Sunday, February 19, 2006

Martyrdom 101

A speaker at a Teheran university boasted that his organization has hundreds of potential suicide bombers ready to strike US and UK bases in Iraq, should there be an attack on Iranian nuke facilities.

The things they teach in schools these days.

4 comments:

JH said...

Hi Corrie,
I would like to give my two-cents on the issue. First, I hope to God that there is not an attack on Iranian nuke facilities. I believe that war will make the US more enemies and cause more problems than it will fix. Also, as a father and a christian, I do not think it is worth the innocent lives, especially those of children. In Japan, where I reside, they show quite a bit of documentary footage of the grieving Iraq parents of children killed by bombs. I have never seen anything so heart wrenching. What is a father who has lost his family to American smart bombs going to do? I think these kinds of killings help terrorist organizations recruit members. I fear for the future of this world if the US goes in and attacks Iran.

It is also important to remember that Iran is not a country of psychos as they seem to be portrayed as. It is possible that the hardline Ahmadinejad administration got some inadvertent help from Bush's denouncement of the Iranian election process Here is the link: . This denouncement, according to the article, really motivated hardline and middle-of-the-road voters alike to go out and cast a vote for the staunchly anti-American Ahmadinejad administration. Of course, it cannot be said that this alone got Ahmadinejad elected but it might have helped. Before attacking other countries, I believe the US has to look long and hard at its policies which help put it in its mess in the first place.
Have a nice day,
JH

SkyDaddy said...

Thanks for your comments, JH. I appreciate your perspective, but I think you are misinformed.

I'm curious - does Japanese TV show the images of the grieving relatives of those butchered by Saddam? Of the victims of 9/11? Does it show the video of the beheading of Daniel Pearl? Does it show the bloody aftermath of a suicide bomb in a Tel Aviv restaurant or bus stop?

That is the face of radical Islam.

I, too, hope we do not have to attack Iran. I hope that the Persian people rise up and throw off the madman they "elected" after the mullahs removed all moderates from the ballot.

Ahmadinejad wants to instigate a global war of Islam vs everyone else in order to bring about the return of the Mahdi and a global Caliphate. Does that fact make you fear for the world?

JH said...

Thanks for your reply. Usually, I only blog about English education in Japan. This is quite a change. I am glad to be having this dialogue with a fellow American. Hearing your perspective is very interesting to me and gives me a more comprehensive view of a very complicated issue.
Yes, Japanese TV shows the terrible images of 9/11 and the wife of Daniel Perl pleading for his life as well as the massacre of the Kurds and footage of Hussien calling out "traitors" in the Iraqi congress right before their executions. It also shows footage of grieving families in Iraq and Afghanistan. As you can imagine, I watch very little American television. During the war with Iraq I did see some footage from CNN where reporters rode in tanks and talked about the effectiveness of US weapons. From what I saw of FOX, they were cheerleading. I think it is important to see the war from the vantage of the U.S. and the innocent people that are affected.

Concerning Saddam Hussien, my understanding is that he is not a deeply religious man but will use Islam for political purposes. I think that he is an evil dictator but not a fundamentalist. So, I do not know if we can call him an example of radical Islam. There are lots of evil dictators in this world such as Kim Jung Il of North Korea.
We fought the war with Iraq on the premise that they had WMD. They had no bona fide connection with Al Qaeda nor to 9/11. UN inspections did not turn up any WMDs. The Bush administration said that the inspections were ineffective and attacked Iraq anyway going against the majority of the international community. What was the real reason for the US to attack Iraq? Bush now says the war with Iraq is a fight against terror but before it was to eliminate WMD. There are a lot of people here that think the US is doing this for oil.
Since the U.S. invaded Iraq, the country now has an Al Qaeda presence. Governments in Palestine and Iran have become more radical. The other two members of the axis of Evil (or at least North Korea) are now developing nuclear weapons.
What I am saying is that US post 9/11 policies might be making things worse rather than better. How can the U.S win the hearts of the majority of moderates in the Arab world so that people like Ahmadinejad don't come to power? Certainly not by war.
Also, can the US expect Iran to obey the international community and not develop its nuclear program when the U.S itself did not listen to the international community and invade Iraq?

SkyDaddy said...

JH my brother, you are making an argument from ignorance.

That is to say, you are assuming that it is our actions post-9-11 that have *caused* the Iranian mullahcracy and the Palistinians to elect radical governments. It ASSUMES that NK and Iran would have taken radically different stances toward nuclear development had Gore been elected.

It is foolishness that *assumes* that things would be different had the US taken another path. It is an assumption without support.

The Iranian mullahs denied moderates a place on the most recent ballot. There are strong indications that the majority of Persians do not support the hardline leadership. They were given a Soviet-style ballot.

The Palistinans had a Hobson's choice between the obviously kleptocratic Arafat holdovers and hamas, who at least had built schools and clinics.

As the thousands of new documents now coming to light indicate, Saddam was forging ties with AQ in the ancient Arab tradion of, "He who is the enemy of my ememy is my friend."

As far as your last sentence is concerned, the US *went to the UN and was given permission to use force* in the last UNSC resolution concerning Iraq.