‘Today’ goes to war on evangelical warmongers and conservative Americans in the military who no longer represent the true America……. all just a cover to smother any and all criticism or suggestion of criticism of Islam. B-BBC contributor Alan writes…
‘We do not disassociate Islam from war. On the contrary, disassociating Islam from war is the reason for our defeat. We are fighting in the name of Islam. Religion must lead to war. This is the only way we can win.’
Said by the moderate and respected Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, February 2006
Today I was minding my own business, filling in time watching the TV when an advert came on. This advert, taking on the Zeitgeist, whispered to me that ‘Institutions’ have let us down…But if you value honour and honesty and if you think promises are important you are not alone. For some impossible to fathom reason the BBC sprang to mind. An Institution that lets me down all the time, one that doesn’t seem to value honour and honesty nor fulfil its promises of accurate, impartial journalism.
Perhaps I was feeling a bit jaundiced having the day get off to a bad start (John Bell of the Iona Community’s uplifting sermon aside) by hearing America had declared war on Islam. A surprise to me and perhaps to the American Army.
Not to the BBC however who were quite happy to give this story far more prominence and relevance than it merits….its full report differed from its careful description of the item.
This is what the Today blurb said: ‘The most senior military officer in the US has described as “totally objectionable” a course being taught at a military academy that asks students to imagine an all-out war against Islam.’
Note the ‘imagine an all out war’ …not ‘we are at war gentlemen, kill ’em all!’ which was the gist of the full report.
‘Lawrence Korb, of the Centre for American Progress, told the Today programme that some people in the military “really feel that this is the struggle we’re in”.
“There is a certain element in our military – a lot of them influenced by evangelical religious beliefs – that feel that the attacks of 9/11 and the subsequent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are an indication of the fact that we are at war with Muslims and that people are using their religion as a justification for killing Americans and our allies.”
Korb went on to blame ‘very conservative’ people (Republicans!?) who didn’t represent the true America for this war mongering. Today’s Naughty jumps in and says ‘That’s a very interesting point does that disturb you?’ Naturally it did and Korb goes on….‘They think this is the struggle we are in….Islam is just the latest threat to western civilisation.’
Naughty is definitely coming at this from the point of view that the course was wrong in concept and that people should realise that thinking Islam is a threat to Western civilisation is not clever at all……
‘The extraordinary thing about this is that the basic premise of the course was ‘let us destroy the civilisation and the people and this is how you would do it’….there has been a rise in political sensitivity about these things….not in a politically correct way of course…you would have thought people ‘get it’ a bit more….somebody might have had a bit of a brain to say this wasn’t very clever.’
Naughty obviously has no idea what goes on at any military training establishment or at the planning establishment in government. Does the BBC send its journalists to war zones without ‘hazardous region’ awareness training? No…they all go on these courses so they know the dangers and how to protect themselves…..prior planning prevents… an early grave.
The BBC story was that a military college was teaching its students that we are actually at war with Islam and that certain actions are necessary to win that war such as bombing Mecca and killing civilians as in Nagasaki or Hamburg.
In reality the the lectures were not based on the premise that we really are at war with ‘Islam’…it was a training model, a ‘what if’ scenario that illustrated what events could happen in such an eventuality and what measures could be necessary to win against 1.4 billion Muslims.
As the material itself said…..’this model presumes we have already failed at Phase 1- “Deterrence” therefore Phase 1 is not shown as a part of this OP Design framework.’
Is that unusual? No. All military colleges and command structures carry out such scenarios and planning for all eventualities….to train commanders and to have contingency plans for all eventualities….fail to plan and you plan to fail.
How many such scenarios were built around the Soviet threat? How many are now built around the Chinese potential for war? There are similar courses being run right now that wargame China as the ‘enemy’ and envisage ‘all out nuclear war’ at some stage….as one scenario.
In the 1930’s the USA had plans to attack the British Empire:
‘In 1930, a mere nine years before the outbreak of World War Two, America drew up proposals specifically aimed at eliminating all British land forces in Canada and the North Atlantic, thus destroying Britain’s trading ability and bringing the country to its knees.’
In 1945 the USA had plans for the defeat of Stalin with Operation Dropshot:
‘After Nazi’s defeat in 1945, Soviet Union emerged as a new superpower with its own aggressive agenda to promote Communism and eventually, dominate in the world. “Dropshot” is a result of contingency planning, a frightening but realistic scenario of the Third World War.’
Britain had her plan:
Operation Unthinkable (Churchills Plan for War with the Soviet Union)
Within days of the defeat of Germany in World War II, Winston Churchill ordered his war cabinet to draw up contingency plans for an offensive against Stalin that would lead to “the elimination of Russia”, according to top secret British documents.
In 1961 the USA had more contingency plans to tackle the Communists:
‘U.S. War Plans Would Kill an Estimated 108 Million Soviets, 104 Million Chinese, and 2.3 Million Poles: More Evidence on SIOP-62 and the Origins of Overkill
A recently declassified Joint Chiefs of Staff report on “Berlin Contingency Planning,” produced in June 1961 as the Berlin Crisis was heating up, includes horrific estimates of fatalities and destruction that the execution of U.S. war plans would cause to the Soviet Union and putative allies.
The truth is the only difference here is the word ‘Islam’.
The BBC intend to infer that this is what happens when ‘Islamophobia’ gets a grip on a nation…irrational and frightening, dangerous thoughts are spread about the religion of peace. There is a massive movement to close down all discussion about Islam…and certainly about any ‘threat’ that the ideology might pose to the West. The BBC has never discussed the consequences of Islam’s imposition upon Europe, the US has expunged all mention of ‘Islamic’ terrorism or radicals from its counter terrorism training manuals.
There are some people who speak out having recognised the craven Establishment subjugation to Islamic ‘community’ threats of violence…….
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2004/jun/11/religion.world
‘Officialdom is easily frightened of Islam, with good reason, treading carefully in a minefield. There is an essentially craven tendency to give in to the notion that religious belief deserves some special treatment by the state.’
Polly Toynbee said:
‘We must be free to criticise without being called racist’
Liberals appease Muslims for fear of association with anti-immigrant thugs
‘I pointed out yet again that theocracy is lethal. Wherever religion controls politics it drives out tolerance and basic human rights.
More alarming is the softening of the brain of liberals and progressives. They increasingly find it easier to go with the flow that wants to mollify Muslim sentiment, for fear of joining the anti-immigration thugs who want to drive them from the land.
The liberal dilemma over Islam is not unlike the prevarications of some over communism in the cold war.’
And this…..
The Independent (London)
October 23, 1997, Thursday
In defence of Islamophobia; religion and the state
Polly Toynbee
‘I am an Islamophobe. I judge Islam not by its words – the teachings of the Koran as interpreted by those Thought-for-the-Day moderate Islamic theologians. I judge Islam by the religion’s deeds in the societies where it dominates. Does that make me a racist?’
or Boris Johnson:
‘To any non-Muslim reader of the Koran, Islamophobia — fear of Islam — seems a natural reaction, and, indeed, exactly what that text is intended to provoke.
Judged purely on its scripture — to say nothing of what is preached in the
mosques — it is the most viciously sectarian of all religions in its
heartlessness towards unbelievers. We look in vain for the enlightened Islamic teachers and preachers who will begin the process of reform. What is going on in these mosques and madrasas? When is someone going to get 18th century on Islam’s mediaeval ass? ‘
Why did they invite Lawrence Korb onto comment….of all the people in the world why him? Korb was former Assistant Secretary, U.S. Department of Defense dealing with ‘Manpower, Reserve Affairs, Installations and Logistics’ from 1981 to 1985.
but is now a fellow at the Centre for American Progress. He is rabidly against the Iraq and Afghan wars, wants to massively reduce the US defence budget and instead of going to war suggests we engage, talk, to the enemy.
In fact pretty much the BBC’s own world view.
However he does have an insight into the necessary strategy to defend a nation in his publication:
“Integrated Power: A National Security Strategy for the 21st Century”.
‘Defending our country has always been and will always be the highest priority of the federal government. To carry out that task, the government needs a clear, consistent national security strategy….based on sober judgments of how things are, not what some ideologues wish them to be.
It must reflect complex realities, not a naïve black and white view of the world.’
Which is pretty much what the US Army ‘unofficial’ course was doing….taking a ‘what if’ scenario and ‘planning’ a war around that….but for purposes of training.
I leave the best till last……and of course it is Mark Mardell who rather foolishly spells out in no uncertain terms exactly what the BBC ‘unofficial’ line is:
‘The course taught officers there was no such thing as moderate Islam and that they should consider the religion their enemy. It advocated “total war” against all the world’s Muslims, As far as I can see this is not intended in any sense as a rather sick academic exercise in stretching the bounds of what could be thought. It is actually what the officer teaching it believes.
In other words: completely nutty stuff that would disgrace the wilder fringes of the blogosphere.
What does seem rather surprising is that all those commanders, captains and colonels must have sat through the course and not felt the need to tell someone that something rather weird was going on.’
It could be ‘rather sick’ but is in fact what the officers really thought….they’re completely nuts and rather weird.
In fact, having read the material, it is a sensible and rational assessment of, firstly, what Islam the religion means and demands of its followers, secondly what would the threat be if the whole ‘Islamic world community’ did come together in a war against the ‘rest’ and then how that threat might have to be tackled….and being a big threat would need a big ‘stick’ to deal with it.
In other words the course was not saying ‘we are at war with Islam’ it was assessing what would happen if such a war did occur.
The BBC know that but intend to keep the pressure on anyone who raises their heads above the parapet and says Islam may not actually be a ‘religion of peace’ after all and we should take a serious look at the consequences of allowing it to flourish within our own societies.
Old Arab saying….’Once the camel gets his nose in the tent his body will surely follow.’
Oh and just as an addendum… in my search for the ‘camel’ quote this popped up ….
‘Pakistan is top dog in searches per-person for “horse sex” since 2004, “donkey sex” since 2007, “rape pictures” between 2004 and 2009, “rape sex” since 2004, “child sex” between 2004 and 2007 and since 2009, “animal sex” since 2004 and “dog sex” since 2005, according to Google Trends and Google Insights, features of Google that generate data based on popular search terms.
The country also is tops — or has been No. 1 — in searches for “sex,” “camel sex,” “rape video,” “child sex video” and some other searches that can’t be printed here.
The Embassy of Islamic Republic of Pakistan did not reply to a request for an interview.’
Maybe that explains a lot recently in the news?
