparative attrition rates.


We must recognize that in 4GW situations, we are the weaker, not the stronger party, despite all our firepower and technology.


What can the U.S. military learn from cops? Our reserve and National Guard units include lots of cops; are we taking advantage of what they know?

One key to success in 4GW may be "losing to win." Part of the reason the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are not succeeding is that our initial invasion destroyed the state, creating a happy hunting ground for Fourth Generation forces. In a world where the state is in decline, if you destroy a state, it is very difficult to recreate it. Here's another quote from the minutes of the seminar:

"The discussion concluded that while war against another state may be necessary one should seek to preserve that state even as one defeats it. Grant the opposing armies the 'honors of war,' tell them what a fine job they did, make their defeat 'civilized' so they can survive the war institutionally intact and then work for your side. This would be similar to 18th century notions of civilized war and contribute greatly to propping up a fragile state. Humiliating the defeated enemy troops, especially in front of their own population, is always a serious mistake but one that Americans are prone to make. This is because the 'football mentality' we have developed since World War II works against us."

In many ways, the 21st century will offer a war between the forces of 4GW and Brave New World. The 4GW forces understand this, while the international elites that seek BNW do not. Another quote from the minutes:

"Osama bin Ladin, though reportedly very wealthy, lives in a cave. Yes, it is for security but it is also leadership by example. It may make it harder to separate (physically or psychologically) the 4GW leaders from their troops. It also makes it harder to discredit those leaders with their followers… This contrasts dramatically with the BNW elites who are physically and psychologically separated (by a huge gap) from their followers (even the generals in most conventional armies are to a great extent separated from their men)… The BNW elites are in many respects occupying the moral low ground but don't know it."


In the Axis occupation of the Balkans during World War II, the Italians in many ways were more effective than the Germans. The key to their success is that they did not want to fight. On Cyprus, the U.N. commander rated the Argentine battalion as more effective than the British or the Austrians because the Argentines did not want to fight. What lessons can U.S. forces draw from this?


How would the Mafia do an occupation?


When we have a coalition, what if we let each country do what is does best, e.g., the Russians handle operational art, the U.S. firepower and logistics, maybe the Italians the occupation?


How could the Defense Department's concept of "Transformation" be redefined so as to come to grips with 4GW? If you read the current "Transformation Planning Guidance" put out by DOD, you find nothing in it on 4GW, indeed nothing that relates at all to either of the two wars we are now fighting. It is all oriented toward fighting other state armed forces that fight us symmetrically.

The seminar intends to continue working on this question of redefining "Transformation" (die Verwandlung?) so as to make it relevant to 4GW. However, for our December meeting, we have posed the following problem: It is Spring, 2004. The U.S. Marines are to relieve the Army in the occupation of Fallujah, perhaps Iraq's hottest hot spot (and one where the 82nd Airborne's tactics have been pouring gasoline on the fire). You are the commander of the Marine force taking over Fallujah. What do you do?

I'll let you know what we come up with.

Will Saddam's capture mark a turning point in the war in Iraq? Don't count on it. Few resistance fighters have been fighting for Saddam personally. Saddam's capture may lead to a fractioning of the Baath Party, which would move us further toward a Fourth Generation situation where no one can recreate the state. It may also tell the Shiites that they no longer need America to protect them from Saddam, giving them more options in their struggle for free elections.

If the U.S. Army used the capture of Saddam to announce the end of tactics that enrage ordinary Iraqis and drive them toward active resistance, it might buy us a bit of de-escalation. But I don't think we'll that be smart. When it comes to Fourth Generation war, it seems nobody in the American military gets it.

Recently, a faculty member at the National Defense University wrote to Marine Corps General Mattis, commander of I MAR DIV, to ask his views on the importance of reading military history. Mattis responded with an eloquent defense of taking time to read history, one that should go up on the wall at all of our military schools. "Thanks to my reading, I have never been caught flat-footed by any situation," Mattis said. "It doesn't give me all the answers, but it lights what is often a dark path ahead."

Still, even such a capable and well-read commander as General Mattis seems to miss the point about Fourth Generation warfare. He said in his missive, "Ultimately, a real understanding of history means that we face NOTHING new under the sun. For all the '4th Generation of War' intellectuals running around today saying that the nature of war has fundamentally changed, the tactics are wholly new, etc., I must respectfully say…'Not really…"

Well, that isn't quite what we Fourth Generation intellectuals are saying. On the contrary, we have pointed out over and over that the 4th Generation is not novel but a return, specifically a return to the way war worked before the rise of the state. Now, as then, many different entities, not just governments of states, will wage war. They will wage war for many different reasons, not just "the extension of politics by other means." And they will use many different tools to fight war, not restricting themselves to what we recognize as military forces. When I am asked to recommend a good book describing what a Fourth Generation world will be like, I usually suggest Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century.

Nor are we saying that Fourth Generation tactics are new. On the contrary, many of the tactics Fourth Generation opponents use are standard guerilla tactics. Others, including much of what we call "terrorism," are classic Arab light cavalry warfare carried out with modern technology at the operational and strategic, not just tactical, levels. As I have said before in this column, most of what we are facing in Iraq today is not yet Fourth Generation warfare, but a War of National Liberation, fought by people whose goal is to restore a Baathist state. But as that goal fades and those forces splinter, Fourth Generation war will come more and more to the fore. What will characterize it is not vast changes in how the enemy fights, but rather in who fights and what they fight for. The change in who fights makes it difficult for us to tell friend from foe. A good example is the advent of female suicide bombers; do U.S. troops now start frisking every Moslem woman they encounter? The change in what our enemies fight for makes impossible the political compromises that are necessary to ending any war. We find that when it comes to making peace, we have no one to talk to and nothing to talk about. And the end of a war like that in Iraq becomes inevitable: the local state we attacked vanishes, leaving behind either a stateless region (Somalia) or a façade of a state (Afghanistan) within which more non-state elements rise and fight. General Mattis is correct that none of this is new. It is only new to state armed forces that were designed to fight other state armed forces. The fact that no state military has recently succeeded in defeating a non-state enemy reminds us that Clio has a sense of humor: history also teaches us that not all problems have solutions.

I didn't include link to the above essay since I got it from a Death hippie site who threaten vaguely about those reprinting this work without permission. Frankly, I'd be happy to go to war against them myself. And to further my reputation as a pointlessly bellicose fellow I will also add to my reputation as erudite, even at the real risk of alienating my vast readership, by referring to Fransisco Franco.

War, for many in the West, is a sentimental venture. For the majority of anti-war Death Hippies war is something one can emote about in public for the sake of impressing ones fellows with ones deep commitment to Peace. It's a performance art for people who have nothing better to do with their lives than to pretend at morality. For serious people, war is business, the business of living, the business of the tools and material that make Life possible. One doesn't go into a war for no reason and with no expectation of gain. It's not gratuitous. In the Modernity we live in there are civilized rules to obey in war, and they have been in place at the least since the time of St Augustine. One rule is that we do not fight wars we cannot hope to win. Thus:

Franco engaged in war against the Republican forces in the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. Picasso fans will know of the painting, as such, "Guernica." The painting commemorates Franco's battle against the city during which Hitler sent the Luftwaffe to destroy the city and it's inhabitants, armed and civilian, at random and totally. For those who prefer their history of the non-Stalinist flavor, one might refer to George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia. The point: Fascist murderer Franco was aided in his war by friends Mussolini and Hitler against the equally disgusting Stalin, who attempted to exterminate the Republicans as well. Including all involved, there was no good side in the war; however, not all was pointless: each side demanded a result of benefit. Franco, a rational, if murderous, military man, gained more than he lost. He won. He won by following the laws of natural war. Rather than rushing immediately to Madrid to claim victory and to then fight the towns and villages till victory was cemented, he stopped at each point, killed the opposition to the point of annihilation, and moved on to the next, pacifying and consolidating all his gains as he went. Spain remained in the grip of his fascist dictatorship for roughly 40 years thereafter. Western Germany was spared that length of dictatorship thanks to the Allies, among other tactics, burning Dresden.

So, what do we want? What are we prepared for and what are we wiling to pay for it? Of course we are all lovely people here, and we are moreso daily; but what kind of people are we willing to become should the need arise? Do we honestly care about the hearts and minds of jihadis? Do we genuinely care to have an endless and losing jihad against us as do the Indians in Kashmir? Is a sensitive New Age war the kind off commitment we care to make. If our governments continue to collaborate with our enemies, do we care to abide by our own destruction? What goal, if any, do we care to have? What is our point or purpose in waging war? Can we win at all? What is winning a war?

I feel that we need a theory, one written and explained to our public, one debatable and clear. To claim we are at war is one man's considered opinion based on observation of the world we live in. My response is that we should wage war effectively for the purpose of winning; but what is winning? And what do we do to ensure our victory isn't Pyrrhic-- if only in the moral sense? I ask 'What is to be Done?'

Is Islam a Mental Illness? How to Reason with your Favorite Mob

Truepeers and I are having a debate of sorts over what to do about Islam and Muslims generally. Peers argues we cannot simply write them off as incorrigible and then resort to apocalyptic visions of revenge, stalking after the Muslim world and defeating it as bloodily as we may, expecting it to stay down eternally, our problems forever thereafter solved.

I have been putting forth that Islam is an Irrationality, and that those who are Muslims are something like insane, which I use for lack of a better term. Peers argues that "insanity" is a sure way of alienating the reasonable Muslim who wants nothing more or less than what any other person wants, and that to dismiss him, the normal Muslim, without trying to negotiate with him a common understanding of a covenant between disparate groups is to give in to -- I would guess-- and innate blood-lust and viciousness. Peers argues that debate and reason are the best ways to approach our problem with Islam, and that until all other reasonable avenues are show to be closed we cannot rightly resort to force. Calling the Muslim world "insane" does nothing to further the talks we must have with the Muslims we can deal with. Calling them all insane is merely to foreclose debate even with the most normal of Muslims, writing them off as not worth talking to at all, just being worth fighting. If we refuse to accept any Muslim as anything other than insane, then we begin with war and end with some utopian idea that we will stop all of the insanity and life will be perfect afterward.

Peers is, as our readers know well, an extremely sophisticated writer and debater. My point in posting the two short editorial pieces below is not to foreclose debate or to try to add legitimacy to anything I argue, but to show there is a side to the West that agrees with me in the mainstream. Regarding the particular debate between me and Peers, one may read it at Covenant Zone and see just how severely I blew the doors off his arguments today. Wow.

WEBCommentary Contributor
Author: Sher Zieve
Date: December 1, 2007

Does Islam Cause Mental Illness?

With resumed violent riots in France, the Saudi Arabian woman who was recently convicted of having been gang-raped by seven men and has been sentenced by the Islamic Shari'a court to 200 lashes with a whip (a virtual death sentence) and 6-months in prison, assuming she survives the beating, and the case of Muslims calling for the execution of British teacher in Sudan Gillian Gibbons (who allowed her students to name the classroom teddy bear Muhammad) the insanity occupying the Islamic world is once again slapping the rest of the world in its face. Although she was convicted by the fundamentalist Islamic court system of "insulting Islam" and sentenced to jail time, over 10,000 Sudanese Muslims have taken to the streets and are reported to still be screaming for Gibbons� death with: "No tolerance! Execution! Kill her, kill her by firing squad!"

Apparently not satisfied with last year's worldwide riots over the infamous Muhammad cartoons and the multiple videos of Islamist beheadings, not to mention the genocide of non-Muslims that is still being perpetrated in the Darfur area of Sudan, portions of the Muslim word are at it once again. As these types of extraordinarily brutal, sadistic and bizarre behaviors do not occur within the Jewish or Christian communities of the world, I believe that I must ask: Is it Islam, itself, that is causing this mental illness amongst its adherents?

In the mainstream reportage of these continuing and violent incidents, once again the bulk of the leftist media, the same media that vilifies virtually everything democracies affect to protect their citizens and bring down these regimes of terrorism, are offering "o opinion" on these recent Muslim atrocities. Note: Unfortunately, not all of the recent so-called extremism in the Muslim world is coming strictly from the Islamist factions. But, it does appear that an increasing number of non-Muslims are finally beginning to realize that violence against them is built into and commanded by the Surah verses (the latter stanzas) of the Qur'an.

" Islamic Rage-Boy Photo credit."

Getting back to the Gibbons debacle, an ostensibly mainstream Muslim cleric Abdul-Jalil Nazeer al-Karour in Khartoum worked to incense Muslims in his Mosque on Friday with: "This is an arrogant woman who came to our country, cashing her salary in dollars, teaching our children hatred of our Prophet Muhammad!" The fact that the children chose the teddy bear's name still seems to have escaped the attention of this cleric and others in these repressive Islamic systems. Instead a favorite theme on Islamic television continues to be "the proper way to beat one�s wife". In the below video link, women are compared to camels and donkeys and Muslim men are instructed not to beat their wives in the face but, to beat them "where it won't leave marks." Whew! That's helpful, unless you're a woman. Note: Western feminists still continue to ignore this and other Islamic atrocities committed against their "sisters." It's mind-boggling that they still pretend that none of this is actually occurring. Or, could it be that as it doesn't directly impact them, these "humane" feminists simply don't care about women half a world away? I vote for the latter.

Spurred on by its Imams, the Muslim world is becoming more and more violent each and every day. And it is now creating "insulting" situations when they have not occurred. Like the Leftists, Muslims attack before they are assaulted and then claim "victimhood". Note: This is another example of homicidal children killing their parents and then asking for sympathy because they're now orphans.

Like the recent riots in France, brought on by two Muslim teens running a red light with their motorbike and then hitting a police car, when these immigrants to Europe have nothing else to fall back on, they create false situations themselves. In this instance, Muslim "youth" in France torched cars, libraries and homes then claimed, even though it was the fault of the two teens, that the police were to blame!

So, I ask again: Is it in the interpretation or does Islam�itself�cause mental illness? Take a look at what's happening around the world and draw own conclusion.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/us_world/2007/12/01/2007-12-01_sudan_mobs_want_british_teacher_shot_for-1.html

Muslim Video on How to beat your wife�: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RsysfGN0Iw

Sher Zieve

http://www.webcommentary.com/asp/ShowArticle.asp?id=zieves&date=071201

Mobs rule and bullies dictate

David Warren

The Ottawa Citizen

Saturday, December 01, 2007

Let us not be timid in the face of bullying. I am thinking of the mob that formed in Khartoum yesterday, after Friday prayers in the mosques, demanding the execution of a British schoolteacher who was arrested by Sudan's ruling Islamist junta. Gillian Gibbons has already been "tried," and jailed 15 days, by one of this regime's kangaroo courts.

She was found guilty of "insulting Islam," and barely escaped 40 lashes or worse -- for what? For having named a class teddy bear "Mohammed," in complete innocence, at the suggestion of one of her pupils, whose own name is Mohammed, and who bravely stood up to defend her. In other words, a wilful misunderstanding, in which the wilful misunderstanders are calling for blood.

From the BBC's reports, we read the signs and hear the shouts from that mass rally: "No tolerance." "Execution." "Kill her." "Kill her by firing squad," etc. The paradox is that the idea of "zero tolerance" came from the politically-correct West, just as the idea of "tolerance" came from the civilized West before the era of political correctness.

The British Foreign Office is naturally on the case, and doing what it can to free Mrs. Gibbons, and get her out of that murderously dysfunctional country, which anyone of charitable intention (teachers, missionaries, the deliverers of food aid, invited foreign "peacekeeping" troops) enters at his own risk. A country in which slavery is still openly practised, and slave raids against Christians and Animists have been documented. Let us not be diplomatic when speaking of Sudan, or of the vicious government that has created not only the conditions for massacre and rapine, but also, the administrative problems that have followed from these. And which expects the world to solve its problems.

Alternatively, I am thinking of the violent mobs that have formed repeatedly in Calcutta, demanding the execution, or in the case of some moderates only the flogging and incarceration, of Taslima Nasreem. She is a witty feminist author from Bangladesh, whose memoir, Dwikhondito ("Split in Two," published in 2003) contained several remarks which fanatics consider to be derogatory to Islam. The government of West Bengal had already banned the book, in deference to the state's Muslim minority. And now, at the demand of the union government in Delhi, Ms. Nasreem has agreed to remove two pages from editions of the book available elsewhere. She has required heavy security and been whisked from one hiding place to another, around India.

Yet as the eminent Bengali artist, Shuvaprassana, has said: "This is a compromise that she has been forced into for the sake of getting refuge. But if she can drop two pages to get refuge in India, she can drop three pages and go back to Bangladesh."

This remark conveys more than first appears. Obviously, no matter what Ms Nasreem does, she cannot return to Bangladesh. The point to be read between Shuvaprassana's lines is that if we don't make our stand where we are standing, there is no end to retreat. The defence of freedom demands that we make no concessions -- no concessions at all -- to a bullying mob. And should people in the mob wish to impale themselves on the pikes of lawful authority, let them.

My third example of bullying is a more subtle one. It is from the conference at Annapolis this week, and could be seen on television, by any perceptive person. Naturally, it was widely noticed in Israel, but not elsewhere. The royal Saudi delegates not only did not politely applaud, as is the genteel custom, after the Israeli delegate spoke. They had declined to put in their earphones, to hear the translation while that delegate spoke. From a party to actual peace negotiations comes this rude gesture to announce that nothing a representative of Israel could say would be worth hearing.

After the conference, the Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, whose national affiliation is compounded by the fact she is a woman, made an unprecedented public complaint. She said that none of the Arab foreign ministers would shake her hand; that she was treated as a pariah. Or as Frans Timmermans put it -- a Dutch government minister who was in attendance -- they "shun her like she is Count Dracula's younger sister."

The questions should ask themselves: Why do we treat Arab foreign ministers diplomatically, who are themselves incapable of diplomacy? Why do we confer dignities upon Saudi royalty who will confer no dignity upon our friends?

These are naive questions, to be asked boldly.

David Warren's column appears Sunday, Wednesday and Saturday.

© The Ottawa Citizen 2007
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/story.html?id=e3bea1db-e534-4fb9-8793-19594334926e&k=22035&p=2

I know a great deal about Islam and its history. I don't know everything. I do know that i might have missed something that would lead me to believe Islam has a chance to reform itslef to become in time something like other religions of the Earth. I know too that no one currently speaking on this topic has spoken the right words to make it convincing. I hear nothing but uninformed platitudes, rehashed cliches, hopeful bursting bubbles, and taqiyyah. No proof, no evidence based in Islam as it is, no verifiable hints at a possible peaceful Islam.

Of those who claim that not all Muslims are violent jihadis, I agree. I argue though that the non-violent Muslims are either engaged in passive jihad as supporters or by-standers willing to aid and comfort jihadis in the field without actually going to violent lengths; or they are not really Muslims in any legitimate and meaningful sense at all in th e eyes of Muslims generally. I base that on my own and on the studies of others into orthodox Islam over the centuries, not on any ill-will toward Muslims. I accept the need for force to restrain and de-Islamise the world for the sake of the safety or Muslims. I see non-Islamic aggression against Islamic areas as the best hope of saving most Muslims from retaliation for the provocations they now instigate. That's me. There are others who see things more or less as I do. There is also much time to discuss the future, given that we aren't rushing off from the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli any time soon. Feel free to leave a comment, a fatwah, a thinwah, a dagwah, or a deathwah. I'm easy.