Picture of the Day - "Progress" in Iraq / Update

[Chandernagore]

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I've read more than enough on him and on French history in general, thank you.  Princeton tends to be fairly demanding with their French Literature Doctoral candidates, you know.....   They also bring world experts from France to lecture to us.  So trust me, I've read enough, and I've heard both sides on the matter.

And still you don't know much about your subject. The point of vue you defend is that which has been largely abandoned by western scholars some 20 years ago.

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And my opinion is (without going into details) that overall Robespierre was a cruel dictator and yes, a butcher.

As long as you don't try to show a single argument, it will surely impress me.

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Quantitatively the losses due to executions during the French revolution are surprisingly low comparatively to many others and are completely dwarfed by some contemporary events of the same kind

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There is always a more atrocious event to compare it with.....that doesn't make it any more acceptable.

There is a line between what is acceptable and what is necessary. Never has absolutism been overthrown simply by talking. Sad truth.

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I hold the French revolution as the golden period of European politics ...

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Well, that says enough about your views.  End of discussion...

You don't discuss much in Princeton, do you ? Oh yes, end of discussion. Stop talking I can't argument. So typically neocon.

[Victor]

:offtopic:

Get back to Irak and let Robespierre be.

[Chandernagore]

When I came back from a 2 weeks vacation, daily reality caught back with me quickly with the Irak press releases. For a short time I found myself asking "what are they doing in Irak yet ?". I really had to think to remember the pretext for war. There had been so many :roll:

Not even fun. Scary.

[Alexandru H.]

Well, I'm getting bored with Iraq. Everyday the same gimmick: death, raids, terrorists, promises, democracy, bush... if things don't change, I predict the same for next year....

Boring...Switch the channel to prOn ---> :drunk:

[Chandernagore]

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if things don't change, I predict the same ...

:laugh:

[Chandernagore]

I found this an interesting pov even if not related to the roots of the war in Irak :

It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims.

The hostage-takers of children in Beslan, North Ossetia, were Muslims. The other hostage-takers and subsequent murderers of the Nepalese chefs and workers in Iraq were also Muslims. Those involved in rape and murder in Darfur, Sudan, are Muslims, with other Muslims chosen to be their victims.

Those responsible for the attacks on residential towers in Riyadh and Khobar were Muslims. The two women who crashed two airliners last week were also Muslims.

Bin Laden is a Muslim. The majority of those who manned the suicide bombings against buses, vehicles, schools, houses and buildings, all over the world, were Muslim.

What a pathetic record. What an abominable "achievement". Does all this tell us anything about ourselves, our societies and our culture?

These images, when put together, or taken separately, are shameful and degrading. But let us start with putting an end to a history of denial. Let us acknowledge their reality, instead of denying them and seeking to justify them with sound and fury signifying nothing.

For it would be easy to cure ourselves if we realise the seriousness of our sickness. Self-cure starts with self-realisation and confession. We should then run after our terrorist sons, in the full knowledge that they are the sour grapes of a deformed culture.

Let us listen to Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Sheikh - the Qatar-based radical Egyptian cleric - and hear him recite his "fatwa" about the religious permissibility of killing civilian Americans in Iraq. Let us contemplate the incident of this religious Sheikh allowing, nay even calling for, the murder of civilians.

This ailing Sheikh, in his last days, with two daughters studying in "infidel" Britain, soliciting children to kill innocent civilians.

How could this Sheikh face the mother of the youthful Nick Berg, who was slaughtered in Iraq because he wanted to build communication towers in that ravished country? How can we believe him when he tells us that Islam is the religion of mercy and peace while he is turning it into a religion of blood and slaughter?

In a different era, we used to consider the extremists, with nationalist or Leftist leanings, a menace and a source of corruption because of their adoption of violence as a means of discourse and their involvement in murder as an easy shortcut to their objectives.

At that time, the mosque used to be a haven, and the voice of religion used to be that of peace and reconciliation. Religious sermons were warm behests for a moral order and an ethical life.

Then came the Neo-Muslims. An innocent and benevolent religion, whose verses prohibit the felling of trees in the absence of urgent necessity, that calls murder the most heinous of crimes, that says explicitly that if you kill one person you have killed humanity as a whole, has been turned into a global message of hate and a universal war cry.

We can't call those who take schoolchildren as hostages our own.

We cannot tolerate in our midst those who abduct journalists, murder civilians, explode buses; we cannot accept them as related to us, whatever the sufferings they claim to justify their criminal deeds. These are the people who have smeared Islam and stained its image.

We cannot clear our names unless we own up to the shameful fact that terrorism has become an Islamic enterprise; an almost exclusive monopoly, implemented by Muslim men and women.

We cannot redeem our extremist youths, who commit all these heinous crimes, without confronting the Sheikhs who thought it ennobling to re-invent themselves as revolutionary ideologues, sending other people's sons and daughters to certain death, while sending their own children to European and American schools and colleges.

Abdel Rahman al-Rashed. General manager of Al- Arabiya news channel.

[mabadesc]

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When I came back from a 2 weeks vacation,

....And how was your 2-week vacation in Afghanistan, Chander?

Did you shoot any infidel invaders while you were there?

Did you cruise the mountainous vistas on top of a donkey?

[Dani]

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QUOTE When I came back from a 2 weeks vacation, ....And how was your 2-week vacation in Afghanistan, Chander? Did you shoot any infidel invaders while you were there? Did you cruise the mountainous vistas on top of a donkey?

Also little trip in Pakistan on the back of a camel?...

[Chandernagore]

Actually I was north of the polar circle...

(true)

HAKKAA PAALLE ! :laugh:

[Chandernagore]

Update : none, really.

There is a feeling in the air that the US just wait for the right moment to bug out of a (now) unwinnable mess into which Bush plunged the country.
Time does not appear to favor the provisional government and each day passing by seems to draw Irak closer to a futur Islamic state. So much for nation building and spreading of Democracy.

If I was an American soldier I wouldn't want to go fighting there : no welcome, no peace, no goal, no electricity, no democracy, no nothing. Only hostiles, everywhere. And a feeling of having been cheated on the job.

Poor guys.

[Florin]

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QUOTE ....... Did you shoot any infidel invaders while you were there?  :lol:   Did you cruise the mountainous vistas on top of a donkey? Also little trip in Pakistan on the back of a camel?...

As far as I know about the rest of the Forum, I was closest to that area.
At only 100 miles (160 km) from the border of Iraq, and also in the middle of a civil war. But that was 10 years ago, and the whole area changed a lot meanwhile.
Into worse, of course. :drunk:

PS: I know some members of the Forum visited Israel, but my quote target the comments about the other side

[Chandernagore]

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PS: I know some members of the Forum visited Israel, but my quote target the comments about the other side

I would like to visit it. But I'm not crazy 8)

[mabadesc]

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As far as I know about the rest of the Forum, I was closest to that area.   At only 100 miles (160 km) from the border of Iraq, and also in the middle of a civil war.

That's awesome, Florin. Can you tell us your impressions on the areas you visited? It must have been a fascinating trip. I'm assuming you were in Turkey, close to the Kurdish region of Irak. What was daily life like? Has modern commercialism broken through or is it still untouched by it?

Give us some details, please...

[Chandernagore]

To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us and make a broken tyrant into a latter-day hero ... assigning young soldiers to a fruitless hunt for a securely entrenched dictator and condemning them to fight in what would be an un-winnable urban guerilla war. It could only plunge that part of the world into even greater instability.

George Bush Senior, A World Transformed, 1998


How can father and son be so different ?

[Indrid]

who says they are different? maybe Bush senior just changed his mind......