Women and Jihad
According to CNN Al Qaeda has used at least two women who were hospitalized for mental disorders due to war exposure in suicide bombings. The obvious implication of this is that Al Qaeda is running out of people. I seriously doubt Al Qaeda would employ the honorable work of jihad to schizophrenic women. After all one of the benefits of dying in jihad is the afterlife of numerous virgins to attend to you. This benefit is not exactly feministic in nature.Personally, I think containing hospitals from Al Qaeda infiltration should not be very hard. The current hospital director is facing questioning right now over whether or not he gave Al Qaeda the information on these mentally ill women.It is also noteworthy that the diary of Abu Tariq, an Iraqi Al Qaeda emir, has been released this week. According to Tariq, in one battalion, the number of fighters dropped from 200 to ten. In another, it dropped from 300 to 16.
CNN also reported last week that our soldiers are commiting suicide at a high rate of 5/day!
when are we getting them home?
The problem is that we are doing the same mistake our enemy is making. Using young men and women in War situation where they dont want to be and are stuck due to personal problems and dreams to live with their families!
Khwaja
15 Feb 08 at 11:27 am
Well let’s just pull them out because they don’t want to be there and allow that country to go into a civil war worse than the one they are already in. Very good thinking.
Chris McNeal
15 Feb 08 at 3:55 pm
Yes, Chris, forcing people into a situation that will cause their death is bad. Al Qaeda is bad. Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia has two units that have dropped in strength. Just because they’re running out of people doesn’t mean this is close to over. If that were true, then Japan should have surrendered to us in 1943.
Kyle Johns
15 Feb 08 at 4:28 pm
The obvious implication of this is that Al Qaeda is running out of people.
Uh, no. Al Qaeda in Iraq may very well be in decline, but using mentally ill women as suicide bombers doesn’t necessarily indicate this at all. A much simpler explanation is that they are using women because they are harder to detect, and crazy people because they are easier to persuade.
Just because they’re running out of people doesn’t mean this is close to over.
Even if they ran out of people tomorrow it still wouldn’t be close to over, because Al Qaeda in Iraq is not the biggest problem in Iraq! The biggest problem by far is getting Iraqis to forge a viable, stable political system. The denial of this vital fact is an ever flowing fount of irrelevant bullshit in the American political discourse.
JH
15 Feb 08 at 5:22 pm
Where in this post did I say that the conflict is almost over? You see, the problem that you guys have is you can’t just look at a couple of facts and just take them for what they are. Everything, everything has to be somehow tied to your grand liberal agenda and it annoys the living crap out of me.
Chris McNeal
15 Feb 08 at 5:52 pm
Then what in the name of Ghengis Khan did you intend to implicate with this post, Chris? That al-queda is bad? That we should institute more protective measures around mental hospitals? Or that this is somehow indicative of American success in Iraq and is a reason to stay there?
“Well let’s just pull them out because they don’t want to be there and allow that country to go into a civil war worse than the one they are already in. Very good thinking.”
You want to talk about “good thinking”? Try being there in the first place. Try talking to mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters who have lost loved ones fighting a far under a false premise. They’ve died for what? For the geopolitical goals of a nut-job administration? For freedom? What freedom? Who’s freedom? Quit making out our presence in Iraq as some moral obligation, because it’s not! If you really believe that it’s our moral imperative to be in a country we don’t understand, fighting a people we don’t’ understand, and for a cause we don’t understand. Then go enlist yourself for the grand cause of liberation.
There’s no damn grand liberal agenda. There’s matter of fact.
S.C. Denney
15 Feb 08 at 8:54 pm
Everything, everything has to be somehow tied to your grand liberal agenda and it annoys the living crap out of me.
I think they have medication for that nowadays.
JH
15 Feb 08 at 9:19 pm
Can there not be progress in Iraq? Would that be so terrible?
Just because they aren’t going to have a democracy like ours doesn’t mean we can’t stay there until people can safely walk the streets again. Is that too much to ask for?
And jh if there’s a medication, then ship it to me as fast as you can. I’m going crazy.
Chris McNeal
15 Feb 08 at 10:09 pm
Every debate on Iraq disolves into the same debate:
Some people think that if we just occupy Iraq long enough, spend enough money, and kill enough people that the people of Iraq will overcome cultural and ideological fault lines that go back hundreds of years and accept western liberal democracy.
Others think that establishing a stable liberal democracy in Iraq is a pipe dream no matter how long we stay. Meanwhile, we are squandering human life and taxpayer money at an absurd level with no end and no progress in sight.
The gender and frequency of suicide bombers is hardly the most important factor here. I agree that we can probably prop up any government, no matter how corrupt and empty it is, while we are willing to occupy Iraq. But I do not think that the government can survive if we leave now or in 35 years. We could wait 35 years (or 100, McCain) to find that out, or we can realize it now.
David M Manes
15 Feb 08 at 10:18 pm
“Grand liberal agenda…” Good job McNeal, spoken like a true FoxNews pundit. And you claim to be a moderate…
Two posts in a row that were not written by David or Steve…this is a new record! You are standing in the way of their (our) grand liberal agenda!
TheChrisBerry
15 Feb 08 at 10:58 pm
Killing enough people will not get the job done. However, remaining with a people in their time of calamity will build trust in us. What message does it send when we make the mistake of going there, cause a civil war, and then just leave? We are already looked upon with suspicion because of our support of Israel without supporting the Arabs in the Gaza strip and the West Bank anywhere near the same amount. If we leave, we demonstrate, once again, that we are always thinking about ourselves and any humanitarian efforts of any kind in the the Middle East will be made impossible. I don’t think you want that. I can’t see how anyone could want that.
Chris McNeal
15 Feb 08 at 11:13 pm
thechrisberry: I don’t have to sound like a liberal to be a moderate. I do not view myself as a conservative (chiefly because of reasons other than the Iraq war) but I am certainly not a liberal. I think Fox News has one good thing going for them. They aren’t liberal!
Chris McNeal
15 Feb 08 at 11:19 pm