Why nation-building in Afghanistan only wound up failing

Here's an excerpt from Jesse Petrilla's recent book, "If It Takes a Thousand Years: From Al-Qaeda to Hamas, How the Jihadists Think & How to Defeat Them", which explains why, so long as Islam rules countries like Afghanistan, nation-building there won't be possible:

I was serving in the U.S. Army as a Liaison Officer to the Afghan secret police, and facilitated the interrogations of over 400 captured Taliban and Al-Qa’eda members while there. A Taliban leader once told me “You have me in a cage, my fight is over for now, but my children will fight you, and if they don’t win, their children will fight you. If It Takes a Thousand Years, we will win.” Although it didn’t take the Taliban a thousand years to win the battle of Afghanistan, it demonstrates the drive that our jihadist enemies have. They fight generational wars against the West as a whole.

When analyzing our Islamic extremist enemies, it is important for the American people to understand the tribal mindset that so many of our enemies come from. Islam developed from tribal cultures, and many tribal cultures over the past 1,400 years developed under Islam. The Islamic world itself is divided into what I would describe as tribes; you have the Sunni tribe, the Shia tribe, and within that are thousands of other tribes, one of the most recent being the “Palestinian” tribe which has become somewhat of a self-appointed identity by various lost members of other tribes. But in Afghanistan, tribalism is at a level that is virtually unparalleled in the world.

It is human nature to coalesce together into groups, but when you add Islam to the mix, it fuels different dynamics that are completely alien to Westerners. The tribal mindset is so vastly different than our own that it often makes it impossible to reason with them, and they will not respond logically or rationally as you might assume an American or other Westerner would. To Westerners, the tribal mindset may contain many elements that are quite shocking and deeply disturbing.

Part of our training upon arrival in Afghanistan included multiple briefings on Islamic and Afghan culture, since we would be working with locals on a daily basis. In one such briefing, the Afghan-American man leading the discussion began by stating; “You must understand that everything about your way of life in America, is completely different in this planet.” He quickly corrected himself to say “in this country,” but his misspeaking was not too far from the truth. From the way people say hello to the way they go to the bathroom, everything is different, and it is like another world to a Westerner.

In Pashtun tribal law, the largest tribe in Afghanistan comprising almost half the nation, there is something known as khun, or blood money. It can be paid to make amends for various transgressions such as murder, property damage, theft, kidnapping, etcetera. In addition to khun, women can be given to become sex slaves as well as female babies to eventually turn into sex slaves. Women and female babies count as two-thirds of the khun.

Just as in every other part of the Islamic world, Pashtun women have far less status than men. To divorce a woman, the man only needs to declare “I divorce thee” three times publicly. Many Pashtuns also believe that women have something called the “evil eye,” that they have special powers and the ability to cause bad things to happen.

In Pashtun tribal law, if a woman is kidnapped by force, and coerced to consent to marry her kidnapper, but she does not get her father’s permission, the father has the right to kill her. Any inclination of a woman having dishonored the family is rapidly met by her murder. In one of the detainee interrogations, I was truly shocked and saddened when the detainee was describing his family, and nonchalantly said “I have eight children, I had nine but one of my daughters dishonored the family and so I killed her,” a story I unfortunately would hear similar versions of on more than one occasion from multiple detainees.

With women and children relegated to 2nd-class status via Islamic sharia, it's no wonder things are as horrific there as they still are. That the government of Dubya did nothing to prevent many of these repulsive cases behind the scenes is another reason Afghanistan's "liberation" was doomed to failure. We must hope Donald Trump's incoming government will do whatever possible in the meantime to reverse what Biden's bunch enabled upon retreat. But it's doubtless going to be a very long, grueling trip to put an end to the suffering there.

Taliban destroyed education for over a million girls in Afghanistan

Ironically, it's the UN that first reported this, considering such an awful outfit does nothing genuine to defend women's civil rights from Islamofascism:

The Taliban’s ban on women receiving above a secondary has deprived 1.4 million Afghan girls of education since 2021, according to research from the United Nations.

The Afghan government first banned girls from attending secondary school in March 2022, later going on to prohibit women from attending university classes in December of that year. As a result of the bans, girls over the age of twelve have had education opportunities restricted, with 300,000 more girls being affected by the ban since the U.N.’s last count in April of 2023, according to a press release from the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

[...] Aside from banning girls from having access to secondary and higher education, the Taliban has also banned females from teaching male students, according to the press release. This change has contributed to the drop in total education enrollment in primary schools from 6.8 million boys and girls in 2019 to 5.7 million in 2022.

“In just three years, the de facto authorities have almost wiped out two decades of steady progress for education in Afghanistan, and the future of an entire generation is now in jeopardy,” the press release states.

But don't expect Kamala Harris to speak in defense of women in Afghanistan if she becomes president. And don't expect the UN to come to their rescue either. They're all just big talk and nothing else. For now, it's terrible what Joe Biden led to shortly after he become the fraud-in-chief of the USA.

MORE ORLANDO SHOOTER/JIHADIST NEWS

TRIPS TO SAUDI ARABIA


Has ISIS Infiltrated 'Homeland Security'? Omar Worked for Major DHS Contractor


Company Transports Illegals Inside USA...



ISIS releases hit list with names of more than 8,000 Americans
Afghanistan Migration Surging Into USA: 99% Support Sharia
Imam speaking in Orlando said gays must be killed out of 'compassion'
NYC DEPLOYS 500 MORE OFFICERS FOR PRECAUTION AFTER MASSACRE...
FACEBOOK Deletes 'Stop Islamization Of America' Page After Orlando Attack... 

'50 perverts killed in bar': Homophobic headline on Turkish newspaper website with strong ties to country's President Erdogan

Dead club gunman was interviewed by FBI over terror links THREE times – yet worked for government security contractor and bought guns legally


FROM THE WITNESSES

Witness video via twitter outside of Pulse club. Audio reveals the relentless pace of shooter. 25 steady paced shots in 9 sec video

---------

No one seems to be picking up on this interview:

Twitter video
ABCNews EXCLUSIVE/#ABC2020 visible on video clip...."Man says he played dead to keep Orlando shooter from killing him."
2:15 length video interview reveals the shooter made calls during massacre...ff:0:43"then he called somebody else that he knew and he mentioned that he was the 4th shooter and there was three others and he mentioned, I believe, a female name and was playing dead...he's saying she has a bombing vest and he has one too."

Witness: Orlando shooter asked
club goers their race, said U.S.
needs to "stop bombing ISIS"#PrayForOrlandohttps://t.co/kE09dV6gIK

— AlwaysActions (@AlwaysActions) June 13, 2016

Afghan men wear burqas and march to support women's rights

Clint Eastwood: To a Point, Moore, Maher Right in 'Sniper' Criticism

From Newsmax:

Clint Eastwood surprised many people recently by saying he agreed with critics who have attacked his Oscar-nominated film "American Sniper." 

Since the film was released last month, it has been attacked by film director Michael Moore, who called military snipers "cowards." 

Comedian Bill Maher questioned whether the subject of the film — the late U.S. military sniper Chris Kyle — was a "hero or not" and called him a "psychopath patriot," The Daily Beast reports. 

As he was leaving a West Hollywood restaurant Monday night, Eastwood was asked by TMZ what he thought about the recent criticism by Moore and Maher. 

"They were right," he said. "Did Clint Eastwood Just Agree with 'American Sniper' Critics?" a Daily Caller headline asked. 

The answer appears to be that he does — to a point. Mediaite reported, for example, that Eastwood has defended the film by stating that "the biggest antiwar statement any film" can make is to show "the fact of what [war] does to the family and the people who have to go back into civilian life like Chris Kyle did." 

In an interview published last month, Eastwood described his philosophy as "more dove than hawk: a pragmatic libertarian rather than a red-meat Republican," the Toronto Star reported. 

He said he opposed both the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and that he has seen enough conflict in his life. 

"I was a child growing up during World War II. That was supposed to be the one to end all wars," Eastwood, 84, told the Star. 

"And four years later, I was standing at the draft board being drafted during the Korean conflict, and then after that there was Vietnam, and it goes on and on forever." 

Every time "the nation enters these conflicts, it deserves a lot of thought before we go wading in or wading out," Eastwood said. 

But as director of "American Sniper," Eastwood said it was his responsibility to be able to properly represent Kyle's version of events. 

"I'm seeing it from the point of a person who was sort of an American hero, as far as his ability to be this ultra-sniper. And his family and his beliefs were very strong about defending the country," he said. 

"You have to embrace his philosophy if you're going to tell a story about him."

More Than "An Embarrassing Flub"!

How is this even possible to have happened?

White House mistakenly reveals CIA official's name

In an embarrassing flub, the Obama administration accidentally revealed the name of the CIA's top official in Afghanistan in an email to thousands of journalists during the president's surprise Memorial Day weekend trip to Bagram Air Field.

The officer's name - identified as "chief of station" in Kabul - was included by U.S. embassy staff on a list of 15 senior American officials who met with President Obama during the Saturday visit. The list was sent to a Washington Post reporter who was representing the news media, who then sent it out to the White House "press pool" list, which contains as many as 6,000 recipients.

The Associated Press is withholding the officer's name at the request of the Obama administration, who said its publication could put his life and those of his family members in danger. A Google search appears to reveal the name of the officer's wife and other personal details.

White House officials realized the error after the Post reporter notified them, and sent out a new list without the station chief's name. Other major news organizations, including the Post, also agreed not to publish the officer's name.

The reporter who distributes the pool report sends it to the White House to be checked for factual accuracy and then forwarded to the thousands of journalists on the email distribution list, so in this case the White House failed on at least two occasions to recognize that the CIA official's name was being revealed and circulated so broadly....

Has The US Defense Department Developed UFO's?

With Nato forces withdrawing from the badlands of Afghanistan, the country's people need all the help they can get to keep extremists from once again seizing power. 

But it seems a new intervention has come from an unlikely source... outer space. 

U.S. Marines captured this incredible footage of what looks like a UFO hovering over a Taliban encampment - then blowing it to kingdom come.

The clip was reportedly filmed by U.S. troops fighting in Afghanistan in March. Shot by a soldier standing next to a stationary armoured column, it shows a bizarre triangular object hanging in the sky not far ahead. 

As soldiers look on, the craft slowly moves into position, before what appear to be muzzle flashes soundlessly emanate from its underside. 

A split-second later and huge explosions erupt as the fearsome space weapons hit the site of the purported Taliban camp, sending up plumes of smoke that obscure the view of the mysterious bomber. 

After the smoke clears, the cameraman zooms in to shoot a close up view of the UFO, which looks unlike any known U.S. military drone.

GO READ THE WHOLE THING.

JOE BIDEN FLAT-OUT LIED ABOUT HIS VOTES ON THE WARS IN AFGHANISTAN AND IRAQ

Somehow, I believed he MUST be telling the truth. After all, how could he have expected to get away with such an outright lie.

When he said it, I thought, "Well, this doesn't gibe with my memory, but, ok."

Turns out he was, indeed, outright lying to the American people, on an issue that is so easy to fact-check, even the Palace Guard Media couldn't find a way to get it wrong ...

I think.

From Ace:

“By the way, they talk about this great recession like it fell out of the sky–like, ‘Oh my goodness, where did it come from?’” Biden said. “It came from this man voting to put two wars on a credit card, at the same time, put a prescription drug plan on the credit card, a trillion dollar tax cut for the very wealthy.” 

“I was there, I voted against them,” Biden continued. “I said, no, we can’t afford that.” 

Then Sen. Biden voted for the Afghanistan resolution on Sept. 14, 2001 which authorized “the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States.” 

And on Oct. 11, 2002, Biden voted for a resolution authorizing unilateral military action in Iraq, according to the Washington Post.

The one thing they told this drunken buffoon not to do is to spin some grandly self-serving lie about an important issue which could be easily disproven.

It was like having an argument with your drunk, blowhard, dullwitted uncle at Thanksgiving. And your drunk blowhard dullwitted uncle, who is superior to you only in age, keeps asserting he's right about everything by shouting "I WAS THERE!!!"

Read the story at Ace of Spades.

Muslim Par-tay! Rockin' Da House With Mo and Allah

"Taliban Style Party" - 17 party-goers 'found beheaded' in southern Afghan village

From Will at The Other News:

"Taliban Style Party" - 17 party-goers 'found beheaded' in southern Afghan village.(TI).KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN:

Fifteen men and two women were found beheaded in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province on Monday, punishment meted out by Taliban insurgents for a mixed-sex party with music and dancing, officials said.

The bodies were found in a house near the Musa Qala district, about 75 km (46 miles) north of the provincial capital Lashkar Gah, said district governor Nimatullah, who only goes by one name. "The victims threw a late-night dance and music party when the Taliban attacked" on Sunday night, Nimatullah told Reuters. 

There were no immediate claims of responsibility. In ultra-conservative Afghanistan, men and women do not usually mingle unless they are related, and parties involving both genders together are rare and highly secretive affairs. 

For the Taliban, flirting, open displays of affection and the mixing of men and women are vehemently condemned. According to witnesses of a major attack that killed 20 near Kabul in June, Taliban gunmen stormed a high-end hotel demanding to know where the "prostitutes and pimps" were. 


The Taliban said it launched that attack on Qarga Lake because the hotel was used for "wild parties". During their five-year reign, which was toppled by US-backed Afghan forces in 2001, sparking the present NATO-led war, the Taliban banned women from voting, most work and leaving their homes unaccompanied by their husband or a male relative. 

Though those rights have been painstakingly regained, Afghanistan remains one of the worst places on earth to be a woman. Helmand governor spokesman Daud Ahmadi said a team had been sent to the site of beheadings to investigate.

Read the full story here.

How To Apologize To Karzai

Found at Right Truth:

Pepsi Cans In Afghanistan

From Bare Naked Islam:

Those Pepsi cans were manufactured in Dubai.

Is the image a rendering of the Twin Towers? Evaluations on that matter have been mixed.

Excerpt from Bare Naked Islam (citing this source):

So yesterday I was in the chow hall on my Forward Operating Base here in Afghanistan, and, as usual, I grabbed a diet cola to go with my meal. The Diet Pepsi served in our chow hall is not from the United States. It is manufactured in Dubai by Pepsi Arabia and says so right on the can.Yesterday, for some odd reason I looked–I mean I really LOOKED–at the subtle “clip art” on the background of the can.And I did a double take. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing… I examined the can for several minutes while my food grew cold, wondering if my eyes were deceiving me.

But there was no getting around it. To either side of the Pepsi logo, there was an image of a jet airliner over tall buildings. Looking at the image, I couldn’t help but think it alluded to 9/11.Three other soldiers were sitting with me at my table. One of the other soldiers asked what I was looking at so hard. Instead of answering, I handed him the can and said, “Look at the artwork on this can. Do you see what I see?”

He looked. His eyes grew wide. He turned the can from side to side. The other soldiers at the table looked, too. None of us said anything. The phrase “9/11″ never passed from our lips. We could LOOK at each other and understand we all saw the same thing, a “sneaky allusion to 9/11.”

Ten Long Years In Afghanistan

And even Afghan lawmakers are in despair:

Afghans: Obama wasting time talking to terrorists

A group of senior Afghan lawmakers says the Obama administration is wasting its time in trying to make peace with the Haqqani Network, a Pakistan-based terrorist group U.S. officials have accused of killing Americans and attacking the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan.

Washington should instead increase pressure on Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency to cut its ties to the Haqqanis, withhold millions of dollars of aid to Islamabad and attack the militants in their safe havens, the lawmakers told The Washington Times this week.

The Haqqani Network, which is led by Sirajuddin Haqqani and operates from Pakistan's North Waziristan province, is supported by the ISI, according to Afghan and Western officials. Pakistani officials deny these accusations.

The Afghan lawmakers said the United States should use a combination of sanctions and travel bans against top ISI officers and the Pakistani military to break their support for the Haqqani Network.

The group of 10 lawmakers is in Washington for meetings at the Pentagon and State Department and on Capitol Hill.

U.S. officials met with representatives of the Haqqani Network over the summer.

In congressional testimony late last month, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton defended the Obama administration's strategy of "fight, talk and build" while dealing with the terrorists. She said part of the reason for the administration's approach is to test whether the terrorist groups "have any willingness to negotiate in good faith."

The Afghan lawmakers were pessimistic about the prospects of such an approach....

The rest HERE.

Ten long years of our blood and treasure, and the final result is going to be a complete loss as far as I can see.

Funding The Taliban In Afghanistan?

With a hat tip to Sam Huntington of Praesidiumn Respublicae, citing this source:

The U.S. military estimates that $360 million spent on combat support and reconstruction contracts in Afghanistan has ended up in the hands of people the American-led coalition has battled for nearly a decade: the Taliban, criminals and local power brokers with ties to both…

Some "war," huh? Our tax dollars are funding the enemy!

The Light That Must Not Fail

Guest Commentary by Edward Cline:

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. (Common English translation)

It was first an epigram written by French novelist, critic, and publisher Alphonse Jean Baptiste Karr in 1849. Now it is regarded as a proverb. It applies to the Islamic nations of Pakistan and Afghanistan (and any other Islamic nation), because nothing there has changed in centuries but the weaponry and technology that Islam could never have created and has certainly appropriated to “defend the faith.” American presence there has had less influence than had the British. The cultures of Pakistan and Afghanistan are still stagnant, obdurately and contentedly imprisoned by a barbaric creed. Those who in those countries raise their hands or their minds against the creed are almost immediately struck down.

Over a century ago Winston Churchill described the problem with Islam, and specifically with Muslims. His first-hand experiences with them in Afghanistan and later in the Sudan are evidence of an uncorrupted epistemology and an uncompromised moral evaluation of them. Not even the most ardent anti-jihadist would portray Muslims in the frank and objective terms that Churchill did. He did not flinch from the evidence of his eyes. He did not search for some “saving grace” in Islam or in a Muslim that would forego a blanket condemnation of Islam

In The River War, his two-volume account of the Sudan Campaign of 1896-1899 – the campaign ending with the battle of Umm Diwaykarat and the demise of the Mahdiyah regime, established in 1885 over the Sudan – he picks up where he left off in The Malakand Field Force:

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity.

The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities - but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.*

In those and in subsequent paragraphs there is no hint of a suggestion by Churchill that Islam could be “reformed” or that there are redeeming qualities in the creed which would civilize a Muslim and render him as indistinguishable from and non-threatening as the average Catholic or Presbyterian.

In The Malakand Field Force, published before The River War, Churchill went into damning detail about the Afghan tribesmen and their culture, which have not changed to this day, and never will.

Except at the times of sowing and of harvest, a continual state of feud and strife prevails throughout the land. Tribe wars with tribe. The people of one valley fight with those of the next. To the quarrels of communities are added the combats of individuals. Khan assails khan, each supported by his retainers. Every tribesman has a blood feud with his neighbor. Every man's hand is against the other, and all against the stranger.

Nor are these struggles conducted with the weapons which usually belong to the races of such development. To the ferocity of the Zulu are added the craft of the Redskin and the marksmanship of the Boer. The world is presented with that grim spectacle, "the strength of civilisation without its mercy." At a thousand yards the traveller falls wounded by the well-aimed bullet of a breech-loading rifle. His assailant, approaching, hacks him to death with the ferocity of a South-Sea Islander. The weapons of the nineteenth century are in the hands of the savages of the Stone Age.

Every influence, every motive, that provokes the spirit of murder among men, impels these mountaineers to deeds of treachery and violence. The strong aboriginal propensity to kill, inherit in all human beings, has in these valleys been preserved in unexampled strength and vigor. That religion, which above all others was founded and propagated by the sword -- the tenets and principles of which are instinct with incentives to slaughter and which in three continents has produced fighting breeds of men -- stimulates a wild and merciless fanaticism. The love of plunder, always a characteristic of hill tribes, is fostered by the spectacle of opulence and luxury which, to their eyes, the cities and plains of the south display. A code of honor not less punctilious than that of old Spain, is supported by vendettas as implacable as those of Corsica.

In such a state of society, all property is held directly by main force. Every man is a soldier. Either he is the retainer of some khan -- the man-at-arms of some feudal baron as it were -- or he is a unit in the armed force of his village -- the burgher of mediaeval history. In such surroundings we may without difficulty trace the rise and fall of an ambitious Pathan. At first he toils with zeal and thrift as an agriculturist on that plot of ground which his family have held since they expelled some former owner. He accumulates in secret a sum of money. With this he buys a rifle from some daring thief, who has risked his life to snatch it from a frontier guard-house. He becomes a man to be feared. Then he builds a tower to his house and overawes those around him in the village. Gradually they submit to his authority. He might now rule the village; but he aspires still higher. He persuades or compels his neighbors to join him in an attack on the castle of a local khan. The attack succeeds. The khan flies or is killed; the castle captured. The retainers make terms with the conqueror. The land tenure is feudal. In return for their acres they follow their new chief to war. Were he to treat them worse than the other khans treated their servants, they would sell their strong arms elsewhere. He treats them well. Others resort to him. He buys more rifles. He conquers two or three neighboring khans. He has now become a power.

Many, perhaps all, states have been founded in a similar way, and it is by such steps that civilisation painfully stumbles through her earlier stages. But in these valleys the warlike nature of the people and their hatred of control, arrest the further progress of development. We have watched a man, able, thrifty, brave, fighting his way to power, absorbing, amalgamating, laying the foundations of a more complex and interdependent state of society. He has so far succeeded. But his success is now his ruin. A combination is formed against him. The surrounding chiefs and their adherents are assisted by the village populations. The ambitious Pathan, oppressed by numbers, is destroyed. The victors quarrel over the spoil, and the story closes, as it began, in bloodshed and strife.

The conditions of existence, that have been thus indicated, have naturally led to the dwelling-places of these tribes being fortified. If they are in the valley, they are protected by towers and walls loopholed for musketry. If in the hollows of the hills, they are strong by their natural position. In either case they are guarded by a hardy and martial people, well armed, brave, and trained by constant war.

This state of continual tumult has produced a habit of mind which recks little of injuries, holds life cheap and embarks on war with careless levity, and the tribesmen of the Afghan border afford the spectacle of a people, who fight without passion, and kill one another without loss of temper. Such a disposition, combined with an absolute lack of reverence for all forms of law and authority, and a complete assurance of equality, is the cause of their frequent quarrels with the British power. A trifle rouses their animosity. They make a sudden attack on some frontier post. They are repulsed. From their point of view the incident is closed. There has been a fair fight in which they have had the worst fortune. What puzzles them is that "the Sirkar" should regard so small an affair in a serious light. Thus the Mohmands cross the frontier and the action of Shabkadr is fought. They are surprised and aggrieved that the Government are not content with the victory, but must needs invade their territories, and impose punishment. Or again, the Mamunds, because a village has been burnt, assail the camp of the Second Brigade by night. It is a drawn game. They are astounded that the troops do not take it in good part.

They, when they fight among themselves, bear little malice, and the combatants not infrequently make friends over the corpses of their comrades or suspend operations for a festival or a horse race. At the end of the contest cordial relations are at once re-established. And yet so full of contradictions is their character, that all this is without prejudice to what has been written of their family vendettas and private blood feuds. Their system of ethics, which regards treachery and violence as virtues rather than vices, has produced a code of honor so strange and inconsistent, that it is incomprehensible to a logical mind. I have been told that if a white man could grasp it fully, and were to understand their mental impulses -- if he knew, when it was their honor to stand by him, and when it was their honor to betray him; when they were bound to protect and when to kill him--he might, by judging his times and opportunities, pass safely from one end of the mountains to the other. But a civilised European is as little able to accomplish this, as to appreciate the feelings of those strange creatures, which, when a drop of water is examined under a microscope, are revealed amiably gobbling each other up, and being themselves complacently devoured.

… Truth is unknown among them. A single typical incident displays the standpoint from which they regard an oath. In any dispute about a field boundary, it is customary for both claimants to walk round the boundary he claims, with a Koran in his hand, swearing that all the time he is walking on his own land. To meet the difficulty of a false oath, while he is walking over his neighbor's land, he puts a little dust from his own field into his shoes. As both sides are acquainted with the trick, the dismal farce of swearing is usually soon abandoned, in favor of an appeal to force.

All are held in the grip of miserable superstition. The power of the ziarat, or sacred tomb, is wonderful. [By this, Churchill did not mean “wonderful” as we use the term, but rather that the superstition defied all reason.] Sick children are carried on the backs of buffaloes, sometimes sixty or seventy miles, to be deposited in front of such a shrine, after which they are carried back -- if they survive the journey -- in the same way. It is painful even to think of what the wretched child suffers in being thus jolted over the cattle tracks. But the tribesmen consider the treatment much more efficacious than any infidel prescription. To go to a ziarat and put a stick in the ground is sufficient to ensure the fulfillment of a wish. To sit swinging a stone or colored glass ball, suspended by a string from a tree, and tied there by some fakir, is a sure method of securing a fine male heir. To make a cow give good milk, a little should be plastered on some favorite stone near the tomb of a holy man. These are but a few instances; but they may suffice to reveal a state of mental development at which civilisation hardly knows whether to laugh or weep.

Their superstition exposes them to the rapacity and tyranny of a numerous priesthood -- "Mullahs," "Sahibzadas," "Akhundzadas," "Fakirs," -- and a host of wandering Talib-ul-ilms, who correspond with the theological students in Turkey, and live free at the expense of the people. More than this, they enjoy a sort of "droit du seigneur," and no man's wife or daughter is safe from them. Of some of their manners and morals it is impossible to write [Victorian sensibilities prohibited Churchill from describing these “manners and morals.”]. As Macaulay has said of Wycherley's plays, "they are protected against the critics as a skunk is protected against the hunters." They are "safe, because they are too filthy to handle, and too noisome even to approach."

Yet the life even of these barbarous people is not without moments when the lover of the picturesque might sympathise with their hopes and fears. In the cool of the evening, when the sun has sunk behind the mountains of Afghanistan, and the valleys are filled with a delicious twilight, the elders of the village lead the way to the chenar trees by the water's side, and there, while the men are cleaning their rifles, or smoking their hookas, and the women are making rude ornaments from beads, and cloves, and nuts, the Mullah drones the evening prayer. Few white men have seen, and returned to tell the tale. But we may imagine the conversation passing from the prices of arms and cattle, the prospects of the harvest, or the village gossip, to the great Power, that lies to the southward, and comes nearer year by year. Perhaps some former Sepoy, of Beluchis or Pathans, will recount his adventures in the bazaars of Peshawar, or tell of the white officers he has followed and fought for in the past. He will speak of their careless bravery and their strange sports; of the far-reaching power of the Government, that never forgets to send his pension regularly as the months pass by; and he may even predict to the listening circle the day when their valleys will be involved in the comprehensive grasp of that great machine, and judges, collectors and commissioners shall ride to sessions at Ambeyla, or value the land tax on the soil of Nawagai.

Then the Mullah will raise his voice and remind them of other days when the sons of the prophet drove the infidel from the plains of India, and ruled at Delhi, as wide an Empire as the Kafir holds to-day: when the true religion strode proudly through the earth and scorned to lie hidden and neglected among the hills: when mighty princes ruled in Bagdad, and all men knew that there was one God, and Mahomet was His prophet. And the young men hearing these things will grip their Martinis, and pray to Allah, that one day He will bring some Sahib -- best prize of all -- across their line of sight at seven hundred yards so that, at least, they may strike a blow for insulted and threatened Islam. …**

I excerpted this lengthy quotation from Malakand because it was difficult to select a single sentence or paragraph that would not also illustrate the point that Muslims are still this primitive, not only in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but in any Western country Muslims have emigrated to, and even have been born in as second generation Muslims. On its own terms, as an instance of fine prose writing about Islam, we do not see its like today, and certainly not in the mainstream media. I highlighted Talib-ul-ilms (meaning “students) because the Taliban are still there, still killing our soldiers, still terrorizing other Muslims, still plotting against the “Empire of the Kafir.” Churchill uses a term that is employed today: kafir (unbeliever) by anyone who writes about Islam and has correctly identified the peril. The term is synonymous with “infidel.” Which, for the jihdist, is synonymous with fair game for slaughter, rape, plundering, enslavement, and conquest.

Note also that there is no suggestion of “hate” in Churchill’s description of Islam and the state of Muslims. He may as well have been writing about a nest of termites. He was unable to imagine Muslims valuing the kind of liberty the West takes (or took) for granted, and incapable of projecting a credible Western version of Islam. When the barbarians overran Rome, they didn’t come to introduce new modes of plumbing or life-saving surgery or poetry. And when the Moslems captured Alexandria in Egypt, it wasn’t to browse through what remained of its great library. They burned it.

Would General Petraeus be able to pen an assessment of Islam as honest as Churchill’s? Or Colin Powell? Or any modern military commander assigned to “win the hearts and minds” of Muslim “extremists”? Political correctness, in the context of military operations, governs the “rule of engagement” in any public discussion of Islam, whether it is the violent kind or the stealth kind. All it accomplishes are needless casualties and ultimate defeat, an unconscionable waste of blood and treasure in pursuit of a détente with destruction, in which only the destroyers can triumph.

The first step in defeating an enemy is to acknowledge that it is one. The second step is to not to talk it to death, or engage it in a friendly panel discussion on the meaning of life. Jihadists know this, and act accordingly – bringing down a helicopter full of American soldiers, and winning a foot-bath and prayer room in a Western business or factory. But the West has forgotten the true rules of engagement, preferring to pretend that the enemy would not be an enemy if only we “understood” it and “tolerated” it. Kipling had some advice about indulging in that kind of evasive “tolerance” of an enemy one secretly fears will destroy for the sake of destruction.

To each man is appointed his particular dread – the terror that if he does not fight against it, must cow him even to the loss of his manhood.***

The light that is failing in the West is the knowledge of its own superior, life-affirming and life-sustaining value. Islam is a nihilist ideology that must be fought against with the same dedication one must oppose the ongoing jihad of secular collectivism unleashed against us by the Progressive Marxists in Washington.

Islam will not and cannot change. It can trade filthy robes and sandals for three-piece suits and Rolex watches, and spears and swords for rocket-propelled grenades and Kalashnikov rifles, but it will remain what it has been for fourteen centuries: a cult of death and degradation.

*Winston Churchill, The River War, Vol. II, pp. 248-50. London: Longmans, Green, 1899.

**Winston Churchill, The Story of the Malakand Field Force: An Episode of Frontier War, pp.6-8. (Originally published by Longmans, Green & Co. 1898.) Text quoted here is from my copy of the Dover 2010 reprint of the Thomas Nelson & Sons edition, 1916 (London).

***Rudyard Kipling, The Light That Failed, p. 128 (1899). New York: Charles Scribner’s & Sons 1909.

Crossposted at The Dougout

Talib al-Britani: British nationals caught supporting the Taliban

Britain’s connection to jihad in South Asia was once again cast into the spotlight with the capture of two British nationals with alleged links to the Taliban in Herat. The man and woman remain unidentified, and the British Ministry of Defense and Foreign Office have both merely confirmed that they were British nationals. Stories have started to circulate in the press that they were plotting an attack back in the U.K. and it seems that they were dual Afghan-British nationals known to MI5, though other reports indicate they may be of Pakistani origin. Whether they were planning an attack in the U.K. or not, the prospect of British nationals fighting British soldiers in Afghanistan is something that has long worried British officials. Either way, their presence shows the connection between the U.K. and fighting in Afghanistan continues to exist, a demonstration of how ingrained extreme ideas continue to be in the U.K.

About Those Slain U.N. Workers

From AOL News:

"They were killed when they were running out of the bunker," said Staffan de Mistura, the top U.N. envoy in Afghanistan, who recounted their harrowing deaths to reporters on Saturday evening. "One was pulled out alive because he pretended to be a Muslim."

[...]


When the killers forced themselves inside they saw Pavel Ershov, the mission chief who is fluent in Dari, one of two languages spoken in Afghanistan. They beat him, but stopped after he convinced them, in Dari, that he was a Muslim, de Mistura said.

[...]

President Hamid Karzai publicly condemned the March 20 Quran burning, leading some to blame him for triggering the protests. De Mistura, however, blamed the person who torched the holy book.

[...]

"Freedom of speech does not mean freedom of offending culture, religion or traditions," de Mistura said. "Those who entered our building were actually furiously angry about the issue about the Quran. There was nothing political there."...

Interesting words: "nothing political there." Is de Mistura equating Islam with politics? If so, he has admitted that Islam is both religion and politics, in other words, a geopolitical ideology.

And just how does de Mistura define "freedom of speech?" It's fine as long as it doesn't offend anyone? That way lies madness.

When The State Controls The Media

Or when illiteracy controls the people.

Or when the people are technologically behind.

From Jihad Watch:

Fewer than one in 10 Afghans are aware of the 9/11 attacks and their precipitation of the war in Afghanistan, says a study from an international think tank.

[...]

To be sure, the survey can't claim to be definitive: It only canvassed men, and relied primarily on respondents from Helmand and Kandahar, the two most war-torn provinces in the country. But the results nonetheless show that Western forces fighting insurgents in Afghanistan have largely failed to connect with the local population.

Some news that you could have missed

1. Afghanistan: former Muslim could be sentenced to death penalty for conversion: Sayed Mossa, an Afghan convert from Islam to Christianity, has been scheduled to stand trial today and most likely will be sentenced to death. His trial for apostasy will probably be televised in the war-torn country, and it appears Mossa may not even have adequate representation. Every lawyer, all Muslims, that has been appointed by the courts to represent Mossa have refused. They dare not defend someone who converted to Christianity. Mossa is a 45 year old, married, father of six children. His youngest is 8 and he has one disabled child. Mossa is an amputee and has spent 15 years of his life helping others with the International Red Cross. However a co-worker turned Mossa in for being a Christian convert – a crime in most Muslim nations practicing Sharia law.
2. Egypt: cleric demands death penalty for importers of female virginity-faking device. Abdul Mouti Bayoumi said supplying the item was akin to spreading vice in society, a crime punishable by death in Islamic Sharia law. The device is said to release liquid imitating blood, allowing a female to feign virginity on her wedding night.
   
3. France: another Catholic church attacked. Father Gabriel, the parish priest, speaks to the press, almost in desperation. For several months, his church has been the target of obscene and offensive tags, excrement-throwing … And last week, the cypresses adjacent to the religious building were set on fire, threatening to spread the flames to church. For this priest, “these acts have a direct link with what is happening in Iraq where Christians were attacked.” At the outset, Father Gabriel talks about inter-community tensions and denounced a “climate of increasingly aggressive and violent maintained by a small group of young people 12/13 years up to 16 years.” At first, Father Gabriel was believed to “incivility” of unemployed youth in the neighborhood. Nonsense of teenagers in need of provocation.Then a few days before the fire of cypress, a youth entered the church during mass, urinating on the porch with while shouting this terrible sentence, “We’ll toast you all, you and your church.” The parish priest complained to the police on Nov. 9.
4. Iran: Islamic religious leader expects the Pope to consider the Qu'ran as holy as the Gospels. 
5. Iraq's Christians unimportant in global politics. "We also must squarely face the unpleasant reality that terrorism done in the name of Islam is not going to disappear on its own or be resolved by dipomacy. As Fr. de Souza wrote in a National Post column earlier this week, “The blood on the altar makes it clear. No amount of goodwill, no amount of dialogue, no amount of circumlocutory evasions, no amount of supine prostrations — nothing will dissuade the jihadists. … The jihadists respect neither man nor God, not even their own. They have killed their fellow Muslims and bombed mosques. The Christians killed on Sunday were Iraqis, their fellow Arabs, their fellow citizens, their neighbors. They kill because they are seized with a murderous hatred. The least we can do is to summon a righteous anger in return.”
6. Malaysia: Dad in pork issue claims son is not Muslim. Debates and arguments in Parliament over the last two days had centred on whether or not his son Basil — raised by a Christian mother — was also Muslim. The father left Islam and now is registered as "non-Muslim".

7. 

   Asia Bibi

   Pakistan: Christian woman sentenced to death on blasphemy charges: Some of the women workers had reportedly been pressuring Bibi to renounce her Christian faith and accept Islam. During one discussion, Asia Bibi (pictured) responded by speaking of how Jesus had died on the cross for the sins of humanity and asking the Muslim women what Muhammad had done for them. She is married and has 4 children. Her sentence has been appealed. There is an internacional campaign to help her.
8. Obama praises Jew-free Indonesia.
9. Saudi Arabia: Facebook blocked for not conforming with values. The official announced that Saudi’s Communications and Information Technology Commission blocked the site and an error message shows up when Internet users try to access it.
10. Spain: Violent Muslim occupation of Cordoba Cathedral did not Violate Law against Offending Religious Sentiments, Judge Says.“There isn’t so much an intention to minimize or harm the religious sentiments of the Catholic religion so much as an attempt to favor, not to say clearly impose, in a false gesture of tolerance, the possibility of carrying out joint worship [in the cathedral],” the judge declared. “It doesn’t act to demerit or discredit the Catholic religion, but rather in favor of joint use.
11. Sri Lanka: maid alleges nail torture while working in Kuwait. he doctor said the woman had told surgeons that her Kuwaiti employers drove the nails into her hands and left leg – some as long as 3.5 centimetres (1.5 inches) – when she asked for her salary after working for six months. (AFP)
12. Uk: Tower Hamlets' Luftur Rahman puts fundamentalist sympathiser in charge of the money. The four posts (in Tower Hamlets’ council) Lutfur has filled are all from the ranks of the councillors who defected from Labour to him before the election. They include Alibor Choudhury, a man with even closer links than Lutfur to the Muslim supremacist group, the Islamic Forum of Europe. Alibor has, incredibly, been given the key post of cabinet member for resources – that is, he will be in charge of the money.
13. UN: Iran, Turkey could be frontrunners for nuclear disarmament. Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said the Islamic Republic and Turkey have potentials to be forerunners of international nuclear disarmament, the local English language satellite Press TV reported on Thursday.”Iran and Turkey can be flag-bearers of nuclear disarmament in the globe to establish a world free from nuclear weapons,” Mottaki said in a meeting with head of Turkish Parliament’s Commission for Foreign Relations Murad Marjan in Tehran on Wednesday. Turkey, which is a partner of the US-led coalition against Iran along with Israel, possesses some 90 thermonuclear B61 bunker buster bombs at the Incirlik nuclear air base.
14. West Bank: Blogger faces potential life prison sentence for "insulting Islam". Husayin faces a potential life prison sentence on heresy charges for “insulting the divine essence.” Many in this conservative Muslim town say he should be killed for renouncing Islam, and even family members say he should remain behind bars for life.”He should be burned to death,” said Abdul-Latif Dahoud, a 35-year-old Qalqilya resident. The execution should take place in public “to be an example to others,” he added.

Posts for Nov 5th: Ramala's 5-Star Hotel, Abdel Hameed Shehadeh, Sexual Harrassment in Egypt, ISAF kills Haqqani network leader, Soutudeh in danger, US Human Rights reacord scrutinized in UNHRC,

1. Ramallah gets five star luxury hotel: The hotel, a franchise of the Swiss-based Movenpick chain, has 171 rooms and suites, an outdoor pool, and a fitness center, and cost $40 million.
   
2. UK: Jihadist webmaster Abdel Hameed Shehadeh held without bail in Brooklyn Federal Court: Abdel Hameed Shehadeh, 21, of Staten Island, was arrested last week in Hawaii, where he had tried in the past to travel to Somalia, but failed because he was on a “no fly” list.
   
3. Egypt: Challenging sexual harrassment on Cairo's streets: The project, called HarassMap, aims to create a map of the ‘hotspots’ of harassment in Cairo – that is, the places where harassment most frequently occurs.
   
4. Afghanistan: fifth Haqqani network leader confirmed killed during Paktiya operation: Intelligence reports later confirmed the death of the five Haqqani leaders as well as several additional Haqqani fighters. It is assessed the security force had broken up a Haqqani leadership meeting.
   
5. Iran: Life of Jailed Human Rights Lawyer at great risk: On Sunday, 31 October, Nasrin Sotoudeh, one of Iran’s most prominent human rights lawyers went on a dry hunger strike protesting her detention and ill treatment inside Tehran’s Evin prison. Her family reported that her health is quickly deteriorating.
   
6. UN: Cuba, Venezuela, Iran top the list of countries lining up to scrutinize US Human Rights during UN review: ccording to diplomats cited Wednesday by a Geneva-based NGO, U.N. Watch, Cuban officials “took the lead last week in circulating an advance sign-up sheet.” “We are concerned that Iran, Cuba, Venezuela and other non-democracies are planning to hijack the session to score propaganda points and drum up anti-American sentiment worldwide,” said the organization’s executive director, Hillel Neuer.
   
7. UK: Al-Qaeda terrorist arrested: Talking to the Royal United Services Institute, May revealed that an associate of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was arrested earlier this year and is suspected of planning an attack on the country. This terrorist unit has been blamed for the cargo bomb plot on the US just last week, which was intercepted. The bombs were found in printer cartridge packages in Dubai and Britain and were being mailed to the US. It’s believed that Anwar al-Awlaki, a US national and al-Qaeda leader, was the mastermind behind the attack from his base in Yemen.

The People's Cube.com

Posts for Nov 3rd: Iranians in Isle of Man, Imam condemned in Spain, Sakineh update, Malaysian blogger Kamaruddin, Iraqi massacre update, Women and the Taliban, Algeria ambush, Obama adviser on "anti-Muslim sentiment"

1. Investigation: Why did Iran register ships in the Isle of Man? File on 4 investigation has discovered questions over whether the Iranians have already sidestepped the international arms embargo, on the UK’s own doorstep by setting up companies in the Isle of Man to register ships for its fleet.
2. Spain: Cunit's imam, Benbraim Mhamed, sentenced to a year in prison for coercing a woman to wear the Hijab:The president of Cunit’s Islamic cultural association, Abderrahman el Osri, was convicted of the same crime and sentenced to nine months in prison and the imam’s daughter, Hafssa Ben Brahim, to pay a fine of 730 euros. They may not approach the victim or communicate with her for two years and must pay 1,500 euros in moral damages. If it would have been me, I would have expelled them all. They have given sufficient evidence (with death threats and intimidation to her family) that they are not succesfully integrated in Spanish society.
3. Apparently Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani was going to be executed today, but in the end she has not. But her family is also fearing for the lifes of both his son and lawyer, both arrested with two German journalists when they were trying to speak about her. When attempting to secure lawyers for the two, authorities have said that the two men did not need legal representation.
4. Malaysia: exiled Muslim blogger accused of "insulting Islam" is free to return. He has refused: “This order has lapsed but it does not stop the authorities from seeking my client’s detention on other grounds should he return,” said lawyer Jadadish Chandra. He lives in the UK now.
5. Iraq: Pope sends mesage to Syriac Archbishop of Baghdad. Meanwhile, the Vatican envoy to the UN, Archbishop Chullikatt, said that although the Holy See favors efforts to protect religion from “hate speech and incitement to violence,” his delegation was uneasy with the approach that targets “defamation of religion.” In practice, he said, measures promoted to stop “defamation of religion” have actually “served as a means for State-sponsored oppression of religious believers.” Let's see if someone really begins protesting about the abominable UN Resolution on the Defamation of Religions.
6. Afghanistan: negotiating with Taliban will crush women. "The evidence that girls will be able to go to school under the Taliban is slim. While girls might go to schools in some areas, in my experience, this is highly exceptional and by no means a uniform practice. The Taliban have been quite consistent in their beliefs that girls should not be educated and women who work outside the home deserve to die, a belief enacted in the Taliban’s murder of numerous female politicians, elections workers, policewomen and other prominent professional women. They are hardly interested in the protection or welfare of children given they regularly use children as suicide bombers and spotters and have hung boys they accuse of “spying for the Americans“".
7. Algeria: Islamic terrorists ambush soldiers: 2 killed, 3 wounded: On Oct 3rd, another 5 soldiers were killed on the same spot, a stronghold of AQIM.
8. US: Obama adviser decries "anti-Muslim sentiments".Hussain said he’s concerned about the increasing vitriol directed at Muslims, which he said may be due to their increasing visibility in the U.S. It’s a “reaction to a lot of progress made by Muslim communities,” he said.

Lastly, from Townhall.com: